Collections

I’m a collector of treasures. Not precious metals or fancy cars, but precious petals and lovely cards. Dried petals destined for potpourri, but foiled by the perfect tin are scattered throughout my house. Decades worth of calendars filled with notes from Grandma Doris, hundreds of letters from friends, get-well cards for hospital stays, congratulatory cards for weddings and babies, my birth announcement declaring that my parents had a girl, and congratulations to my folks for my arrival into the world, are a sampling of my collection. I used to have all my cards in dilapidated boxes, which I carted from Whidbey Island to Ketchikan, Alaska and back to Washington State. More boxes. More weight. More treasures.

I recently dedicated half a closet to cards and photos and organized them in plastic containers. Just as my good intentions toward potpourri are foiled, so are my intentions to create photo albums. I’m just not that organized. Besides, if I were organized I’d miss out on the fun of having to go through stacks of dog-eared photos to find the elusive one. I’d miss the joyful occasion to sit on the guestroom bed, surrounded by memories, and the surprise once again of a picture that captured a moment so significantly. Disorganization has its perks. Nevertheless, I’ve been filling fewer boxes now that e-mail takes the place of letters. Of course I have desktop email folders brimming with entertaining communications. I am a bit more organized with photos now that FB and a cloud has them somewhere in a virtual sky, but I must admit it’s way less fun searching for photos in the vast universe. I am frustrated by my fears of technology, of pressing the wrong button and watching my memories go poof. I prefer the tactile, dusty adventure of breaking into tattered envelopes containing so many wonders.

I’m also a big collector of word memories. I especially like to snag sayings gone awry, or runaway lyrics for a fun memory later. You know, when you’ve been singing the same song for years and finally learn the words have nothing to do with the song, yet they seemed so right. I had an epiphany about a song Dad used to sing to me about “Mersey Does”. I heard the song like this:

Mersey Does and Doesy Does and Little Idey Dideys, a Kiddle Dee Didey Doo

Dad heard me singing it in the kitchen a few years ago and realized he recognized the tune, but not the lyrics. It makes so much more sense to me now that I know:

Mares Eat Oats and Does Eat Oats and Little Lambs Eat Ivy. Kids Eat Ivy Too. 

Remember the rebel playground anthem (circa late 1960s,) that kids sang loud and clear under the monkey bars? I could bellow it as well as the rest of the scoundrels:

Wanda Wanda, Wanda Wanda

Esterly Esterly

Doctors make it, teachers take it

Why can’t we? Why can’t we?

Many years later another epiphany had me blushing when I learned Wanda Wanda wasn’t the character from my Saturday morning kid’s show. Wanda was really Mary Jane, or marijuana, and Esterly was LSD. Gotta love the era of the innocent flower child.

As much as I like to poke fun at myself for my ridiculous utterances or some spoonerism that twisted my tongue into saying what it ought not, Mom and I also take delight in our collection of word foibles of others, such as when I was asked to pick up just the “Bears and Necessities” from the grocery store. Furry friends and necessities are always on my shopping list now. Perhaps that’s why I ended up with three pampered poodles, at least one who thinks he’s a polar bear. Another delightful saying that always elicits a smile is my then toddler son’s can-do-attitude statement, “I can if I don’t want to.”

Ah, the free riches of life. Tangible mementos from those we love, dried petals that evoke a memory, letters honoring friendships and significant events, my grandmother’s calendars reminding me that each day was worthy of at least a sentence, hilarious new sayings derived from more mundane ones that have become part of the family story, and captured snapshots in time.

These are my most treasured collections.

Enter the Hormone War Zone

Hot Flash.  Cold sweat. Change at thirty-five

A scorching hot reminder that I am still alive

 Changes, changes, changes are happening to me

I wonder what it’s all about

I wonder why me 

The ovary snatchers had thrust me into Meno Meno Land.  No survival kit accompanied my crash landing at the base of the Mount Hysteria, and I wandered desperately through a scorching hot valley.  The volcano rumbled incessantly as I dodged lava streams and tried to deflect the molten rocks falling all about me. 

I felt alone in the inferno.  Sharing stories about cancer was easy.  A twenty-something Alaskan woman in her first year of marriage, battling for her life, is a jaw-dropper in any crowd, but discussing menopause with friends who were still young and vibrant left me cold. 

 I could no longer concentrate on their chatter, I was too busy waving down the waitress who’d been remiss in refilling my glass of ice water—the cool condensation-clad container that doubled as a freeze pop to roll on my neck. My relaxed friends didn’t seem to notice. As they were chilling out, I was melting into menopausal mush. They had time to ease into “The Change” to prepare, to change eating habits, to exercise.  They were on a gradual descent into the heat, while I’d been plunged into the inferno.  I’d crash-landed in six hours flat. 

Other than cancer, my ovaries had never given me any grief.  It is only the absence of them that had me yearning for the keys to the body parts room where I imagined them floating like buoyant eggs in a canning jar. I longed for them—especially at night—when a warm tingling in my cheeks rapidly moved to my neck and I found myself in hell dodging fireballs.  Impaled on a rotisserie rolling round and round in my bed, my once cool sheets threatened to suffocate me until a gust from the ever-present fan hit condensation beads on my skin and plunged me into an arctic freeze.  

My outfits consisted of loose sweat pants, a tank top, and a polar fleece jacket. My beverage of choice rotated between ice-cold water and jitter-laced coffee.  All thoughts of social interaction were peppered with panic; was there a chilly escape route?

It was hard to remember a life beyond cancers borders, where once upon a time I was a normal girl whose fairytale enemies bore benign sticks and stones. But my fairytale ending had been rewritten.

The twenty-three year old baldheaded woman turned her blazing blue eyes to face the malevolent cancer dragon.  She consumed mystical potions concocted to shrivel the creature, and her two children—born in defiance of the monster—forced it to recoil back into its lair. 

Several years later, her ovaries were wrenched from the malignant clutches of the cancerous beast, but as she smote the dragon it exacted vengeance, huffing and puffing its final death flame—a scorching menopausal heat—licking the back of her neck for eternity. 

My doctor eventually pulled the patch and prescribed a little green pill consisting of conjugated equine estrogens called Premarin—Pregnant Mare Urine.  I wondered if things could get any worse. I’d lost my reproductive organs and replaced them with horse pee to trick my brain into thinking I was still vital. 

 This is an excerpt from my book, Chemo on the Rocks: My Great Alaskan Misadventure. For more information about Chemo on the Rocks, click here.