A Surprise Third Act

Niece Tabitha & Gillian Zed, Kailua  Photo @hoff96734

Six months. It can be a lifetime. It can be a deadline. It is one of those increments that's beyond subjective. It's a malleable timeline. It can go fast, or inch along at a glacial pace. It marks a half a year, or two fiscal quarters, and potentially two seasons. I lost Spring & Summer of 2019. Because, in March, I woke up unable to use my left leg or foot, finding it paralyzed, but not without excruciating pain.

I don’t want to recount the blow-by-blow on my injury because it won’t help anyone- especially me- to relive all the truly agonizing steps towards being able to have enough concentration to even attempt to blog. I started this post at the six month mark. It's now been ten months.

I was so smug, thinking a decade behind me surviving breast cancer, made me exempt from further health challenges. I agreed completely with an old friend who wrote recently, saying they felt I had ‘been through enough.’ But I ignored a gnawing backache for years. YEARS. In my late 50’s I physically flipped houses, moved furniture, painted walls and did landscaping, all the while choosing to work through the discomfort thinking it was temporary. In fact, it was the canary dying in the coal mine. I brushed the little yellow feathered body aside. There was more than one.

So, on a Monday morning, weeks after turning 58, trying to get up from bed, I screamed for my husband and said something I have never said in my adult life: “Take me to the ER.”

Support following a traumatic life experience looks like different things to folks. Similar to the ‘love languages’, care and concern can manifest in a variety of ways. I learned this to my joy, as well as deep disappointment when realizing that, although in my new community for several years, I did not have a true friend. Not. A. One. No one beat a path to my door with a casserole. I got a few texts. A funny card, mailed from a client, (after I'd run into her husband three months in, while wearing a back brace, with cane,) was a bright spot.  I asked someone considered a good pal of three years, to come hang out a few days post op because I had run out of family to keep me company, and she came for a few hours, but I didn’t hear from her again. Not. A. Word.

This revelation resulted in a great deal of self-reflection, wondering if I was, in fact, that undesirable as a friend? Or had I not contributed any energy towards these imaginary relationships, and this acrid desert of kindness, the result? I reviewed my actions. No, fuck that. I was present for these people. I listened to their family dramas. I helped them professionally for no monetary gain. I'd initiated social outings, given gifts. And, I tolerated their bullshit. It was not enough social currency apparently: I’d wasted that investment in several people.

That was another blow to my balance, beyond the shattered-into-pieces-disc between L4 and L5. I struggled for solid footing.

But there were shining lights at the end of my seemingly endless road to recovery. After losing my dear friend Terri almost five years ago, her sister JC and I have become very close. We’ve managed to usually spend the painful anniversary of Terri’s passing together, with me venturing to Seattle. But in 2019, I offered JC a ‘wine country weekend’ and she bought a plane ticket.  We were going to spend time smoking weed, eating good food and laughing till we cry. But three days before, about to go into emergency spine surgery, all I could think of was how I fucked up our weekend. My husband called to waive her off, but, no, she was coming anyway.

Sonoma Valley Sunshine

And this is where I will be a little ‘woo woo’ because in my drugged up, pain crazed mind, I still chuckled, thinking: Terri, you fucker, you timed this disaster so it would go down like this. That I would have a true friend, family,  full of unconditional love and good humor, to help the first 48 hours home. When I thought I would never walk normally or function independently again. And the kicker? JC is a nurse practitioner for a profession. She briskly set the household up for post-op success, created the medication schedule, made me protein smoothies and gave my exhausted and buried-in-work husband a vital break. 

JC did not get the promised wine tasting or farm-to-table-dinner, Sonoma-Valley experience and there were no complaints. (We'll make good on that, girl, I promise.) We still managed a few Terri laughs, and she let me read her the opening chapter of my first novel that I'm determined to write in spite of life's detours.

When I had to tell my family about having breast cancer, 11 years ago, everyone jumped in to offer help. But I knew I couldn’t take my mum’s nervous concern daily or interrupt everyone’s busy life with ease. But my niece, Tabitha, 20 years younger than me and a good friend, was who I needed to help. My sister bought her plane tickets and over the course of not one but two surgeries, she up-rooted her life (then in San Diego,) and came, missing work and income to be my nurse. After this recent mess, when I told my older daughter F. about JC coming anyway to take care of me, she humorously replied, “Well, that saved Tabitha a trip.”

Tabitha continues to be a rock of support for me. It was her that I called, hysterically sobbing, the night before the back operation, anxiety, and pain meds, pounding through me. Seeking escape from the fear of a major surgery, and all that came with it, trying to find an option I knew was not there, babbling on, she calmly offered: 'Sometimes science is the answer, the best choice. Trust it.'

It was the second weekend home, I was physically uncomfortable and struggling with my new reality and lack of mobility, when F. and her partner H. came to visit. This was the first non-holiday related visit to our house made by these very-busy-almost-30-professional-women, who drove over an hour in Bay Area traffic, to come sit on the couch and watch me do nothing. It meant everything to me. They had not made other plans “for later”, they did not linger on their phones, they were present and sweet and doting.
They fucking showed up.

F. told me she had called her younger sister, now unseen by us for about 10 years, to inform her of my brush with mortality, and ‘Thanks for telling me,’ was the response. I heard nothing from her. It was the same silence after my husband informed her I had lost Terri, someone she knew. That -painfully - revealed the depth of her contempt for me. I easily can drift into self-blame for being the awful mother she is so certain I was. But, at some point, you have to look forward, not back, or there is no movement at all. It strengthens her hate and resolve to remain aloof from us, but in reality, only deprives her of the unconditional love and support that family offers. The value of that has become clearer to me with every health hurdle.

(And if I was such a failure at parenthood, why did F. turn out so awesome? One out of two ain’t bad? Is that parenting today?)

Oahu Blooms

They used to say you can’t choose family. But anyone associated with the Queer community knows that's very old-fashioned thinking: sometimes the best, most loyal, is in fact, chosen family. That artificial-but-very-real connection is what kept me going through my self-destructive, often suicidal, teens and twenties. However, this debilitating  and life-changing experience showed me that blood family can show up for you too. It is a mystic, unbreakable bond that can keep people afloat in the worst of times, physically and spiritually. I'm grateful for it in my life, to be allowed the privilege to be vulnerable. To trust.

I asked the surgeon early on if it was possible for me to take a plane trip six weeks post op, a long planned trip to my beloved Hawaii, this time just a week to celebrate my great-nephew’s graduation from high school. The doctor was cautiously optimistic and I managed to go, even though I probably should not have. My husband flew with me and spent the weekend, arranging a first class (horizontal) ride home for me.  I wore a brace, used a cane and was perpetually exhausted. But I stayed with my sister and her hubby, in a swank rental at the end of a quiet road, and they treated me like gold. I felt like a Five Star spa guest as they handled food, chores, outings, and made sure I was comfortable at every turn. It was touching, appreciated, and also so necessary in order for me NOT to over due it- and undo all that expensive doctor work. Family.

Middle age is sometimes poetically referred to as life's Second Act. I was fully prepared, entering stage left, with my revitalized character, re-written as a patient and compassionate human following the wizardly transformation of cancer and reevaluation of my life's priorities. Formerly a power bitch in the deadline tight world of marketing and advertising, I'd just started to learn the rhythm and pace of my creative retirement gig: re-designing homes and curating people's crap. I loved the physicality, the 'before and after' accomplishment of that work. But, no, the (physical) reviews were in! My part was being cut entirely now. I had no more lines. My only hope for getting back on the boards of life was, in fact, to re-audition with a completely new set of talents. 

Honestly, I have no idea what those are. 

Writing, always my first love, is now subject to my random, volatile, levels of anxiety, comfort, inspiration, and yes, health. It's become a manic enterprise: there are hours of flowing, meaningful words, and then the blank page and dearth of ideas. (In other words: writing.) I don't allow myself self-pity in any way. Believe me, I know I'm beyond lucky. Dodged a bullet. Again. I have my leg under me. And I deeply appreciate my improbable life as a spoiled 'wine country housewife' (albeit, sans the wine,) that puts no monetary stress on me, and allows even my most complicated neuroses to be indulged, or at least accepted. Today, as we watch our parents age, and the little ones become young adults, I fully understand that family is also one of my blessings. That won't-put-you-through-BS-when-they-know-you-REALLY-need-them quality, the emotional short hand of a lifetime shared. 

Sunrise at Lanikai Beach, Oahu

My lucky stars have brought me back to Hawaii for some time near the ocean, far from town, quiet and peaceful. To reflect. To hopefully write. But this time, most importantly to heal.

Now, as I navigate the challenges of this surprise Third Act, I stare at the sea and follow the moon, ready for their messages. I continue circling this book I'm undertaking, often sneaking up on it, to sit and crank out pages before the self-doubt and editing that cripples the creative, begins. I often ponder: does it matters at all, if I continue with this work, especially now that it seems to be the only game I have left? 

Like a passionate lover, too good to be true, I want to abandon the words, first, before they leave me. But I've reached that place where I know, beyond a shadow of the moon, that now, I must press on. My future in this tentative theatrical planetary production is dependent on my willing, conscious, participation. If I don't string the words together and write them down now, tell my story, no one else will. I won't have any more lines in the play. And what then?

Exit, stage right.