Domestic superheroes

Growing up you never think anything is going to happen to your parents. All the talk about the different kinds of cancer, yes it made me nervous, but I never thought it would touch me personally. I don’t think anyone ever does.

It was like a blow that came out of nowhere.

I had recently — within the past few years, well, since college, actually — begun worrying about my mother’s health. She doesn’t exercise, she doesn’t eat right, she has smoked since she was 16 years old, and I was convinced she was going to get diabetes or have a heart attack. What I wasn’t expecting was breast cancer.

When Mom turned 50 in July she told me it was a weird year for her. When she was 24 — my age then— and her mother turned 50, her mother had an aneurysm and died, alone, sitting on a step, holding recently folded clothes.

That story made that year weird for me, too. I can’t imagine my life without my mother, so I had been walking on my tiptoes, waiting for bad news, ever since she turned 50. Then it came.
My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of August 2007. She told me and my younger sister over a now rare family dinner.

I sat there, stunned. My sister didn’t seem to react, but she doesn’t usually. To this day, I still wonder how she’s taking it.

But I just kind of sat there, my mom and dad looking at me. Later Dad said my mom was worried about how my sister and I were going to take the news.

At that point I decided there was nothing to worry about, yet. There was no bad news, just unnerving news. There was no death sentence. Everything, at this point, was fine.

Talking to my dad about the issue later that night, I needed to see what he felt. He is my realist. He doesn’t really talk about things, either. He and my sister are two of a kind. So I went to him, seeking reassurance. He is of the medical profession, has been a registered nurse for almost 25 years. He confirmed my notion that, at this point, everything was fine, there was nothing to freak out about yet. My mom isn’t dying.

But there was something in his tone, something in the look on his face that showed he was just as scared and nervous as the rest of the family - that he, too, was worried and wondering what he would do without my mom. I don’t think anyone wanted to think about that. It was that look that made me nervous, not the way my mom told us or the idea of her having cancer. It was that look my father gave me, without knowing he was showing emotion, one of the few times I could actually see it.

My mom’s doctor found a lump, and she was going to the Mayo Clinic the next day to get a mammogram to find out exactly what was going on.

Many tests were done. My mother and father met with many doctors. They biopsied the lump and took X-rays to see if it was, in fact, cancer.

About a week after the nerve-wracking dinner conversation, my mom called and said it was in fact cancer. The lump was malignant and there was some suspicious looking tissue leading from the lump to the nipple.

If it hadn’t been for a regular exam, my mom’s lump may have grown larger and the situation could have been much worse.

My mom was supposed to have surgery on a Thursday. The Wednesday before, she had more meetings with more doctors and more surgeons that only proved to frustrate her and my dad and confuse them more.

There was discussion about performing only a lumpectomy and proceeding with chemotherapy or simply chemo to try to shrink the lump.

In the end my mother decided to go with a single mastectomy, scheduled for the following week, to remove all affected tissue so that she wouldn’t have to worry about making that decision following other failed efforts.

We — Dad, Mom and I — were in the hospital at 7 a.m. that Monday morning. The surgery went fine and she wasn’t in too much pain. Dad and I — and my sister, who came later — stayed with Mom until 7 p.m. that night. We laughed and talked and shared jokes - some at the expense of my drugged-up patient of a mother.

She went home the next day — staying in the hospital for less than 36 hours — and was off work for weeks. My mother did well following the surgery and was surprised with the amount of people who shared their story or sent food over or just showed up at her house to say hi.

She wasn't sick, or at least didn't show signs of being sick. I think that was fortunate for all of us. That would have made the situation harder.

Still, I don’t like hearing about how upset she gets sometimes, or the fact that she has been emotional about having cancer. I don’t like to hear because it isn’t something I can fix. But I listen, because that’s what good daughters do and that’s what she needs. I want her to feel better, and if she needs to talk about it, then I will listen.

I could have killed her, though, when she told me she felt the lump a year ago, but didn’t think it could have been cancer. In this day and age when cancer is on every talk show and in every woman’s magazine, how could it not occur to her that a breast lump might be cancer?

Who knows how this will affect our family. This for sure isn’t the last we will see of breast cancer. Mom went in for chemo therapy a few weeks later and then continued with radiation. She was bald by Thanksgiving, so we had fun learn new ways to tie scarves. Her hair is blonde and in a pixie cut already, so there shouldn’t be much difference when she's bald, right?

The first time I saw my mother with a scarf tied around her head, instead of a full head of hair, was shocking. My parents and my sister were in town for my birthday celebration. When my mom walked through the door I almost cried - she didn't warn me that she had lost her hair. She said when she started loosing her hair instead of suffering with furry patches she had my father shave her head - a sweet act of a loving spouse, I think.

One of my worst fears was to see Mom sick or ailing. I had never seen her like that before. My parents are still superheroes in my mind. Even now that I am in my 20s, I have yet to see them come down from the pedestal I put them on when I was a kid. Breast cancer and chemo could never knock Mom down.

Through all of this, I believe my family — and particularly myself — will emerge stronger. Thankfully chemo didn't bother her as much as it could have, and I was "lucky" enough not to be around on her really bad days.

I think one thing we learned through this, even though it is far from over, is that breast cancer is not a death sentence. Women can live without breasts. It may be difficult to deal with, but it is possible.

Mom has been cancer free for close to a year. She is strong, and I guess I always knew that. On top of that, she has been a non-smoker for almost 7 months!

- column originally published Oct. 17, 2007 in the Albert Lea Tribune; edited June 20, 2009

View of St. Clair, as seen from my living room window

Patchy grass, cigarettes littered along the steps, white paint curling off the overhand above the door ? details I perpetually miss as I come and go distractedly every day. The front yard protecting my apartment building from the busy traffic in the street has a steep slope that almost propels you into passing cars.

Fifteen steps take you up to the front door ? it seems like too many for the 10-foot-wide strip of grass trying to pass as a yard. Every other step is home to tiny ants hurrying back and forth ? carrying food, not carrying food, running into monstrous feet, running away from monstrous feet.

A sad tree stump sits dejected ? missing the trunk and large leafy tree that once extended from its base. A recent murder, the evidence known as sawdust still sits littered around the stump.

An aqua-turquoise Pontiac Sunfire sits in front of my building, seemingly belonging to one of my neighbors. Tonight it is on the south end of the street. My neighbor must have been arriving home from the west, perhaps coming from work in Minneapolis?

A blonde woman in a grass green T-shirt and slouchy dark gray shorts runs by with a curious terrier. She calls to him encouragingly to keep him running. A teenage girl talks excitedly on her cell phone as she meanders along the cracked sidewalk in the opposite direction ? her fluffy pint-sized pooch trotting excitedly in front of her, dog walking girl along the neighborhood street.

Every few minutes a car, van, truck or motorcycle rumbles down the street throwing engine sounds up at me into my apartment. As the sun sets behind the stucco tan and white siding houses across the street I uncurl from my arm chair, close the blinds, and head to bed.

Anna's childhood memories reborn

I grew up in an old, white farmhouse with a classic white-washed wooden porch. The wooden swing hanging on the porch had just enough of a creak to let Mama in the kitchen know when Talulah and I swung with the breeze as we gossiped about our school days.

Our family had some land - maybe 5 acres - on which we raised a pony, a few chickens, two dogs, five barn cats and almost all the food we needed to eat. My father prided himself on self-sufficient and sustainable practices. We cared about our land and where the food came from. Daddy worked an hour away on an organic farm. Mama was a painter who stayed home with me, Talulah and Max, our towheaded little brother.

My favorite childhood memory is very simple. It isn't a big celebration - such as Christmas or my birthday. There is one summer day - when I was 7 - that was just the perfect temperature with plenty of sun. Max, Talulah and I were playing out in the front yard with a bottle of bubbles. Talulah and I danced around the yard, singing as we blew bubbles at 4-year-old Max. Every once in a while one of our dogs - Coco or ChaCha, Airedale terriers - would chase after us and the bubbles until we collapsed on each other smearing grass stains on our rolled-up jeans and simple white T-shirts. I could feel Mama watching us from the big window above the sink as she washed dishes from our PB&J lunch.

Our dancing and singing and bubbles only ceased when Daddy's old battered, faded blue Chevy truck hobbled down the long gravel driveway lined by then-blossoming crab apple trees. The pink and white petals rained down on Daddy's truck like a sugary sweet hint at the present he had for us in the truck bed. Daddy parked, and as he got out of the car he called to Mama to join us outside as we three children raced each other to his side. From his truck bed, Daddy pulled a crateful of the sweetest summer fruit I had ever tasted. Juice dripped down our faces as our family of five sat on the white porch steps, enjoying our snack and listening to the wind in the trees.

At 18, Talulah was just getting ready to go off to college - NYU. She was excited about her dorm and new roommate, so I was helping her pack up all of her dorm necessities. We spent the day packing extra-long sheets, pillows, a comforter and a trash can into the back of her little Honda Prelude - she was going to drive all the way from our home in Spokane, Washington, to New York City. I don't remember how it happened - I was just 15 and careless. My memories come back in flashes. Eventually I am down in the front yard at dusk watching as the flames leapt and danced, consuming not only my beloved childhood home but also my mentor, my role model, Talulah. I can still hear her voice barely reaching me from the attic bedroom window as the smoke slowly stifled her voice and replaced the air in her lungs.

-Written June 10 as the result of a creative writing exercise for "Finding the Story," an MFA class at Hamline University