January 1, 2005
I awoke Saturday morning, the first day of this new year, needing to cry.
2004 was pretty crappy. And if my anticlimactic New Years Eve was any indication of what 2005 held, I was in big trouble.
At midnight I was knocking on the bathroom door. Marcelo had been in there for somewhere around 15 minutes. "Honey? You OK?
"Yeah, I'm sorry, I'll be out in a sec.
So at 12:02 a.m., I got a dry, brotherly kiss on the cheek and a "Happy New Year, baby. This year will be great for you, I know it.
I didn't echo this hope. I just felt flat and useless, my only contribution to the world that I managed to hang on another year. Marcelo tried to reassure me but I cried and cried. I do not matter, my insides keened.
We went to a party hosted by a writer who has won seven or eight Emmys -- he can pretty much hand them out as door prizes; they're everywhere -- for his work on Sesame Street.
I got to talking to a woman in the kitchen, who said she was a cancer survivor, nearing that five-year window the doctors say means you're out of danger. Hers had been kidney cancer, another serious, Stage IV situation. Colorectal cancers usually spell short shelf lives for those they inhabit.
But this woman, Sherrie, spoke simply and plainly about the obstacles she faced and the choices she had made. "My daughters were 13 and 11 at the time I was diagnosed," she said. "And he's a great guy," nodding toward her husband, "but he's not raising my girls without me. Death simply was not an option.
I got that.
Sherrie and I talked about the mindset of cancer, the fear it brings, the irony that we spend so much of our time reassuring those around us. And in that conversation, that connection, I was renewed.
As they were exiting, her husband pulled me aside and said, "I wanted to leave you with this: Cancer has been really wonderful for our family.
And I fought back the tears as I returned to the conversation about why Steven Sondheim leaves this guy cold, and whether Avenue Q could be a viable musical, and how nothing compares to West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, or Fiddler on the Roof.
On Jan. 10, 2003, I was re-diagnosed with a larger tumor than the one they'd removed the year before and liver metastases. And yet, I have experienced love in ways I never knew were possible during these past two years.
My financial situation is so horrifying it's almost funny; and yet I stayed in a Four Seasons Hotel went on several mini-vacations fraternized with the famous and uber-rich in Beverly Hills -- in 2004.
More than once these past few months, observing chaos in the lives of my friends, I've prayed "Thank you God, that I only have cancer.
There are worse things than cancer that could befall a girl.
And I am running again.
And so are you.
We could make New Years resolutions and break them. We could make un-resolutions and trip on all the "I won'ts.
Or we could realize that just running is making a contribution, to our lives and to those around us. The simple act of living purely -- keeping the crap from our diet and the rust from our joints -- spills over into all other aspects of life.
Jean Stratton-Porter wrote several books around the turn of the century. LAST century. One, The Harvester, is based on men of the Midwest who used extracts of plants and flowers for medicinal purposes -- very early American chemotherapy. This excerpt is from a speech David Langston, the protagonist, gives to a group of doctors in New York.
" I am pleading with you, as men having the greatest influence of any living, to tell and to teach the young that a clean life is possible to them in this way only can men arise to full physical and mental force, and become the fathers of a race to whom the struggle for clean manhood will not be the battle it is with us.
"By the distorted faces, by the misshapen bodies, by marks of degeneracy, recognizable to your practiced eyes everywhere on the streets, by the agony of the mother who bore you, and later wept over you, I conjure you men to live up to your high and holy privilege, and tell all men that they can be clean, if they will.
And so can I. And so can you. And it counts.
Happy 2005.
(Ed. Note: For 2005, Heather will be writing a monthly column about her never-a-dull-moment life. Due to time-constraints, I came up with this exciting title. We will have a little contest to name this column. The winner will get an AREC cotton T-shirt or tank of his/her choice. Remember, talking to or bribing Heather is strictly encouraged.)