This is the Day

I have several random vivid memories from my preschool years. I can picture a lot of the dresses I wore, what my teacher looked like, the caterpillar puzzle she gave me to distract me when my mom left, and I can still recite some of the Bible verses by heart. We sang a couple songs every day and I always got really excited when This is the Day was on the agenda. That was my song and I felt like a 3-year-old Christian rock star every time I had the chance to belt it out.

Every now and then I have days that make me think of the lyrics in that song, and today was one of those days. I woke up early (after a late night with my girlfriends, no less) to drive to Chicago. When I pulled up to my mom's house I saw her car in the driveway, so I knew she was home, but she didn't answer when I called her name. I thought it was weird that our dog didn't come to greet me, so I wandered upstairs to see if she was sleeping. Her bedroom door was open and I could hear her talking to Stan, so I yelled "knock, knock", which I instantly regretted when I heard a hint of panic in her response. It was obvious I had interrupted something, my mind immediately went the one thing no child ever wants to imagine.

My mom came rushing to the door in a towel yelling something along the lines of "Oh, uh, well, uh, brace yourself." I looked up and saw her half bald head lathered in shaving cream and a razor in her hand. I was so relieved that I hadn't accidentally walked in on them doing the deed and so shocked to see my mom without her hair that I started to laugh. She started laughing too, realizing how unprepared we both were for that moment. She asked me how she looked and I said "You look great". And she did. 

Before my mom started chemo she was really worried about losing her hair, which is a reasonable fear for anyone facing treatment. I think people tend to fixate on this particular side effect for two reasons. The first is that we care about our appearance, and the second is that baldness from chemo is a very public indicator of a very private experience. 

What's funny is that the time spent worrying about and anticipating the hair loss seemed to cause more stress than the event itself. After seeing her in the hospital last week I told myself that this would make losing her hair seem like a cakewalk, and I was right. She woke up this morning with a full head of hair, started losing hand fulls of it in the shower, and reached for a Bic. Simple as that. In fact, it was a relief because the day had finally come, the moment had passed, and she didn't have to wonder anymore. She seemed happy and in control for the first time since I've been home from India, and we agreed that it was just one more thing we could put behind us.

The rest of the day was amazing. She put on her new wig, which looks exactly like her old hair, and looked like herself again. She was smiling and happy and ready to face the day. We went out to lunch, went shopping (found a fabulous dress for Miss Michigan), and just talked away the afternoon. I gave her her Mother's Day gift and she gave me a beautiful necklace that has a heart with the word 'unconditional' written on it. I imagine my feelings about this necklace are similar to the way she felt when I came home from a school fair with a '#1 Mom' pencil holder for her. These are gifts that have little value to anyone other than the recipient, but to that person they mean the world. It's so different from anything she's ever given me and something I will always cherish.

We have a robin's nest that sits on the ledge of our back porch. The first egg appeared a couple weeks ago, followed by another, and then we actually saw the mama robin lay the last two. They finally hatched while I was in Ann Arbor this past week, so my mom and I sat for a few minutes watching the four tiny featherless babies stretching their necks and opening their beaks as the mama and daddy robins gathered worms. It was such a beautiful act of nature to watch unfold, and today it reminded me how lucky I am that I can still come home to my 'nest'. 

When I first found out my mom had cancer, these are the types of days I had envisioned. I looked forward to joking about her bald head, talking about life, and sharing a deeply personal connection. When I left her hospital room last week I wondered if we would ever reach that point and here we are, one week later, starring in our own personal Lifetime movie. 

This is the day my mom lost her hair from chemo. I will rejoice and be glad in it. 

gv

Back to Reality

I've only been home for a week, but it feels like months. I keep waiting to feel overwhelmed with gratitude or at the very least nostalgia for the time I spent in India, but I'm starting to wonder if that day will ever come. To be honest, it just wasn't that great. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't the life-changing experience I was expecting.

Cliche as it may be, I saw Slumdog Millionairre right before I left and I envisioned being caught up in a culture so different from my own; the way I imagine Madonna and Angelina Jolie feeling when they travel to countries looking for babies to adopt. Perhaps it was the mundane feeling of working life or the fact that my mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer that kept me from emotionally investing myself in the experience, or something else entirely. 

I went to India expecting an intense personal experience and good professional experience, and it ended up being the complete opposite.  I gained so many great skills from the project I was working on, but I don't feel like my outlook on the world has changed much and I'm kind of bothered by that. Ordinarily I would come back from a trip and spend the next year starting sentences with 'Did you know that in Inda...' What kind of person spends three months on the other side of the world and walks away feeling unchanged? I'm feeling a bit disappointed in myself over it, even though there's nothing I would have done differently. The resulting mental dissonance has left me dissatisfied and exceptionally irritable, as my family can attest to.

Speaking of, my family is doing a decent job of working together to keep the household running while mom is down for the count. We are not, however, doing an excellent job of controlling our stress levels. Mom has Stage 3C cancer. I'm not sure she wants the world knowing that, but she's probably too tired to care at this point and for some reason writing it here makes me feel better. At least owning up to it makes me feel more in control, false as it may be.

I know that dealing with cancer at this level is hard on any family, but the fact that my mom also runs her own business has taken the role of caretaker to a new level. Managing my project in India was nothing compared to stepping blindly into her business and trying to help organize things. It's not that it's disorganized, but that I don't yet understand her organizational system and don't want to stress her out by firing off an arsenal of questions. 

When all of this started I heard so many people say how far chemo has come in the last few years and how it's really not as bad as it sounds. I've heard stories about moms and aunts making full recoveries and how surprisingly normal their lives were during treatment. Not to discredit their experiences, but I feel like it has only set us up for disappointment. Maybe their cancer wasn't advanced as my mom's or maybe they have 20/20 hindsight based on a favorable outcome, but no one prepared me for the version of my mother I met today. Chemo has taken my strong-willed ass kicking mother and completely zapped the life out of her. It is bizarre to see this sort of transformation and I can only imagine how it's playing on her emotions.

While I often use this blog as a place to vent, I don't want this to turn into a pity party. I also know that negative energy is not going to help anyone or anything, so I am trying to focus on the positive. I can say that I'm really proud of the way my family has come together and supported one another, and how grateful I am to have such amazing friends and colleagues. Every setback I have experienced thus far in my life has resulted in something greater and more meaningful, but never immediately. For now, all I can do is wait patiently for the answer and distract myself with pink plastered rah-rah breast cancer events.

Speaking of, I will be joining our Google team at Detroit's Race for the Cure on May 30. Our team goal is to raise $5000, which Google will match. I'm really proud of our history of giving to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which is dedicated to research and education about causes and treatments for breast cancer. If you are interested in supporting our team you can do so by clicking here or by clicking on the Donate! button on the left column of this blog. I didn't put much effort into making the page pretty, or even symmetrical for that matter, but rest assured my heart is in it.

gv