Laugh. : April 2016

It's been seven years today since I heard those magical words "you've got cancer." Last week someone asked me what the significance of 7 years was. I told her it's like turning 19. It's older than 18, but still three years away from 21.

Graduating from high school is like the first cancer-versary, whew, I made it. Turning 18 is similar to the 5 yr cancer-versary. You're still getting "window" envelops with medical bills, but you're strong enough to "vote" for the medical care you wish to receive in the future. Then you wait five more years to reach the holy grail of cancer-versaries -- 10 years. Ten years is definitely the equivalent of 21. You can drink! Before health care reform after 10 years you were stamped "CURED" by the insurance companies and cancer was no longer considered a pre-existing condition.

Yesterday I woke up to Truckee blanketed in 5 inches of snow. I donned my snow boots and walked the dogs to the river. It reminded me of years ago when it used to snow every April in Truckee. It reminded me of backcountry skiing "right into the lake" before feasting on a shared sandwich and cookie in front of the fire at Tahoe House with a friend that is no longer alive. It reminded me to enjoy this very moment watching the water flow away from the mountains towards Pyramid Lake where once I took the Squaw Valley company car -- a sporty Subaru -- to see how fast it would go. I drove 120 mph down a two-lane road and to this day that remains the fastest I've ever driven.

A lot of life has happened between April 24, 2009 and today. In my memoir, Saving Second Base, I wrote:

I stood there staring at my own body but did not see me. I hated cancer. I hated the way I looked. I hated the way I felt. Mostly I hated that my life was not my own.

The truth is I wasn’t sure I wanted to fight cancer. Cancer was my way out of this world. If I died from cancer that wouldn’t be my fault.

But yesterday I thought of something else I used to have written on pieces of paper all around me. It was not from cancer, but before cancer. I lived by the words and those words have taken me all over the world. I read the saying somewhere that I do not remember and I cannot remember the words exactly, but it went something like this:

I don't think about what I would have missed if I had never left, I think about what I never would have known if I had stayed.

In revising these words yesterday, I wrote:

I don't think about what I would have missed if I did not fight cancer, I think of all the experiences I've had because I did.

Here is a photographic journey of the past seven years.