Notes on a notebook

Nappy Valley Girl asked me, in her comment on my last post, if I always write blog posts in a notebook, and the answer is no. I rarely do so. I usually type them on the computer. I do, however, have notebooks that I used for writing at the time when I was blogging a lot. I didn't use them very much, so there's not a lot in them, but there are a few half-written posts, or thoughts scribbled down for future mulling over.

I kept one in the car, in the driver's door pocket, a big A4 size one, hardback, and sometimes I'd write when I was waiting to pick up a child, or killing time in a car park for some other reason (looking at you, soccer training). There were others that I took on journeys, A5 size, travel handbag size. There's a really nice leather-bound one, which I remember initially feeling was rather too nice to write in at all! Notebooks were for blogging on the go. This was in the days before smart phones (though I find it really hard to write more than a very short email on a phone, so that wouldn't have helped).

Then there was this little notebook, the one from which I was copying out my last post. It's mobile-phone-sized, and lovely to look at. (Sorry, not a very good photo.)

I have a soft spot for this one. It's not mine; it belongs to Husband. It was a present from a friend of ours, when I was diagnosed with cancer. She gave it to him, saying that he should take it along when accompanying me to medical appointments. It would be helpful to write a list of questions in advance, and to note down what the doctor said. She was so right on both counts. What a very kind, thoughtful, and practical present.

I came across the notebook last week when I was looking for one to take to a work meeting that I was going to from home. It was too small and flowery to be suitable for that, but I started leafing through it. It tells the story of those very intense few weeks, mostly in Husband's handwriting. There's a careful list of phone numbers (how many kind people rallied!). There are 'To Do' lists, including one titled "Thurs Eve", which must have been for the day I had my mastectomy, judging by the things on it (three phone calls to make, feed hamster, and e-mail friends/family). There are a few pages ruled into sections to make a diary, with notes of places the children had to be, and if someone was going to pick them up. I like the entry that reads "J will collect at 9am - go to donuts and then the zoo". I bet that was a fun day for them! There is a list of questions, in my handwriting this time, about Kindergarten - I'd obviously felt the need to send Husband along to an open evening suitably briefed. ("What writing do they teach, and in what grades? Cursive? Sports? How many times a week do they do PE? Music? Other non-American children? Homework? Playground - have a look.") There are lists of questions for doctors, and hastily scribbled answers -  the lists that the notebook was intended for. Lists that give me a bit of a jolt when I read them. Lists that contain "pain meds, steroids, nightmares, can I expect similar pattern next time?" And then there are my thoughts on blogging and writing, that you saw in my previous post. I don't remember where or when I wrote those. I know it was a few months later, because it comes after another, jollier, list, one planning a child's birthday party ("no 2 o'clocks available, balloons $12 doz, hot dogs or pizza, tell Jeanne 2.30 - 4.15").

Remember the idea of a notebook. It's a lovely thing to give someone going through a medical crisis, should you find yourself wondering what to give a friend in that situation.

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Christmas after cancer

Those of you who've followed my blog for a while might remember that I love Christmas. I really do. And since I had cancer, I love it even more. Each one that comes round, I think to myself "This might not have been". This is the seventh Christmas since I had cancer, and I've felt it every year, but I don't think I've ever been brave enough to write it - at least not quite so plainly.

The odd thing is, you would imagine that such feelings would tow along anxiety, fears for the future, panic. And yes, those moments come too. I know I sometimes place an unhealthy load onto events, because the desire to create memories gets out of balance with the ability to live in the present. But mostly, "This might not have been" brings in its wake a warmth, a stillness, and a sense of depth.

Last Sunday, for example, we headed off to get our Christmas tree. We go to same farm, where there's an excruciatingly delicious farm shop and cafe. We've got our tree from there three years running now, so I think that counts as a family tradition. We headed out of the city (only a 15 minute drive, though - I can't tell you how much I love living in a small city...). Desert Island Discs was on the radio, and Kylie Minogue was the castaway. She talked a little about her experience of breast cancer, and one of her discs was a recording of her boyfriend reading a poem full of emotion, so I suppose I was primed. As we turned off the main road towards the farm, the view of the valley emerged before us, and was a picture of absolute beauty. Mist lay in the valley, but you could see dark shapes poking up through it - treetops, hedges, farm buildings. If you'd painted the scene, it would have been all greys and whites, and probably impossible to capture.  It was winter at its most imaginative, and I think I gasped out loud. We'd left a dirty, damp, grey city, but when we got out of the car here in the countryside, the ground was frosty hard underfoot, and the air was crisp. A perfect Christmas moment. A moment that might not have been.

I tread carefully as I write this. Christmas is a time of painful memories, and thoughts of loss, for so many. There are plenty of blog posts out there to remind me of that. I've had my poignant Christmases too - my first as a mother, stuffing a stocking for a 7-month old baby who had no clue what we were doing, was also my first without my father, and there will no doubt be more to come. But in this chapter of life, each Christmas brings joy and peace and thanksgiving for all that is for me, that might not have been.

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Time

A lovely thing happened to me this week. I was talking to someone whose husband is undergoing chemotherapy, and I told her I'd done the same, for breast cancer, five years ago. I don't tend to talk about it very much, but I sometimes throw my hat into the ring (do you remember those great caps I used to wear when I had no hair?)

After the conversation, when we'd gone our separate ways, I stopped and thought. Hang on. We're May 2015. My cancer diagnosis was May 2009. That's SIX years ago. I said five, but a year has sped by, and now it's six. And how very wonderful, that I'm no longer specifically aware of how many years it is, not without thinking about it.

Time can be an ally as well as an enemy, a restorer as well as a thief. We know Father Time, the slow steady figure who regulates our lives with his measured rhythm. What about Mother Time? She who strives with her whole being to hold on to choice moments as they slide from under her feet, and who drags her heavy heels when the treadmill of life is weary?

Speaking of mothers, I was talking to one the other day, as she held her baby. I asked how old the baby was.

"Seven months on Tuesday week", came the reply.

I smiled. "Six months" would have served the purpose. "Six months" or "seven months". What difference? Either would have told me what I needed to know. But to that mother, every week, every day, perhaps every hour, the baby changes, grows, tries and accomplishes new things. Seven months old, not this Tuesday coming, but the one after. Each day between now and then a precious compendium of the familiar and the amazingly new.

Passports. They're another marker of the perplexity of time. I had to photocopy 14-yo's today, for the purposes of opening a bank account. It was issued in May 2011, and there is his 10 year old face staring out. When you receive your new passport, the date of expiry makes you stop. May 2016! Five years away!  It seems hard to comprehend that a document can project so far into life. I probably said at the time

"Goodness! When we next have to renew your passport, you'll be 15! Difficult to imagine! I wonder what we'll be doing then."

And here I am, wondering a little what we were doing back then.

It was 14-yo who, when a small boy, told me that it was unfair being a child, because when you're having fun, time goes very fast, and then when you're bored, it goes slowly. Regretting the demolishing of a piece of innocence, but knowing that Honesty required the deed, I told him that actually, it's the same for grown-ups.

Perhaps instead of characterising Time as Father or Mother, it's best to think of it as Friend. I like the idea of Friend Time, close by our side as we potter along, always there, a shadowy companion who disappears if we turn to look at him (or is it her?), but who we glimpse continually out of the corner of our eye, though it's more an awareness than a proper sighting. Friend Time. Do you like that idea?

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Happy New Year - and may it be a slow, long one

I've had a lovely Christmas, with a long break off work, and time spent with family and friends. Drank mulled wine. Ate mince pies and cream. Salvaged a turkey that was in the oven for 3.5 hours before I noticed that the oven was on a grill setting (and a low grill setting at that).

But it's also been the Christmas when I've struggled with one of the after effects of having had cancer, one which seems to be getting worse as time goes by. I find it very hard to put into words, and the best I can do is to say that it's the opposite of what I wrote about in this post. But it's vaguer. I can't put my finger on it. If I was making a film, I'd have myself looking in a mirror, stretching out a finger to trace my features, and then the image in the mirror dissipating into vapour, with a mocking laugh as she disappeared.

It boils down to a re-figuring of the shape of life, in terms of time. That happens as we get older, and we all struggle with it. You can tell that by the ridiculous way we are constantly surprised by the normal steady beat of time. We express amazement when another year passes by. When we have a birthday or anniversary that ends in a 0, we say "how can that be?" In our hearts, we're all 23 year olds. We bore the children of our friends by talking about how they've grown. Of course they've grown! Duuh! It would be odd if they hadn't. Somehow we all feel we're fighting against the passage of time. Perhaps when you've had cancer, that rational knowledge - the clock is ticking and life is finite - passes into lived experience. I don't like it.

What's changed for me is that a little note of urgency has been added. It's only little. It's imperceptible most of the time. But it's there. And it's got a grim irony, because the more you feel you need to be making the most of time and holding onto it, the more time slips away from you.

I find it hard to relax. I plan things, and they're nice, and I do them, and then I want to move on to the next thing. Perhaps I want to create that memory, tick that box, and then make sure I get on with the next one. You never know how many boxes will fit into the timeline, and you want to get as many of them ticked off as possible.

I find it hard to be in the moment. This is a modern day complaint, isn't it? I'm sure many of you will identify with this. I read articles on Mindfulness, and I totally believe in the value of it. But I can't do it. (So please don't leave me any handy hints in the comments.) I'm always thinking about what needs to get done. I have a false sense that when I've done everything, then I'll be able to relax and smell the roses. But I know that I'm never going to get to the bottom of the list. It's not even a real list, where I can tick things off. It's just a ghostly feeling of a list, that's always there. I've had periods of my life, long ones, where I've understood that you don't wait to smell the roses, that the roses are all there along the way releasing their sweet perfume if you'll only understand that the point is to smell them as you go. But at the moment, I can't seem to do that.

I build time into my life in positive ways. I go to yoga once a week, I walk the dog, I have hot baths, I spend regular time with people who energise me. But I still feel the tightness of the Time Thief on my back. He feels like he's got a large clothes peg, which he puts over the vertebra at the bottom of my neck. It hoicks my shoulder blades up and in. That peg seems to be there, and tighter, more and more.

I once picked up a leaflet which talked about the after-effects of cancer. On the list of after-effects it mentioned "a fore-shortened sense of life". It was such a relief to read that. Yes. Those words summed it up perfectly. It's always such a moment of comfort and sustenance to feel "I'm not the only one - this is a 'thing' - this is normal". I'm grateful for that leaflet, but it didn't tell me what I could do about it. So I've made myself a little word-joke, and I think of myself as living "life on the foreshore", but I'm a bit stuck as to what I can do to get myself a little further back onto dry land. (Please don't recommend a book on Mindfulness at this point.)

Postscript: In the writing of this post (how awesome is the process of blogging?), I realised that, since this is a 'thing' and since I'm not the only one, there must be wisdom out there about it. So I've googled my local Maggie's, and I'm sure that is going to be a good place to start. It's so odd that I haven't thought of that before. My local Maggie's is a 5-minute walk away, and of course it's the obvious resource. That's the thing about the Time Thief, though. He robs you, with his evil clothes peg, of the time and space you need to think about how to help yourself. He's a very clever devil. He must be clever because even Google can't pin him down (and Google can do pretty much everything). I googled "grinning devil with clothes peg" to see if I could find an image to end this post with, and it didn't throw up anything appropriate.

One of the upsides of having had cancer...

... is that you really love your birthdays. I do, anyway.

Last night, Husband took me out for a meal. It's not quite my birthday, but the date worked and logistics seem to dominate life at this point. And I'm not fussy - it doesn't have to be the exact date. I didn't know where we were going. Husband just told me it was going to be nice, and to dress up. It was a posh gig at a very fancy restaurant in town, and there was a bill that I didn't see, but I know was ridiculously large. I don't care. I loved the evening. Loved every minute of it.

I love celebrating that I'm here. "Every year is a bonus," I told Husband. "Every year since 2009 is a bonus." I might not have had these years. That thought, that knowledge, that tremor in my bones, brings with it a deep humility and an exhilaration. I wouldn't have paired those two emotions, but in my experience, they can arrive together and get along nicely. For me they do, every birthday.

I might not have written all these blog posts (and yes, I know I'm meant to be on a blogging break, but it's my blog and I'll write if I want to). I might not have moved house, back across the Atlantic with the family. I might not have seen all those children's concerts and plays, and planned those birthday celebrations. I might not have seen my daughter in a hockey match. I might not have watched The Hunger Games with my son. I might not have helped my oldest choose his GCSE subjects. I might not have owned a dog. I might not have done ALL THAT LAUNDRY! I might not have seen the beauty of this truly fabulous autumn. I might not have been to the Isles of Mull and Skye. Most of all, other people might have carried a yawning gap in their lives.

I couldn't live life with this awareness at the surface all the time. It would be too exhausting, and would alienate me too much from daily life. When I was being treated for cancer, and life was so odd and chaotic and nothing felt right, I missed normal life. I missed it terribly. So I'm happy that the intensity of all that emotion has faded over time, and that life trots along again in its normality. But on my birthday, and at occasional other times, I dip down deep into that pool of gratitude and marvelling that lies at the very bottom of my being, and I drink from its waters. For a while, I truly love that I hate my hairstyle, and that I haven't got round to putting up the new curtains, and that there are always balls of dog hair fluff in the corners of the kitchen, and that I shout at the children when they're being annoying and then feel guilty afterwards, and that the endless untidy family clutter gets me down, not to mention ALL THAT LAUNDRY.

So Cancer, you're a beast, but you've inadvertently given me this gift of glorious birthdays. I love it, and it's a darn good excuse to spend an unseemly amount of money on a restaurant bill.

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It's been a year

We've been back a good year now. Back in the UK. The school year is starting again, and we've commented several times to each other, and to other people, how nice it is not to be newbies. The uniforms are sorted out, the relevant bits of paper read and signed, the calendar perused and any event in the next week or so noted, if I need to do something about it in advance. Otherwise, the kids will just roll up, and the next year will begin. It's a great feeling, to be established and not at sea. I've told my children to be specially nice to any new kids, and I know they will.

I'm happy to be here. We're in a good spot. We've made our house our home, found our way around a new city, made friends, had visitors to stay. My new job feels feels like another piece of the jigsaw is filled in. The picture has taken shape. I wouldn't change it, but as the year milestone is passed, I feel a little sad. It's beginning to feel like our time in America was a long time ago - another life, almost. I know other expats have said this, so I know I'm not alone. It's a strange feeling. I'm happy to be here, and when we were in America, we spent a huge amount of time, energy and emotion on trying to get here. But I left part of myself behind (quite literally, actually...).

I was shopping with 9-yo the other day, and I stopped and said "Do you remember when we used to go shopping at 'The Children's Place' together?" She nodded, and the expression on her face changed to sadness. We had a conversation about missing The Children's Place, and that made me feel better. It's part of her life too, and always will be. It took me such a long time to think of my children's sojourn in America as gain, rather than loss. I spent the first year or two thinking about all they were missing out on here. Now, for all that their current lives here are full and rich, I find myself thinking about what they are missing there.

Part of what I'm feeling is the oddness that I've made some very good new friends over the past year, but that they don't know about my having had cancer. It's not the first thing you talk about, and then as time goes by, it seems like it would be awkward to say "oh, and I don't think I've ever mentioned that I was treated for breast cancer four years ago". In a way, it doesn't matter. I am who I am in this moment, meeting people who are who they are in this moment. But in another way, it feels like it's almost become a big secret. I don't really want that. I realise that everyone, at my stage of life, will have events from their past that are significant, and that not all their friends know about. We all have things tucked away at the back of our kitchen cupboards, as it were. It's just that the cancer episode takes up a lot of cupboard space, and I don't like it being so hidden. Though I sort of do, too. I like how much it isn't part of everyday life as it used to be. There's no pleasing me at the moment! I suppose moving on involves gain and loss. You can't have one without the other.

Meanwhile, 9-yo and I are very much enjoying The Great British Bake Off. We look forward to Tuesday evening, and I love sharing that hour with her. Seems like a good trade-off for losing our trips to The Children's Place (though I did like that shop!)

Angelina

I haven't forgotten I owe you a post on our camping trip, but this morning, I just have to say Good for you, Angelina Jolie. She has had a preventative double mastectomy, because her risks of developing breast and ovarian cancer were assessed as high (87% for breast cancer). It's a brave decision - though I'd want to say that choosing not to have a mastectomy in that situation is also a brave decision. Dealing with risk always requires bravery, if you think about it.

On the radio this morning, I heard an interview with the woman who had Britain's first preventative double mastectomy. She said that she'd had to fight hard for that, and that everyone thought she was mad. She's a brave woman. Trail-blazing requires bravery too.

For Angelina, I think telling the world what she's done is brave. What she said is so careful and thoughtful, that it inspires huge respect in me. She said: "I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity".

Good on ya, Angelina. I mean, it's easy for someone like me to say that. Well, not easy, exactly, but... Anyway, back to you, Angelina. Your public image, your career success, your financial worth, your value in the eyes of so many... they all hang on your physical appearance. So to say that your surgery in no way diminishes your femininity is wonderful. I guess you won't feel that all the time, and I'm sure you'll have your ups and downs, but for the moment, I just think you've done a great thing, by talking about your decision in such a way. What a fab person to rally behind! I'm on your team, Angelina! Next time you're over in Europe, pop in and we'll have a cuppa, and share mastectomy stories. You had the "nine weeks of complex surgery required for a double mastectomy", whereas I did all that in half an afternoon! But don't worry - I totally won't be competitive about that.

And you have a small, fictional, ballet-loving mouse sharing your name. That can't be bad.

                                                                                                                                                                  Photo credit: Reuters

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Finding my new normal - Part II

So why is there a Part II to this? It's because I want to share with you one of the things I learnt, through having cancer. There is no normal.

Of course there is, in one sense. As I said at the end of the previous post, I like being normal. "Normal life" is something we all take for granted... until it's wrenched away from us.. and then it seems like a golden blessing. As I write, I can see the buses going past my window, full of people going about their daily lives. Jobs, shopping, visiting. Who knows what they're up to? Most of it not very important, probably, but all of it part of a big whole. Each day, each element, is like a stitch in a tapestry, contributing to a picture.

Most people come through a major illness with a desire to appreciate the little things of life more, a determination to live every day to the full. I think that's wonderful. But it's also a bit exhausting. You can't do tapestry on speed. Tapestry is often a slow, plodding, meticulous task, and you can't fall down in admiration at every stitch. So yes, I do appreciate life and I do want to live to the full, but I do also have grumpy times (yes, really), and get fed up, and I don't remember to live each day as if it were my last.

The change I notice in myself, is the change of understanding of how life unfolds. Before cancer, I thought life was a line. I might deviate from the line, but then the task was to get back to it. For example, I battled with the idea of living abroad with the children for too long. I was happy for them to have an American experience, and I'd have talked about "broadening their horizons". But really, I looked on it as a deviation. Their real life was somehow hidden away in a cupboard in Britain, and I'd get it out and polish it up when we got back. But I now see how life exists in the deviations, because they're not deviations. They are the very stuff of life. And it's not just the visible. I think I'm able to accept change and disruption at my very core, in a way that I didn't used to. If I was a cake, having cancer wouldn't be a bit of the icing that's gone a bit wrong, that I can scrape off, and cover over with new icing. No. It's one of the ingredients, in the mix, in the baking, in every bite. It's in the flavour.

Unless I am alone in this (and I am perfectly happy to accept that I have a personal level of unique weirdness), I think it is an important truth, but also a difficult one to get hold of. I find it hard to explain. I see it in various aspects of life. Some of our deep insecurities come from a sense of not being who we ought to be. Even at a fairly superficial level, we are bombarded with the image of what our body should look like, what our face, our hair, should look like. When you move house, it's easy to feel permanently inadequate, because your house doesn't look like the ones in the catalogues, as they should. It's as if there is an imaginary straight line, that we are deviating from. But guess what? That imaginary line, where we're all slim, healthy, happy, fulfilled, with our scatter cushions perfectly arranged on our sofas, doesn't exist. When I had cancer, one of the overwhelming, yet hard to define, feelings, was that I shouldn't be having cancer. This shouldn't be happening to me. It was a deviation. But it did happen, and it still is happening, in that it is part of me now. I wouldn't be who I am, if I hadn't had cancer, and I am who I am. And that is it. To go back to my earlier example, I used to resent being in America, as it was somehow preventing the children from having the life they ought to be having the other side of the Atlantic. But I stopped seeing it like that. They are who they are, their lives are as they are, and that is enough. My house doesn't look like an IKEA catalogue, but that is.... hang on... I really would quite like my house to look like an IKEA catalogue. I guess I have some progress to make on that one.

I haven't described what I wanted to describe very well. I can feel words like "embracing change" and "acceptance" hovering around, ready to fall onto the page and sum this up for me.

And, if you've read this far, you'll be pleased to know that the results came back from the lab, and that everything they tested was benign. That was the word the doctor used: "benign". Maybe she had a sixth sense that if she said "everything was normal", it might have prompted a monologue on the word "normal". You can see I've been thinking about it... just a little.
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Finding my new normal - Part I

The title of this post is stolen from a blog I follow. I found it, because it's written by an American living in London, but that's not what the blog is about. The author lost a baby at full term, and has written deeply and movingly (that sounds so patronising and cliched and I don't mean it to) about that. Now she has a second baby, and is navigating life in the new-baby-new-mummy world.

I don't want to compare life after cancer with life after losing a baby. It's a wrong comparison. But some of what she has written recently has resonated with me. I absolutely love the title of the blog. "Finding my new normal". It just seems to encapsulate so much. When we moved back here to Britain last summer, we started a new chapter, in a new place, among new people. We were building a new normal. I had a choice, have a choice, whether to tell anyone about going through cancer. Or not.

I've chosen not to. It wasn't a decision made in advance: "I'm not going to tell anyone". No. It's just that it never quite felt like the moment. There's one person here who I knew before we came here, and she knows, and maybe that one person is enough. I see her often, and we have hardly ever talked about cancer, but perhaps it's enough that I know I could. I did share with her the details of my recent health scare (investigative procedure didn't find anything nasty, but still awaiting lab results to confirm, thanks for asking). Perhaps this is the ideal situation. Just one person, a person I can trust, who I can talk to if I need to. And of course I can always share what I want to on the subject on my blog. That must make a difference.

I suppose part of it is a desire to be free of that label. I want to be me first, and a breast cancer person second (notice I didn't use that word "survivor" which I really loathe). It's not that it's a secret. I'm not afraid of telling people. I'm far enough on now, that it doesn't dominate my life. I can talk about it without it being too overwhelming. It's just that if you don't tell a new friend early on, then it would feel a bit odd when you do tell them. It somehow takes the conversation, and maybe the relationship, into a different register.

It feels good that "I've had cancer" is no longer the top of the list of my daily mental agenda. Perhaps that's why I haven't told people. I don't want it to be. Perhaps I'm afraid that if I tell them, then it will ratchet back up the list a little. Would the casual "How are you?" be weighted with a little more significance? Will I have to say "I'm fine" with a little more emphasis than I usually do?

I'm at the point where I'd be happy to be in a supportive role to someone else going through the same experience. I know that, because I've recently heard of someone with a breast cancer diagnosis, about to start chemotherapy, and I've sent a message, opening the door to further contact, if that is what she wants. I said "it's not a secret, but it's not something I talk about very much". And that is where I am. It's easy to see how something like a cancer history could become a dark secret, and I don't want that. It's nothing to be ashamed of. One in eight women are going to go through it at some point in their lives (are you doing self-examinations, ladies? ONE IN EIGHT...). But I don't want to bang the drum, either. I'm not that woman who is throwing herself into fundraising, campaigning, getting involved. I don't want it to become my identity.

I like "my new normal", actually. I like being a normal person. I did terribly miss normal life, when I was going through the valley of the shadow of cancer. I expect that's why I haven't told people. I like being normal again.
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Regurgition

OK, so I realise that last post was a bit obscure, but I don't know how much medical detail you want. In a nutshell, I'm on Tamoxifen, which gobbles up the oestrogen in my body which might otherwise go and feed any sneaky lingering cancer cells. Yay, Tamoxifen. Great job. I sometimes visualise it whizzing around my bloodsteam and lymphatic system, looking for little particles of oestrogen, and snatching them away from under the nose of a sole mutant cancer cell. But one of the side effects of Tamoxifen is that it causes the lining of the uterus to thicken. Not so yay, because that raises your percentage chance of developing endometrial cancer. Not by very much. But a little. So that's why, if you're on Tamoxifen, they like to go scanning and poking around to make sure your misbehaving old uterus isn't harbouring anything that shouldn't be growing there.

When you've been through cancer, you have no "it's probably nothing" hidey-hole. Because you know it probably isn't anything, but it might be. So you have to find new ways of dealing with daily life, while waiting for the next event (investigative procedure in Feb, and 3-4 week wait for results, since you asked).

Sometimes I feel I'm not very good at life. Do you ever feel that? That's not a very helpful way of looking at it, is it? I mean, it's not a competition, or an exam. You can't take a course in "Life: how to deal with its ups and downs" and then get an A or a B. There's not a correct way of going through these kinds of things, is there? There's not a correct way of going through anything, come to think of it.

I used to find it helped to write, so, well, I guess I'll do some of that.

This is what my morning was like. At breakfast, we told the boys that they were going to have to pay for the Xbox Live payment of $99.99 that has been automatically deducted from our credit card. No doubt, at some point in the past, we had a conversation about "if you sign up for this, you have to make absolutely sure that it's not a recurring payment" etc etc, but of course that conversation is long forgotten. They weren't too impressed with our assertion that this is an excellent life lesson for them, that adult life is FULL of having to negotiate your way through systems that you sign up for, that bleed you at any opportunity, and that learning the consequences painfully now will prepare them well for the future. I have a nasty feeling that Husband bestowed the following wisdom on one of them: "This is what life is like; suck it up, kid".

Somehow, the Xbox Live payment conversation segued seamlessly into a voluble expression of my dissatisfaction with the state of their bedroom floors. It seemed logical to me at the time.

12-yo had to be in formal wear (love that kilt), because it's the Burns Supper tonight. This involved a lot of running around, ending in me saying something along the lines of "I've just remembered that last time you wore formal wear, we agreed we'd look it all out the night before, and get up 10 minutes earlier". Great moment to recall that particular jewel of wisdom.

And that is why I HATE the whole cancer journey. Actually, it's the second reason I hate the whole cancer journey. The first reason is that everyone refers to it as a journey, which is a horrible cliche. The second is that it spills over into the whole of life, so that even if you do what you practised with your nice therapist, over months, and acknowledge the anxiety and nervousness and all the other emotions that you're feeling, they still spill over into your everyday life, and you end up giving one of your children a really hard time about a missing kilt pin.

As I was walking the two younger ones to school, I announced that we'd all had a bad morning, and that therefore, I was declaring that today, 24th January, is officially National Rubbish Day. (Except I think I used the word Cr*p.) Every year, we will celebrate National Rubbish Day (Cr*p Day). 12-yo was horrified. "It might be someone's birthday. It must be someone's birthday. That's not very nice for them." I pointed out that our wedding anniversary, 27th January, has become Holocaust Memorial Day, and that's not very nice for us. Life isn't fair. (I may have used that "suck it up" phrase again.)

Which reminds me, it IS our anniversary on Sunday, and I've booked cinema tickets on Saturday night to go and see Les Miserables. Not only is it meant to be a very good film, but I thought it would give me a good opportunity to have a cathartic cry in a dark place. I'll be the one saying on the way out "Poverty? Starvation? Revolution? Imprisonment? Betrayal? Death? I can't believe they made such a fuss about it. I mean, this week, I've been dealing with a LOST KILT PIN."

I'm going to stop writing now.

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Returning reluctantly to an old theme

So I haven't blogged about cancer recently. Those of you newish to my blog might not even know that at one stage in its life, it was a cancer blog. Does that exist, actually? A cancer blog? Do they call them that?

Don't worry. No serious announcement following. Just an "I recommend we check this out. It's usually nothing, but if you have it checked out, then you'll have peace of mind". I hate those. They're too... familiar. That's what it is. It feels like going back into a country you were happy to leave behind. You've been through security checkpoints and passport control, and you're on your way. Then someone stops you in the road and turns you back.

"I've heard so many women say that", said the doctor. "They don't want to go back into it all again."

"OF COURSE WE BL***Y DON'T" I wanted to yell.

But I smiled, because she was so incredibly nice, and sympathetic, and good at explaining everything, and sensible, and had time for me. I smiled, and I said "I agree it makes sense to check it out". And I felt the tears at the back of my eyes, because I always feel those when doctors are kind to me. It's a result of all those times doctors haven't been kind, or had time, or been good at explaining, and have instead quoted percentages (as if percentages mean anything).

I'm not worried. The symptoms aren't even quite right, and the doctor is very clear that the procedure is just to be thorough. It's good to be thorough. She thinks it's nothing. She thinks it's fine. So I'm not worried. Nah. Worried? Me? Nah. Little old Mrs Stoic in the corner? Worried? Nah.

I'm not agitated. That's not why I turned off the Today programme when they were discussing the breast cancer drug Tamoxifen, which I've been on for over 3 years now, and got to the bit about one side effect being an increased risk of endometrial... issues.

I'm not concerned. That's not why I phoned and told my mum, saying "I'm going to tell you something, but you've got to promise you won't worry about me". Because that's a sure-fire way of ensuring she doesn't worry about me.

I'm not anxious. That's not why, when my daughter caught the virus that's doing the rounds, I got into bed with her, and held her, warm and soft, in my arms, wondering whether her headache might in fact be a brain tumour, and imagining...

I'm not jittery. That's not why I'm sitting here with cold hands and feet, browsing websites on relaxation exercises, thinking about making vegetable soup, wondering if I should go to Sainsbury's or perhaps take the dog out, or both, and then reading another blog or two instead.

I'm not allowing myself to get carried away. That's not why I've been on to our realtor in the US, trying to get some movement on our house, so that'd be one less thing for Husband to...

Worried? Of course not. I'm only blogging about this because I thought it would be interesting to write a post about the NHS, and how it compares to my experiences of medical care in the US. A thoughtful, analytic post. Prompted by my visit to that nice doctor. A post about the NHS. Yes. A good topic for a returning expat blog. Don't you think?

A holiday in the crucible

There's a competition in Tots 100 to win a holiday, and I'll definitely be entering. You have to write a blog post, 500 words max, about The Best Holiday of My Life. I will write that post, another time, but interestingly, when I first started thinking about it, the holiday that sprang to mind was the week that we took in Colorado, after my cancer diagnosis and mastectomy, and before chemotherapy. I started browsing the photos, and yes, in many ways, it was the best of all my holidays.

For a start, it arose out of the sincere generosity of strangers. A friend of a friend let us use their holiday cabin. It was July, and we had hot weather, but Colorado altitude hot is not the same, let me tell you, as Great Plains hot. It's a dry, friendly, enjoyable heat, not a stagnant, muggy, draining heat. To be away from home, to take a break from the relentless series of tests, appointments, waiting for results, decisions, in the beauty of the mountains, was, metaphorically and literally, a breath of fresh air.

To be honest, I don't remember much detail of what we did. I could guess, because we've been back to the same place three times since, and we now have our favourite spots and activities. They've become traditions. But what I remember from that week, and what I see when I browse the photos, is a moment when we were almost suspended in time. It was a week of peace and calm in the midst of a great storm. I suppose much of that was probably denial of some kind, or hiding, or whatever you want to call that particular coping mechanism. But it was more than that. Looking back, I see how we were in the crucible of life, and yet able to enjoy each other, and have fun, and treasure the days (but not treasure them too much, for fear of thereby investing them with a dangerous significance).

We took a lot of photos that week. There are lots of beautiful nature shots, of woodland, waterfalls, views. There are photos of the children. I made sure I was in a lot of them, because... can't quite bring myself to write why. Just because.

Here's one I love. Out for a walk. The small boy waggling a stick, the mum carrying the water bottle, the little blond girl bringing up the rear. It could be any family. But it's not. It's us.



There was one afternoon when I was on the sofa with the camera, and from where I sat, I photographed the whole family. I have my rules about not showing my children on my blog, but I'm going to stretch those rules a little here.

Here is younger son, 8 at the time, with his friends, the Bionicles.




Here is oldest, just turned 12, not usually much of a reader, but immersed that afternoon in Harry Potter.

Here is youngest, 5 years old, at the table. That's apple juice in the glass, just so you know. Don't you love the way their feet dangle at that age?


And here is Husband, busy in the kitchen area. When I was diagnosed, he read as much as he could on diet, and how you can give yourself an advantage over cancer with what you eat. He took over cooking and shopping, and here he is in action. We still take the trouble to include a lot of anti-inflammatory foods in our diet, and we use the juicer (remember the juicer?) to imbibe quantities of fruit and vegetable juice (though Husband has never repeated one legendary juice from that summer, which he concocted from cabbage, onions and garlic).



It all looks so peaceful and idyllic, and honestly, it was just like that. Perhaps the children needed their own time and space, that week, to process what was going on in their tender lives. Certainly in these pictures they seem reflective. They look so young and vulnerable. I remember sitting there, watching them, managing surreptitiously to raise the camera without them noticing.

Well, we made it through. We are no longer in the crucible, and I'm glad for that. I'm going to end this post with a photo taken in the same place, but four months later, in November, when I'd finished chemotherapy. I look dreadful - gaunt, strained, tired... bald of course. The cabin has a wonderful deck with a lovely view, and even in November, it's a sun trap. Here I am, sitting on that deck, ubiquitous cup of tea to hand, and the reason I'm showing you this photo is to remind us all of what helped me bump along through that time. See what I'm doing? Yes... I'm writing.



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And that's why I did labels

Sounds like the opening line of a short story competition, doesn't it? If you want, you can leave me a comment telling me what your short story would be, if it began with that line. It was, in fact, what I said to husband in my sleep last night. "And that's why I did labels."

Wouldn't it be interesting to know more about sleep and dreams? It's such an undiscovered world still. I mean, why do we all conk out for several hours a day? Why do we sometimes dream and sometimes not? Why do some dreams seem to make sense, and some are entirely random? Why do we sometimes speak out loud? I suppose it's the brain, left undisturbed, getting on with its work of processing experiences, cogitating on them, filing them away, bringing up old memories, working out how they tie in, imagining new possibilities. All very clever.

What a preoccupation sleep is for new parents. I can remember periods when I'd have given anything at all for a week of undisturbed nights. What am I saying? I'd have given anything for one undisturbed night. Impossible to believe that it will ever pass, but if you're in that phase of life, take heart. It does. I'm hardly ever disturbed at night by the children these days. If I am, I've lost the art of dealing with it. I'm all groggy, hardly functional. "House on fire? Are you sure? It's probably ok. Go back to bed and I'll deal with it in the morning." Then I can't get back to sleep again. Not like the old days when my on/off switch was brilliantly effective.

Sleep is a mercy, isn't it? Whatever the true extent of all of its mysterious unknown functions, it is one of life's blessings. The chance to lay aside worries and burdens for a few hours, the chance to recharge physical batteries. I've always been a good sleeper. I can't imagine how horrible long-term insomnia must be.

Let's go back to where we started. "And that's why I did labels" came, of course, from a dream about the toy shop. Price labels are my nemesis. You'd think it was simple, in the grand scale of things, to stick the right price label on the right object. I guess my education didn't prepare me properly for such tasks. I know I always used to write on job applications "attention to detail" as one of my impressive skills, but my experience with labels in the toy shop have led me to see that as something of a fib (though what else is a cv but a list of fibs?) Too many toys are similar, but not quite the same. That is the essence of the problem. And the importance of accurate stock control. Bleugh. Whatever.

So in my dream, having been given complicated instructions about which set of labels went on which boxload of items, I found I was four labels short. So I was trying to print out the extra four labels on the computer, and making a bit of a hash of it, and then my boss came over and asked me what I was doing, and I went into a lengthy explanation of the whole issue, most of which was to do with the personalities of the other people working in the shop, and ending with "and that's why I did labels".

Then I was in a cake shop, ordering a birthday cake (Husband's 50th birthday this week?) and wondering how on earth I was going to carry it home on a London bus and the tube in the rush hour (memories of Sarah Brown's story at CyberMummy? and my own journey to CyberMummy on buses, as the tube line was closed? - perhaps, in my dreams, I AM Sarah Brown?). Then the cake shop lady started insisting that I buy some new clothes as well (sartorial insecurities?), and I noticed that it was a shop selling cakes and clothes (odd... or perhaps a brilliant idea for a new small business venture?). But then as I ran for the bus, my top kept falling down, and it turned out to be a dream about mastectomy scars. Ha! You didn't see that one coming did you? Nor did I, at the time.

I rest my case. Sleep. Dreams. Fascinating stuff.

Birthday party

Yesterday we celebrated the 50th birthday of my older brother. Big family party. Thirty-five people: mostly first cousins, their spouses and children, and a few family friends. Sunny day. Outside on the lawn, chairs or rugs, depending on age and agility. Food and drink.

Aunts and uncles saying to children "Goodness me, how can you have got so big?" and "Sorry, it's so boring when grown-ups say that, isn't it?" Children too polite to roll their eyes, but inwardly doing so. Then as the afternoon wears on, racing around the lawn, kicking a ball, thinking how very tedious it must be to be a grown-up - all that sitting and talking, talking, talking, and having to drink wine and coffee - yuk! - and saying no to birthday cake or just a very small slice please. They don't know that we watch them, and remember, and know their secret thoughts.

Stolen moments in the kitchen with my younger brother. "Too many people out there? Yes, me too." "Nice though..." "Oh yes, very nice." Nice party. Nice kitchen interlude. Nice being with people who understand the hundred words you haven't said, when you just use one. Nice.

"Are you having a nice time, Iota?" Husband at my side. I smile. He knows I am. He knows how I love these events, and how sad I am at the many we've missed. 'Big 0' birthday gatherings, 21sts, 18ths, weddings, even humble common or garden Christmases. I see my children with their relations, chasing, falling, laughing, getting cross, tears before bedtime. The oldest of that generation is 21 later this month; the youngest is 4 months old. Blood is thicker than water. I see my own generation of cousins, the women more like our mothers each time we meet. I see my mother and aunt, who nurtured our love of these big gatherings Christmas by Christmas, year after year, planning the day, cooking the meal, creating the atmosphere, teaching us how to celebrate, how to enjoy each other's company. "Yes", I reply, even though he knows the answer. "I'm just sitting here and letting the family flow around me." And then I think that's a rather brilliant way of summing it up.

My older sister's 50th party was one of the ones we missed. I received the lab results from a lumpectomy the evening before. Cancer. Bad enough being estranged from the family gathering. Hadn't foreseen a cancer diagnosis on top of that. It was a very long Saturday. I didn't phone till the day after the party. Didn't think the news would add much to the party ambiance.

I don't know what that party was like. It's one of those conversations I've never had with my family. Probably never will have. Did they chat away bravely to guests, eyeing each other occasionally and taking a deep breath? Or had I not really intimated what the lumpectomy might reveal? Oh, how very me that would have been. Yes. I'd probably told them that I was having the lump out and implying that would be the end of it. Perhaps I believed that myself.

Two years on, my sister also finds a kitchen moment with me. She puts her arm round my shoulder. "I'm glad you're my sister," she says. "I'm glad you're my sister too," I reply. What more to say?

I'm sitting in the sunshine. Big brother is doing the rounds with a bottle of champagne. "More for you?" He waggles the bottle in my direction, puts a hand on his stomach and makes a slight retch, a wicked reference to the fact that only two days ago, I was confined to bed by a horrible sick bug. I grin brazenly and hold out my glass. I've had a whole day in between to recover, and I'm not going to miss out on this celebration. I have so much to celebrate.

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In the Powder Room

I am writing this post as an entry into the competition hosted by In the Powder Room. The prize is a couple of nights in London’s Hoxton Hotel, and a ticket to CyberMummy 2011. The challenge is to write a post about who you would like to meet in the powder room of the Hoxton Hotel. This is my entry. (If you want to have a go yourself, the details are here, but you're probably out of time. The deadline is at 8.00pm on 31st May.)

I have an idea. It’s just a tiny little germ of an idea. I believe it’s quite a good idea, but it’s one I know I’ll never pursue under my own steam. I would like to see it become reality, but I know that if it ever does, it will be by serendipity. Perhaps the powder room at the Hoxton Hotel could help. Perhaps it could be the setting for a chance meeting. I don’t know exactly who the other person in that unplanned encounter would be. We’ll come back to her later. But I see us getting chatting in front of the mirrors, the conversation starting with the trivial, but moving to deeper waters. I’d share my idea, and it would catch her imagination, and she’d say “What a fabulous thought, and funnily enough, it just ties in exactly with a project I’m involved in. Can you give me your name and number? Would you mind if I contacted you? I’m so glad we started talking. I’m so glad I happened to come into the powder room just now.”

My idea is this: I would like to have a go at being a model. Not a full-time job, not a long-term commitment. Just one short contract to prove I can do it. You see, two years ago this Saturday, I had a double mastectomy. When that happens, you have all kinds of choices to make, about whether to have reconstruction or not, and if so, how to go about it. All of a sudden, just as you’re dealing with words like 'cancer' and 'prognosis' and 'percentage chance of survival beyond five years', you also have to think about whether you want to have squishy boob-like objects implanted underneath your skin, or whether you’re happy to wear them in a bra over the top. For all kinds of reasons which I don’t have space for here, I opted for the latter.

So far I’m happy with that decision, though of course I have times when I think “Should I? Shall I? It’s covered by insurance…” Of course I do. But mostly, I have come to the conclusion, intellectually and emotionally, that I’m happy in my own body as it is. It’s terribly ironic. The years my body was at its best, when I was young, hadn’t been pregnant, had nice boobs, were the times I was most critical of it and unhappy with it. Now, wrinkly saggy tummy and flat scarred chest, I really quite like it.

Hang on a minute, though. When I say I want to be a model, don’t race ahead with the scheme. I’m not thinking Vogue or the catwalk at London Fashion Week. No. I have in mind the Land’s End catalogue, or some other publication for the mature woman. You know the kind of thing. Smiley women of a certain age in tasteful pastels. I’m tall, and maybe slim enough (maybe...). I scrub up ok from time to time, and I can look wistfully out at sea vistas with the best of them. My hair is, unfortunately, a rather over-bright red hue at the moment, (it said “root beer” on the packet – since when has root beer been red?) but it’ll wash out over time, and I’m sure they can shade that down before sending to print. In any case, don’t they have armies of attendants with make-up and hairstyling skills to make you look presentable before you go in front of the camera? And can’t they do clever things with airbrushing? I mean, if the worst came to the worst, couldn’t they photoshop Angelina Jolie’s head onto Pippa Middleton’s body and call it me?

Now you’ve got your heads round my idea (your own heads, not Angelina Jolie’s), I’ll tell you why I want it to happen. When I had my mastectomy and was trying to make sense of it, and what it was going to mean for the future, imagine what it could have done for me if a friend had sent me a Land’s End catalogue with a post-it sticker on the front saying “look at the inside back page”. There, alongside a headshot of a woman with hair a rather startling shade of red, could have been an article which read:

Iota, who appears on page 32 in the unadventurous knitwear and sensible trousers section, is a breast cancer survivor. She opted to have a double mastectomy, and has chosen not to undergo reconstructive surgery. But doesn’t she look great?! She had no previous modelling experience, and says that before she had cancer, she hated being in front of a camera. We asked her how it felt in our photographer’s studio, and she told us “I loved it. At first I was nervous, but everyone was great and put me at my ease. By the end, I was feeling so attractive and feminine, and that’s a great feeling when you’ve been through breast cancer surgery.”

Wouldn’t that have been a hope-giving, comforting, encouraging story to have read? Do you see how I could now BE that story for other women?

Who, then, do I need to meet in the Hoxton Hotel powder room to make this idea happen? Is it the marketing manager of Land’s End? Is it an advertising or PR exec? Is it someone from a breast cancer charity? Is it a journalist, or a photographer? It’s someone who has come into contact with breast cancer in their own life, I’m sure, either facing it themselves, or standing alongside a friend or relation who has done so. Who is this person? I don’t know, but if it’s you, please come and bump into me. Come along and tell me “I’m so glad I happened to come into the powder room just now”.

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Burning the land

I believe that the practice of burning stubble is no longer allowed in England. Here in the US it is still widespread. Stubble, and wild grass. Acres and acres of it, out on the prairie.

At our local nature centre, they’ve been doing it too. Look at this picture.



Before and after. What a striking contrast. On the left is the untouched piece of land, and on the right is where they’ve burnt the old grass. You can see what it looks like a little while after the fire. I watched it, as the ground recovered from blackened nothingness to the beginnings of lush green. It changed literally day by day. It really looks quite verdant and healthy, doesn’t it? But just a very few days before, it had been like this.



I feel like the earth. There I was, minding my own business, and then cancer came, like a fire. I didn’t see it coming, I didn't ask for it, I didn’t want it. Nearly two years ago. It hurt, it destroyed, it ravaged. Pain and loss and fear. That was me, in the second picture: bare soil and blackened stems. I probably didn’t look like that to you, to others, and not even to myself. It’s not very nice to look at, when the earth is like that (click on the picture to see it full size and you'll see what I mean), so I didn’t pause to examine it much and I displayed it even less.

But the truth is that these things, these fires and cancers, if you let them, bring life. They bring growth and newness. They take out some of the dead brush. I don’t want to push the analogy too far. I rather liked myself as I was before, honestly. But I like myself, love myself, a whole lot more now. That top picture, before and after, that’s me (click on it - it's so much better full size). Somehow, in ways I see and I’m sure in ways I don’t see too, I am more full of life, more full of potential, more deeply truly myself, more fully ME, than I have ever been.

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Farewell, red mullet

I have a little curly red mullet on the back of my neck. I do. Thing is, I got really very used to having thick curly hair, and I loved it. It’s now reverted to straight and thin, and almost all the waves have gone. There are just a few tight curls left at the bottom, at the back, and I haven't been able to bring myself to have them trimmed off. I also Clairoled my hair red, and hit lucky on a colour that is very nice (though I say it myself). I even remembered to keep the top of the box, so that I can buy the same one next time.

I’ve been loathe to cut off my curls. I didn’t like them at first, but as time passed, I got very fond of them. Having cancer seems to involve endless rearrangement of your mental furniture. I’d rearranged it to embrace the idea of curly hair, and then I had to go about re-rearranging it to re-embrace the idea of getting my straight hair back. I knew it would revert over time. I just didn’t know “over time” meant a few weeks. I thought it would be months or even years. By the time I’d got to like having curly hair, it was time to U-turn back again.

Losing your hair is a big deal. In a way, though, it’s no bad thing. It's easier to focus on losing your hair, than on having cancer. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not really an inevitable side-effect of the drugs, but a result of some product that the medics deliberately add. Maybe they know that thinking about losing your hair is the easier option, and consider it an act of kindness to make that happen.

So yes, I enjoyed my curls, but I’ve held onto them for reasons beyond the curliness itself. There’s a feeling that they’re a part of me now. Somehow cutting them off feels like the end of an era. It’s not an era I liked, but it was an era. I didn’t have any photos taken of me when I was bald – I didn’t want to preserve the look for posterity. But I wish I had. That was me, whether I liked it or not, and I wish I had a picture to look back on and say “yes, that was me”. But I have got photos of the curlicued Iota. I’ll be able to look back and say “ooh, get me with my curly 2010 hair!”

But even I can see that an aging diminutive curly-at-the-bottom red mullet is not the most attractive of looks, and so the little hoops must go. It’s one thing to enjoy a season of ringlets; it’s quite another to go around in polite society with straggles dripping down your neck. In the past year, I have gone through so many looks: Gandhi, Sinead O’Connor, Obama, Showaddywaddy. Time to take control, and get me to a salon.

Here’s a photo of them, though, for you to enjoy before they go.



Farewell, little curly red mullet.

Top photo credit: Philippe Guillaume, Flickr

Two green things

First green thing

Well, it turns out that my green card is green, after all. The white one was a temporary one-year one. My permanent one arrived 2 or 3 weeks after it. Husband's temporary and permanent ones arrived on the same day. Can't help thinking they could save themselves some work there...

Anyway, my green card now lives in my wallet (which is also green, incidentally). That's purse, to you Brits, though not to you Americans, for whom a purse is a handbag... Got that? I'm required to be able to produce it at all times. Otherwise, I will disappear in a puff of green smoke. It's in a special little envelope that looks as if it's lined with aluminium foil, which has printed on it:

'We recommend use of this envelope to protect your new card and to prevent wireless communication with it.'

Stop the world, I'm getting off. Are you telling me that people can effect identity theft by waving some wireless gadget at my green card when it's not even visible? I can't keep up with modern life. Can they remove my kidneys wirelessly as I walk round Wal-mart too? Is it safe to go out? Is it even safe to stay in? Aaaargh...

Second green thing

This blog. What am I going to do with it? Clearly it needs revamping in a big way. The design is out of the dark ages. You know, like... like... 2009 or something. I love wittering my heart out here, and it doesn't cease to amaze me that people read it and keep coming back for more. But I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable these days. There's a heck of a lot of very personal stuff on this blog, and I guess my boundaries are shrinking back a little. Which is probably a good sign - a sign of life returning to normal, perhaps. When you're in the middle of a life crisis, it all goes a bit weird. I have to confess that now, I'm not entirely comfortable in my own blog.

Cyber Mummy marked the end of my era of true anonymity, though I'd given away little pieces of it here and there before then, to virtual friends and real ones. It makes writing a blog feel different. I also realised at Cyber Mummy that if I'm giving out business cards, and using this blog as a showcase for writing, then it's not really appropriate for it to be full of personal angst and boobless lamenting. You get my drift.

I hoped Blogger would let me do something straightforward, like hide chosen posts from view. But it doesn't. You have to delete them, and I don't want to do that. I suppose I could copy them all into Word documents, and then delete them. That would be quite a job, though. My research on the issue has turned up the suggestion that you can open the posts, then save them as drafts, which effectively hides them. I suppose I could try. Does anyone know if you lose the comments if you do that? (Comments = best bit!)

Or... here's what I'm thinking of doing. I'm wondering whether to have two blogs. The first would be essentially the whole Not wrong, just different English woman in America gig. Though I think it will become less personal, and more simply a reflection on life in a different culture. I've felt for a while that I've outgrown the whole mummy blogger stage, and that's another aspect I feel uncomfortable about. It feels ok telling stories about children when they are young, but mine are growing up. I'm less happy about sharing them with you all. India Knight said the same at Cyber Mummy, so I'm in good company. But I still have plenty to say about life here, even without them.

The second blog would be where I would dump all the uber-personal old posts from this one. Following the oft-quoted truth that blogging is cheaper than therapy, I would use it to write when I needed to write. I suspect that it would turn into a rather whingey blog, but bloggers quite like reading each other's whinges, so that probably wouldn't matter. I'm guessing the posts would be sporadic, but that's another good sign, isn't it? This second blog would be password protected. That would feel safer.

What do you think, Bloggy Friends? I thought I'd run this by you, and see what your opinions are. Would you follow two blogs? Would you miss the unpigeon-holeable untidiness that is currently Not wrong, just different?

And how possible is it to move posts from one blog to another?

I was going to leave you with Captain Sensible's Stop the World, I'm getting off, but wouldn't you know? Youtube couldn't come up with it. So here is Happy Talk, which seems equally appropriate for a post about blogging. If nothing else, you always know you're going to get the occasional fabulous track from the '80s here. So go on, put it on, minimise the window, and do whatever you were going to do next in another window (the video quality is appalling so you won't miss anything). You'll be tapping your toes for 3 minutes and 17 seconds, and thanking me for it. It's quintessential irony.

Last year, this year

Last year, I drove 5-yo to school on her first day. I have photos of her getting ready to leave, the sky so dark that it could almost be night. The heavens opened, and it rained as if Noah had built his ark in the neighborhood. We were soaked.

This year, I walked 6-yo to school. She had been up for more than two hours, and ready for nearly one. Walking seemed a good way of using up twenty of the remaining minutes. It was a lovely morning, sunny but not yet hot. She told me she had a tummy ache, and I asked if it was really a pain, or if it felt like butterflies. She said, yes, butterflies, so I talked about nerves, and how they would go as soon as she got started at school. "Do you remember in the summer, I went to a conference, and I was reading something out in front of a big lot of people? Well, I had butterflies then, but they went away as soon as I started. It'll be like that when you get to school." She wondered why people say they have butterflies in their tummies, and not birds, and we agreed that birds would probably feel rather heavier.

Last year, I didn't know a soul at this school (she's at a different one to her brothers). If I'm honest, I didn't really want to know any. Getting to know new parents, new teachers, new children seemed just another exhausting thing to add to the exhausting list.

This year, what a pleasure to see familiar faces, to exchange a few sentences about the summer and add "we'll have to catch up". On the way home I passed a friend, out with her twin babies in their stroller, before the day got too hot. We talked, but only briefly, because the babies wanted to be on the move.

Last year, I was so pleased that the first day of school fell towards the end of the 3-week chemotherapy cycle. It seemed so important to take my daughter to school, though of course she could have gone with her daddy. He'd already been to the enrolment and open day. I had to drive. Twenty minutes there on foot, and twenty minutes back, would have been far too much.

This year, I was happy to walk, as I've put on quite a few pounds while on holiday, and I'm needing to lose weight. Needing to lose weight! Ah, that's a sign of life returning to normal, if there ever was one.

Last year, I wore a cap.

This year, one of the other mothers greeted me with "you've changed your hair". I was a bit flummoxed as to what to say, and ended up with "well, it's grown!". I was secretly rather pleased she didn't instantly remember the cap and the reason for it.

Last year, I had two chemo sessions to go. I didn't know the third would be the worst. Probably just as well. I was dreading starting on Tamoxifen, and getting used to the idea of being on a drug for years seemed a huge mental hurdle. Huge.

This year, I forgot to take the Tamoxifen tablet this morning, but that's just because we're out of routine and not properly unpacked, and my pill box isn't in its usual place. Being on a drug seems a tiny thing. I was lucky with the side effects. Lots of people are on long-term medication. It's a very safe drug. Been around for years. No big deal. Not any more.

Last year, my biggest fear (which I couldn't bring myself to write down in black and white - though I did try) was that I would lose myself. That was it. Whenever anyone talked about losing my hair, I'd hear a voice inside saying "and you might lose yourself". I'd lost little bits of my body, and the steroids during the first chemo session made me feel like I was losing my mind. I didn't seem to be doing much. If you take away body, mind, and role, it doesn't feel like much is left. I wondered if somehow the bit that is the essence of me would evaporate, and I'd never get it back.

This year, I look back and see that I did not lose myself. I am here. I am me. (Actually, I was all along.) I can even write about that.

And now it's time to go and pick 6-yo up. I wonder how her day has been.

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Taking a break

I’ve really struggled with this post. You see, I want to take a break from blogging over the summer. I thought I could get to you to click on the play button below, and create in your minds a picture of me shimmying off into the distance, passport in one hand, mug of tea in the other, no way of carrying a laptop too. “I’m heading to the UK, and I don’t want to be writing blog posts all summer”, I would have said breezily. And that would have been a fair picture. Well, fair-ish anyway. So go ahead and click (it’s a great song, you’ll enjoy it).



See that shimmying? Then I started writing a bit more honestly about why I want to take a break, and several hundreds of words later, I thought “this is way too long, and do I really want this uber-personal stuff to sit on my blog as the top post for weeks?”, but I liked the honesty of it, and so I didn’t know what to do with it. It had paragraphs that started:

One of the thoroughly miserable things about having had cancer is that you can't go back to being quite how you were...

Returning to normal life after a trauma like cancer is a little like running a sprint, and then being asked unexpectedly to tack a half-marathon on the end of it...

Here's the difficult thing. I find it very hard to complain about any of this without feeling very guilty. I mean, shouldn't I just be so grateful? The fact that I've got through so far seems to have deprived me of the right to feel hard done by about anything else...

I know I'm very bad at the whole head/heart balance thing. Thing is, Head has got it all so sussed, and knows that it needs to get out of the way and let Heart have a turn at running things, but for all its cleverness, it doesn't know how to do that...

I do see someone to talk to (since you're all going to suggest that), and yes, it does help. And I know it will take time (so if you mention that in a comment, prepare to have your comment deleted, since I’m quite irritable on that point)...

Does that give you enough of a flavour? Each one could be the subject of a whole blog post, and there was lots more where that came from too, but truth to tell, I am a little fed up of writing all this stuff. You know how I always love writing, and blogging? Well, I have to confess I’ve slightly fallen out of love with this blog over the past few weeks. It's seen me through so much, but it's recently become a bit of a burden as well as a pleasure. Has that shown?

So, in an honest nutshell, that’s why I'm going to take a break.

There's one little loose end. Do you remember that conference I said I wanted to run? You know. The yoga bottoms and chocolate cake one? Well, I was, actually, quite serious about it, for a short while. But then a very wise bloggy friend (you know who you are) said "Don't run a conference. Spend your precious summer enjoying time with family and friends." And I thought "she's absolutely right". I haven’t seen my immediate family for two years. Two years! Hello Mum, I'm waving at you now! I have good friends to catch up with. I want to sit on beaches, walk in woods, eat picnics in fields, have days out in historic cities. We're flying on Sunday. So I’m not going to organise that conference, but I am going to Cyber Mummy (probably not in my yoga bottoms), and if your summer will be incomplete without meeting me in the flesh, you can see me there. I'm looking forward to meeting so many of you. It feels a little weird – I know you, and you certainly know me, more than is normal for first time meetings, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.

At Cyber Mummy, the tables at lunch are going to centre round different themes, to get people with similar interests together, and to get conversation going. I’m hosting a table, discussing Identity and Anonymity (kind of ironic, since I’ll be giving up the latter to attend Cyber Mummy). So please come and join me if you’d be interested in those topics - or if you spot me sitting all on my own. (And psst… between you and me, no-one made me sign a contract saying I would stick to the subject, so if we want to share pictures of our kids or talk about chocolate cake, then I think we can get away with it.)

And the music? Well, that song has become something of a theme tune for me over the past few weeks. 6-yo asked for ‘a grown-up cd’ for her birthday, and while browsing in Dillons, I came across a compilation one: Summer of ’67. It had a picture of a chiffon-clad, long-haired, wafty woman in soft focus on the front which I knew would appeal to 6-yo. It is a fabulous cd. Wow, they knew a thing or two about music in 1967. Somehow this song has become the place I’ve gone to when I just haven’t been able to connect with the world, as well as being the accompaniment to lots of happy moments. It has suited every mood. Wistful. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to it. Isn’t it odd, what gets you through? (And that line at 1.58, “you and me and Leslie” is actually “you and me endlessly” – makes me laugh every time.)

Oh, and if you've been lurking all this time, why don't you come on out and say hello to me? I'm only going on a break; I'm planning to be back; but you never know what the future holds, and look how long it took Ross and Rachel to get together again.

There. I’ve packed my virtual suitcases (or soupcases, as 6-yo calls them), and I’m off on my break.

Happy blogging...


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