"My first friend in America"

We live in a world of instant: Instagram, Instant Message, Twitter, Text, Tumblr, Snapchat, Facebook, Pinterest.

And in an instant I was reminded how simple it used to be when I received a text with this attached photo. A whole lot of life has been lived since these photos were taken.

Yet, I just want to find a way to crawl back into the skin of the girl smiling in the photo booth hanging out with her best friend.

Loss? Or just giving up?

There's loss of innocence like trying desperately to be 21 when I was only 15. Loss of the ability to do something I used to be able to do like back walkovers into the splits. There's real loss, like when my boyfriend fell 240 feet in a fatal climbing accident.

Then there's two days after his death when I was climbing with Nettle, wailing and pounding my fists into the rock barely able to mutter words when Nettle said to me "time has a wonderful way of healing and I know you don't think this now, but you will love again."

Years later cancer stole from me. I've lost my insides - every part that makes me female from my breasts to my cervix. I write "droid" on forms where I should check either male or female.

When I stand at the bottom of a climb I look up. Many times I've already given up in my head. It's a long climb. The ice is brittle. What if I don't have the gear I need. I'm done before a single ice ax is swung.

Loss is real, it makes life go round. My brother desperately tried to have kids for more than a decade. My niece was born almost exactly 1 year after my grandmother died, She's my grandmother in a beautiful new way. My brother never gave up. And after our other grandmother died, his son was born.

What will happen next when I'm standing at the bottom of a climb - figuratively or for real? How will I write the ending to the story? Will I blame loss as I give up?

I bought myself a greeting card a week before I started chemotherapy. Today it still hangs on my fridge and some days it is the reason I put one font in front of the other. I changed "you" to "me". On the outside it reads: Believe. On the inside it reads: Because I Believe in Me.

I'm not even close to the top of the mountain, but I show up and I climb.

Every New Begining Comes from A Beginning's End...

I just didn't understand that song. I do now. I purchased a camper trailer in May. The plan was to live in the camper trailer while my significant other and I built a house. But that's not exactly what happened.

I purchased the camper from a man in the middle of a divorce. He had some remaining items in the camper. Jeff and I followed as he drove the camper from storage to his house to empty what remained of a life he once had. A life with his daughters and wife as a family. Kites they flew into the sky at the beach. S'mores sticks to roast marshmallows over the campfire. Sleeping bags the kids curled up in at night. It was his beginning's end.

Once the camper was officially ours, we cleaned the camper and added our own touch to make it ours. Dog bowls and beds, a painting my mom painted of our trip to the Grand Canyon, clothes, dishes and finishing touches. Our camper was moved onto the back half of our property. We were ready for construction. Our beginning.


Four months into construction and our house was moving forward, rapidly. The exterior was done, roof on, windows in.

On August 23rd we went to Rocklin for my brother's birthday and stayed the night. Monday morning we returned home.

Theodore stopped dead in his tracks about 10 feet from the front door of the trailer barking his little head off. The windows were busted. The door was wide open and a shredded bag of dog food was strewn on the ground before us. Walking through the battered front door was quite a sight. The refrigerator door was open, eggs smashed all over the floor, chocolate pudding decorated the walls along with mashed avocado. Bear blood was on the walls at the windows and doors and glass was everywhere.


We cleaned for the next 8 hours. Picked up the trash, swept the glass. We kept the dogs safe. Loaded the cat into a kennel and drove her to be boarded, where she still is today.

Eventually all of the windows were taped shut, the door locked for the final time and the camper was moved off of our lot.

Insurance would make the repairs.

In the meantime, the man I bought the camper from wanted to buy it back from us. He wanted to rebuild his memories in the camper. We were happy for a buyer and awaited the return of the camper to live in to finish construction and then sell back to the very person we bought it from.

For the next six weeks we camped, lived out of our cars, the cat in the kennel and the dogs at my folks. We jammed everything else into our already over-stuffed storage unit. We ate out breakfast, lunch, dinner (we still do this!) Every waking moment hanging sheetrock or working our jobs for money. Working until exhaustion so that we can get out of our cars and into our house. Understanding and appreciating the feeling of displacement. And very thankful that this would be temporary. Our house was nearing temporary move-in condition.

The first week of October, my insurance agent called to tell me the camper was considered a "total loss." A few days later I went to claim the final items that remained. As I stood in the camper at the wrecking yard I couldn't help but be a bit nostalgic. Standing in the "living room" was once a dream that seemed like a lifetime ago. A few odds and ends remained and one final art piece I had tucked away from my nephew. This was my beginnings end.

Welcome Home

I choose very little in my life. While I've done a lot, the choices have not all been mind. This revelation came recently as I was telling someone how I graduated from college as a Conservation Biologist. I did not go to school to become a biologist. I just took classes that seemed fun. About my junior year, my adviser called me into her office to talk about graduating. After careful examination of my transcripts it was decided that I would be a conservation biologist. Graduation: BS in Conservation Biology 1990-something. 

My first job was a fluke. I spent most of my 20's and 30's chasing adventure and my body felt it (especially now, but that's a different BLOG). I returned from 3 or 4 months in Europe kite skiing, hiking, climbing, and traveling with one achy back due to an accident years earlier skiing in Tuolemne Meadows where I slipped a disc. With a ton of skiing while carrying heavy packs it was time to sign up for back surgery. I left my job driving a Zamboni at the Squaw Ice Rink and headed to personal for "light duty". That is where I met Nancy Cushing, wife to the owner of Squaw Valley. I told her I was a conservation biologist (whatever that was) and she said "you're hired" and I was thrust into the throngs of Squaw Valley Ski Corporation! If you were around in the late 90's you would understand and perhaps that makes for another BLOG another time. I loved my job-out-of-college. I was actually working as a biologist! But things changed fast and my dream job became a nightmare when the EPA raided the valley, prosecuting Squaw for violations of the Clean Water Act (not a good time to be the only staff biologist at Squaw). My life was about to change. 

I did a brief stay in Orlando. I thought if I moved all the way across the country I could dump my boyfriend. Imagine my surprise when he showed up at my door a few weeks later with a car full of stuff! A year later he stayed in Florida (got married had kids) and I went home -- back to Tahoe (1st return). One of my friends asked what I was going to do next so I told her: I'm going to rent out my house plants and plant flowers. I did. For two years. I met the most amazing man. He died. And I ran away to Bozeman, Montana. (A side note: you can still see the planters I created and had built hanging in Mama Sake's at Squaw Valley from over 10 years ago.) 

I did not choose Bozeman. I fell in love with a flower garden, bought the house attached to it and stayed. I was asked again what I was going to do with my life. I looked around Bozeman at all of the lawns and thought I'm not mowing lawns so Botanika (my landscaping company in Tahoe) is out of the question! But real estate was booming. So after a 60-hr online class WHAM I was real estate agent. Money grew on trees (it is true, 2004-2006 money did grow on trees). My guy at the time kept saying: it's smoking mirrors. He was right and in 2008 the trees fell and all the money went away, along with my house (a hail storm in August 2008 claimed the flower garden). I climbed into my Subaru with an exercise ball riding shotgun and Sampson holding down camp in the back and hit the road. Everything I owned shoved into a shed at a friend of mine's except what fit in the rocket box on top of my car. Someone said I'd like New Zealand or Colorado. Colorado was simply easier to get to. 

And then I got cancer. I was required to stay within hospital's distance. I never cared for Colorado. It was pretty, but pretty only goes so far. I missed my home, my family and my friends. I felt alone in Colorado and I hated cancer for making me stay. In 2012 I left for Tahoe (the 2nd time I returned). I stayed a month and a month Costa Rica surfing and zip lining with my mom before returning to Colorado to see if things would work with the guy I left there. From 2012 to 2014 I made a choice - to learn everything I could about oncology massage and working with people who are in treatment for cancer, had cancer, or are living with cancer. I absolutely love working with those touched by cancer. I love my patients. I love learning about oncology care, lymphedema, I love working with those getting ready to leave this world. This work makes my heart sing. 

On August 20, 2014 I called my brother to wish him Happy Birthday. He was with his kids and our folks. I got off the phone and cried. I knew that day I could no longer stay in Colorado. When my guy got home that night, I told him I was leaving (and he decided to come too). This year ends with my final return to Tahoe (3rd time's a charm) and my commitment to well being. 

On January 19th I begin grad school where I will get a Master's Degree in Health & Wellness. I have plans and goals and I can see exactly where I want to go from here. I can picture the house I live in, the flowers planted in the yard. I can see my niece and nephew playing in the woods and learning to ski. I see my mom and I romping through the Sierra's talking about how my dad and her met, how my great grandfather sold pencil-drawn portraits during the depression to put food on the table. We will talk about our next great adventure and lament about new aches and pains. My dad and I will talk about my mom and my brother. And my brother and I will talk about my dad.

Life seems so simple and so pure. It has been a long road back, paved with heartache, but grouted in wonderful memories. I would not change my life and the wind I've floated on. But I will say, it sure is great to be home. Welcome home me!

View from my parent's deck. 

It's Tradition

I arrived in Portland a day before my class, mainly to go to Powell City of Books--a book store so incredibly large they actually have a map of the store. A real map, one similar to a transit map for a  metropolitan area, well, at least a metropolitan area the size of Frisco, CO.

I wandered aimlessly, then focused. Searched shelves with intent as well as casual amusement. Narrowed on three books, a gift and a quick exit before spending above more than my pocketbook would allow.

I arrived in Pioneer Square to watch the lighting of the Christmas Tree.

I have long since converted to Judaism and decorating and lighting up a Christmas tree an activity of my past, lost is the tradition of my childhood. Serving me now only memory.

I'm born December 23rd so my childhood was short on birthday parties and rich in Christmas tradition - a "birthday month" where most years  my birthday was buried in red and green wrapping paper and pecan and pumpkin pies. But hunting out the tree from a lot of spruce and pine, scented in cinnamon-spiced cider, listening to Christmas carols was fun. We often went as a family. Sometimes we even cut our own tree from one of those come-select-cut tree farms. At home the great untangling of tiny little white, red, green, and blue lights began. Ornaments hung. A beautiful mom-hand-sewn angel-like doll on top. The tree became a sanctuary of peace. Looking at the lights and watching as piles of gifts surrounding it's trunk began to build. Chocolate chip cookies and milk left for Santa. Fighting to stay awake the night before Christmas, eventually overcome by sleep. Christmas day my brother and I pouncing on my parent's bed "wake up! wake up!" In a moment all that's left is piles of wrapping paper, bows and ribbons askew, my brother and I setting up new games with new toys - "where Barbi meets Luke Skywalker". In our house, Barbi never dated Ken, but she was often tight with Yoga. The tree still lit.

I still remember sitting by the tree, watching its lights tinkle on and off and sometime watching an entire strand of lights go off, for good.

Today I don't know whether I believe Jesus has already come to save us or Isaiah is coming to save us. Likely my beliefs fall somewhere else altogether. But what I do know and I do believe is that tradition is the glue that holds us together.

Ouch

My shoulder surgeon suggested that my shoulder surgery would be one of the worst pains I would experience. I said there was no way a shoulder surgery would be worst than a bilateral radical mastectomy. Turns out I was right. Perhaps it is more than just the physical surgery that makes the mastectomy worse. I don't know. This shoulder surgery seems to be a breeze, a simple 2 out of 10 pain and nothing a couple of Tylenol and a chocolate chip cookie can't fix.

I looked forward to the surgery. I knew that I would be better from surgery, not worse, not left contemplating "what next?" in my life. Just well. Able to do vinyasa flow and down dog and lift weights and all the stuff that has evaded me for the past several years.

Today I walked in and out of all the stores in Frisco. Stores I heard of but have never visited. We have some great little shops in Frisco. I walked into one store without a customer in the store yet four staff and not one of them said a word to me. I walked into the very next store with only one employee and three customers and the employee managed to say hi to all of us. I suppose the clerks just assumed I would not buy anything and most certainly not try anything on. After all, I was in a shoulder sling. Pity really as they did have some really nice things and I won't be a shoulder sling forever and I do live right down the street, but I likely will never go into that store again.

Monday I receive an MRI on the right shoulder and on Wednesday I find out if my right shoulder can borrow the sling from the left shoulder in November. And for the rest of the year I'm going to  squeeze every penny from my health insurance as my deductible has been met! And for the past several years I've gotten to pay my deductible along with my premiums every year! Ahh, but as my neighbor once said to me "I get to...". When I think about it, that is a grand thing that I'm able to do.

I'm "wine"-ing now!

Over the course of the last five years I've lost a lot --  my boobies, ovaries, uterus, cervix, even my fallopian tubes! And I've gained a lot -- 30 pounds around my middle! (Cancer, have I had a chance to thank you yet for that?)

I feel like I've done a good job at embracing my new vitality. I still hike, swim, play, lots of play. But here is where I have to draw the line -- I can no longer drink wine, or any alcohol for that matter. Not that I am a huge drinker, because I'm not. But it is nice to go for a glass of wine. A wine bar opened in Bozeman when I was living there. I used to meet with a friend of mine over wine and cheese, watch the hustle and bustle of guests getting the street beat from the locals at the bar. It was fun. And definitely would not be the same sipping on a tall glass of water!

Just one glass of wine - red or white, there is no discrimination - and I cannot sleep. I wake up sluggish with swollen eyes. Really?

I have a choice to make: sluggish and sloshed or a tall glass of water with lemon. I've been battling this for the past year. I have to say, even though it is not a big deal (I drink two to three times a month) it is the last thing I want to surrender to cancer.

I may go to war a few more times over a glass of chablis, kicking and screaming the whole way.

Here's a toast &^%! cancer!