Lesion and Light
An appropriate word for my year.
Poetry
My dear friend BR sent me this poem recently. It’s one of my favorite’s of Emily Dickinson, “You cannot put a fire out-.”
Journeying
Sitting in the idling car, my daughter in the passenger seat, I listen to the nurse relay the results of last week’s breast biopsy. I take notes on a piece of paper, already covered with printed words, that I found stuffed in the cup holder between our seats. I have cancer. I finish the call, give my daughter the news, tell her it doesn’t sound too bad and that I need to talk to her dad. I get out of the car, climb the steep stairs up to my husband’s second floor apartment. We joke about how this is the stairway to doom, all grey carpet and walls, one faint fluorescent light high in the ceiling. He’s in the shower. He pulls the curtain open around his dripping head and chest confused; we’ve already said good-bye. I prop myself on the edge of the bathroom sink and tell him. I try to recount all the details the nurse gave me. I can’t read my writing. He looks at me stunned, the buzz of shock bouncing between us. Then he tells what he always tells me when I’m frightened, it will be o.k. I retrace my steps, down the stairs, into the car. On the drive back to her college in Minnesota, I attempt to explain my diagnosis by answering my daughter’s pointed questions. She is very seldom upset. She isn’t now, but her questions are careful. It is this care that I converse with and try to calm.
In St. Paul, my Airbnb host invites me upstairs for lentil soup. I just bought a hot dinner from Whole Foods on my way to her place for the night, but I take her up on the offer. I like to meet new people, even though I also worry about them being odd or discomforting. One way or the other, my host will be a distraction. I climb the stairs from my basement suite. She’s unlatched the door at the top, and her dog Twilight greets me with tail wags. I tell my host, whose name is Mary, that Twilight reminds me of Olive, our dog of fifteen years, another mostly black and medium sized creature of gentle disposition. “Maybe Twilight has had a longer life than I thought,” she says. Perhaps, Twilight is Olive returned to comfort me. She was good at that. Mary offers me a seat at the table in her small kitchen, bright blue walls, spring green cabinets, white cabinet doors. The table is next to the window. It has been dark for over an hour now. The temperature outside is in the single digits. Beside me the window blinds are drawn.
On any other day, I would have soaked in the cozy, eclectic atmosphere of a warm, winter kitchen. But tonight, I’m up to my neck in cancer, struggling to keep my head above water and breathe. The kitchen is a soft, if inadequate blanket. It can’t change the weather, but its protection brings a welcome, provisional comfort.
Mary’s vegan. I’m not. I give her my quick apologetic explanation: we raised two boys who would have mutinied and also been difficult to fill without meat. Her son, who’s my twin boys’ age eats lunch meat, she says. The lentil soup is delicious, the carrots a little crunchy. I wonder if they come from the bursting garden that surrounds this small bungalow on a busy street in an undesirable neighborhood of St Paul. The Airbnb listing included numerous pictures of Mary’s garden in high summer. They swayed my decision to book as much as the clean and affordable accommodations. On my way in tonight, I struggled with my bags past dried stalks of coneflower and other prairie plants, poking up through the snow.
I add some tortilla chips to my soup, and we talk about our children and their futures. Her son is studying public health, which she worries about under the current political administration. I tell her about my boys, their premed majors, my daughter’s interest in art and anthropology. We talk about my job and her job as a part-time general practitioner. She tells me that she was a single mother by choice, had a later marriage that didn’t last. She wants to retire in the next couple of years. When I mention my work as a spiritual companion, she says, “I’d like to do something like that. Get a job at a college campus, where students could just show up and talk, while I listened.” I nod. I tell her that I think that kind of listening is needed more than ever.
Since I walked into the kitchen, I have been eyeing what looks like fresh baked scones on her stove top. When she offers me one, I say yes. She assures me they’re vegan. The scones are chewy and sweet, full of oatmeal and little dark currents. I eat them and drink the tea she’s poured me. “Would you like to have some for breakfast?” Another yes. She opens a cupboard drawer, telling me she saves all the plastic bags she gets. I smile because I am also a saver. In the drawer, amongst the plastic, she locates a piece of wax paper and a yellow ribbon. She wraps the two scones in the paper, and after a few tries, ties up the package.
I think about mentioning my diagnosis. But in the end, I don’t, even though perhaps she would’ve given me some medical advice. Such a revelation seems beyond the scope of host and guest. And the thought of once again, directing a probing hand at my insides with the goal of pulling out something writhing and bloody, then enduring a response, is untenable. Instead, I thank Mary for the soup and my breakfast in its secondhand wrapper. She grabs her cat so that it doesn’t escape downstairs with me. This stairway is short, a landing for pause, the walls are orange, the steps red. Light from a small lamp at the bottom rises up to greet me. I descend into it.
Gardening and Making/Mending
I’m taking a break from Gardening and Making/Mending this week. However, I will say that I’m nearly done with the giveaway for January’s A Thin Space Handmade Item Raffle. If you’re a paid subscriber here, you’re automatically registered to win a hand constructed item from me once a quarter. I’ll announce the winner for this quarter at the end of the month. Above is a sneak peek.
