Walking around with Prose

When I am walking around, I am walking around with prose continually in play in my head.  It is a bit like a tape recorder.  Or, maybe more of a broken record player on some days.  When I was little, I thought everyone had these tapes playing in their mind.  I learned to write and sometimes wrote down what I heard.  When I was a teenager, I thought I had gone schizophrenic and prayed the voices would stop.  By the time I graduated, I made friends with my prose and began to write.  But most, since I was so busy and the best words came when I was on a bike riding towards campus to Zoology 101, I wished I could press play and record my thoughts.  My prose got lost.
   Fifteen years later and with minimum amount of training in creative writing, I have learned to maintain my prose, edit, rewrite, and then type it up here on this handy computer.  Sometimes I am remiss at words lost in the time passing from the spark of an idea in the grocery store to the quiet hours of my home when everyone is sleeping and the washed dinner dishes are melodically dripping in the kitchen sink.  But, mostly, the prose thrive and grow in the hours between their birth and the page.
   My prose are filled with deep crevasses today.  My day started off with a conversation with my seven year old daughter about the woman's period and its role in the life cycle.  This moved into the the conversation of reincarnation and the difference between Hindu and Christian views on the subject.  By the time we sat at our oatmeal, my daughter proclaimed that she was my Great Grandmother Ruth who chose her body for her soul at birth so that she could be near her granddaughter, my mother.  And, she shared that my sister's dog, Beau who passed away last year, comes to visit her in her dreams most nights.
   The prose filled my day as I sat in my oncologist office chit chatting with my mom on the above subject of my daughter's apparent spirit guides. And, we smiled at the fact that the room was filled with my own spirits and my mom knew it as clearly as I did.  Dr. Mark is a sensitive soul and one for reflection which is why I chose him to captain my ship.  Yet, when I gave the short version of my deep conversations with my seven year old and asked if he had those conversations with his seven year old, he coily smiled and said, "No, we mostly talk about Star Wars Legos.  Now, take a big deep breath in and out. Again..."
   At one point during the appointment, I breathed in my courage and asked if my new path on the this crap cancer journey with the full brain radiation was surprising or was predictable.  Of course this is a tender spot, but I push for honesty.  So after some fancy foot work, it was put out on the table that it is not surprising at all.  We just didn't plan for it as we are all optimists.  Did I tell you that back in April 2009, we didn't know I was HER2/neu+ and could have the Herceptin treatments?  I was pretty much told to get my affairs in order.  This is code word for you have six months, say your good byes.  So in all estimation, I have out lived my expiration date by nearly 2 years.  Another estimation my prose put together during my two hour relaxation in the recliner getting my Herceptin slowly through my power port, was that my body is on a 10-11 month time cycle.  My four pregnancies were timed 10-11 months between each conception (well seven between my first born and concetion of my second born...but I was planning on ten).  And, each bad episode is vaguely ten months.  So yes, this full brain radiation is a one shot deal, but it buys me ten to twelve months.  So if you do the math, I can loose any weight I gain, get out running, and be feeling pretty good again by next summer.  I realize that the fall of next year may bring another episode requiring boxes of Kleenex.  Yet, I will let my prose write in my head that I am a miracle, one for the record books, the one that beat all odds, kicked cancer in the butt, and bought herself five (because I am going to be forty!), ten, twenty pretty good years of feeling pretty good.
    Yes, I can not describe to you how it feels to think of your life in months when once I wrote a short story of an old woman in a rocking chair that creaked and imagined that was me, age 82.   I am okay with it at the same time I am not okay with it.  I talked a long time with a friend this evening.  Yes, I talked and bawled, and she listened and hugged.  I told her that I came to a new place today.  I had always said I didn't want to die all wasted away looking and bald in a bed.  Today, I realized I did want to be all wasted away when I died.  For if I die when I am as vital and super-hot-momma as I am now, then that means that my death is sudden and surprising.  It means that I wasn't able to fight all the way as far as I could until this body I live in simply gave out.  You hear that, cancer, I am putting up my fists, and I know KungFu.
    I cry to think I will loose my hair again pretty soon.  I am sad to proclaim on Christmas morning, "no pictures please."  But, I know that this is not the bald when I will die.  Maybe Grandpa Homer told me that.  He was here today.  (I love you, but you know that.)  I had a good day today.  My spirits helped.  I know that.  It is hardest when I think about my kids.  It is selfish that I want to be with them forever.  Maybe their souls chose their bodies and chose me as a mother so that they could learn to be strong and vital in spite of not having their mother.  Maybe my daughter is right.  Maybe she is Ruth's soul.  I would love that.  Ruth lived it.  She was a single mom of three girls during the Depression when my grandmother's father died when she was five.  Ruth worked, raised her girls and outlived two other husbands (I think.)  I remember her living in the senior living apartments and leaning to quilt, play piano, and played Bridge.  Well in her 80s, she was the life of the party then.  I can see that in Julia.
   It will all be okay.  It isn't how we expected it to be.  And, maybe I am the one in your life that is dealing with this because I can.  I am freakin' ass strong (excuse my language) and Taurus Bull Head She Devil none the less (Okay, I have to pump up my ego just a little bit to stay as bad ass strong as I am.)  So I am here for a short spell to tell you in all my prose, once I get them out on my head on the paper, to slow it down.  Stop to smell the roses.  Or, take a picture of them.  If you are mad at something or yourself, ask, what is the real world impact if this doesn't come out the way I wanted it to?  Find the beauty in yourself.  Stop to look at the people around you, especially your children.  Don't paint a cloud black when you can line it with silver.  And, for heaven's sake, take out the trash if it is starting to stink.  (Make sure to recycle, eat free-range, use cloth shopping bags, and buy locally.)

The following is a poem I have the cycles through my head on a broken record and has since I was very little, maybe eight years old.  It has changed through the years, it has changed through the life happenings, and maybe it will change tomorrow.

Don't just look, see.
Don't just hear, listen.
Don't just eat, taste.
Don't just breath, smell.
Don't just touch, feel.
Don't just think, know.
Don't just live, be alive.