I am Invisible

I am disposable,
I am generous,
I am raw,
I am an introvert,
I am hidden,
I am sweaty,
I am chewing,
I am swallowing,
I am typing,
I am here.

That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles

My marriage is crumbling like the warm blueberry muffins that I'm baking.  I try to retrieve them from the muffin tin, but the moist, sugary confections turn into crumbs in my hands.

I can't hold all of the crumbs, and they fall to the ground.  Their sweetness becomes bittersweet on the floor.  I can't put them back together in their original form. 

Old stories and photos, remind me of better times.  I can't recapture those feelings. 

I want to make a sticky sweet syrup and pour it into a bowl of crumbs and somehow make something that was never there to begin with.

My daughter Summer and I are swept up in the crowd heading up the ramp toward the Coney Island boardwalk. In an instant, I look around, and cannot find my husband and son anywhere. There is the loud thump of a bass and we see someone dressed in a pink gorilla suit, wildly gyrating to music. There are grown men walking around in diapers and drinking from huge baby bottles.

Summer and I plunk down our stuff and start undressing at the edge of the boardwalk. We strip down to our bathing suits, put on fleece robes and sandals. We observe the swarms of people, families and lovers, an older gray-haired couple, muscled, tanned, tattooed and pierced.

We head down to the beach, stepping on snow as the sun warms our backs. A man is lying on the snow in a cheesecake pose as someone snaps a picture of him.

A tattooed bride in a blue bikini and silver garter runs in the snow, her white veil sailing behind her.

We wander down the beach, looking for sea glass. I find a piece of worn green glass, and put it in my pocket, a souvenir for my six-year-old daughter, who will take her first dip in the ocean. She was always afraid of the beach, the sand would bother her skin and the movement of the waves would terrify her, as if the water would swallow her.

The beach seems alive today, with swarms of people, like ants, laughing and smoking, jumping and singing, happy just to be here on this beautiful winter day, to celebrate the New Year with hundreds of strangers.

People start to run into the water, and Summer and I drop our robes and take off our sandals. Summer clings to my chest like a monkey, and suddenly I am running into the water, laughing and screaming, "Happy New Yeeeeeaaaaaarrrrrr!!!!" The water stings my legs, like a thousand nettles. It wakes up my skin, and all of my organs are alive, squirming inside me.

Summer has the widest smile I've ever seen, and we run back and put on our robes, looking at all of the people still splashing in the water, like an octopus with hundreds of arms.

We are baptized in the cold waters of Coney Island, cleansed of last year and free to begin our life again.

Pay It Forward

I got a gift this year, not having cancer that spread into my lymph nodes. Not the kind of gift wrapped in a pretty package, but the best gift of all. My life, and I am grateful for that. I guess it is wrapped in a pretty package, my body. I had thyroid surgery in August and was lucky that the small cancer that the doctor removed had not spread. When I called my sister Wendy she said, "You just got a gift, my friend, pay it forward."

I have tried to do that this year, providing support for my friends, and talking to a parent at my school going through breast cancer treatment. My sister had breast cancer last summer, and ran the Portland marathon this year. She is amazing and strong and beautiful and continues to be an inspiration to me.

As the New Year approaches, I want to be grateful for all that I have, a loving family and my health and happiness. My 13 year old son is happy in his school and has an active social life. My six year old daughter is reading and writing and has a true best friend. My 17 year marriage to my husband Keith is still going strong. I have great friends, and I love my job.

I look forward to all of the good things that 2011 has in store for me. Happy New Year!

Wacky Packs

I had to get a biopsy of a nodule on my thyroid. Just thinking about this test made me suffocate. I made the mistake of watching a video on You Tube of a woman getting a large needle jammed into her neck and jiggled around a lot.

I walked into the doctor's office, decorated with shmaltzy mirrors and black laquer, and this made me even more nervous. There were Jewish prayer books, maybe to say a prayer before you experience massive pain. There were also doctor's magazines in Russian, with stern looking Eastern European doctors staring right into the camera and articles about all sorts of disgusting things. That didn't make me feel any better. All of the geriatric patients in the waiting room were wearing sparkly clothes and too much gold jewelry.

Okay, now it's my turn. My husand, Keith came with me for moral support, but in the weeks leading up to the test, he seemed more nervous than I did.

In the exam room, there were large diagrams of tumors and growths, just to calm my nerves. There was also a large frame filled with vintage Wacky Packs. I love Wacky Packs!!! This made me feel instantly better. Keith and I laughed about Quacker Oats and Badzooka Guggle Bum.

The yarmulke clad doctor walked in. He was a sharp tongued intelligent guy who seemed to know what he was talking about. The needle was so thin, I hardly felt it, and before you could say Wacky Packs, the test was over.

We were called into Dr. Minkowitz's office, whose desk was full of slides of other people's biopsied gunk, and he told us the bad news. I have a suspicious lesion that is 2.4 centimeters, a big sucker. I have to have surgery to have it removed and I have a 20 percent chance of having cancer. Yippee!!! Now I'm in the club with my sister.

The news didn't quite hit me until the next day. My sister was more upset about this then I was. "It isn't fair," she said. "You already have enough health problems. Why do bad things happen to good people?" she cried.

I guess that's just part of life. It's just another wacky part of my pack.

I Have Cancer, No Kidding

When my sister Wendy told me she had breast cancer, I thought it was a joke.  I called her first thing on a Saturday morning to chat and laugh, as we usually do, and asked, "What was the result of the test?"  

She replied, "I have breast cancer."

I knew by the tone of her voice, this was not a joke, but for a split second I thought she would say,  "Just kidding!"  She didn't.

I felt like bursting into tears, but held it in, I didn't want to freak Wendy out.   My first reaction was, I cannot lose my sister, she is everything to me, my best friend, my world.  She is more than my sister, I can't even explain in words how connected we are.

I somehow felt like this wasn't the way it was supposed to be, I was the sickly one, the one who was always struggling with health problems, food allergies, exhaustion.  I was the sister who had spent time in doctors offices and hospitals, being probed and poked.  I was the one who I expected to get a serious illness, not Wendy.

Wendy is a fitness instructor and  a runner who lives in Oregon, where the air so clear and crisp, it can give you a nose bleed.  

I live in toxic Brooklyn with black dust on my windowsills, and vermin living in my couch.  It just didn't make sense to me.

I know Wendy was scared, I was scared.  We didn't know how bad it was or the chance of recurrence.   

We talked on the phone, a lot.  She was on a roller coaster ride of emotions, and I was going with her.  Wendy was angry and I just couldn't figure out how to help her navigate out of that stormy cloud.  I listened and tried to be positive, I chanted at my Buddhist altar for the strength and wisdom to help her feel better.

We joked, as usual about all of the annoyances in our daily lives.  That always got us through the day.  Even the prospect of radiation and chemotherapy became funny, "first they'll burn you, then they'll poison you," my sister said.  

After Wendy's surgery and test results came back, we both realized how lucky she is.  She has low grade cancer that will probably not reoccur.  I felt I could breathe again, I was so relieved.

We now have a new cast of characters to joke about, the overweight receptionist at radiation named Feather, and Martha the nurse who likes to give hugs (Wendy does NOT like hugs).  

Our lives are perhaps forever changed, but we will always laugh our way through it.

Just for Men

My husband Keith has been having a midlife crisis for the past few years. His long blackish brown hair has a few strands of gray in it, and his beard began going gray recently. An old time friend saw a picture of Keith, and commented that he looked the same, except the gray beard. Keith freaked out.

He announced that he was going to dye his beard at once. "Gray just isn't me," my husband declared and headed straight to the store to buy a box of Just for Men. You know those cheesy commercials where they show a couple relaxing on their couch, the husband gets up to look in the mirror and is horrified by his gray hair and beard, and voila! He paints Just for Men on his hair, and he looks twenty years younger!

Keith is convinced he looks like he's in his thirties since he started using Just for Men. I won't tell him that he actually looks the same, just like a middle aged guy who paints his beard.

After one episode of beard painting, Keith started sharing his Just for Men syndrome with me.
He started bugging me constantly about my gray roots. "When are you going to dye your hair?" Keith would ask about ten times a day.

"I'll get around to it," I answered. I secretly enjoyed putting off coloring my hair, just to torture Keith a bit longer. After awhile, I think I was torturing myself more than him. I really started to get a complex. Did he think I looked like an old granny with gray hair? Would he start making passes at younger women? Would he start dating a Just for Women model?

After a few months, I gave in. I have to admit, I was looking kind of grannyish with the gray roots. The hippie look just wasn't doing it for me. I just purchased some medium ash brown hair color, it's sitting on my dresser waiting to be painted on. Yes, I still look like a middle aged woman with dyed hair.

But that's okay. I accept my aging body, and still think I look pretty good.