and just like that...

A call came today telling us her cancer is back.  They had removed it in both breasts a few months ago and we had thought it was fine, it was gone.

But they didn't get it all.  They must have missed part of it.

And now she needs chemo.

We were just sitting on the couch resting, watching stupid TV, and the call came with this new information.

And the tears came with it.  And the sadness...because it's back.

"We will all say prayers, we will keep her in our prayers."

It's all we can do, really.

unplugged

It's been two and a half years since I turned off my email.  Every day I check it.  I leave it on at all hours and wait for that little "ding" sound the phone makes to let you know that something has come - something urgent - something needing me, now!

I keep that little black phone near me all the time for fear that a big emergency will arise and I will not be the first to see it, respond to it, know about it.  If I go more than 5 minutes without checking my phone I frantically search for it, certain that there will be many, many notifications.  For what?  Of what?  I don't know.

But for two and half years I have not disabled my work email.  It's been attached to me wherever and whenever I go.  But last week, I turned it off.  I took it off my phone completely, if only for a little while...

And it was scary.

The moment I did it I wondered - what if someone needs me?  what if there is a question no one else can answer?  what if there is an emergency?  I thought through every scenario and in the end, just got too tired to think any more.

And you know what?  It's been a week and a half without my work email, and the world has not stopped turning.  Life has gone on just just just fine.  And I guess it all makes you realize how indispensable we all really are.  Not inconsequential, just indispensable.

Perhaps it's our egos that make us believe that we are that needed and that we are wanted.  Perhaps it's just our need to feel wanted.  Perhaps it's our belief that if we control things then we don't have anyone to blame but ourselves if they go awry.

I don't know, again - it's just too much thinking...

But this is the first time that I have been cut off from work completely and it's a strange, strange feeling...and I'll tell you one thing - it' gives a LOT of time for thinking about other things.

hammock and juice

Dad put up the hammock yesterday.  The one they bought in Peru.  I'm pretty sure my sister, niece, and I wore the other one out on our last visit.  When I had energy - when I jumped and laughed and moved about. 

It's a little different now.  Slower.  I don't have the same energy.  I sleep a lot.  A lot. But that's what they say I need to do.  To get better.

Mom and Dad just got a juicer.  And Dad's especially excited about it.  I showed them a beet juice recipe that I like and yesterday morning they were both in the kitchen measuring things out, washing vegetables, and making that very same beet juice.  This morning Dad had made three different kinds of juice.  Three glass cups, filled to the rim, sat on the breakfast table when I came downstairs.  "Just have whichever one you feel like, I made them for you," dad says, resting a hand on my shoulder.  I drink the one he likes the best - I know this because he has been speaking of the frozen strawberries in the freezer since I arrived.  And it's delicious.  It gives me a bit of life.

Later Mom gently guides me to the hammock, "the sun is good for you," she says.  I lie down and my legs begin to burn from the sun so Mom brings over the sunscreen and puts in on my legs.  I am so tired I just lay my head back.  The sun starts to creep up, almost covering me completely.  Mom brings a sheets, drapes it over the hammock and blocks the intensity of the sun.  I'm so grateful but I don't have the energy to tell her how much.  

And then she tells me to close my eyes.  And she stands there and sways the hammock back and forth and says prayers for me.  She sings them - in Farsi - like she used to do when I was little.  

And I fall asleep.

the new normal?

I'm sitting at an airport restaurant in Toronto between flights, eating tikka masala.

I don't think I even like tikka masala.  I enjoy it every once in while, but will only seek it out maybe once a year.  Weird cravings these days... No, not pregnant.

I say this not to insult the entire cuisine of a region, but to illustrate how out of place things feel.
It's the beginning of December, I'm supposed to be at work. 9-5. Or is it 7-7?  Either way.

But here I am.  At the airport.  At the restaurant dedicated to Grey Goose(?!) with extremely cheesy decor, inundated with announcements in French, sitting behind a guy that has "Death Racer" defined on the back of his shirt.

It's life dictating for you.  It's something else guiding you.  Outside of your control.

And somehow you are there.  Like you have arrived and not sure what else is to come.

I don't even remember the last time I opened this.
I read my last post and I have no idea who I am even talking about.

It's been that long.

Barely even recognize myself.

I have to start somewhere.