Friday, April 1, 2011

What a Difference a Year Makes

Finally the bad weather has abated.  This week I started walking at the beach again on a regular basis.  I have not done so since before my tumor was found in December 2009.  It was great to get out and see the waves in the morning.  I am listening to course on Chinese history while I am walking.  In 2009 I walked my way through Team of Rivals, among other books.

One of the days I was out I saw a woman wearing a beanie who clearly had no hair.  She was walking vigorously with two other people.  I saw that she also had no eyebrows.  I remembered that a year ago now I had no hair and no eyebrows. Unfortunately unlike this woman, I was not able to walk at the beach. I had no energy or ability to shake off the feelings of nausea and dizziness that overwhelmed me at the time.  It amazes me that an entire year has passed.  I made it through that difficult time but am finding it hard sometimes to handle the losses I have had in the past few months, such as my friend Ann.

Next week I have another one of my quarterly checkups. I am not quite a year free of cancer and in the back of my mind I worry about its return.  I make inappropriate jokes about it which make my friends cringe. Perhaps because of my talking with Ann about her dying for the past three years, I am more comfortable talking about death than my contemporaries.  Death happens, my friends, to people our age.  We need to be able to talk about it and even joke about it.  At least I do.

One of the great things about being out walking at the beach is seeing one of my neighbor's creative use of lawn statuary.  Here are three different settings for these stone(d) birds:
St Patty's Day 2010


Thanksgiving 2010
Opening Day Dodgers March 2011
"Buy me some peanuts and quacker-jacks"

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