Sam and Mama on his 5 month birthday
Keeping up the positive attitude can be trying some days. Today was one of those days. I woke up early, spent the morning with Sammy and my Mom and after about 2 hours, found myself curled up and sleeping again. By 3 p.m. I dragged myself out of bed because I had to eat something today. I contemplated showering, but looked at my thinning hair and decided I could go another day to keep more of it atop my head than down the drain. I had errands I had to run. It is Christmas after all, and as much as I tried to get a jump on it, I will always be racing around Christmas Eve to tie up loose ends.
This year is no different. I told Bill and my Dad that I was going to head to the drug store and to grab some lunch because I had to get out of the house. I don't think I could stand being inside the four walls of this house much longer. I needed to be out breathing the fresh air and driving myself, not being dependent on everyone else to get me from here to there. Not ruining someone else's day out because I was too tired to make it any longer. That's what my life has become.
I got in the car and turned out of our development the opposite way from where I told Dad and Bill I was going. I just drove and let my car lead me...I was running away.
When I was in the hospital the first week awaiting my diagnosis, I had a no good, very bad day when I met with one doctor. I was all alone when the GI doctor finally came to see me and his bedside manner was less than stellar. He told me in that stark white room, all alone, with a throbbing liver, that this could be a number of things and started rattling off a list of diseases. Then he said it, "or cancer." The tears streamed down my face, my lip quivered because I was doing everything I could to hold back my sobs. Someone actually said it out loud. I could have cancer....in my liver. How could this EVER be a good thing. The doctor looked at me and very matter of factly, placed his hand on my knee and said "I'm sorry sweetheart, but whatever it is, you can't run away from it." That stuck with me. Even after he finally left my room, and I was able to sob uncontrollably because of the possibility of cancer and the pain that it caused me in my liver from sobbing, those words reverberated in my ears. I couldn't run away, if it was cancer, I could strap on my best sneakers but that wouldn't help anything. I would have to face this all head on.
But here I sat in my car....running away. The traffic up and down Erie Boulevard incensed me. Not because I was impatient, but because all these people were getting to "enjoy" Christmas shopping, they could handle the hustle and bustle, they weren't walking through the mall praying for a seat to magically appear (because let me tell you, Destiny USA is severely lacking in seating!), and they weren't wearing a black coat that looked like your cat rolled around on it for a solid 24 hours because their hair was falling out. I was mad. So I just kept driving. I didn't run my errands. I was going to get away from this cancer, even if it was just for a couple of hours.
I pulled onto the highway and let my feelings take me where I needed to go. I found myself driving past my old elementary school and memories of an innocent childhood and easier times came flooding back. Even though I was a fatty in elementary school and didn't always have the best time there, I wasn't facing what I was facing now. I didn't have to be an adult there and take responsibility. Mom and Dad always fixed it. They knew the right words, the right actions to make me feel safe and ok. I kept driving. I drove past the graveyard where my grandparents are buried. Some of you might find this morbid, and I didn't pull in because it is a very old place and all I needed was to get stuck in there! "Dad, can you come pull me out of the graveyard?" Probably would put my dad over the edge. But going there or just driving by it, always seems to calm me. Maybe it is because my great-grandmother made us stop there every time we were on our way to the mall to check on the grave stones. Maybe that made it a reassuring place for me. I don't know what it is, but I always feel like they are there when I visit. I always place a yellow rose on their graves, and I know that they see that and it reminds me that they are always with me.
Finally, I turned around and drove to the place I most needed to be. I sat in the parking lot of Chip's Deli, the Southwood Superette, or Liberty Deli as it is now called. Why? Because I could sit in peace and look at the place where I grew up. Our house in Southwood, the place where I first learned to ride a bike, planted a maple tree with my father, had fires in the backyard, the yard where we played kickball every summer, the flagpole that was home plate. It was all there in front of me. The back corner bedroom that my dad made for me as a teen and stuffed cigarette packs in the wall for the "future" to find. The pool where I had so many birthday parties where neighborhood kids knew to bring at least one change of clothes because there would be people thrown in the pool. The garage roof that Mark Bell still has a scar from jumping off of into the pool (in my Dad's swim trunks). The little sledding hill, the tetherball yard, the back stone wall that Grandma used to sit on in her bathrobe some spring mornings to watch me get on the bus (I was 15!). I remembered running around the house being chased by my Dad who was going to throw me in the pool. The part of the yard where Mort, our first cat, had been buried until Mom made Dad exhume his body and move it to our new house (that is love...creepy, but love). My grandma's living room where I read so many books and ate so many breakfasts. The second floor living room where my Dad opened up the window in his tighty-whities and threw out the Beta cassette of the Ewok movie that Jamie was making us watch for the umpteenth time. The place where I found out I had two baby sisters.
I ran away to home. Or what used to be home. It's not like life was unicorns and roses there all the time. But to me, it is the place where I grew into the woman I would become. It's where I fell down, made mistakes, embarrassed myself, but always dusted myself off, got up, and was able to laugh it off later. There isn't much to that house, it's a two-family flat on a double-lot on a busy county highway. A lot has changed since we moved too. There's a deck on the back, the garage is in disarray, the front driveway is now a yard and trees no longer line the side of the house. To the every day passerby, it might even be considered an eyesore. But looking at it through the windshield wipers on this rainy Monday, that house was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It took all my might not to walk up to the door and ring the bell and ask to just walk around and touch the walls. To close my eyes and hear the giggles of my youth, the feel of my grandma's flannel sheets. I wanted to be catching fireflies in the side yard or be in our pop-up camper telling ghost stories. But you can't go back, you have to move forward. So I pulled out of the parking lot and got back on the road.
However, I was no longer running away, as the doctor said, "You can't run away from it." I was driving right back into the storm and was ready to keep fighting. I just needed to go back and remember what else I was fighting for, besides my son and my husband and my family. I am fighting for that little girl who deserves to grow up and realize the dreams she had in that house. Running away would defeat that little girl and let her down. I still have dreams I haven't realized and I still have time to do it. I'm not running away because I got this.
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