Favorite Child
You probably already know that Margaret Atwood maintains that all of the things that happen in The Handmaid's Tale have already happened, somewhere, or are things we are trying to do, or making progress towards. She was known to carry around newspaper clippings (recall, if you dare, the time before the internet, search engines, and smart phones. Just the other day I remembered I had forgotten that we used to call Time and Temperature--a phone number that let us know what time it was and, in my case, whether it was warm enough to go to the pool. Alone, by the way.). Genital mutilation? Check. Killing people because they are gay (well, not sure if that happened in the book or the series). Check. Controlling bodies, especially women's bodies--check is an insufficient word for what is happening right now.
I was thinking about Margaret Atwood because I haven't watched the third season of the Hulu series. I know the series has moved past the novel at this point, but I've been afraid of the trauma I experience watching that show. My heart races. I can't sleep afterwards. Yet I also feel duty bound to watch it.
I also will watch When They See Us. I expect to be horrified and upset and taken back to those days when the newspapers cried out "wilding" and experience the feeling of powerlessness I have these days--like the powerlessness I feel when I watch The Handmaid's Tale, or read The Overstory. Is no story compelling enough to change the things we do to one another and to the planet?
Not to be depressing.
I hear King quoting Parker, saying "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." I would like to have faith in that idea. The Overstory taught me that the arc of the moral universe may not include humans.
Perhaps earth will reemerge once we are all gone.
Perhaps human ingenuity and creativity will carry the day, under pressure, at the last moment, like all the save the planet from evil movies teach us. But what if the evil is us? What if the Whitewalkers are a metaphor for climate change? Where will our Arya spring from?
Here's some good news.
New tracts of wilderness have been created in the last year.
Courts have ruled that the Trump administration (seems like the wrong word--clown car?) couldn't simply side-step an Obama-era moratorium against selling coal mined out of federal lands.
Kroger--in Ohio!--has phased out plastic bags, among all stores, everywhere, it seems.
The ozone is healing because we banned CFCs.
The second largest coral reef is no longer endangered.
Carlisle now composts.
I don't know. I have a lot of kids and at my core, I believe they will be able to inhabit this planet for their natural lives. I really hope I'm right. But file this under, won't be around to see how this all plays out.
Again, not to be depressing.
When my oncologist first met me, he said he couldn't tell me how long I would live, all he could tell me were the averages for the various medication regimes I likely would embark on. It all added up to 2 1/2 years. I'm now at year 2.
I think, more than ever, that I don't know how long I will live. Anymore than any of us do. But I would be lying if I didn't say that cancer puts a special frame of mortality around one's lived life which healthy people may choose to avoid looking at on a regular basis. I no longer believe death is what happens at the end of a long road. I believe death is our companion from the moment we are born. Whether we acknowledge our fellow traveler is a whole other thing.
We are built to be afraid of loss. Eternal life, or the kind of heaven that we are taught to imagine (even if we are being told in our families that it does not exist), contains the promise of no loss, of no pain, of our old beloved dogs crowding at the gate to greet us. Oh and look, there is Grandma.
I suspect that if there is life after death, or something after death, that our capacity to imagine what that looks like is seriously beggared.
Here's what I do think, though. Death can, when contemplated truly, allow us to be wholly present in this life, and give us a frame within which to love that which we know will end. We know our dogs will not outlive us (unless we are very old or have stage four cancer--sorry, Sebastian), but we love them wildly nonetheless. We know our children are meant to grow up and away, to leave our homes, start new lives, maybe start new families. They will continue to love us and need us, but it's not the same. We also know they could die, and sometimes they do. Well, they all do in time. But sometimes someone has what we call an untimely death. But we love them passionately, furiously, achingly so.
Death makes time, doesn't it? A little? A lot? Without it, how would we not take one another for granted? But that's a fucking hard place to stand in. Knowing someone you love is going to die can send you into a dark, black place. It can make you hold back, to protect yourself.
But it can also be transformative. In many ways, it has been for me. I'm walking around with my own mortality front and center every single day, and I have been for the last two years. That's what it means to have stage four cancer. (Although maybe not to everyone. I've met people who are living recklessly because they know they are going to die. One strange thing I have seen more than once is someone from my metastatic support group smoking outside the cancer center. I see the argument. But I haven't embraced recklessness.).
The transformation has allowed me to embrace the ordinary. I have read about a woman with stage four lung cancer who has devoted herself to climbing mountain peaks with each of her children, trying to get in one last adventure with each of them before she dies. I read about a person who trained to be a chef. With about a year left to live, she and her mother and sister embarked on a global tour, going to the best restaurants in each country. I don't have much of a bucket list. I pine for an ordinary horizon--I want to be at the twins' graduation; I want to be there at the birth of my grandchildren; I want to grow old and visit the sea and write poems meant only for me.
But what do I do everyday? I am in the middle of my life, and I will be in the middle of my life until the day I die, give or take a few days, depending on how it goes. That's how it is for me to live with cancer--it's just like life, but with cancer. This has been somewhat revelatory for me. I don't wander around in a golden haze, smelling all the roses, reading Shakespeare, and having intense, meaningful days. I worry about the people I love, all for various reasons that mostly predate cancer, even if cancer has exacerbated things. I worry about money. I worry about making lemon chicken for the teacher appreciation luncheon. I worry about work deadlines (although not like I used to). I worry about ticks on the kids and the dog. I worry about screen time. I worry about my scans.
And I do ordinary things. I make pancakes with buttermilk, mochi rice flour and greek yogurt. I am reading a terrifying book about the Donner Party. I write talking points. I go to lunch with my mother. I watch GOT with Kyle. I make a lot of ridiculous jokes about cancer. I secretly cry in my car after I drop the boys off at a birthday party on the weekend. I like some new songs by The National, and Lissie, but I'm still not sure about Vampire Weekend. I get poison ivy like clockwork, and my body had the temerity last week to get pink eye.
School's almost out. I think a lot of people feel like the year actually starts in the early fall each year, when school starts, whether or not you have children, because you were a child. The rhythm of life changes in the summer for everyone, at least on the east coast where we have seasons. I'm looking forward to swimming in the ocean with my kids this summer, making this delicious lime corn recipe when corn gets ripe, hoping the Red Sox dig themselves up from the middle of the standings, kissing and holding the people I love, and hopefully reading The Testaments, Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaiden's Tale, when it comes out in September. I'm counting on it.
Here's a poem by Margaret Atwood called Sad Child.
You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.
Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.
Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.
My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light falls and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,
and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside your head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.
I was thinking about Margaret Atwood because I haven't watched the third season of the Hulu series. I know the series has moved past the novel at this point, but I've been afraid of the trauma I experience watching that show. My heart races. I can't sleep afterwards. Yet I also feel duty bound to watch it.
I also will watch When They See Us. I expect to be horrified and upset and taken back to those days when the newspapers cried out "wilding" and experience the feeling of powerlessness I have these days--like the powerlessness I feel when I watch The Handmaid's Tale, or read The Overstory. Is no story compelling enough to change the things we do to one another and to the planet?
Not to be depressing.
I hear King quoting Parker, saying "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." I would like to have faith in that idea. The Overstory taught me that the arc of the moral universe may not include humans.
Perhaps earth will reemerge once we are all gone.
Perhaps human ingenuity and creativity will carry the day, under pressure, at the last moment, like all the save the planet from evil movies teach us. But what if the evil is us? What if the Whitewalkers are a metaphor for climate change? Where will our Arya spring from?
Here's some good news.
New tracts of wilderness have been created in the last year.
Courts have ruled that the Trump administration (seems like the wrong word--clown car?) couldn't simply side-step an Obama-era moratorium against selling coal mined out of federal lands.
Kroger--in Ohio!--has phased out plastic bags, among all stores, everywhere, it seems.
The ozone is healing because we banned CFCs.
The second largest coral reef is no longer endangered.
Carlisle now composts.
I don't know. I have a lot of kids and at my core, I believe they will be able to inhabit this planet for their natural lives. I really hope I'm right. But file this under, won't be around to see how this all plays out.
Again, not to be depressing.
When my oncologist first met me, he said he couldn't tell me how long I would live, all he could tell me were the averages for the various medication regimes I likely would embark on. It all added up to 2 1/2 years. I'm now at year 2.
I think, more than ever, that I don't know how long I will live. Anymore than any of us do. But I would be lying if I didn't say that cancer puts a special frame of mortality around one's lived life which healthy people may choose to avoid looking at on a regular basis. I no longer believe death is what happens at the end of a long road. I believe death is our companion from the moment we are born. Whether we acknowledge our fellow traveler is a whole other thing.
We are built to be afraid of loss. Eternal life, or the kind of heaven that we are taught to imagine (even if we are being told in our families that it does not exist), contains the promise of no loss, of no pain, of our old beloved dogs crowding at the gate to greet us. Oh and look, there is Grandma.
I suspect that if there is life after death, or something after death, that our capacity to imagine what that looks like is seriously beggared.
Here's what I do think, though. Death can, when contemplated truly, allow us to be wholly present in this life, and give us a frame within which to love that which we know will end. We know our dogs will not outlive us (unless we are very old or have stage four cancer--sorry, Sebastian), but we love them wildly nonetheless. We know our children are meant to grow up and away, to leave our homes, start new lives, maybe start new families. They will continue to love us and need us, but it's not the same. We also know they could die, and sometimes they do. Well, they all do in time. But sometimes someone has what we call an untimely death. But we love them passionately, furiously, achingly so.
Death makes time, doesn't it? A little? A lot? Without it, how would we not take one another for granted? But that's a fucking hard place to stand in. Knowing someone you love is going to die can send you into a dark, black place. It can make you hold back, to protect yourself.
But it can also be transformative. In many ways, it has been for me. I'm walking around with my own mortality front and center every single day, and I have been for the last two years. That's what it means to have stage four cancer. (Although maybe not to everyone. I've met people who are living recklessly because they know they are going to die. One strange thing I have seen more than once is someone from my metastatic support group smoking outside the cancer center. I see the argument. But I haven't embraced recklessness.).
The transformation has allowed me to embrace the ordinary. I have read about a woman with stage four lung cancer who has devoted herself to climbing mountain peaks with each of her children, trying to get in one last adventure with each of them before she dies. I read about a person who trained to be a chef. With about a year left to live, she and her mother and sister embarked on a global tour, going to the best restaurants in each country. I don't have much of a bucket list. I pine for an ordinary horizon--I want to be at the twins' graduation; I want to be there at the birth of my grandchildren; I want to grow old and visit the sea and write poems meant only for me.
But what do I do everyday? I am in the middle of my life, and I will be in the middle of my life until the day I die, give or take a few days, depending on how it goes. That's how it is for me to live with cancer--it's just like life, but with cancer. This has been somewhat revelatory for me. I don't wander around in a golden haze, smelling all the roses, reading Shakespeare, and having intense, meaningful days. I worry about the people I love, all for various reasons that mostly predate cancer, even if cancer has exacerbated things. I worry about money. I worry about making lemon chicken for the teacher appreciation luncheon. I worry about work deadlines (although not like I used to). I worry about ticks on the kids and the dog. I worry about screen time. I worry about my scans.
And I do ordinary things. I make pancakes with buttermilk, mochi rice flour and greek yogurt. I am reading a terrifying book about the Donner Party. I write talking points. I go to lunch with my mother. I watch GOT with Kyle. I make a lot of ridiculous jokes about cancer. I secretly cry in my car after I drop the boys off at a birthday party on the weekend. I like some new songs by The National, and Lissie, but I'm still not sure about Vampire Weekend. I get poison ivy like clockwork, and my body had the temerity last week to get pink eye.
School's almost out. I think a lot of people feel like the year actually starts in the early fall each year, when school starts, whether or not you have children, because you were a child. The rhythm of life changes in the summer for everyone, at least on the east coast where we have seasons. I'm looking forward to swimming in the ocean with my kids this summer, making this delicious lime corn recipe when corn gets ripe, hoping the Red Sox dig themselves up from the middle of the standings, kissing and holding the people I love, and hopefully reading The Testaments, Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaiden's Tale, when it comes out in September. I'm counting on it.
Here's a poem by Margaret Atwood called Sad Child.
You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.
Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.
Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.
My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light falls and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,
and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside your head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.
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