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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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i carry her heart in my heart

I carry all their hearts in my heart. I’ve been doing it since they first turned lines on a stick pink, blew celebration bubbles in my blood test with their energy and light. So much energy. So much light. All four of them. They pop and sizzle like neon in my life. Beautiful and bold. They keep my heart beating with joy and pride.

And so when they suffer, I suffer.  When they fizzle, things go dark in my core. In the root of the root and the bud of the bud. And so, when one of them was diagnosed with cancer, it took my breath away, I couldn’t speak, could barely function. Just clutched her tight inside my chest and searched for ways to navigate this new dark. Just fumbling through it all with no words.

I wanted to write about it. It’s how I process and find ways to proceed. But I couldn’t. There in my heart in the darkness, the letters I needed to construct words to make sense of it all were too slippery with tears and fears. When I tried to latch onto them, they disintegrated into mush. 

I felt her fear and I felt my own. I felt her bravery struggling inside my own quaking soul. I felt her intense energy, hobbled and hidden, while pain pulsed in its place. And I was helpless in the midst of it all.

It’s been a month now, and she’s doing better and gaining her strength and my words are slowly sprouting, letter by letter, out of the storm drain where they collected during it all. But it’s taking me far longer to assemble them. It’s like that old game of pick-up-sticks (similar to jenga) – pluck out one to use without dislodging another, otherwise everything I want to say will crumble into yet another useless pile. 

But I’ve managed to scrounge up enough to tell a cryptic version of what it was like and how she’s doing now – and she’s doing so very, very well. Her cancer was excised, the margins all clear. And while she’s got scores of seasonal scans headed her way this first year, her prognosis is solid – better than solid, it’s as bright as her neon spirit. 

And I still can’t explain what that bright light returning does inside a mother’s heart. I wish I could. I can only say there’s no pain like heartache. And no heartache like a child’s ache. And no better feeling than when it all goes right, and your baby’s back to shining bright – her neon smile shining like a night in Nashville, spunky and spirited as ever.

Thank heavens for miracles and thank heavens for these four beautiful, brilliant, beating chambers of my heart.

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The C Word

They come in threes, they say. Bad things come in threes. And sure

enough, bad tidings rode in on their serrated fonts in swirling

impatient portals: an unholy trinity of cyst, malignancy and mass.

One slung sideways, like a fanny pack across a kidney sack, a second,

mortared to wind pipe, spewing ash into places unknown, a third sucking

marrow from mammary glands like a motherfucker. Unsanctified settlers,

all. Mother of all that is Holy, who let in the false prophet, the devil, the

beast to cast rings around x-rays and pockets full of poison, ashen shadows

on MRI scans? All that rot and stink and bile planted like rancid Easter eggs,

tangled spiders’ nests, like hissing snakes in sacred sanctuaries… Such blatant

blasphemy. Such sick sacrilege. But then, while bad things come in threes, so

too, do good. And we believe in the Good — that Triumvirate of Truth: Faith

and Hope and Love. And the greatest of these is Love. Love lends strength and

courage to fight. When we harness for God the energies of love, then love will

help conquer all. Together, we’ll banish the bad for Good.     Even the dirty, rotten C word.

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A Wish is a Prayer Your Soul Makes

I love wishes. I’m a big believer. They are my favorite form of prayer — tiny little heart’s desires in a single sentence — sent out into the universe. They’re like a mantra. I wish the same one over and over until it is granted. And it very nearly always is.

And the universe gives so many occasions to speak our dreams and desires: on birthday candles and shooting stars, on eyelashes lost and pennies found, on coins in fountains, and wishbones in hand. They ride dandelion fluff and ladybug wings.

I learned their power and value way back when, on Sunday nights in front of the television while watching “The Wonderful World of Disney.” Tinkerbell would wave her wand and Cinderella’s castle would erupt in festive fireworks and Disney’s tinkling instrumental theme song would whisper the power of wishes… Jiminy Cricket’s “When You Wish Upon a Star,” Snow White’s “I’m Wishing,” and Cinderella’s “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.”

I was indoctrinated at an early age. And then my wishes merged with the evangelical movement of my childhood, and I latched onto the promise of “ask and ye shall receive,” “seek and ye shall find.” And I found myself a believer.

And I decided, if a dream is a wish your heart makes, then a wish is a prayer your soul makes…

And ever since, I’ve sent so many wishes out into the universe – a series of one-sentence mantras repeated until they come true.

And they usually do.

Mike and I came true. And so did the boys. And my girls. And their blessings. So many blessings. So many wonderful wishes have come, and are coming, true.

Yes, my track record is solid… but not undefeated.

There have been wishes I’ve repeated like mantras for months. For years. And they never seem to materialize.

Sometimes I think wishes are only granted for the Disney-type-desires. The tiara and taffeta kinds of wishes, the happily-ever-after, against-all-odds-imprisonment-and-sorcery kinds of dreams. Things that end in freedom and love. In new lives and sweet loves and new babies and fresh starts.

But the ones reserved for sickness… or, more specifically, cancer… those seem not to take as well. Those seem not to get answered. And I don’t really understand why.

Cancer sucks. That’s the meme; that’s the hashtag; that’s the absolute truth.

It sucks.

And its cells keep stubbornly replicating harder and faster than my wishes on lashes and ladybugs can fly. And it sucks the joy and the freedom and the energy out of my friends.

Cancer is an angry, aggressive, harsh vacuum. A black hole that targets the gentlest and most generous amongst us. And so very often in my life, it’s targeted women. Women who have nurtured and loved and saved and sacrificed. Grandmothers, mothers, teachers, and friends. My grandmother, my best friend’s mother, my two dear teacher friends. They’ve all battled or are battling cancer.

And my wishes all seem to fall flat. And make me question my faith.

Even my more traditional prayers –long and devout and completely dedicated to destroying the wide, gaping mouth-of-a-black-hole-on-Satan’s-backside that IS cancer — seem not to have the stamina to soar and succeed against this vile foe.

But there’s got to be a way to defeat it. There just has to be.

My physician daughter is currently doing cancer research. She is AIKA-deep in clinical trials and focus groups and data pulls and cross-discipline conferences. She is a part of an army of physicians all over the world who are currently spelunking Satan’s arsehole, searching for ways to destroy its ability to suck.

And I know this war has been waged for decades. But I know that we’ve got to be getting closer. We just have to be.

And then I think about all those wishes I’ve made. All the ones that HAVE come true. They’ve been positive ones. Focused on love and goals and abilities. They haven’t had any negative words, no Defeat or Destroy or Kill words. They house words like Help and Grow and Love and Learn.

And my evangelical childhood taught me that God helps those who help themselves.  And mankind is working hard to help themselves, my daughter included amongst them. We just need a little more time. Just a little more time to deactivate Satan’s anus, to ratchet down his rectum, to strip mine his sigmoid. To render his sphincter suction-less. The doctors are on this.

So I will refocus my prayers to positivity and light. If a dream is a wish your heart makes, and a wish is a prayer your soul makes, then I wish for Happily-Ever-Afters. No more “Defeat cancer” and “Destroy cancer.” Leave that to the doctors. Now my dandelion mantras and pennies-found prayers will be: “Help us find the way and the truth and the light. Help us find the cure.”

Over and over. And over. Amen.

 

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