(My last “Hawaiian” Chapter)
Chapter Thirty Four – April 14, 2008
This morning when I walked into the restroom near the swimming pool I was smiling, still in conversation with someone when I turned to close and lock the door. So it was with a smile on my face that I lurched to the sink and my stomach violently wretched up everything I had to drink that morning. The cleaner they had recently used to wash the tile floor smelled like my chemo tasted. I can’t describe it, can’t explain which chemicals or mixture of chemicals they are but my body knows them and in their presence it responds involuntarily. What pissed me off about it was that I can go a long time now without remembering it…and I can even speak of it without recalling what it felt like…but occasionally something brings it all right back to me and I am shaken and broken all over again.
What I find so disgusting is that I am supposed to be escaping it. This trip, our vacation….these weeks in the sun…the swim suits, the tanning oil, the cocktails, the palm trees…my reward for having endured it…all the things that I pictured over and over again in the hospitals, hooked up to my poison. What I told myself then was that when this over…when it was all over I would leave it behind me. I am so stupid sometimes….it didn’t dawn on me that the little dark monster would lurk quietly inside of me and after all this time and distance it would reappear suddenly in a bathroom in my tropical paradise to kick the shit out of me when no one was looking. Son of a bitch. On my knees now I steadied my shaking hands, pushed myself to a standing position and dusted myself off. I stood at the sink again and washed my face and adjusted my hair. I fumbled for the sunglasses that had fallen and cracked. Looking in the mirror I noticed the familiar greenish tint to my now tan skin, “smile Julie, just smile and no one will notice.”
How twisted and sick does that make me? I was smiling. When I walked back outside again I was smiling. Into the heat and the wind and the noise….the kids wanted money for an ice cream cone, my friends were waiting to finish the conversation and Trevor looked up from his book and studied me from across the pool deck. Did he notice? Did they? I have a nasty habit of attempting to appear unscathed, as if whatever trauma that has just occurred isn’t real if no one else knows. I thought I was getting better at that. This past year has taught me a lot about myself and the many things I don’t want to teach my children to be. It’s better to take the trauma out in the light kiddos and let people look at it with you. As disappointing or embarrassing or hurtful as it may be..let them see your pain and all of the ways in which you are broken so they can help you through it. It makes people feel like you love them if you trust them enough to ask for help. It’s honest, it’s real, it’s human. Perfect? No….but if you feel broken….then be broken…cry…even if, especially if….someone you love is watching.
I have news about my recovery. Something newsworthy in my book anyway, I realize this is going to sound tremendously frivolous to the rest of you, but of worth to me so I’m passing it along just in case those of you who might be in a similar predicament are reading this for validation and the hope of progress.
My eyelashes have experienced a growth spurt. Really. They have. I now have eyelashes that are long enough to fit into a curler. Yay me! They didn’t all fall out with chemo…they just got stubby and thin and remained that way for so long that I was beginning to wonder if they would always be that way. I was trying not to be bitter because as everyone likes to remind me, I am lucky to have not lost all of my hair. But I am happy to report that six months after my last infusion of rat poison, there is progress. Isn’t it strange how progress can sometimes be so slow in movement that we don’t even realize we are inching forward and yet one day you look backwards and realize how much distance has been covered without even noticing there was movement? Yay me! I am no longer the Lashless Wonder. …witless..but not lashless.
So among my discoveries on my fabulous Hawaiian vacation I have also discovered that my world has shifted again. Listen…”Julie’s World” doesn’t shift often. I am a girl happily set in her ways. I am a creature of habit. With habit comes repetition, with repetition comes predictable outcome, with predictable outcome comes the glorious sensation of control….I enjoy those words…I am a creature of habit and repetition, and of control so in my world, if I could help it there would be very little shifting.
But my weeks here have been full of shifting…teeny tiny practically imperceptible rocking and then the massive tectonic plate grinding. My world… it is shifting.
Even on vacation I develop habit. I am comforted by habit…..when I wake up I roll out of bed and put on my running shoes and find the perfect song on my Ipod then I head down the steps until my Nike’s hit the sand and then I run….and I run…and I run…I watch my feet hit the wet sand before me and I try not to concentrate on the fact that it’s hot and the work is hard and I really, really want to quit. The feeling I most look forward to is when I am finished and I unlace my shoes and take off my socks and walk the remainder of the way wading through the waves. I put on my favorite song of the moment, and I spend the remainder of the walk searching the sand for one perfect rock, when I find it I return to the condo to face the most stressful decision of the day.
“Which bikini should I wear today?” I walk out the door and greet the construction crew who is working on the condo and who have become familiar. Like the birds of paradise, hibiscus, plumeria, the lizards, the palm trees, the waves….my construction crew greets me upon my departure from the condo and I can generally gage my success in dressing by their enthusiastic response. Everyone needs a construction crew outside their front door in the morning. Seriously, they could make a troll feel attractive.
Then it’s down the beach in the opposite direction until I happen upon my fresh fruit stand. There I buy the coffee and organic muffins and fresh fruit and vegetables for the day. I fill my bag with all of the things I need to take care of my family and I walk the beach back “home”.
So this morning it dawned on me that I am no longer offended by the aggressive cheerfulness of Hawaiian shirts and day-glo polyester mu-mu’s with the enormous flowers that tourists of every shape, size and gender wear over here. Seriously, this is huge for me. When it dawned on me I actually had to sit down in the sand and think about it. When did that happen? I always assumed my dislike of them was ingrained. Like my intolerance for ugly feet, or Wranglers, sensible shoes, Tupperware parties, El Camino’s or a man with a mullet. There are things in this world that I get and then there are things that I will never get. I was of the assumption that Hawaiian shirts and mu-mu’s were in the latter category. In their defense, I had to admit that since I had never been to Hawaii before this trip that perhaps there was something about them that I was missing. So they weren’t really in my “completely written off” category, they were located in the bin titled “pending judgment but it’s not looking good.”
But through my morning wanderings on the beaches here I have found that I am beginning to get it. Shifting…my opinion is shifting and it’s not just because my psyche is being flooded by visions of them either, though that is also true. Somehow the cheerfulness of all of the bright attire seems slightly less aggressive and I think it’s because I understand now, what inspired them.
What comes to me over and over during my morning treks is that this State is so stinking colorful. I always thought Alaska was the most picturesque place in the world but I have to admit the greens and blues of our fair state are of the more serious, earthy, foresty type….The colors around here are not quite primary, not exactly neon, just bright in a way that seems alive. It’s humming, it’s breathing, it’s vibrating…it’s alive. The scenery in Hawaii is screaming “LOOK AT ME!”, it is loud, vibrant, never subtle….Hawaii is a State that does NOT blend.
I keep thinking about how God is in the details around here. I think of that sometimes when I watch my children. God is not necessarily apparent in children themselves, I mean you don’t always glance at a child and feel Gods presence immediately but in their details there is little doubt that they are of Him. Chubby knuckles, smiling through their eyelashes, high pitched giggles, the feel of their arms around your neck as they pat your back…in their details one is assured of the presence of God. So I’ve been noticing the same thing about the details here. From a distance it’s pretty…but if you look close, it is stunning. Take a flower in Hawaii…it doesn’t even matter which one, though I have my favorites. If you walk by it once you may notice the color or how they smell, but if you walk by again, and walk closer, and then bend down and pick it up and look at one blossom in the light. I promise you will see it in a way that you did not know you could. You stop looking at the flower and instead see the detail and then you realize you can no longer remember why the flower was important because the details of it make it extraordinary. Yes, the flower is pretty, but the details are what make it Gods work and in this assurance of Gods handiwork you find that you are stunned.
So I had a moment this morning… a shifting…I was noticing the blue sky and the ocean and the white waves crashing and the sand and how it sparkled in the light and then I noticed the flowers in the distance and I experienced the strangest sensation that I was running in a painting…a movie. Later in the day a butterfly bumped into me on it’s very disoriented flight down the beach and then of all things, a rainbow… seriously…in the distance a rain shower on a beach miles away produced the most spectacular of rainbows.
In case you weren’t already aware of it…I’m cynical..I’m sarcastic….I used to think it was one of the things I should work on because it’s really unattractive..but now I think it’s just part of me and you either love me despite it or you don’t… so anyhoo, in a fit of sarcasm I just stopped amid all the colorful splendor and looked heavenward: “Seriously God? Don’t you think you’re being a little over the top this morning?” I think that’s when I shifted, when I realized that the Hawaiian shirts with enormous flowers and the loose fitting day glo mu-mu’s are just an attempt to copy the surroundings. Our sad little attempt at paying homage to the beauty and color around us…I don’t find them offensive or garish or ugly. So that we don’t mistake each other here, I doubt that you will see me shopping for a pink polyester mu-mu at the next ABC store, however, you won’t find me mocking them either. I get why they’re popular, I’ve seen all of the bright colors that have inspired them and the flowers that they attempt to represent…I get it…because now that I’ve been here I understand why people love this State and call it their home.
There I go…shifting again. However, in terms of being noteworthy, this next shift could be the one that is most life altering. Not only do I understand why people call this home, I understand why people would leave their current homes to adopt this one. It feels very, very disloyal to type that sentence. And if we’re being perfectly honest with each other, then you should know that I typed it and deleted it many times. But I think my love for Alaska goes without saying. I am an Alaskan girl. More specifically a logging camp girl that is so proud of her heritage and her family and her upbringing. Could I ever truly leave Alaska? No…Never…..But there is a little place here…a town that speaks to me… It’s beautiful and charming…and soulful and artsy and slightly edgy. It has all of this opportunity for purely shallow recreation. I can shop and I can bask and I can drink and I can people watch on a beach and I can nurture and tend to the piece of my soul that is so shallow that calling it a puddle would be overstating its depths. But at the same time, this little town has a tone that invites introspection and art and creativity. So I don’t think you could live here and only tend to one….I think you would have to find ways to tend to the creative side of your spirit too. I’m not saying it would be a 50/50 split….not even 60/40…but there would be SOME creativity…one couldn’t indulge in the sluggishness of a tropical vacation forever, could one?
I can picture a little house, surrounded by exquisite flowers and I can picture wandering the beaches in the morning with my little people scampering about and the coffee shop mid-day where they already know my name. I can picture wandering in the evening at sunset, with my flip flops and my sun dresses and my lap top. Maybe Home is just wherever you happen to be that inspires you. Where people know you and where you feel the presence of God and a connection…where you can make room for the possibilities of something new and dream and grow and love.
Love to all of you!
j
Chapter Thirty Four – April 14, 2008
This morning when I walked into the restroom near the swimming pool I was smiling, still in conversation with someone when I turned to close and lock the door. So it was with a smile on my face that I lurched to the sink and my stomach violently wretched up everything I had to drink that morning. The cleaner they had recently used to wash the tile floor smelled like my chemo tasted. I can’t describe it, can’t explain which chemicals or mixture of chemicals they are but my body knows them and in their presence it responds involuntarily. What pissed me off about it was that I can go a long time now without remembering it…and I can even speak of it without recalling what it felt like…but occasionally something brings it all right back to me and I am shaken and broken all over again.
What I find so disgusting is that I am supposed to be escaping it. This trip, our vacation….these weeks in the sun…the swim suits, the tanning oil, the cocktails, the palm trees…my reward for having endured it…all the things that I pictured over and over again in the hospitals, hooked up to my poison. What I told myself then was that when this over…when it was all over I would leave it behind me. I am so stupid sometimes….it didn’t dawn on me that the little dark monster would lurk quietly inside of me and after all this time and distance it would reappear suddenly in a bathroom in my tropical paradise to kick the shit out of me when no one was looking. Son of a bitch. On my knees now I steadied my shaking hands, pushed myself to a standing position and dusted myself off. I stood at the sink again and washed my face and adjusted my hair. I fumbled for the sunglasses that had fallen and cracked. Looking in the mirror I noticed the familiar greenish tint to my now tan skin, “smile Julie, just smile and no one will notice.”
How twisted and sick does that make me? I was smiling. When I walked back outside again I was smiling. Into the heat and the wind and the noise….the kids wanted money for an ice cream cone, my friends were waiting to finish the conversation and Trevor looked up from his book and studied me from across the pool deck. Did he notice? Did they? I have a nasty habit of attempting to appear unscathed, as if whatever trauma that has just occurred isn’t real if no one else knows. I thought I was getting better at that. This past year has taught me a lot about myself and the many things I don’t want to teach my children to be. It’s better to take the trauma out in the light kiddos and let people look at it with you. As disappointing or embarrassing or hurtful as it may be..let them see your pain and all of the ways in which you are broken so they can help you through it. It makes people feel like you love them if you trust them enough to ask for help. It’s honest, it’s real, it’s human. Perfect? No….but if you feel broken….then be broken…cry…even if, especially if….someone you love is watching.I have news about my recovery. Something newsworthy in my book anyway, I realize this is going to sound tremendously frivolous to the rest of you, but of worth to me so I’m passing it along just in case those of you who might be in a similar predicament are reading this for validation and the hope of progress.
My eyelashes have experienced a growth spurt. Really. They have. I now have eyelashes that are long enough to fit into a curler. Yay me! They didn’t all fall out with chemo…they just got stubby and thin and remained that way for so long that I was beginning to wonder if they would always be that way. I was trying not to be bitter because as everyone likes to remind me, I am lucky to have not lost all of my hair. But I am happy to report that six months after my last infusion of rat poison, there is progress. Isn’t it strange how progress can sometimes be so slow in movement that we don’t even realize we are inching forward and yet one day you look backwards and realize how much distance has been covered without even noticing there was movement? Yay me! I am no longer the Lashless Wonder. …witless..but not lashless.
So among my discoveries on my fabulous Hawaiian vacation I have also discovered that my world has shifted again. Listen…”Julie’s World” doesn’t shift often. I am a girl happily set in her ways. I am a creature of habit. With habit comes repetition, with repetition comes predictable outcome, with predictable outcome comes the glorious sensation of control….I enjoy those words…I am a creature of habit and repetition, and of control so in my world, if I could help it there would be very little shifting.
But my weeks here have been full of shifting…teeny tiny practically imperceptible rocking and then the massive tectonic plate grinding. My world… it is shifting.
Even on vacation I develop habit. I am comforted by habit…..when I wake up I roll out of bed and put on my running shoes and find the perfect song on my Ipod then I head down the steps until my Nike’s hit the sand and then I run….and I run…and I run…I watch my feet hit the wet sand before me and I try not to concentrate on the fact that it’s hot and the work is hard and I really, really want to quit. The feeling I most look forward to is when I am finished and I unlace my shoes and take off my socks and walk the remainder of the way wading through the waves. I put on my favorite song of the moment, and I spend the remainder of the walk searching the sand for one perfect rock, when I find it I return to the condo to face the most stressful decision of the day.
“Which bikini should I wear today?” I walk out the door and greet the construction crew who is working on the condo and who have become familiar. Like the birds of paradise, hibiscus, plumeria, the lizards, the palm trees, the waves….my construction crew greets me upon my departure from the condo and I can generally gage my success in dressing by their enthusiastic response. Everyone needs a construction crew outside their front door in the morning. Seriously, they could make a troll feel attractive.
Then it’s down the beach in the opposite direction until I happen upon my fresh fruit stand. There I buy the coffee and organic muffins and fresh fruit and vegetables for the day. I fill my bag with all of the things I need to take care of my family and I walk the beach back “home”.
So this morning it dawned on me that I am no longer offended by the aggressive cheerfulness of Hawaiian shirts and day-glo polyester mu-mu’s with the enormous flowers that tourists of every shape, size and gender wear over here. Seriously, this is huge for me. When it dawned on me I actually had to sit down in the sand and think about it. When did that happen? I always assumed my dislike of them was ingrained. Like my intolerance for ugly feet, or Wranglers, sensible shoes, Tupperware parties, El Camino’s or a man with a mullet. There are things in this world that I get and then there are things that I will never get. I was of the assumption that Hawaiian shirts and mu-mu’s were in the latter category. In their defense, I had to admit that since I had never been to Hawaii before this trip that perhaps there was something about them that I was missing. So they weren’t really in my “completely written off” category, they were located in the bin titled “pending judgment but it’s not looking good.”
But through my morning wanderings on the beaches here I have found that I am beginning to get it. Shifting…my opinion is shifting and it’s not just because my psyche is being flooded by visions of them either, though that is also true. Somehow the cheerfulness of all of the bright attire seems slightly less aggressive and I think it’s because I understand now, what inspired them.
What comes to me over and over during my morning treks is that this State is so stinking colorful. I always thought Alaska was the most picturesque place in the world but I have to admit the greens and blues of our fair state are of the more serious, earthy, foresty type….The colors around here are not quite primary, not exactly neon, just bright in a way that seems alive. It’s humming, it’s breathing, it’s vibrating…it’s alive. The scenery in Hawaii is screaming “LOOK AT ME!”, it is loud, vibrant, never subtle….Hawaii is a State that does NOT blend.
I keep thinking about how God is in the details around here. I think of that sometimes when I watch my children. God is not necessarily apparent in children themselves, I mean you don’t always glance at a child and feel Gods presence immediately but in their details there is little doubt that they are of Him. Chubby knuckles, smiling through their eyelashes, high pitched giggles, the feel of their arms around your neck as they pat your back…in their details one is assured of the presence of God. So I’ve been noticing the same thing about the details here. From a distance it’s pretty…but if you look close, it is stunning. Take a flower in Hawaii…it doesn’t even matter which one, though I have my favorites. If you walk by it once you may notice the color or how they smell, but if you walk by again, and walk closer, and then bend down and pick it up and look at one blossom in the light. I promise you will see it in a way that you did not know you could. You stop looking at the flower and instead see the detail and then you realize you can no longer remember why the flower was important because the details of it make it extraordinary. Yes, the flower is pretty, but the details are what make it Gods work and in this assurance of Gods handiwork you find that you are stunned.
So I had a moment this morning… a shifting…I was noticing the blue sky and the ocean and the white waves crashing and the sand and how it sparkled in the light and then I noticed the flowers in the distance and I experienced the strangest sensation that I was running in a painting…a movie. Later in the day a butterfly bumped into me on it’s very disoriented flight down the beach and then of all things, a rainbow… seriously…in the distance a rain shower on a beach miles away produced the most spectacular of rainbows.
In case you weren’t already aware of it…I’m cynical..I’m sarcastic….I used to think it was one of the things I should work on because it’s really unattractive..but now I think it’s just part of me and you either love me despite it or you don’t… so anyhoo, in a fit of sarcasm I just stopped amid all the colorful splendor and looked heavenward: “Seriously God? Don’t you think you’re being a little over the top this morning?” I think that’s when I shifted, when I realized that the Hawaiian shirts with enormous flowers and the loose fitting day glo mu-mu’s are just an attempt to copy the surroundings. Our sad little attempt at paying homage to the beauty and color around us…I don’t find them offensive or garish or ugly. So that we don’t mistake each other here, I doubt that you will see me shopping for a pink polyester mu-mu at the next ABC store, however, you won’t find me mocking them either. I get why they’re popular, I’ve seen all of the bright colors that have inspired them and the flowers that they attempt to represent…I get it…because now that I’ve been here I understand why people love this State and call it their home.
There I go…shifting again. However, in terms of being noteworthy, this next shift could be the one that is most life altering. Not only do I understand why people call this home, I understand why people would leave their current homes to adopt this one. It feels very, very disloyal to type that sentence. And if we’re being perfectly honest with each other, then you should know that I typed it and deleted it many times. But I think my love for Alaska goes without saying. I am an Alaskan girl. More specifically a logging camp girl that is so proud of her heritage and her family and her upbringing. Could I ever truly leave Alaska? No…Never…..But there is a little place here…a town that speaks to me… It’s beautiful and charming…and soulful and artsy and slightly edgy. It has all of this opportunity for purely shallow recreation. I can shop and I can bask and I can drink and I can people watch on a beach and I can nurture and tend to the piece of my soul that is so shallow that calling it a puddle would be overstating its depths. But at the same time, this little town has a tone that invites introspection and art and creativity. So I don’t think you could live here and only tend to one….I think you would have to find ways to tend to the creative side of your spirit too. I’m not saying it would be a 50/50 split….not even 60/40…but there would be SOME creativity…one couldn’t indulge in the sluggishness of a tropical vacation forever, could one?
I can picture a little house, surrounded by exquisite flowers and I can picture wandering the beaches in the morning with my little people scampering about and the coffee shop mid-day where they already know my name. I can picture wandering in the evening at sunset, with my flip flops and my sun dresses and my lap top. Maybe Home is just wherever you happen to be that inspires you. Where people know you and where you feel the presence of God and a connection…where you can make room for the possibilities of something new and dream and grow and love.
Love to all of you!
j
