My Goodness, What Big Ears You Have

Lop-eared, like a rabbit, I've decided. I mean, one could have donkey ears, basset hound ears, elephant ears, even giraffe ears; they'd all be bigger than normal human ears. But I'm picking rabbit ears for imagery here because it's spring bunny time and loppies are super cute. And as of today, I am supposed to have bigger ears, so I am leaning toward lop stylings in keeping with the season. I mean, I didn't take official before-and-after measurements, but still, I don't doubt that those flappers on the sides of my head, which weren't so small to begin with, have grown a bit, especially since I've been feeding them A LOT of music and poetry these past few days. Turns out that feeding music and poetry to one's ears is the truly avant-garde method of fighting pretty much anything that ails a body, way more experimental than any clinical trial, way more effective, probably, and a lot more fun. Here's my method:

Start by going back to a city where you used to live, a place you learned to love the hard way, over time, long ago. It was a good city for living in when you were always broke and studying and making plans; rent was cheap. You survived on pizza, ramen, and beer, lived in a half-dozen different places over the years there, all of which were varying degrees of tumble-down and shabby, but full of art your friends had made. And lots of books. There were too many romantic entanglements and too many lonely months and years. When you finally left town over a decade later to go be a grown-up, your heart broke a little as you watched the mountains get smaller in the rearview.

When you get back to that city so many years later, go in for the great big genre-defying music festival which has made the place famous these days, and walk everywhere. You always did walk everywhere back in the old days, and you can again. It's the same city, better in some ways, worse in others. One way it is better...the walking. You can walk to so many bougie things you like now, shops and restaurants and galleries, theaters and music halls. The entire downtown, which had once boasted so much empty real estate, is bustling. There are things, and you can walk to all the things. Up and down, up and down the streets and hills. The weather is fine; the cherry trees are blooming; it's spring and perfect, and you walk and walk. And walk. Miles and miles before the long weekend of music is over.

Go inside the churches and theaters and clubs and galleries for all the music and poetry and art all day and all night. Sounds and words you've never heard, jazz and not-jazz, string music and space music, music wrapped around poems, and music bashing into screens and scrims. Screams and saxophones, singing and shouting, harmonium drone and happenstance, ballet and balls-out photography. Try to see and hear everything and fail because there is too much and it is impossible. Stand in line, stand in the venue, listen, walk some more. Go in again. Listen to the people playing, singing, speaking, most of whom you've never even heard of. Listen to the people talking about the people playing; listen in between, listen, listen. Listen to all the weird stuff, almost none of which you know, and if you did, now you hear it in a different way. Be puzzled and curious and surprised. Be glad and listen some more, to all the sounds, the various languages, the idioms, the words and the silences. Deal with the crowds even though you hate crowds. Embrace the too-muchness or let it embrace you. Listen for four fucking days. Be amazed and grateful that you, formerly very, very sick you, can do ALL OF THIS!

And you'll feel better because you'll have gotten avant-garde aesthetic amnesia, in-the-momentness, the real cure for, well, just about anything that needs fixing. You'll go home with a full heart and a mind twisted up like some crazy beautiful sculpture, wrapped around the love of old friends who welcomed you back, took you in, fed you pastries and cheered you on as you fed your ever-growing ears and felt yourself...healing.

My So-Called Memorial Tree

Last year on March 20th, John and I planted a small weeping cherry tree  in the backyard. The weather was chilly that day; rain and sleet took turns falling and calling the calendar into question. We could have put off the planting for another day when the weather was fine, but we'd bought the tree specifically to plant on March 20, the first day of spring and my 55th birthday, the first one since my metastatic lung cancer diagnosis. I was determined to get that twig in the ground. So we put on our rain parkas, dug a muddy hole, set the tree, and filled more mud in around it. It felt like an act of defiance, of the weather, yes, but also of something else, the nagging fear that tucks in alongside a metastatic diagnosis. I crossed my fingers and prayed that the tree would root well and bloom the next spring, and that I'd be around to see it. Of course, there was always that other possibility, one I didn't want to entertain – the weeping cherry could end up becoming my "memorial" tree, and its roots maybe even home to my ashes.

That's not what happened, obviously. Instead, I went ahead and had myself a 56th birthday, which I celebrated today with family and friends and neighbors on this first day of spring at one of our favorite East Nashville restaurants, Lyra. I didn't used to always go big on my birthday, but I've changed my mind about that since, well, ya know.  So carpe feliz cumpleaños and all that!

In that spirit, we had a community happy hour (actually a happy two hours) of cocktails and kabobs (cooked outside on the grill Lebanese style by Chef Hrant) and a wonderful Armenian layer cake (made by co-owner Liz, who happens to be married to Hrant). I invited lots of lovely people, and lots of them came. It was sunny and festive and kind of perfect out there on the patio honoring the Vernal Equinox. Plus a portion of the proceeds from that little party are going to The Addario Lung Cancer Foundation for the ROS1 Research Project.  So it was an entirely wonderful 56th first day of spring. And birthday.

And –
this:

Eating All the Cake

During the first months after being diagnosed with ROS1 metastatic lung cancer, I took a daily chemotherapy pill, Xalkori, 250mg twice a day. The side-effects were crummy, not as bad as other forms of chemo, but still, I puked a bunch. I lost weight, of course; food wasn't such a pleasure, and I couldn't drink coffee or tea at all, which was a big deal to this caffeine slave. When I started in the clinical trial on lorlatlinib (now called Lorbrena), those GI adverse effects got traded out for others (ridiculously high cholesterol, neuropathy, brain fog), but my appetite returned with a vengeance. Lorbrena, it seems, not only stimulates the appetite; it puts the brakes on both metabolism and the willpower/common sense part of the brain, making a person more inclined to impulsive behavior. As in eating ALL the cake. So all the weight I lost puking on Xalkori came back fast, and then some. And that's fine. I mean, I haven't had to buy an entire closet of new, bigger clothes or anything, but my skinny jeans are having a little rest right now, and I have recently pursued a more careful diet. (Not because I've bought into the patriarchal bullshit on body type, but because it's true that carrying extra weight is not exactly the best way to fight cancer.)

I continue, however, to eat all the cake in other ways: going out to hear live music more nights than I don't; waking up the next day in a house I love, next to someone I love, and who loves me back; sitting at a table with a bunch of writers finding the best words; sharing supper, stories, and gossip with a poet who has been a friend and mentor to me for nearly three decades; tasting the latest shaved fennel salad creation by one of my favorite chef-friends; discovering yet more people my step-daughter and I have in common; sending text messages bouncing off satellites and into the hands of dear ones to make them laugh; reading any old good thing that falls into my hands; going to weekday matinees, and to Mass; taking quick road trips to hang out with the gorgeous weirdos who are my friends (and eat cake); yakking too long and late into the night on the phone with the faraway friends; watching the spring blooms unfurl themselves against still-grey skies; and napping, napping, napping. And that's just in one week! These are just a few of the lovely things I thought would cease to be too soon when I learned I had metastatic disease. And I'm getting to do them all.

I teased my husband after he retired from over three decades of teaching by getting him some business cards that read John Mathenia, Bon Vivant. Now, I'd like to get a set for myself, perhaps adding the word "Grateful" to the title of Bon Vivant. Mostly I'm grateful because in those moments when I am busy eating all the cake, I'm not thinking about being a person with cancer.