Rocking the Pink (11 page)

“I was recently diagnosed with TNBC,” I wrote, tears welling up in my eyes. “I will start chemo soon.” I paused. What did I really want to say? “I'm scared,” I continued. And it was the truth. “Is there anyone out there? I need a friend.”

With a heavy sigh, I wiped the tears for one last time, turned off the computer, and flopped into the warm bed next to Brad, who was already fast asleep.

The next morning, I awoke to find a reply message in my inbox.
It was from Jane, a recently diagnosed, forty-year-old woman from Sheffield, England.

“I'm scared, too,” Jane wrote. “I'll be your friend, if you'll be mine.”

I immediately sent Jane an email telling her how excited I was to have found her. She happened to be online at that very moment, and replied right back. A lengthy, giddy email exchange between us ensued, during which we discovered that Jane and I were both scheduled to undergo our first chemotherapy infusions
on the exact same day,
a few weeks later. We agreed to be each other's TNBC buddies.

“I feel like I have had a bit of a weight lifted from my shoulders, just knowing you are there,” Jane wrote. “I am really thrilled that you want to take this journey with me and I look forward to us ‘holding hands' across the pond as we both take our first trepidatious steps into chemo and beyond.”

“You have made a big difference for me, too,” I replied. “Thank you for holding my hand. I am squeezing it right now.”

Over the next few weeks, Jane and I prepared ourselves for chemo. Even though we were embarking on our respective battles on separate continents, it felt like we were arm in arm. In a flurry of emails, we compared the different chemo drugs our oncologists had recommended, traded practical tips we'd read about how to combat chemo side effects, and sent each other links to websites that donated head scarves and hats. We divulged personal-ad-type details about ourselves: “I love reading, listening to music, socialising, and being with my family—however much they drive me nuts,” Jane wrote. In
response to my descriptions of Brad and the girls, Jane wrote to me about her husband, Adam, and two-year-old daughter, Natasha.

We gave each other pep talks. Jane cheered me on: “You must not let this bloody disease ruin your dreams! It may feel like it is in control of you but you can be in control of it!”

And I replied, “I am one hundred percent here for you, squeezing your hand, sending you positive vibes. You can do this. The cancer won't know what hit it!”

We vented and complained about things we couldn't reveal to anyone else, lest we cause worry or offense. Jane wrote, “I had a bit of a wobble the other day. I couldn't stop crying and crying.”

For my part, I bristled against “staying positive” all the time, the universally accepted mantra for defeating cancer: “I am told 10,000 times a day to ‘stay positive.' Yes, of course. But I was not ‘positive' 24/7 before cancer, and I'm not going to be positive 24/7 after cancer. I believe completely in a positive attitude, no doubt. But I was already a positive person. And I got cancer.”

Jane agreed and suggested we get matching T-shirts bearing the slogan STAY POSITIVE, with two thumbs up. We just understood each other.

I lamented Brad's suffering: “How is your husband? I have seen mine cry more in the past week than in the twenty-three years I've known him. It's devastating. He keeps saying he wishes he could do it for me. . . . ” To which Jane replied that, strangely enough, her husband hadn't cried at all. I chalked it up to Adam's (very) British stiff upper lip.

And then, in one of our email exchanges, I fortuitously addressed
Jane as “My Dearest Jane,” and noted that this was how Miss Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen's classic
Pride and Prejudice
had always addressed her elder sister, Jane, in letters. Well, that certainly touched a chord with Jane: “Do you like
Pride and Prejudice
?!” she wrote, and I could hear her exuberance through cyberspace. “I love P&P! Did you get the BBC's version of it with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth over there? Being a bit of a romantic at heart, my most favourite part is when, although he gets rebuffed, Mr. Darcy says to Elizabeth: ‘In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.' Oh, be still my beating heart!”

I'd found my soul mate! I didn't know anyone, other than Mom and Sharon, who'd even
seen
the BBC version of
Pride and Prejudice,
let alone adored it like I did.

Thanks to my mom, I'd been a period-drama junkie my whole life.

“Come on in,” Mom had said to Sharon and me during those first uncertain months after her divorce from Dad, holding up the corner of her bedspread.

And Sharon and I had crammed into her warm bed, transfixed by Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler in
Gone with the Wind—
a life-altering movie that inspired me to randomly shoehorn “fiddle dee dee” into countless conversations for the better part of a year.

Years later, when Sharon and I were in our twenties, the three of us had crammed into Mom's bed yet again, this time swooning over all six hours of the BBC's
Pride and Prejudice,
starring the scorching Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. Since that first viewing, I had become
addicted, regularly watching all six hours in one sitting. I knew it was unhealthy, but I just couldn't stop.

And now here was another woman afflicted with
both
triple negative breast cancer and
Pride and Prejudice
fever, just like me! What were the odds?

“My Dearest Jane,” I replied, “yes, I am obsessed with
Pride and Prejudice
. I have seen the BBC version probably twenty full times and I am not exaggerating. People in the U.S. are not obsessed with this; most do not know it exists, so there is no accounting for it. My favorite part is also his first proposal. I would have said ‘Yes!' I wouldn't care if he had insulted my family or said his feelings violated his judgment and social situation. I would have said ‘yes' and then tackled him and had my way with him right then and there.”

And thus, through a shared belief that Mr. Darcy's proposal to Miss Bennet was, without a doubt, the single most romantic moment in cinematic history, a friendship born from cancer transcended into an unbreakable sisterhood.

Before I had my baby, I envisioned my life as a world map. My marriage was North America; my career was Europe; my family, Asia; and my friends, Australia. When I became pregnant, I assumed my future baby would fit right into my world map, like a thumbtack marking a city. My baby would be . . . Rome, perhaps.
Right there—
a very precise and contained place. After the baby's arrival, I was sure, I would continue to be exactly the same person as ever—the same wife, daughter, friend, and, yes, lawyer. My map would simply have one additional thumbtack:
baby.

And then Sophie arrived. She was no longer a hypothetical baby—she was real. Quickly, I realized I'd been a complete idiot. Sophie wasn't a thumbtack on the world map; Sophie
was
the map! And everything else—and I do mean everything else—became the thumbtacks. Marriage? San Luis Obispo. Sex? Ha! Des Moines, if I
was lucky. Friends? Barstow. Career? Detroit. Exercise? Ah, luxury: Paris. Sleep?
Sorry, we've run out of thumbtacks.

But in those first glorious months of Sophie's life, I wouldn't have had it any other way. Sophie was my world. Even after years of loving Brad so deeply, I had never experienced a love like this before. Right after Sophie was born, Brad and I mutually agreed that, in the event of a fire, there was no question whom we'd both rescue: Sophie.
No offense,
we both said.
None taken,
we both answered.

When I took Sophie to my mom's house, I sat in a chair, holding Sophie and staring into her sleeping face.

“Oh, Mom,” I said, “I love every inch of her, every cell, every molecule. I love her hair, her nose, her soft lips. The way she smells. Oh, I just want to eat her up. I've never been so in love in all my life!” After a moment, I realized the silliness of verbalizing these obvious statements to my own mother, a woman with whom I now shared the Universal Truths of Motherhood. “Of course,” I continued, a knowing smile on my face, “I'm sure you felt exactly the same way about me.”

My own mother, without a moment's hesitation, answered, “No, honey. You're pretty over the top.”

I took an extended maternity leave from work to spend every moment with my beautiful baby. I would come back, I assured the firm, when Sophie was six months old. I was certain that six months would feel like an eternity. And then, after my brief respite as a full-time mommy, I'd be back to my old self.

Of course, six months passed in the blink of an eye. And I wasn't back to my old self. I wasn't even in the same universe as my old self.

“I can't leave her,” I blurted to Brad on the eve of my scheduled return to work.

But we were tens of thousands of dollars in debt from law school, and Brad's salary alone wasn't enough to cover student loans and living expenses.

“We'll get a great nanny,” Brad suggested. “She'll be fine.”

I was frustrated that he didn't understand. “She might be fine. But
I
want to be the one to care for her.”

“What about working part-time?”

Oh, please.
“No attorney has ever worked part-time at my firm. Ever. That's not an option.”

“Well, then, it's a no-lose situation,” Brad said. “Just write up a proposal with everything you'd want in a perfect world, and submit it. If they say no, you need to find another job. If they say yes, you've got exactly what you want. It never hurts to ask.”

I couldn't argue with Brad's logic.

Just as Brad had suggested, I wrote up a ridiculous proposal, incorporating all the elements of my dream work situation—part-time hours, working from home, and full benefits—and then I sent the proposal to the managing partner of my firm. The very next day, I received word that my proposal had been summarily accepted. It was the first arrangement of its kind at my firm. I didn't know whether to jump for joy or dissolve into tears.
Yay?

For the next six months, I worked from home and relieved the nanny multiple times per day to breastfeed and cuddle Sophie.

I'm not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg, but Sophie wasn't attached to stuffed animals or blankies; she was attached to me,
literally and figuratively. When I tried to put her in a crib, stroller, or high chair, Sophie wailed to the point of hyperventilation, until I picked her up and snuggled her close.

When I finally decided to wean Sophie, after her first birthday, I gave her a sippy cup full of warm chocolate milk in lieu of my breast, just as the leading baby book had instructed, and she threw it angrily against the wall, seething. I was her woobie. There would be no substitutes.

Every night, Brad bounced Baby Sophie in his arms for an eternity to put her to sleep. When Sophie cried hysterically in her crib, not wanting to be left alone, Brad scooped her up and brought her into our bed. When I protested, telling Brad she needed to learn to soothe herself, he wouldn't hear of it.

“Whatever she's crying about, it's real to her” was his mantra. “Bears don't leave their cubs alone in a cave, crying hysterically, or else they'd get eaten. It's basic wilderness survival, honey. We don't leave our baby to cry.”

Two years after I had Sophie, getting pregnant again was as easy as falling off a log. I told the doctor at my very first appointment of the pregnancy, “Doc, this baby's as strong as an ox.”

The sonogram revealed that the little ox inside my womb was a baby girl. A Baby Chloe to join Big Sister Sophie. Sophie and Chloe. Two sisters. Just like Sharon and Laura.

In a flash, I was four years old. I had gone number two in the bathroom, and there was no toilet paper. As any sane four-year-old would do in this situation, I simply used the nearby hand towel to wipe myself. And then, in another perfectly logical (and, I believed, polite) move, I neatly hung it back up on the towel rack.

Some time later, six-year-old Sharon marched me into the bathroom and, holding the poo-stained hand towel out toward me in disgust, demanded, “Did you do this?”

“No!” I lied, feigning indignation.

But Sharon wasn't fooled. “I know you did it.”

What Sharon did next shaped our sisterhood our whole lives: She helped me dispose of the mortifying evidence. Rather than rat me out to our parents, she led me and the “poo towel” (as it has come to be known ever since) into the back yard, where, after glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she hurled it over the back fence and into the neighbor's yard.

I never would have thought of that. And that's why I needed a big sister.

I have never forgotten how it felt when Sharon chose to be my accomplice in crime, rather than the Gestapo. Even though I didn't know the terminology at the time, I thought, in essence:
She's got my back.

And now I was going to have two little poo-towel huckers of my own, God help me.

Brad and I were ecstatic to have another baby, of course, but the pregnancy itself was just a means to an end. This time around, the giddiness of first-time pregnancy was replaced by the drudgery of “been there, done that.” Morning sickness was no longer the happy emblem of a successful pregnancy; it was just me puking my guts out.

One day well into the pregnancy, I was sitting on the cold tile floor of the bathroom, retching violently into the toilet. Brad stood in the doorway, and just as I paused briefly between heaves, tears streaming down my red, puffy face, he asked, “Hey, where are my brown shoes?” I looked up at him and gestured that I was just a little bit busy at the moment. So much for ginger-root tea and foot massages.