Cotuit

And another summer's week at the Cape. All the children are here: Cameron, Kaitlyn, Zachary, Avery, Zoe, Asher, Elijah. And Dave, Kaitlyn's husband. And my niece Katie, and her girlfriend from Texas, Rachel. Tomorrow Kanika arrives, Cameron's wife. 

Everyone was scattered through the first floor, making lemon zucchini cake, playing a complicated board game called Everdell, resting on the white furniture (why??) shimmying to Avery's playlist. And Zoe said, "Are they all yours?" in a sarcastic, Massachusetts accent. 

Years ago, when the kids were Asher and Elijah's age, this is how we were greeted once at Honeydew Donuts. "Are they all yours?" Yes, I said then, shelling out eight dollars for four donuts and an iced coffee. 

Yes, I say now, although they have multiplied, have various mothers and fathers, coupled and uncoupled with sundry partners, and yes, although they aren't strictly all mine, they are mine to be with, mine to love. 

I'll say it again, my goals in bringing up people in this world are to foster adults who love and receive love, and to encourage critical thinking. Critical thinking we have in spades. Sarcasm we have in treble-spades. Love--the giving and receiving we have in hearts.

I waxed poetic about interoception last time we met, but my hesitant surety that the clinical trial drugs were working was faulty. The cancer came roaring back, progressing in my spine and in my lung for the first time, and in my pelvis. Two more vertebrae are broken. I was unceremoniously kicked out of the trial. In most ways, this feels like the other shoe dropping.

I wonder if the reason I felt positively about the medicine working was a confusion between feeling physically good and feeling emotionally good. I'm pretty content these days--extraordinarily connected to the people I love, and finding a quiet joy in each day. Making my peace each day with the pain. A confidence in the myriad decisions I make each day in terms of what I do with my hours is blooming. I have let go of some bigger dreams, and I'm being honest when I say I no longer need to see the Northern Lights, or travel to Italy, or go back to Telluride. My bones are damaged and fragile, and my blessed body has taken me so far already. 

Maybe interoception, the signals sent from our internal organs to the brain which shape the brain's perception of our bodies' state, is operating for me such that what gives me joy is what my body can actually do. Does that make sense? I can't go to Norway with these fragile bones and this compromised ability to walk, and I no longer feel the need to go to Norway. Which comes first? I love the idea that my lungs and my bones and my heart are signaling to my brain, "Hey sister, that's not going to work for us anymore. You good?"

The children genuinely adore one another. Most of them are old enough now to have critical views of one another, but unless they hide it from me, which seems impossible to believe and to pull off, they seem to love one another, to a one, unconditionally. I am moved by the deep acceptance they have for one another, the treasure chest of shared experiences--both hilarious and terrible. For example. We had this super pleasant and passive Rottweiler, Scout, and the kids were tasked with walking the dog when they got home from school. Scout would sometimes leave these large poops on the landing, and the rule was whomever saw it first was responsible for picking it up. Zoe usually got home first, but never cleaned it up, and her siblings would cry foul. "I was looking up," she would say in her own defense. "I never saw it."

They all lived through divorce and the shuttle between houses and their struggles with their fathers and their mothers and their step-mothers. I really parented them in the spirit of benign neglect and on the positive side, that made our house the place to congregate. However. I shudder thinking of the high-wire paint job Cameron and Zachary pulled off when we decided to sell the house they grew up in (I may never be forgiven for that sale). They borrowed tall ladders and essentially went unsupervised while I was at work, at least forty-five minutes away. My neighbor nervously kept an eye on them. I just assumed it would all work out. 

I think my way of parenting has lent itself to very close and intimate relationships with all of them, but also made me miss certain things--a budding eating disorder, bouts of depression, endless midnights playing world of warcraft on school nights. I have no regrets exactly, but I wish I had observed in a more nuanced way. Hindsight is a late night demon.

Until cancer, I did assume that things would just work themselves out. I'm sure no one who doesn't have hereditary cancer running through their family expects to get cancer, but I was gobsmacked by the diagnosis. The hubris makes me ashamed. Experiencing the anticipatory grief my cancer has brought to the family really opened my eyes to the grieving of others around me. 

There is a silver lining to which is a complicated feeling to admit. As I have said, I cannot consider cancer, per se, a gift. It is a terrible thief.

I can however recognize the gifts which have come with the passage of time.

Here, in Cotuit, or Barnstable, or Mashpee--I am not certain where we are, the name of the town seems to shift every few blocks--the many gifts are splendid. What else could I want, other than to sit on this dilapidated couch, with feathers poking out through the worn upholstery, and witness a parade of the ones I love, coming through to me with their various concerns. From dissatisfactory reviews at work to the unfair calls in the endless ping-pong game in the basement. The grocery list can't be managed because as soon as one person gets back from Stop and Shop, we run out of something else and start a new list, because there are about a dozen people here on any given day. Stop and Shop. When we first moved here I thought that was a ridiculous name for a grocery store (as if Kroger's made any more sense). Now it flows off the tongue. I ease into rotaries without hesitation. I don't remark on the endless Dunkin Donut franchises. Much, anyhow. 

I'm feeling especially tender towards my body today. As it turns out, there is another clinical trial to join in a month or so. Before that, though, I need to have a course of radiation. I need to again have the back surgery that leveled me last winter where cement is inserted to shore up the spine, which is slowly collapsing. I need to have a port inserted--I have dreaded this for some time--my veins are too scarred for the chemotherapy I am going to start. My teeth are also damaged from the chemo, so I need to squeeze a root canal in there, too. My brain feels sorry for my body. Is it interoception for my brain to offer comfort to my body? "Hey, sister. You can do this."

I'm officially at the place where I need to consider quality over quantity with each proposed new treatment, but this decision felt simple. I honestly believe it is okay with my heart and brain if this is my last summer on the Cape with the children. But oh, who wouldn't want another evening on the back deck with my son, watching the heron lift into the sky? Who wouldn't want one more fire to gather around, eating the gooey, golden brown marshmallows until our stomachs ache? Who wouldn't want to stand at the ocean's edge and let the water rush your feet, which are sinking into the soft, shell-studded sand? Who wouldn't want the tender arm a daughter lends me? Who wouldn't want to sit here, with my laptop, hurrying the words out of my system so I can go be with the people about whom I write? 

I would, I would, I would.