The two days following my diagnosis were slow ones. Emotionally over-cooked and hanging on to the slippery edge of consciousness with tired fingers we arrived at the home of Ellyn and Steven Stern, a lovely jewish couple who were opening their homes to us as visitors through a program with the hospital.
Once I had passed on the all-together overwhelming news of the diagnosis to my family and my husband, I popped a xanax and watched myself fall through the blue aquarium waters of consciousness, leaving a trail of little bubbles behind, not unlike watching sad sea creatures from behind plate glass walls at the zoo; Just a flash of life in big alien eyes before slipping down into a deeper more forgetful depth. I vaguely recall moving through the motions of formal introductions upon our arrival, I focused very hard on getting out the right words in proper order before hiding from the world from beneath a home-knit blanket and promptly surrendering to a wooly grey sleep that asked me no questions.
I awoke in a room of forgotton childhood, various pinks here and there, hippos with ballet shoes and baby pictures, of childhood photos and books. I got up and dressed as it seemed to be the thing to do, then did my best to avoid and ignore everything around me with the exception of the penny-thriller I had picked up at the airport. My mother eventually got to me, we were up and out of the house and down a brisk lane to the philadelphia equivalent of a wealthy suburban strip mall. We ate lunch at someone's idea of a Panera bread where we contemplated what we might do for the day. The conversation seemed to circulate upon her whishing to know what I might find fun and me wondering what I might possibly want to think about wanting to do. We settled listlessly on the movies, and found the conversation envigored for a moment when I gave her a spirited recount of a pair of troublemakers i'd had to deal with earlier in the week. It seemed xanax was not a strong enough depressent to depress a servers indignation at being berated, complained about, then walked out on (the antichrist trifecta), which made us both a little less worried that I had been reduced to the emotional capacity of a sea sponge.
We arrived at the movie (monuments men) ten or fifteen minutes late but I didn't mind. While I've never considered pursuing any kind of life remotely involving motion pictures, the movies have often been my escape. The darkness and the anonymity call to me; nobody can find me in the movies. Unlike books which need light and air, nobody can yank me out of a corner nook mid day and say "look who I found with her nose in a book" or "go *insert task here*!". At the movies beautiful people do and say the most perfect things. The lead always listens to his beau's impassioned speech on fidelity and mortality; its only on tv shows that he turns up the ball game and the staged audience loses their heads. In the movies the timing is perfect, no one comes home to a surprise birthday party only to say "well sorry my flights out to australia in an hour!". So there, in the movies, we saw the poignantly noble and different band of merry picture hunting men tromp across Europe to find the great masterpieces. We sighed at the losses, felt emboldened by Cate Blanchette's oh-so-french insouciounce, cried when they found the madonna they had so long searched for; and for a moment I forgot I had cancer.
Since we had failed to decrypt the wi-fi password in our host home we went to that omnipotent and always beckoning beacon of free internet and caffiene, the local starbucks which was sandwiched between a Manny's deli and a Rosenburg's wine shop and judaica. Our host mother had mentioned we were right smack center of the Pennsylvania Jewish communityand looking around, it appeared we'd hit the very epicenter.
As I was feeling rather uncommunicative, so I skipped the java and headed next door. Although Bala (the little town within a town) was jewish through and through not even they had escaped the scourge of stripmalls everywhere: the korean nail salon. I signed up for a pedicure and was surprised to find myself plunked down in a knobbly vibrating chair by the best looking korean man i'd ever seen. He looked a little like the most recent asian GI JOE villain but with better hair, a nicer smile, and arms that were bigger than my legs. I was a little off beat-I'd never had a male pedicurist and so stuck my nose in my book and tried to get used to the devilishly hot water that you always say is "hhhhhhhhhhohhhhh ya just peeeeerfect" while you check your feet for heat blisters. I was well settled into the comfortable routine of foot scrubbing and trying to think about something terribly tragic (like...oh...my own cancer) while he scrubbed the bottom of my feet which normally results in highly undignified giggling and twitching. Then the massage started...and I forgot about the rest of it. Turns out my pedicurist was also the resident masseuse and was so sucessful at turning me into jelly from the legs down that I started daydreaming about the temple at the top of the mountian deep in the forest of Hollywood's mystical asia where he learned to secrets of the pedicurist brotherhood, passed down by generations of warrior monks and little white haired ladies with hairless arms and perfect eyebrows. When I let out an involuntary "thaaaaat feels sooooo good" he smiled in a particularly zen way and told me I should come back for a full body massage while the little old lady in the back room practicing waxing cackled "He da best, make all the ladies come back for da massage" and wiggled her toes at me knowingly. I told him politely that while I would love to return again and again to his magic hands I was from out of town so would be unhappily unable to do so. He asked me where I was from and I told him Seattle, much to the excitement of the older woman in the other room. She came running out, her popsicle stick trailing sticky wax behind her to ask "where" in a particularly excited manner to which I replied, "Seattle, aaaaaall the way on the other coast". She smiled kindly and nodded excitedly "Yes yes Seattle, I lived there, where you live?" Mortified that I had assumed she was looking for a geographical answer not a comparative one, we established that she had relatives who lived in a somewhat general proximity to my family which seemed to please her to no end. She asked why I was visiting Philadelphia and things took a turn for the morose. I tried to keep it casual at first, mentioning that I had come to see a doctor, to which she impatiently replied that many many people were coming to her town for a doctor, what doctor, and why was he so good? I felt the lump in my stomach stretch and yawn and climb right up into my throat and came clean. It broke my heart to tell the truth to the cheery lady and her adonis peducurist. Their faces fell in tandem and I thought she might cry a little as she lamented on my youth. the foot rubbing extended a good few minutes past what was required by pedicure law, he was a river of calm, pushing good vibes up my calves while he told me god never gave us more than we can handle, his open honest face made me cry and the lady had a tissue under my nose in a jiffy, stroking my hair and promising all would end for the best. Together they soothed and painted and fussed me into a chair at the foot dryer where my GI Joe gave me a free shoulder massage to help flush out toxins pre surgery and sweetly wished me the best before shouldering his pack and heading home for the night.
I rejoined my mom and we headed home to the sanctuary of Ellyn's well decorated foyers and nick-nacks. I slept knowing that the next day would be my last chance at denial.
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