juliette lynch

a march victory, due north, part #13

Bobbing heads and sweaty hands line the grey wooden fence. The babies carried by parents, we stand expectant, our eyes focused on each car that comes around the corner. 

The eleven of us wait. Impatiently. Ready to strike our “Surprise!” stances and yell out our congratulations. We need only one more person. This day is significant. 

The weather has taken notice, taken interest, even. March shed its winter coat in celebration and gave us 80 degree weather on this Wednesday afternoon, March 21st. I couldn’t be more thankful.

We wrapped the back porch in colored streams of red, yellow and blue. Balloons hung with a staple gun, secured to the posts, G’s style. Flowers and edible arrangements, hand drawn cards, all leave no space on the table. We will drink all the wine and beer that was brought. Shish-kabobs wait to be eaten as the rice cooks and the salad stays cool in the fridge. The biggest surprise is the yummiest: vanilla and chocolate ice cream cake with a crunchy middle. R’s favorite is hidden in the freezer. T tingles with excitement , she could barely keep the party a secret as the day wore on. 

R’s final day of radiation is today. 6 weeks, 28 rounds, she is finally done. Besides the “chemo pill” that she will take for 5 years that acts as an estrogen suppresser in any potential cancer cells, she is done with her cancer treatment. While the pill is no small thing and we wait to see the side effects, we are extremely happy she is done. Overjoyed really. I do not have the right word to express our relief at arriving at this moment. 

As R pulls in the driveway and we erupt into cries of celebration and shrieks by the kids, her face gives away her surprise. She had not expected this. As she hugs her good friend, her eyes sparkle with tears, and despite her long, long day of appointments and her general exhaustion, her happiness is palpable. This victory is her’s. 

I drink my fair share of beer, and forget that there are kids still to be put to bed and dishes cleaned, food to be put away. The yard is filled with T and Q and their friends, and the adults lounge at the table. If only for this hour I believe we stand at the mountain top. The view is magnificent. No cloud in the future can darken the picture at the moment. 

We can breath.  We can be. All in joy. 

radiation-due north part #11

I swear an alien will emerge and suck her body up into the bottom of this gigantic blue machine. Any moment, the beams of light will align, and she will be lifted into the air and carried away. 

R isn’t air-lifted into outer-space. But the hovering red lines of light that swirl around her ready to zap her body of cancer cells are straight out of a sci-fi film.  She lays on the table, her arms stretched awkwardly above her head, her right un-reconstructed breast exposed. Permanent black dots mark where the radiation beams should shoot, and the attendants fill in the rest of the square lines with black marker. A patchwork quilt emerges across her skin. Loosely covered on the table, she must be cold. 

The women who adjust the machine are robotic in motionas they talk to each and R. I wonder how they can withstand the countless hours they spend in this dark, sunless chamber aligning radiation beams over bare body parts.  My feelings are a contradiction of pity and anger. The anger is surely misplaced. 

As my initial shock subsides, I can see the room more clearly. The alien space ship disappears and is replaced by a vision of a giant kitchen aid mixer. Buttons are pressed and numbers read out, a coded language, all making the mixer move and swing around R as she lies motionless. We talk about the kitchen aid metaphor later, we laugh, as if with enough mixing and churning, a new R will arise from the table. At least they tell us that is the theory. 

The walls are lined with devices for different people, each one molded to a specific body, ready and set up for the string of people that will file in as the day progresses.  Computers murmur from the opposite wall and several charts are stacked in the corner. 

In a small section of the ceiling observable from the table on which R lies are 6 or 7 illuminated square tiles that together make up a colored holographic picture. I cover a laugh as I realize it is supposed to be a source of brightness and light. But the green, green grass and overly white clouds are too perfect to be a painting and too bright to be a photo. I swear they almost shimmer as the electricity moves through them. 

The women walk in and out of the 12 inch thick door about 4 or 5 times, always muttering numbers to each other. A video feed outside the windowless room lets me watch R as the beams ent

April, due north, part #12

At the beginning, I often wanted to protest the new role of “mom.” From diapers to bottles to 4 year old questions and lots of cooking, I did everything R would have done. I spent the most time with the kids. I was playmate, provider, guardian, and disciplinarian. Sometimes I was even accidentally called “mom.” 

It wasn’t easy.

And now, whether or not I am ready, I will no longer play the role of mom. 

My body was shocked initially as I adjusted to “being” a mom. Waking up in the middle of the night or having my name called endless times in a row, being covered in pee as a diaper exploded,  requests to do things as if I were an octopus with 8 arms: it all wore me out. It was a rude awakening to the reality that once kids are in your life, the blissful occupation of “sleeping-in” on a saturday no longer exists. It vanishes. Instead you are left with kids asking to play at 5:30 am. If not earlier.

But being a mom also brings joy in the small but frequent moments. A snuggle, an “i love you,” a shared smile, laughter. I have done countless things with T and Q that are hilarious and evoke a deep, genuine laugh. I am only egged on further when their high pitched laughter joins mine. 

April is a month of transition.  With each day, R puts chemo and radiation further behind her and gains more energy. Her presence floats around the house, her role as a mom awakening from a long winter hibernation. Her timing mirrors the coming of spring. And the whole house feels light. 

The five of shift as we figure out new roles. We acknowledge the fact that at some point this family of five must once again become a family of four. But there is no detailed map of getting there. Rather, we navigate it one day at a time, often one hour at a time. 

R scoops Q up, kissing him, rocking him and holding his little hands. He burrows into her arms,  cozy and content. They snuggle on the couch while Q has a bottle, and they soak up the warm morning sun.  While I will not miss changing stinky diapers or warding off tantrums and giving time outs, I will miss these moments.

The big hugs by small arms, the endless drawings given to me, the words of love, all are actually priceless.  I love being included in the ways kids experience the world. It is bright and beautiful and full of vitality. It has taught me to better live with the mix of complexity and simplicity that is life.

I watch R and Q talk and whisper. The touch of his tiny hands on her growing hair, familiarizing his fingers with the feel of her face, the smell of her skin. He must learn who his mother is anew. It seems balanced. But knowing something is right doesn’t make it easy. I pry myself away from the living room, the downstairs. I drift quietly away to my space, to let mother and child be. I trust that as the balance in this house, in the lives of these four will right itself, that a sense of balance will return to my life as well.  The work to re-familiarize me with myself is just beginning. I imagine it will require time and much patience.  

30 years of marriage

“I had given up on getting married,” she told me. “I thought perhaps I was supposed to be single for life.” 

Despite several serious boyfriends, my mom still hadn’t found the man who could fully have her heart. None had been “the One.” 

But fate had other ideas. And so did friends. 

As my father traveled back from Germany where he did his military service during the Vietnam war to start life back in the US after eights years abroad, seeds were planted in their ears that they should meet. 

Their first meeting was a weekend-long conference; the sort of thing my mom hates. My father wasn’t sure about mom, her grumbling and strong opinions were perhaps too much for him. But after a long car ride south to Virginia Beach and coaxing by friends, they decided to give it a chance.

They weathered long distance and heated conversations. They discussed religion, politics, money, kids, and life. My mom’s go-get-‘em attitude and energized personality won Dad over. He was well-read, kind and intelligent. They discovered they loved to dance.

My mom called my grandmother to say he was a “One.”  In the end, Dad liked her opinions. 

At 34 and 32 they were married. 

She gave up her job, her house, her love of the beach. They lived in the bottom of their friends house in gray central New York as they looked for a house and she for a job, all while my father worked on his doctorate in marriage and family therapy. 

My mom always said that when you stop looking for the thing you want, it often suddenly shows up before you.  I am thankful she stopped looking so fate could bring my Dad.

I am thankful that my parents made it. I am thankful that not only have they stayed together through the years, but they they love each other. And out of that love and commitment for one another, they gave my brother and I a home, a family, a sense of deep love and in that security to be kids and then adults. They gave us faith and hope in things larger than ourselves. They gave their love, their time, their energy. I understand I may be biased and extremely blessed, but I think being parents is the noblest vocation. 

Happy Anniversary M & D. 

(My dad lacks his long red beard, plaid shirt and hiking boats, my mom her mini skirt and “pumps,” but I doubt their energy has diminished one bit.) 

due north part #10: two steps forward, one step back

everyone gathers to the couch on a saturday morning for cartoons and snuggles.

breakfast out: a rare occasion.

sick and tired from radiation, R takes a nap while T and Q watch a show.

Q talks on the phone to daddy while T combs the fuzzy hairs on R’s head.

Q initially ignores a goodbye kiss from R before leaving for preschool. He finally acquiesced.

R’s eyelashes and eyebrows slowly grow back, short, stubby and straight. She gets ready for the first preschool field trip that she has been well enough to attend with T.

a rare treat, R helps T get ready for preschool in the morning.

due north Part #9: explaining cancer

It was not yet 8 am. Breakfast remained on the table. We were getting ready for school, and unlike most mornings, R was out of bed and helping T, Q and I out the door.  And in protest of having her hair done, T yelled, 

“You are not a Mommy, you are a cancer girl!” 

R and I stared at her, stunned. 

While I doubt T meant what she said, she knew what words would hurt the most. Angry over pulled hair and tight barrettes, she had reduced R down to the simplest thing she could think of: a girl with cancer.  She had stripped away her identity as a mom. 

How do you explain cancer to a four-year old? How do you answer the many questions that follow?

Where is the cancer?

Does it go away?

How does the chemo medicine get out of your body?

Where did your energy go?

When will your hair come back?

Does it hurt?

Can daddy have cancer?

Can I have cancer?

For T it has been more than the loss of hair, the frequent trips to the hospital and endless doctor appointments. Its more than a lack of energy and a slow regression from daily life. It is an invisible “boo-boo.” She can’t kiss it and make it go away.

It took T many weeks to understand that I was here to help, because Mom no longer could. With understanding, she transferred her trust and security. With time, she will transfer it back. The “family” that has been five for the past six months will soon be the family of four once again. 

Her shock gone, R collected herself and bent down to face T. Pulling her daughter gently into her arms, she said, “I am still a Mommy, I am your Mommy, even though I have cancer. I will always be your Mommy.” 

R explains the cancer “boo-boo” to T before surgery and chemo in Sept.

T rushes to give R a hug before she leaves to have her head shaved for her wig fitting. R told her that she would come home without hair.

Fussing before putting on her pjs, T cries that she “wants her daddy to put her to bed. I need my daddy.”

A Saturday morning mid February.

Due North Part #8

I drive to preschool every morning. A small, montessori school with 12 children, situated on a peninsula that juts out into the atlantic. It is every bit a school house out of a storybook.

We do the weather as we cross over the inlet, whether the tide is high or low, if its calm or windy, sunny or cloudy, foggy or clear. T will often claim there is sun on the right and clouds on the left. She is usually right. Not even the weather can be black or white.

Q sits in the back bobbing his head from side to side after asking for a “song.” T belts the words she knows as if there is a stageful of people listening. 30 minutes there, 30 minutes back. Twice a day.

While the drive is long, and the road is known for the speed-trap cops waiting like vultures, larger than the cars they drive, full from their donut stops at Rileys, I know the ocean waits for me at the end. Crossing the bridge onto the thin stretch of land almost surrounded by water, I feel like I am finally letting out a breath I have been holding for too long.

The air smells different, and the houses, empty in the fall and winter, sit like mystical creatures waiting to be kissed awake by spring and the humans that inhabit them. Large and small tucked together on narrow roads, they resemble a misshapen puzzle. In the silence, I consider the streets my own.

On days when it isn’t raining and warmer than 25 degrees, Q and I run back and forth over the small streets. I glance in the windows of the houses, imagining the stories they hold. My favorite sits at the very end, surrounded on three sides by ocean and bay. As we run along the sea stretch, Q hums a tune and watches the sky.

Usually the ocean is calm, peaceful. The skies hint at sun and promise color, the vastness of the ocean promising hope. But today the sea was angry. The waves foaming, they came upon the shore in a disordered fashion, having lost their way at sea, only to find themselves crashing upon the black rocks that mark the shore. The ocean was a dark grey, and where it met the sky, I could not tell. I swore I had traveled to the end of the earth. Even Q sat silent. The strength of the ocean overwhelming, we were left without words.

I often find that I am speechless, unable to give words to the feelings that accurately describe complete exhaustion. I am not sick, but I feel worn down by the sickness. A sense of powerlessness in the face of the journey that marches on, its path predetermined. I find myself unable to voice the weight of responsibility over those I care for. From practical every day care, to their deep emotions that hover just beneath a smooth exterior. There is often nothing you can do but keep going. And wait. Wait for whatever the next “normal” will look like. In the waiting, I hope for the patience to continue. I hope for the ability to stand and accept what is. I hope to watch as the dark, stormy sea calms, as the angry waves recede, and as time brings warm and color to the land.

due north part #7

Lately T has been telling R, “I can’t wait till you are my normal Mommy again.” She means the Mommy that drives her to school, and makes her lunch, who takes her to the doctors when she is sick, and gives her a time-out when she has a tantrum. She means the Mom who chases her around the house, who colors with her at the table, and cooks dinner every night. She means the Mommy who doesn’t sleep all day and who “has her energy back,” for cancer stole so much, it decided to steal her energy too. 

She scours R’s bald head, examining the tiny fuzzy wisps of hair, as if the length of them will tell her how long she must wait. 

T alternates between feeling scared that I will suddenly leave one day, telling me she will miss me, and double-checking that when “Mommy is all better” I will go so she can have her family back. Right, Julie? 

We tell her that no matter what she will never be alone. 

Its not that easy for Q. After a weekend in NYC, and on my first night back, he fussed endlessly in bed, unable to go to sleep. I finally went and picked him and brought him to the living room with R and I. There he snuggled for an hour, every so often turning around and burrowing into my arms, his little hands patting my back as if to say, “she’s here, she’s here.” He soon drifted off to sleep without a sound.  He never knows when someone will leave or stay and he has no way of understanding. 

While T waits for R’s hair to grow back, Q won’t even remember she had hair. 

Cancer is more than a sickness, or a change of one’s body, or the loss of hair. It’s more than medical bills, and vomiting, treatments and drugs. It is more than physical pain and humility. For a young family with kids, its much more.  It’s time, lost time. Often a year or more of life missed out on in the everyday changes a kid goes through as he grows. Its confusion and questions as roles change, and the door continuously revolving in and out with different people.  Its stress and fatigue, anger and perhaps bitterness. It is a dysfunction of behaviors, a deepness of pain, and a mixing of signals. Its fumbled understanding between spouses and with the outside world, and endless resulting frustration. It’s alienating and lonely. It’s stigmatizing and often brings financial ruin. It is unfair and unbiased.  

R will always be R who had cancer. She will always be the Mommy who had cancer. 

due north, part #6 

It felt like 10 years ago,” R said, referencing life before cancer, life before last summer.

I nodded in agreement. 

Q was asleep napping, and T was watching a TV show. We sat at the kitchen island drinking tea, the shiny granite cold between us. 

“Chemo makes you lose your sense of time. I guess the surgery does too.” And so much more. 

I tried to remember exactly what I felt like before Maine, before cancer, before a life with two kids, parenting, and being a second “wife.” I could see myself doing regular things for a 25 year-old, single and without kids: shootings daily assignments, running in the morning, editing photos, hanging out with friends and colleagues over tapas late into the night, sleeping in. But the feeling of knowing that person, of knowing me back then, I couldn’t grasp. In the many days between then and now, I had lost touch with that person. 

I remember the moment when I made the decision to come. It wasn’t anything life altering. I was sitting in my car, outside Whole Foods in Tampa, finishing the last hour of a late night shift, and eating carrots and humus before I would drive across the bridge to St. Pete. I had talked to G and R over a week earlier, when they had called to explain the situation and ask if I would come. The days in between were filled with newspaper assignments and endless late nights editing a freelance project, and a road trip to New York City and back. I was tired. Tired of moving. I had only lived in my new bungalow “tree-house” apartment for 5 weeks, and now I would be leaving in two. 

But I was anything but nervous. Calm was more like it. And during the next 30 minutes on the phone, G, R and I worked out logistics and dates best we could.  It sounded almost like a business deal, not a decision that would change the way I wanted to live, or affect the relationships closest to me. There is only so much we can know, and I could only see so far ahead. 

I don’t really remember the drive home, or crawling into bed, but I do remember thinking that there never really was a decision to be made; I just had to say it out loud.