Sunset at 4:12 PM in Carlisle, Massachusetts
I came down the stairs early Thursday morning because, well, because we had to get up early to drive into MGH to get the results of my latest scans (and Boston seems to get farther and farther away, the roads filled with cars at inappropriate hours, the days dark by four, the flakes of snow slanting towards the weary eyes of the commuters, the cancer patients, the drivers with their loaves of bread, the troopers with their wary eyes, the equally wary drivers tuned into their apps: police ahead, disabled vehicle--the promise to outsmart traffic: should you merge at the last minute, should you wait patiently in the growing length of cars? What did being a good girl get you so far? There are no points for suffering), but also because I had woke up dismayed, remembering that I had forgotten to move the damn Elves on the Shelf. Why do we have these elves? Where is my embattled Judaism? (This year, Elijah has stated his profound dislike of Christmas music, chalking it up to his Judaism--the other night, as I put him to bed, exhausted, and he ran through a small litany of everything that had gone wrong that day, as he is wont to do when exhausted (me too), he exclaimed: "And that guy Crosby sucks!" with such a sense of affront. It took me a minute to realize we were speaking of Bing). I was rushing to move the elves into some other scene (as it turns out, Kyle had thoughtfully moved them the night before, so we can all pause in gratitude that the illusion is still in place (although Asher announced at breakfast this morning that a day is not really 24 hours, that scientists round up to make it easier for us, and that a day is actually 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds, so how long he will believe that Cocoa and Marshmallow travel to the North Pole to report out on the twins' behavior is likely diminishing), when I caught a glimpse of the girl out of the corner of my eye. She was hovering over by the chair on the lefthand side of the living room, by the big windows. And I knew immediately that it was the girl, and then it dawned on me that she had grown up, and then I knew that I wasn't going to get good news that morning at MGH.
When I was little, and lived at 60 Medbrook Way, in Clintonville, Ohio (between the ages of five and 11), in a white clapboard house, with a covered portico which was covered in lilacs and honeysuckle in the summer, I used to sometimes see the ghost of a girl in the basement. She always sat, tucked into a corner by the furnace. I don't remember what she looked like, or even if I could see what she looked like, but she wasn't scary at all. I remember thinking that the fact that I was often coming down the basement stairs thinking about laundry, or recess mishaps, or how unfair it was that my brother was better than math than me and would still see her, out of the corner of my eye, like a cataract or sudden fog in my view, meant that she must be real, because I wasn't looking for her, wasn't expecting her. Which is a peculiar proof of the real.
I stopped seeing her completely when we moved when I started 6th grade.
Until the other night.
The darkness that edges in by 3:30 in the afternoon, until just after four, when the sun has set, in a way that is not so definitive in the summer when of course the sun still sets, in a way that is cold and still, contemplative, lonely is something to which I cannot seem to become accustomed, despite living through these winters for almost every year of my life.
Hanukkah approaches--a festival of lights. I can only imagine it from the atmosphere far above the earth, the scattering of lights across the dark northern hemisphere. Asher did tell me that heaven is located right above earth, before the rest of the universe. The families and lovers, the criminals and the impoverished, the sick and the well, all huddled together for warmth, and wool, and fires, and early bedtimes, and short walks with the dog against the frozen, barren field, the night almost silent, waiting with bated breath.
Shakespeare is the first writer known to have used the phrase "bated breath": Shylock says to Antonio in the Merchant of Venice: "Shall I bend low and, in a bondman's key, /with bated breath and whisp'ring humbleness, / Say this...." I could digress here on the anti-semitism in this play and the treatment of Shylock and bring it forward to the images of money behind Hilary Clinton in the Trump ad in 2016, and so on and so forth, but I'm so weary of that story that I'll allow you to fill in the blanks. Let's leave it as bated, almost not breathing in fear or strangeness at what is to come.
My sister and I were joking on the phone tonight as she drove home from work (see Boston) in the dark (see earth) that the thing about terminal cancer is that all the other problems seem less pressing. That's not a complete truth (see Elf on Shelf), but I did tell her that when I got a scary-looking letter from the IRS today in the mail, I really shrugged my shoulders. Okay, Boomer. The letter was fine, but the idea holds. I really have learned not to get overly excited about some things that would have put me into a paroxysm of anxiety in the B.C. era. But one of the lovely things about cancer, as I am wont to say, as you all know, is that life with cancer is just like life, but with cancer. So I am thinking about what a nice time it will be to teach my son Cameron to make bread over the holidays--which is the only gift for which he asked, even though I know there's a little pressure to pass the recipe and technique on because well, cancer.
I'm watching from afar as an old friend from my high school era watches over her brother as he dies from lung cancer. He was diagnosed only several months ago and is in hospice right now. Today she posted a beautiful, strange photo of him laying in bed, a thin, tattooed musician, and to his right in the room and his photo is a big, visiting Santa, who is looking on with the kind of pity and gravity that I associate with the Father Christmas from Narnia. What gifts are left to give.
I think about the standard of care available in different parts of the country. I think about the joke: Q: Why do they put nails in coffins? A: To stop oncologist's from ordering another round of chemo. I think about this woman I know from Facebook, who writes obsessively about nutrition and cancer--she has been told she was on the brink of death four times in the last four years. Her motto is "never buy green bananas."
I think of the dying man--and the flowers we will send his family soon, the white lilies lining a path of prayers for peace, and even now, where he has chosen no more: no more treatment, no more food, no more water, where he lies bruised and almost emptied of his time-bound gifts, I ask him to whisper to us on the dark, silent roads, the dog's quiet breathing marking our steps, telling us, the still living, what it means to be alive.
When I was little, and lived at 60 Medbrook Way, in Clintonville, Ohio (between the ages of five and 11), in a white clapboard house, with a covered portico which was covered in lilacs and honeysuckle in the summer, I used to sometimes see the ghost of a girl in the basement. She always sat, tucked into a corner by the furnace. I don't remember what she looked like, or even if I could see what she looked like, but she wasn't scary at all. I remember thinking that the fact that I was often coming down the basement stairs thinking about laundry, or recess mishaps, or how unfair it was that my brother was better than math than me and would still see her, out of the corner of my eye, like a cataract or sudden fog in my view, meant that she must be real, because I wasn't looking for her, wasn't expecting her. Which is a peculiar proof of the real.
I stopped seeing her completely when we moved when I started 6th grade.
Until the other night.
The darkness that edges in by 3:30 in the afternoon, until just after four, when the sun has set, in a way that is not so definitive in the summer when of course the sun still sets, in a way that is cold and still, contemplative, lonely is something to which I cannot seem to become accustomed, despite living through these winters for almost every year of my life.
Hanukkah approaches--a festival of lights. I can only imagine it from the atmosphere far above the earth, the scattering of lights across the dark northern hemisphere. Asher did tell me that heaven is located right above earth, before the rest of the universe. The families and lovers, the criminals and the impoverished, the sick and the well, all huddled together for warmth, and wool, and fires, and early bedtimes, and short walks with the dog against the frozen, barren field, the night almost silent, waiting with bated breath.
Shakespeare is the first writer known to have used the phrase "bated breath": Shylock says to Antonio in the Merchant of Venice: "Shall I bend low and, in a bondman's key, /with bated breath and whisp'ring humbleness, / Say this...." I could digress here on the anti-semitism in this play and the treatment of Shylock and bring it forward to the images of money behind Hilary Clinton in the Trump ad in 2016, and so on and so forth, but I'm so weary of that story that I'll allow you to fill in the blanks. Let's leave it as bated, almost not breathing in fear or strangeness at what is to come.
My sister and I were joking on the phone tonight as she drove home from work (see Boston) in the dark (see earth) that the thing about terminal cancer is that all the other problems seem less pressing. That's not a complete truth (see Elf on Shelf), but I did tell her that when I got a scary-looking letter from the IRS today in the mail, I really shrugged my shoulders. Okay, Boomer. The letter was fine, but the idea holds. I really have learned not to get overly excited about some things that would have put me into a paroxysm of anxiety in the B.C. era. But one of the lovely things about cancer, as I am wont to say, as you all know, is that life with cancer is just like life, but with cancer. So I am thinking about what a nice time it will be to teach my son Cameron to make bread over the holidays--which is the only gift for which he asked, even though I know there's a little pressure to pass the recipe and technique on because well, cancer.
I'm watching from afar as an old friend from my high school era watches over her brother as he dies from lung cancer. He was diagnosed only several months ago and is in hospice right now. Today she posted a beautiful, strange photo of him laying in bed, a thin, tattooed musician, and to his right in the room and his photo is a big, visiting Santa, who is looking on with the kind of pity and gravity that I associate with the Father Christmas from Narnia. What gifts are left to give.
I think about the standard of care available in different parts of the country. I think about the joke: Q: Why do they put nails in coffins? A: To stop oncologist's from ordering another round of chemo. I think about this woman I know from Facebook, who writes obsessively about nutrition and cancer--she has been told she was on the brink of death four times in the last four years. Her motto is "never buy green bananas."
I think of the dying man--and the flowers we will send his family soon, the white lilies lining a path of prayers for peace, and even now, where he has chosen no more: no more treatment, no more food, no more water, where he lies bruised and almost emptied of his time-bound gifts, I ask him to whisper to us on the dark, silent roads, the dog's quiet breathing marking our steps, telling us, the still living, what it means to be alive.
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