A Kick-Ass Fairy: A Memoir (35 page)

As we slowly moved forward, my inhaling and exhaling became deep gasps. I was getting dizzy and my front teeth started getting numb. I started feeling very emotional. Was this due to an accumulation of carbon dioxide in my blood?

After taking yet another stop to look at the scenery, I found focusing on the ground immediately in front of me helped. It was not unlike living in the present moment. If you thought of the challenge ahead, you just wanted to die. In my head I heard, You can do it, you can do it. I thought I could use this as a tool, use the rhythm of the words over and over like a mantra. Now I had to find a way to deal with regulating my breath.

Looking over to Ellen, who was using a walking stick made from a birch limb, hunched over, making her way forward inch by inch, I told her, “You look like an old hag.” Together we laughed between choking coughs.

Continuing to ascend, I realized that if I concentrated on exhaling more than on inhaling, my breathing settled down a bit. I tried watching the ground in front of me, thinking You can do it, and breathing like a version of Lamaze—deeply inhaling, then slowly exhaling to the count of four steps. It worked—before I knew it, I was reenergized. I shared my finding with Ellen.

“Good for you,” she said.

Was it chemical mastery, mind over matter, focused attention?

My body is amazing, I thought.

Later in the day we sat at the top of Eagle Peak. If we’d had a flag we would have placed it there. From our vantage point we could see San Francisco, the Sacramento River delta, and the snow-topped peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Here we were, on top of the world (at least locally), two mothers, one grieving for a daughter no longer here and another for a daughter fighting for her life who, if she made it, would never be the same. We were triumphant crones, teenagers, pot smokers, philosophers, singers, inhaling the perfume and the stink of our fume-filled life, exhaling, post-processing. I had many revelations on that peak as I considered the geology of the millions of years it took to create such beauty. If there weren’t earthquakes, torrential downpours, floods, rushing rivers, gale force winds, and volcanoes, the view would not have been the same. All the powerful forces of nature were necessary to create the magnificence of the landscape.

I thought about my life. If I hadn’t had the volcanic mother I had, I wouldn’t have become so strong or learned how to survive. If it weren’t for the earthquakes of my childhood, I would never have learned to be vigilant, a sentinel. I wouldn’t have become a nurse. If I hadn’t married Dave, I wouldn’t have learned about unconditional love. I wouldn’t have had Kim. If I didn’t have Kim, I don’t know if I would have lived when Dave died. If Dave hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have gone from being a nurse to becoming a CPA. I wouldn’t have met Doug. Then I wouldn’t have been supported as I had been, with the best medical care, the freedom to not work and to explore all the avenues of healing I desired. I knew without a doubt that I had a loyal, unconditionally loving partner who was as strong as a rock—not perfect, but perfect for me. And Brad would have never have been born.

I knew having Brad and Kim, most of the time, was the only thing that kept me going. If I hadn’t had my first breast cancer, I never would have found the second. If I hadn’t had the breast infection and learned that they didn’t get clean margins, I probably would have had a recurrence of a very aggressive cancer. If all of those things hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have been so relentless in pursuing the cause of my symptoms, which resulted in finding pancreatic cancer at an early stage. If I hadn’t been monitored so closely, the small lung cancer would not have been detected.

I wasn’t yet sure where Kim’s large tumor fit in all of this, but maybe, someone in the medical community will learn something because of it. Maybe the criteria for testing for Li-Fraumeni syndrome will change. But in any event, this was now part of Kim’s story, the story of a powerful woman whose father died, whose mother struggled with life-threatening illnesses, and who was now recovering from treatment for her own tumor, diagnosed at age 28. I already knew she was amazing. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know all the things she would do.

All this had happened, and all of it was good. I felt a sense of humility that I had lived long enough to understand it all. I felt blessed to know that if these things had not happened, I wouldn’t have been the person that I was at that moment. Neither would Doug, Kim, or Brad. I didn’t know what the future would bring, but I knew I had to have faith and trust that it would also be good, even if not readily apparent.

Exuberant and exhausted, we made our way back to Ellen’s car, six and a half hours after we had begun. As we took the blind switchbacks down the mountain at breakneck speed, the Allman Brothers on the stereo, I said to Ellen, “I want to have a party, a goddess party.” She looked over at me with a raised eyebrow that said continue.

“Let’s celebrate the circle of life, celebrate the maiden, the mother, and the wise women—the cycle of death and rebirth. What do you think?”

“Sounds good to me.”

I sent out e-vites with a beautiful picture of Gaia (the daughter of Chaos), mother earth herself, to the women-only party. It would be at my house, outdoors, on the Saturday after the summer solstice. Everyone was instructed to come dressed as a “goddess,” whatever that meant to them, and bring scarves for swirling, twirling and to prepare to really let go. We were going to celebrate being women—powerful divas, Gagas, and real goddesses—and do it with song, of course.

Feeling inspired by the project, I decided to paint the picture of Gaia that I had found on the Internet for the invitation to use as the backdrop for the karaoke stage on the back deck. In the picture, Gaia was emerging from the earth with her shoulders as the mountains, her head covered in flowers, birds, and butterflies. Rays of white, teal, mauve, and yellow light radiated from her head. Her loving gaze was toward the virgin horizon, as if just her intention was enough to create the beauty of the earth. A river began at the nape of her neck and flowed down to the life-filled oceans that were her one breast. The other breast was inhabited with the animals of the forest. I went to an art supply store and bought a five-by-four-foot canvas and decided to paint it in oil to maximize the experience of all the colors.

After struggling to fit the canvas into the back of the SUV, I picked up Ellen and we went off to a craft store to buy party supplies. There we bought flower garlands and sprigs for the wreaths that guests would make for their heads. I selected twenty-four spools of satin ribbon in red, pink, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple to cut into lengths to decorate the tambourines I was giving as party favors. We searched the store for floral tape and spools of wire for attaching the ribbon. After filling the cart with all the supplies, we waited on the long checkout line, exhausted, having spent all this energy creating.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I blocked out the painting, began to lay out the base colors, then the figure of Gaia herself. As the painting was taking shape, one day Ellen came over for rehearsal.

“Do you think I could paint one little corner of this painting?”

“Absolutely!” I said.

After I’d finished Gaia’s face and head of flowers and started blocking out the animals, I asked Ellen when she wanted to start her corner. She said, “I don’t want to ruin it.” I didn’t push. That was one of the great things about our relationship. Nothing was forced, everything was accepted.

We practiced some duets. Coming from the world of classical music, Ellen didn’t care for pop. In song, she was a jazz and blues gal; I was the blues rocker chick. We intersected at the blues. Like a couple of teenagers we practiced the karaoke versions of the Cranberries’ “Dreams,” “Sisters” by Bette Midler and Linda Ronstadt, Everly Brothers duets, and “Telephone” by Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.

The plan for the party was that each person would pick the goddess they most identified with from a list I’d selected. The four options were Athena, warrior, goddess of justice and truth; Artemis, goddess of the hunt and nature; Aphrodite, love and beauty; and Hestia, hearth and home. Each goddess group would select one song from each of three categories—Women’s Empowerment, Songs of Heartbreak, and Screw Him songs. Then they would get up and perform them—no contests, just for fun. All the songs were ones everyone would know.

Ellen arrived at the party a vision of beauty as Artemis. I was Athena. She had curled her hair. Her makeup was beautiful; she was even wearing eye shadow. She told me she’d spent the whole day getting ready and painted her fingernails just for me. Her dress was a silk-and-lace sheath in teal and brown that her husband had purchased as a gift for her in Hong Kong years before. It had been in storage until the party. She was radiant.

The guests sipped Bellini champagne punch as they made the wreaths for their heads and decorated their tambourines, giggling and sharing stories of their lives. We had an incredible Hestia-inspired pot-luck dinner and spent the rest of the evening singing, dancing, celebrating each other, our lives, and good times. Our ages ranged from mid-20s to mid-60s, but everyone there was young. Just like the famous cartoon that can be seen alternately as a girl or an old woman, if you looked carefully in each face you could see the joyous, carefree expectancy of the maiden, the loving glow of the mother, and the knowing appreciation of the crone.

At the end of the evening, after everyone else had left, on the back deck under the full moon, Ellen, Clara, Kim, and I, each of us in various states of grieving, did shots of limoncello. We drew from the deck of goddess cards we’d forgotten to use at the party and laughed as we interpreted their meaning, arguing whether they applied to each of us.

Late in the evening, I walked Ellen to her car, where we embraced and wished each other well. Then Clara, Kim, and I shared a group hug and said goodnight. I walked back through the house picking up all the debris, the petals fallen off flower sprigs, the scraps of ribbons, a couple of tambourines forgotten, a flower wreath left behind.

Later in the week, watching the video, I noticed the sparkle had returned to my older, and maybe wiser, eye.

April 13, 2011

I’m on a women’s tour in Ireland sponsored by the New York Institute of Jungian Studies entitled
The Realm of the Goddess: A Women’s Pilgrimage to the Sacred Sites of Ireland
. I am hoping to connect with the earth and the “crone” or wise woman—the next phase of my life.

April 14

I am finding Ireland to be very magical with the lush green hills about to burst into bloom. The Irish broom brush is flowering in golden yellow. The idea of the fairies, the fairy trees, the beautiful farms with the rock walls, the little cottage homes seen while along the way to and from our sites, look like the Easter bunny is about to come with bouquets of tulips and daffodils. While looking for the crone, I found my child goddess here instead, further confirmed by the etched card I purchased of the elf Fairy Heart. I have reclaimed her. I’m even giggling! I realized that the Goddess—the child/maiden, mother and crone—has always been within me. I can also see her within the beauty and power of each and every woman I have met.

April 19

I found HER! After visiting the Library of Ireland and calling up books about fairies dating back to the 1600s, I decided that I want to get a fairy pin or charm as my souvenir, a symbol of the trip. So today, while I was walking the streets of Dublin looking for a fairy to bring home, I got shivers up my spine when I finally found my fairy in a store window. She is a silver charm that wears a red enameled motorcycle helmet, with stars, goggles, and red lipstick. She is dressed in a green skirt and over-the-knee shiny black Christian Louboutin platform boots with their red soles, and crystal-studded garters. Her arms and legs move. I bought her and a chain to hang her from as a necklace. She is my charm. She is me—the Kick-Ass Fairy! She is me whole—with all the parts of me reclaimed. And now I know I have always been a Kick-Ass Fairy.

Later, in the fall of 2011, after doing some research into what I could do to make a difference, I contacted the Clinical Genetics Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. Even though it was going to be weeks of work, I wanted to participate in the clinical study on Li-Fraumeni syndrome that was just about to start. After speaking with the study nurse about the criteria for participation, I received a large package of information that needed to be filled out. There were booklets of questionnaires to be answered, family trees to be made, medical problems to be described.

For weeks, I pored over the five four-inch binders I had accumulated of medical records, surgeries, pathologies, and lab reports to fill in all the relevant information. I was struck again by how amazing it was that I had lived through all of this. I called aunts, uncles, and cousins to gather data. I called my mother, but she was no help since she did not remember anything. When I finally gathered everything, I sent it all to the NCI.

In November, I had another surgery for yet another lung cancer (making this the fifth primary) in a different part of the same left lung. This one was also small, requiring no further treatment. Once home, I collapsed into recovery. I spent two entire weeks in bed watching all five seasons of The Wire.

I knew it was going to be a happy Thanksgiving. I chose not to go down into the deep and just be grateful—grateful for my prognosis, for dodging the bullet, grateful for my doctors and their skill and for the technology that they do have that can find these little tumors before they kill me. I was also grateful that they could reuse my scars.

Unfortunately, though, by February of 2012, my body went into lockdown mode. I had to start wearing splints for problems with both of my feet (plantar fasciitis), splints for my wrists (carpal tunnel), and immobilizers for my elbows (epicondylitis, or tennis elbow). One night while I was lying in bed, I thought, I look like the Tin Man. I was practically wearing full body armor and thought I looked just like a warrior. I had been in combat whether I was conscious of it or not.

Toward the end of that spring, I joined a pool to loosen up my muscles and joints. I figured if I can’t take the steep hill, I will go around it. If I can’t go around it, I will blow it up. I knew, after all was said and done, that I was a CANCERIAN, but not just in the sense of the horoscope.

I am a Cancer Warrior, a fighter with a hard shell and a big heart. Not just a survivor but a member of the Legion of Cancerians. I revel in all the drama of life, while learning how to live, living to love, and ready to fight another day if I have to. But I am, was, and always will be a Kick-Ass Fairy!

In June, right before we left on the plane to go to the NIH in Bethesda, we hired contractors to continue the remodeling of our house, our home. We are continually reinventing our lives.

I know I will live to see Brad walk the lawn at the University of Virginia when he graduates from college next year! I believe the best of my life is yet to come.

Really.