Category: life

Zoe just left to play at my parents’ house for the morning with her cousin Cate. They do this every Thursday morning, and my mom often works in a library story hour or even some performance or other. Zoe looks forward to it all week.

It strikes me again today, as she leaves the house, that Zoe is flush with grandparents. There is a newly redecorated cousin room at my parents’ house, and at the Turners’ house, Zoe has her own room (the perk of being the only grandchild). She has time alone with at least one grandparent every week.

It’s a gift that stuns me.

This week I ran across the one thing that I had requested from my Grandma’s house when she died. Somehow, in my care to preserve them crumbling already, I had hidden them from myself for many years. They are these tiny shoes (about 2 inches long) that sat on her piano in her parlor.

When we went to visit Grandma after Grandpa died, Mom would sit in the kitchen with Grandma and we would try to amuse ourselves with anything we could find. The only game in the house was Ants in the Pants and after we had played that a while and checked for anything cool left over in Uncle Al’s old room, we would troll the parlor for anything we could make a toy of.

These shoes were it for me. I thought they were so cool. I remember walking them on my fingers across the piano keys, examining the tiny painting on the sides. They kept me occupied for hours and quickly became the first things I sought out upon arrival.

There was no tricked out room at my Grandma’s house–and I remember only rare occasions of having her all to myself. But these shoes bring back to me what I hope Zoe remembers of her own grandparents.

The delight with which the door is opened at her arrival.

The hearty laughter at something she said that she didn’t know was funny.

The unmitigated adoration that is the right of grandparents alone.

There’s a link on the right hand side of this page to my friend and former pastor Mary’s blog—-Preaching to the Choir.

I read her blog today and the rightness and realness of her post “complete remission” took my breath away, just as her sermons would when she was preaching to us each Sunday.

You simply must read it.

OK, I know the new theme on my blog has been “oh my gosh, the eighties are back.” I promise this will be my last entry about it.

I was minding my own business checking out jeans online and…

a j.crew model has her perfectly good jeans pegged (this is the term I remember for folding them tight, then rolling them up)!

I remember when my fashionable cousin Kokey taught me to do this. It was my entrance into eighties awesome-ness. And a great rescue for a tall girl whose jeans were never long enough anyway!

As has become my fashion mantra, “if you’re old enough to have done it the first time, you shouldn’t do it again.” So, no pegging for me.

(sigh) back to checking for tall-girl jeans.

Last week Zoe attended her first school skating party.

Of course, it was held at the major roller rink in town–home to roller-skating parties of her mother’s youth and site of every one of her mother’s high school dances.

Zoe had a blast.

I had to fight the urge to roll headlong into the girls’ bathroom, wipe my clammy hands on my stirrup pants, pop some Skittles, and check my permed bangs for any loss of height.

And, true to form, on my one time around the rink without Zoe, I was overzealous taking a corner and almost took out Emily who was gliding smoothly beside me.

It’s good to be a grown-up.

The happy rolling bunch.

So, I’m minding my own business at school this week. Merely walking down the hall, leaving a note on a kid’s locker and heading back to my office. Just a Guidance Counselor on a random Wednesday.

Then, out of the blue, here comes a kid strolling to his locker. He’s singing. Not some funky new jam that my 36-year-old ears can’t recognize, no, he’s singing all of the words to “Eye of the Tiger.” All about the cream of the fight and rising up to the challenge of a rival. The last known survivor was stalking it’s prey in the night all over again.

I’m deja vu-ing and not yet to my office when a girl comes strolling toward me wearing leg-warmers. She’s not headed to ballet class.

Last month it was the familiar “dong, dong…dong, dong” intro to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” that was coming from a hallway while some kids practiced for the stage show and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” belted from the stage by a side-pony-tailed singer during the stage show promo. It was all I could do to maintain decorum and keep myself from singing along.

I know I’m working at my alma mater and can’t expect my own experience not to peek around the corner now and then but, come on, give a valley girl a break! I’m ready to turn into Bowling for Soup’s 1985 lady!

Never mind that “99 Red Balloons” is blaring through my house as I type.

Zoe and I have been playing Old Bachelor this morning. A card set with Mercer Mayer-esque drawings, the game surprised us with this card…

Mom, I think you should take this as a sign.

It has been ten years since Mark and I exchanged our vows.

The night of the rehearsal dinner, Mark’s friends took him out to the Sierra Room for cigars and drinks. They asked him, “what do you think Tash is doing right now?” Mark said, “She’s probably half-way to Chicago. I shouldn’t have given her the good car.”

My cold feet with getting married had nothing to do with Mark and me in 1998. It was the subsequent years I was worried about. Would we stay compatible for the long haul?

I needn’t have worried.

I haven’t been married to Mark for a decade. I’ve been married to a series of men who look quite a bit like him, but never quite the same.

Check out the gallery.

This is where we started:

And the man I’m married to now…

Through all our life changes, Mark has remained so dog-gone easy to love, I can’t imagine I ever had cold feet. Now me on the other hand…easy to love? I’m not so sure on that one.

Good thing he had the crappy car.

I’ve been cleaning up Christmas stuff this week. Slowly taking down the advent calendars and wreaths. Pulling down the fake evergreen from the mantle that is definitely past its prime.

Today I worked on the tree.

I love looking at our ornaments. My parents have foregone a tree in recent years, so some of the ornaments are from my own childhood. They are really dear. Stories accompany them, of course. Becki and I painting them. Chris repositioning them so that his toothpick-framed robin picture could have center stage. Etc. Etc.

Zoe’s stories are there, too. Photos of her as a baby. Ornaments made in preschool. Cinnamon/applesauce ornaments that Emily and I made with Vera and Zoe for their first Christmas, ambitious new moms that we were.

But the ornament that struck me most today was given to me not to be an ornament at all. It came in the door with a woman from our church who was part of the “survivor circle” a dear friend organized while I was going through chemo. She gave it to me because she too had gone through chemo and when she had, someone had given her an angel. It sat on her dresser. It was an icon of hope in her dark time. Only problem was that it was ugly. Really ugly. And, sometimes her life was ugly right along with it. But it wasn’t without hope. Somehow, even a really ugly angel still brings the hope.

So, this fellow-survivor told me, perhaps you need an ugly angel, too.

It’s too ugly for me to keep out year round as it was meant to be. But for Christmas, I hang my ugly angel on the tree with joy.

And remember the friends that came to me in my survivor circle.

And the beauty they were in our incredibly ugly time.

Daisy took one for the team today.

I decided that her grooming costs were nonsense and that I could easily do it at home myself. Armed with a newly cleaned clippers and a kid-less morning, I barricaded Daisy into the laundry room and went for it.

After about half of her hair was at my feet, I realized that I should be shaving with the hair not against it. Of course, all my shaving until that time had been on Daisy’s broad ol’ back.

So, my poor, sweet, old girl is walking around with a very bad haircut. I gave her a bath complete with a fresh egg wash, but I’m not sure she’s forgiven me.

I even tried to tell her that Becki did this to me plenty of times under the pretense of “tapering the ends” of my hair, but it is little consolation. So I’m feeding her treats and giving her lots of attention.

Poor old pooch.

It was a rough morning.

Mark and I rushed to the oncologist’s office–me inexplicably grim, Mark without his coffee.

And we sat. And sat. And sat.

When we finally saw Dr. Campbell’s face, almost a full two hours after our arrival, pretty much anything he said would have been met with tears on my part. I was a little fried.

So, when he came in not having even opened my file and tried to summarize the radiologist’s report while he read it, things were prepped for a tear-fest.

The radiologist’s report was actually fine. But just fine. No shrinkage, no growth, just fine.

And that made me cry. Not tears I could explain, just exhausted, worn-out, sick of waiting, sick of cancer, tired, anxious tears. I found myself fumbling around trying to tell him that actually I’m quite happy and I don’t think about cancer all the time and I sleep just fine and I really do enjoy life and and and.

All through these tears I couldn’t explain and couldn’t stop.

But, really, the news is nothing to cry about. I get to stay on the medicine I’m on. No shrinkage this time does not necessarily mean it couldn’t shrink more. Shrinking and arresting growth are both good. In fact, the nodule could be the dead tree stump in the yard and just sit there for years and years (I didn’t make that analogy up–we have yet to visit Dr. Campbell and not get an analogy like this.). We just have to…

wait.

That might involve some tears for me.

They’re nothing to get worried about. I really am quite happy. I really don’t think about cancer all the time.

I’m just not that good at waiting.

Perhaps you could tell Dr. Campbell.