a radio was on.

Have I shared my small fantastical idea that there is a parallel universe so close it sometimes feels like I could just take a step to the left and be back on that path, or open my eyes quickly in the morning and catch a glimpse of the other world, the world from before last summer, a universe where I hum merrily on my way, and I don't have cancer, and Hillary Clinton is president, and we don't have to ever realize that it is much worse than we imagined, over here where I have stage four cancer and Donald Trump is president. I feel so close to that Tracy--I can picture her waking up wearily at 4:30 in the morning to answer emails and make pancakes and adjust her black dress and slide into the old, black Honda to steal through the quiet, dark woods of Carlisle and Concord until suddenly she joined Route 2 and was on her way, into Boston, into her office, where she sat in her office and talked, really, for a living.  Oh sure, there were PowerPoints and bullet pointed memorandum, ...

Have I shared my small fantastical idea that there is a parallel universe so close it sometimes feels like I could just take a step to the left and be back on that path, or open my eyes quickly in the morning and catch a glimpse of the other world, the world from before last summer, a universe where I hum merrily on my way, and I don't have cancer, and Hillary Clinton is president, and we don't have to ever realize that it is much worse than we imagined, over here where I have stage four cancer and Donald Trump is president. I feel so close to that Tracy--I can picture her waking up wearily at 4:30 in the morning to answer emails and make pancakes and adjust her black dress and slide into the old, black Honda to steal through the quiet, dark woods of Carlisle and Concord until suddenly she joined Route 2 and was on her way, into Boston, into her office, where she sat in her office and talked, really, for a living.  Oh sure, there were PowerPoints and bullet pointed memorandum, ...

I started knitting again recently. Oh, you didn't know I could knit? Oh, sure--Tucker's mom taught me in college, back in the days when I wore an old pair of Birkenstocks every. single. day. Back in the days when I had boyfriends with names like Tucker, and I read and reread poetry and lovely, thick novels literally written by authors who were paid by the page, back when I was a vegetarian and that really just meant I ate rice and beans for dinner every night, because that was what the Kenyon College dining hall provided for vegetarians. Every night, mind you.  I had friends from lots of walks of life (limited, of course, by whoever the Kenyon College admissions team had decided to let in), and one of my friends, who we will call Ed, because that was his name, was in a fraternity-- not just any fraternity, but the Dekes, golden-haired sons of Greek Gods, who were destined for careers in investment banking (that's what it was in those days--today they would be destined for c...

I started knitting again recently. Oh, you didn't know I could knit? Oh, sure--Tucker's mom taught me in college, back in the days when I wore an old pair of Birkenstocks every. single. day. Back in the days when I had boyfriends with names like Tucker, and I read and reread poetry and lovely, thick novels literally written by authors who were paid by the page, back when I was a vegetarian and that really just meant I ate rice and beans for dinner every night, because that was what the Kenyon College dining hall provided for vegetarians. Every night, mind you.  I had friends from lots of walks of life (limited, of course, by whoever the Kenyon College admissions team had decided to let in), and one of my friends, who we will call Ed, because that was his name, was in a fraternity-- not just any fraternity, but the Dekes, golden-haired sons of Greek Gods, who were destined for careers in investment banking (that's what it was in those days--today they would be destined for c...

that line of poetry has been flickering in my mind of late, like fireflies in the gloam of an Ohio evening, or the dark embers of a finished fire, pushed to the side with the fireplace brush and ah! those embers are still burning, those orange bits of fire that will likely die out of their own accord, but worried mothers can take those tiny bits of fire and make of them conflagrations of entire households after we all go to bed. The line of poetry is from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which I first read in college, when poetry meant everything, when I thought language would save me.  So bear with me, lovers of the declarative sentence. I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. Some of you know that my afternoon naps, which I need, I need that stolen sleep in order to be awake and present with the boys when they come home from school, falling over themselves to tell me their days, to squabble about toothpaste and pajamas, to tuck into my body to hear Captain Underpants, an unfor...

that line of poetry has been flickering in my mind of late, like fireflies in the gloam of an Ohio evening, or the dark embers of a finished fire, pushed to the side with the fireplace brush and ah! those embers are still burning, those orange bits of fire that will likely die out of their own accord, but worried mothers can take those tiny bits of fire and make of them conflagrations of entire households after we all go to bed. The line of poetry is from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which I first read in college, when poetry meant everything, when I thought language would save me.  So bear with me, lovers of the declarative sentence. I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. Some of you know that my afternoon naps, which I need, I need that stolen sleep in order to be awake and present with the boys when they come home from school, falling over themselves to tell me their days, to squabble about toothpaste and pajamas, to tuck into my body to hear Captain Underpants, an...

I get emails in my inbox from Inspire, which is an online forum for people with lung cancer sponsored by the American Lung Association, and I try not to click on them.  But I do. I'm a sucker for postings like: "Three years on Tarceva and going strong." But I sometimes click on the sad ones too, postings with titles like "Seven years and bad news" or "Fatigue and weakness--is this normal?" Those were actual postings this morning.  You would think I have enough of my own rabbit holes to burrow into without seeking out the stories of my fellow travelers. But sometimes it feels like a test I need to take, this reading of other peoples' stories to find myself in them, or, perhaps to see the ways I am not in them.  I tell myself it's important to know what happens to other people on Tarceva, and inevitably I grieve.  (But I do get great tips from these forums.  I learned to rub tea tree oil into my nail beds to help with the cracked, dry-to-the-poin...