11. What A Fine Life

You know those movie montages where they play a song and then they show snippets of repetitive things, just fast glimpses of moments and flashes of effort or growth or change or improvement or practice. It takes one minute on the screen and suddenly we’re six months or two years ahead. (My kids get very confused every time there is a flash forward or back in movies, it’s exhausting to explain it to four and six year olds!) I feel like I’m montage-living. I’m in the part of the plot that is so boring, the author/filmmaker decides to fast forward and maybe add a song for good measure. What would our song be? As I walk downstairs with my tray of dirty dishes as Mercer snoozes in bed, I have an actual song playing in my headphones. (Venus Fly Trap by Feng Suave, Stay by The Hails, and Love Survive by Michael Nau). I wash the dishes and I return upstairs and fuss about. I stay awake too late, carving out time for nothing: to do nothing, be nothing.

The trees outside still have no leaves. The same view from the same window of the same trees for eleven weeks. No leaves yet. But I know we’ll be here as they bud, grow. What kind of trees are they? The squirrels have loved them in the fall and winter. What will spring bring? Birds? Which kind will sit in the branches as the montage flashes by, the buds budding, the blooms blooming: a time lapse of growth and change. Golden Age by Chris Staples plays. Or Emerald Lake AB by Said the Whale. “What a fine life we are livin’” is the chorus that swells as I dose out medicine into cups, as we build a Lego set for the fifteenth time, as I spray and wipe the same small table. Even though this is insanely difficult, even though these are the impossible days– I still very much feel like what a fine life we are livin’.

Winter sucks. Guys, I’ve never been afraid to tell that truth. It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s usually wet, but right now it’s all just frozen. I’ve been writing a personal blog for 4 solid years, started when Mercer and his twin were babies and I so desperately needed a hobby I could manage with one free arm and a cell phone and it’s fascinating to look back and see trends in my writing. Every single winter I write about how much I despise it, how hard it is on me, and how each spring, I feel like I am thawing back into my true self. I love living in this part of the planet, but dang, PNW winters are bleak and damp and moss-covered and rotten. Every year I see the “the sun will set at 7pm in x amount of days” posts on social media and it literally sets my heart ablaze. We’re gonna make it friends!!! This winter is perhaps the most indoors one I’ve ever spent. The most isolated. The most intense. The most painfully long. Sunset Canyon by Foxwarren starts playing.

It’s Groundhog Day. It’s an alternate universe. It’s a break from real life that is so long it becomes real life. I pretend there is a song playing because it helps me to tell this story one or two steps removed. As if I can zoom out and become the omniscient story teller. Heck, I’d settle for a halfniscient (nice made up word, George) story teller. It feels easier to label this “rising action” and view myself as a character in a play. Now that I’m thinking harder– not a character at all– I want to play the part of storyteller, narrator. It’s easier not to fall apart when you’re the impartial revealer of truths instead of the far messier “frazzled mother of a sick child”. You don’t get the pity eyes when you’re the narrator.

It helps me say “he” instead of “we” so much. I catch myself constantly saying “we” about all the medical things as if I am the one living it. It reminds me of dads who say “we’re pregnant” which has always given me the ick and also made me roll my eyes. Who’s the one growing the human?! The MOM. Who’s the one going through the cancer? Not ME! How do I tell this story well? Because it’s happening to me but it’s not about me? But my child is four and I cannot view it through his eyes so I’m fumbling around trying to speak as truthfully as I can from my own perspective, respectful to this being his life and not my own. But also recognizing my perspective is worth sharing too. It’s a strange place to live. I know that grappling with it will make me a better parent, writer, and storyteller. Maybe all the best stories are hard to tell.

The amber lightbulb glows dimly in the room and flickers intermittently as I write and rewrite the same boring sentences about our same boring days. Even the snow that fell ages ago is still here, clumps of white crystallized in the cold weather for days on end with little changes. I feel a bit like we’re being frozen in time. The curtains get closed a fraction later each day; that’s one of the only signs that spring is coming. I cling onto that tightly as I wish away the cold and drab. We walk to the clinic, the familiar 10 minute walk becoming memorized. The holly that prickles out over the sidewalk, the 20km/h sign that is slapped overtop of the previous 30km/h, the faint edges of the former speed visible. The exact spot on the sidewalk where the wi-fi kicks in again on the iPad and Mercer clicks “accept” without having to ask for help anymore. Even in the midst of something as crazy as cancer, there are the mundane things like knowing where the wi-fi cuts out, knowing which elevator door you have to run fastest for, and which spot in the floor is creakiest. This is home, I suppose, that’s why. Even though there is cancer, we’re still at home.

Mercer’s break in between treatment blocks has been extended because his blood numbers haven’t recouped as quickly as we would have hoped. He flipped a switch and became captain extrovert and it was so delightful to see him confident and making friends, but I guess the downside of all that fun socializing during cold and flu season is: he has caught his first bug, and he’s been coughing. That means extra days up in our room, riding it out, getting deliveries and doing crafts and focusing on sleep and rest. This is what happens when you’re immunocompromised so it’s par for the course. But it’s always a slight pang of disappointment when days and days get added onto things. Even though it’s just a few grains of sand extra through the hourglass, I can’t help but view it as more days further away from the end of this journey. Away from our real home. More Groundhog days.

So we say a few extra prayers that his little body doesn’t get any worse, that our spirits are bolstered, and that Netflix would release a new tv show to capture our imaginations lol. And we sit and wait for the buds to show on the branches just outside our third floor window. Soon, friends, spring is coming soon.