Day 109

Today was a hard day. Bill wasn’t feeling well. He started the day with a terrible cough: the kind that frightens me despite all my positive self-talk. I had tasks to attend to and papers to grade. It was 4:00 p.m. by the time I marked the last item off my list. I made a commitment a few days ago to go to my favorite coffee shop and write each day this week. Here I was, day 2 and already my motivation was waning. Somehow I did manage to get myself on my bike with my netbook stashed in the basket and headed for Bucer’s. By the time I reached downtown, I was certain that I would write today. I order a cup of Earl Grey and settled in my favorite spot. Surely it was a good omen: my table was empty, just waiting for me to fill the space and begin writing. First I sat for 10 minutes, just paying attention. There were college kids making too much noise, as a blender whirred in the background. Still I managed to sink down to that place of detached awareness. I was ready for inspiration. I sat the timer and began to write. I managed to compose sentences and string them together but later when I went back to read them they were flat and dull. I was frustrated with the futility of the whole situation. It took such effort just to get myself here only to find that my writing sucks. No wonder so many writers drink.

Day 108

It was just about this time last year when Kat came out. At that time she identified as a trans-woman. Increasingly since then, she identifies as just a woman. There aren’t many people who understand her journey and I have some sense of just how lonely that can be. As her mother, I long to talk with people who understand her struggles, and my own. Last night at a potluck for members of the LGBT community, I met a woman who does research on trans-youth. I told her our story and she reassured me that, although the path is not an easy one, there are trans-people who find a place for themselves in the world. She validated my decision to support Kat unconditionally and empathized with our shared struggle. On the way home I found myself beaming with pride. In spite of all the rejection and abuse Kat endured as a child who did not conform, one who was branded as an outsider, she survived. She didn’t give in to madness or drugs, like so many others. She survived and I know, despite all of my mistakes, I helped her to survive. There have been so many moments when I doubted myself as a parent, tallied my many errors, and lived in fear of the ultimate consequences. For a moment, I was able to put all that aside and recognize the success inherent in getting to this point.

Day 107

When Bill was first diagnosed with lung cancer is was a bit of a shock. He didn't, after all, have any symptoms. Yet, there it was, a large ghostly image on the film. A few weeks ago he started coughing. It progressed into the kind of racking cough that acts on the body like a small-scale earthquake. The coughing frightened me. Underneath the fear was a sense of helplessness. My habit is to respond to helplessness with anger. I would find myself getting angry with Bill when he would cough. Then I would feel guilty: What kind of horrible person gets angry at a person for coughing, especially a person with lung cancer? It was a painful cycle: coughing, fear, helplessness, anger, guilt. This little drama played itself out in my head several times a day. I had to consciously work to accept the coughing. I had to stop seeing it as the enemy in order to disarm my defense system. I am learning to accept the coughing and the cancer that it speaks for. The fear and helpless and anger are slowly being replaced by compassion. Increasingly I find myself empathizing with Bill rather than being angry with him. Maybe I'm not such a horrible person after all; I am only human.

Day 106

I was invited to a potluck dinner tomorrow. Usually I arrive at these things with some exotic dish, something that will make me look sophisticated and interesting, something ethnic like dolmas or trendy like a watermelon and basal salad. Today, I started to imagine what it would be like to show up as myself. What kind of food would I bring? I thought of those cookies they used to serve in the cafeteria at school, the ones that a kid would trade any three other items on the tray for. A heavenly concoction of cocoa, butter and sugar with just enough oatmeal to hold the whole thing together. At my school they were advertised on the weekly menu as Chocolate Dream Cookies. On the days they were served we all felt that the cafeteria gods were smiling down on us. Those are the cookies I will bring tomorrow: sweet, simple, cheap and delicious, everything I am and hope to be. Beside, it beats pork rinds and box wine.

Day 105

It was a bad combination of pharmaceuticals that left me awake at 2:00 a.m., unable to go back to sleep. I got up and went about my morning routine as if it were some reasonable hour of the morning. I opened my email to find a message from Kat. There was an attachment - an essay written for a class on the relationship between mathematics, literature and writing. I started reading and it was like fireworks in my brain, a shot of adrenaline to the cerebellum, calisthenics for my mind. The essay outlined the intersections where numbers and words converge, parallel systems of thought and action. These concepts quite simply blew my mind. For hours, I kept returning to the ideas I read before dawn. It was like playing with a top. I enjoyed watching it spin. When it would die down I would give it another whirl. I have always enjoyed playing with ideas. I sometimes think that it is nothing more than mental masturbation: intoxicating and seductive, but pointless. But other times, like today, I think that the mind is a muscle that must be stretched every so often, otherwise it will atrophy. Our brains become so rigidly programmed, a dose of the novel is just what we need to wake ourselves up.

Day 104

How much of my life has been spent waiting? Waiting to graduate. Waiting to hear if I got the job. Waiting for the results of an important test. Waiting for a letter from the graduate program I applied to. Waiting for him or her to arrive. I turned 19 a few weeks before Kat was due. The due date was marked on the calendar with a big red star. That date came and went. Kat continued to do somersaults in my uterus and the doctor joked that she would walk herself from the delivery room to the nursery if she continued to hold out. I was not laughing. As the days and weeks continued to crawl by I feared that she would never make an appearance. She was 5 weeks overdue when she was born on November 1st. I would like to say that I learned a lot about waiting from that experience, but I didn't. I have never been a patient person. Waiting is just as difficult for me today as it was all those years ago. There are times in life when we anticipate a pivotal change approaching. We can see it on the horizon. As it draws near there is fear and anxiety. What will it be like? How will I cope? It takes us out of the present moment. There have been many days of waiting since Bill's diagnosis: waiting for test results and procedures. Now we are waiting for treatment. I am trying to figure out how to do that more gracefully. In truth, I think that it can't be done. Waiting is never graceful. The only way is to stop waiting and start living. Whatever will be, will be.

Day 103

Over the last 5 weeks my thoughts have been preoccupied with various answers to a single question: What if Bill dies? My initial reaction was panic. I imagined living in our house alone, going to the co-op alone, watching television in the evening alone. It seemed unbearable. I thought about how sad and empty my life would be without his strange sense of humor and his enveloping embrace. Yesterday I met a friend for tea. Sitting in the coffee shop waiting for her to arrive I started to imagine a solo life. Would I spend my time in coffee shops, at the library, at church? Would I make new friends, take car trips, write more? Bill decided to go to bed early last night. Instead of watching television, I made banana bread and listen to NPR. I was starting to see the opportunity that the solo life might present. I have heard it said that when two people become one, you end up with two half people. I am afraid that, in many ways, that is what has happened to me and Bill. I love the time we spend together. However, I now realize that it has become unnecessarily exclusive. This morning I was reading Mary Karr's memoir Lit. She refers to her budding alcohol addiction this way: Maybe it fostered in me a creeping ambition-deficit disorder, but it could ease an ache. So anything worth doing could be undertaken later. Paint the apartment, write a book, quit booze, sure: tomorrow....Which ensures that life gets lived in miniature. Bill's cancer might just be a wake up call, an opportunity to transform our relationship once again, to move from a miniature life characterized by ambition-deficit disorder to something yet to be imagined.