Fighting On

I'm here! It's been nearly a full year since I've posted on this page--and I'm sure all sorts of friend bloggers have assumed I've given it up for good--but I'm here.

I posted on my Not Writing Anything Anymore blog a few weeks ago, resolving to make blogging on both blogs a priority. But then life threw in the biggest of big wrenches, and I had no choice but to switch to what is more important: my husband's welfare.

My husband, on his way to run an Olympic length triathlon in Arkansas, ended up in an emergency room in Alabama with acute pancreatitis. Three weeks later, after a CT scan, tons of blood tests, and two ultrasounds, doctors concluded its cause was a 3 cm cancer tumor in the pancreas. Filled with anxiety (for the prognosis for pancreatic cancer sufferers is extremely bad), we went to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, where they determined his cancer was operable (thank God!), and where, a little over a week ago, he underwent the Whipple procedure. (It's a BIG surgery--look it up online, and you'll see how serious it is). Through his fight, he's adopted the mantra of his favorite college football team: Fight On! I've even ordered shirts and hats with the saying on them, for him, his friends, and our relatives to wear.

A week later, we were heading home from Jacksonville when the doctors called, and the news is now much more positive. The cancer was caught far earlier than it usually is, and after six months of chemotherapy, Richard will most likely live a long life without pancreatic cancer ever returning. Yay!

Our lives have been turned upside-down, though, and I found that even reading was impossible while I watched over him in the hospital. It was only when tests of the tumor were complete and we were given the great news that I could even concentrate on reading a book again. Now it's time to put my focus back on writing.

Richard was told by a friend who had beaten ovarian cancer that he had to concentrate on more than the cancer, and she told me the same--I had to have more to do than support him and rehash the cancer stories over and over. So that is what I am doing. I'm getting back to my mermaid novel, back to painting (I have accumulated several castles I want to paint), and back to playing piano. All three will soothe my soul through this, making it easier for me to soothe Richard's.

If you've read through this whole thing, thanks for visiting! Hopefully I'll have worthwhile stuff to share with you in the future!

What's Your Soundtrack?

I brought my Zumba cd's to camp last week. I run an art camp, and the schedule gives the kids a half hour between art classes--for snack. My experience in the public school system means I know that 30 minutes is WAY too long. The kids are going to eat their snacks in about five minutes, and the rest of the time they will be running around, falling and hurting themselves, stealing each other's hats, etc.

So I came prepared. The first time I turned on the music, only seven kids danced with me. The next day, pretty much EVERYBODY did (except for a few hold-outs who insisted on running around, falling and hurting themselves, and stealing each other's hats, etc.). Nearly everybody wanted to join in, to move around the room to a fun song.

We use music to exercise all the time. We use it in the car, sometimes singing at the top of our lungs. We have it at parties, watch it in concerts, and infuse it into several finite parts of our lives. We hum songs when we don't have any playing.

But what are the songs of our lives? We had a wedding song, if we got married. We might have even shared a song with each person we dated. And then hated that song when we broke up. But what songs determine how we think? What songs run through us and fit the way we walk, the way we interact with the world around us?

Here are some songs on my personal soundtrack:

Wake-up song: "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" from Oklahoma
Song to sing with kids: "La-La-La-La-La-La-La" from Nightmare before Christmas
Song to vacuum to: "Roxanne" from Moulin Rouge (great for tango dancing, too--or tango vacuuming)
Song to sing when all alone: "Gethsemane" from Jesus Christ Superstar or "Wishing You were Somehow Here Again" from Phantom of the Opera (actually, I have LOTS of songs I like to sing along--all of them kind of eerie--love the minor key)
Song to sing in the car with the windows down: "Love Shack"
Song for writing a gripping climax: "Night on Bald Mountain"
Song for writing a romantic climax: "Seduces Me"
Song for exercising: "Rocky Theme"--or "Flashdance" or "Faith" or any Irish dance music (I know, weird, right?)

I'm still toying with the idea of writing a book with an accompanying playlist--each chapter gets a song to go with it, and you can choose to listen to the song as you read the chapter. It would mean writing some rather short chapters, but it would be an adventure trying to get it right.

I don't yet have a theme song for my life. Do you? What music would you have as your soundtrack?

Happy Christmas!

I know "Merry Christmas!" is the standard greeting in the U.S., but I've decided that, for this year at least, I prefer the British version. The term "merry" can imply that we're making merry, and that could mean we're just putting on a brave face, digging a bit too much into the egg nog or cinnamon schnapps, eating too many stale cookies, buying too much stuff, and falling into excess in an attempt to "look" happy.

Thanks for the photo, Microsoft Office!

"Happy" suggests a very different emotion. It's one of bliss, of warm fuzzies as one walks through a normal day. Of skipping a bit more, of going about one's normal life with a permanent enigmatic smile, a smile that brightens everyone's day without one even realizing it. Happy is a state of being that transcends the ordinary life, imbuing everything with a bit more sunshine.

So I'm raising my coffee this morning--and to every morning from now until next Christmas--to just being happy. To living with a little quiet joy every single day. To doing something truly beautiful with at least a few of the moments we are given. To fitting beauty and happiness into our daily lives, despite family obligations, work, and other have-tos. To feeling blessed with a bit more sunshine on our hair, despite the rain outside or the cold wind blowing.

Happy Christmas, everyone! And a lovely New Year, too!

The Camera is On

The tape is running
Twenty-four hours a day
Watching people
Fight
Argue
Cheat and
Lie

It's "reality TV"
They say
But don't these people
See the cameras?
Do they act differently
Because producers are eyeing every move?
Are they worse than they portray?
Is this all an act?

It's easy to forget
Easy to act in ways that, if we were watching,
We would horrify ourselves.
Words we say in anger
Shoves, sneers, insults, gossip
Petty problems we blow up
Into mountains

But we have our own cameras
The eyes of others
Our family
Our children
The mirror
Who do we want to see when we play that tape over?
A beast?
A sponge?
An emotional wreck?

That is the choice:
Live with purpose
Or waffle and whine?
Use time
Or waste it?
Add to the lives of others
Or create only pain?

You may think no one's watching,
But your portrait is created step by step
Your scars formed choice by choice
And the final picture is all your own.

Choose
So that you don't regret.

Reminiscing

I've had quite the chance to reminisce lately. My husband recently met up with friends from way back in '95, and then just over the last few days we camped with Canadian friends we'd met even earlier, when we were both earning our masters degrees.

My husband loved it. He somehow remembered names of so many people in his program, certain classes, certain parties/days/events/words said. He had a smile on his face the whole time. The friends seemed to like it, too, mentioning certain people and times, smiling, sighing.

Me? Um... not so much. It's not that I hated it. I just find the present far more interesting. I'd rather enjoy the kids as they are now, not as they once were. I don't intentionally forget things, but they have less meaning once they are over. I guess I just don't live in the past.

Either that, or, more likely, these particular "pasts" simply didn't give me much that resonated in my soul, and if they didn't, I pretty much forgot them. I don't miss my life then, don't miss the way I looked or felt then... or at least the parts of my life these people reminded me of were not the parts I cared about that much.

I can't say I reminisce often. I don't go through all of my wedding photos all the time, oohing and ahhing over people's outfits (or my own dress). My kids' baby pictures are even pretty neglected. Perhaps that is why I've never taken up scrapbooking.

Some things do resonate with me, but they are not the kinds of things to share with others. (Perhaps this is where my introverted tendencies shine through.) They are moments when I felt something, moments that were likely only meaningful to me, and trying to share them with friends who were standing there but didn't feel what I felt simply wouldn't work.

After she watched the fourth Harry Potter film, Mom said she didn't like it as much as the previous ones because Harry was on his own so much. But I didn't mind, perhaps because, even if my journey is shared with others, my response to the journey is private. It's mine alone, and thus the experience is too.

Ten people going through the exact same event will see it differently. What recharges my battery--hiking in green forests, playing with my kids, painting, playing piano, writing--will not recharge my husband's, and his interests could not fail to drive me insane. We've been together over 21 years, sharing our lives, yet our life experience is radically different.

Ironically, reading (a primarily solitary activity) gives me the chance to share the inward experience of a person, or a select few (the fewer the better, as far as I'm concerned). It's probably the only chance I'll have to live through another person. Movies do the same, and my experience watching them is always best when I can forget that others are watching, too. Voice-overs allow us to hear thoughts of the characters, so see the world exactly as they do.

Life doesn't offer the same opportunity, for we can never truly share the most intimate world of those around us, even those we are very close to. My children, even when very young, had depths to them I realized I would not ever fathom, and the moment they could speak they also knew instinctively when to keep certain thoughts private. At nine, my daughter already has a seriousness that I cannot penetrate, and probably never will.

And though I seem pretty confessional in this venue, I have parts of myself that I simply haven't shared with anyone. I live around, among, alongside, and cooperatively with tons of people, but they will never truly know who I am. We are all on a shared journey, yet in part we all travel alone.

Your thoughts? What resonates with you from your past, if anything? Do you keep yourself to yourself, or do you share everything with someone? Do you have parts of yourself that you still keep hidden, even from those you love?