The time when I heard the news that I was diagnosed

with breast cancer
feels so far away from me now. It was February, dark and snowy.

I was talking with my friend Jane on Saturday, telling her about the whole of my chemo experience and she said

I bet you feel like there's nothing you can't do now

and I said Exactly

which doesn't mean I don't have moments of getting stressed out or worried or nuts with my kids

but in those moments I can more easily come back to the bigger picture

and call on the tools I've been working on (deep breathing, noticing something of beauty around me) and move away from fear. And it's that ability, looking at fear and consiously neutralizing it, the fills me with a new sense of power and hope and excitement for my life.
***

Last week we had an incredible gift. We spent the week at a little house on Big Bass Lake in the Poconoe Mountains. My friend Steph came up for the weekend and our friends Katie and Jim and their precious 10-month-old baby Lila who live in Rochester came up, too. We hadn't seen Katie and Jim for four years. Friendship is so extraordinary, real friendship. It was so natural and laidback being together, even with the kids waking up early and having no water pressure for showers and some mornings overcast skies...we had time to cook and eat together and play games and stay up too late and talk and drink wine.

Being away from work for a week, with no email access, was so great for Fred, who has a new manager at the theater who is really competant and allowed him to leave knowing the theater was in good hands. It makes me happy to watch the way Fred is shifting in his life, the new ways he is taking care of his health and the way we are meeting each other in a more loving, appreciative place.

And for me, it was the stepping out of Elkins Park and away from not the home and the daily chores but more being out of the element where everything happened--the news, the shock, the surgery, the blood, the chemo, the metallic taste, the piles of shit I had no energy to deal with, being away from Fox Chase Cancer Center, that was it for me.

I'm done with that identity, being someone in crisis, someone ill, someone who needs help. I just want to retreat from it and sink into the new ways I am transforming

and I want to quietly emerge
as the woman

I want to be.

And while I was away I would think people see me and they don't know about the cancer
I'm just a 38-year-old woman stopping at a road side fruit stand to look at the tomatoes, look at the corn. And then my eye would catch the rear view mirror pulling into the fruit stand and I would see my bald head covered with a scarf and remember

it all

not with a feeling of shame in any way, or sadness

but in my mind, I'm free of it, moving on, done.
***

And I am back home now. I have 6 weeks of radiation to start on Monday. It feels like more of an inconvenience than anything else.

But when I go there, when I'm under the machine, my plan is to use that time, to set a clear intention,

to imagine the rays that are healing rays

helping me transform.

My chemo is done

and this last one went smooth, baby, smooth.

It is done.
And I feel really well,
light, happy

at moments I wonder
what did I learn from all this?
what is going to change in my life this year?
what is going to open, what will close?

and at other moments
I don't have the need
to analyze "what all of this meant"

I'm digging that place

because why should I bother
with the tiring circle of meaning making
when the truth of my life is
it's early July
the tomato plants in my garden are tall
the tomatoes are fat and green

George is jumping in the swimming pool at camp
and learning to swim
and June is
June is
soaking up everything there is under the sun

and Fred and I are very grounded together,
very in love

and my friend Sheila who lives in Chicago
came to visit,
the day we spent together
was this phenomenal day

it came to an end, my chemo
July is here
we are eating watermelon
with the windows open
a cross breeze blowing
through this old house

that needs some fixing
that Fred and I love so much
and have worked so hard to make
our home.

What does it all mean
seems pointless right now
that game, that analysis

it all means, I'm here
in this moment, that is
here, then gone.