As Yet Unfinished

I spent today’s gorgeous sunshine sanding and stripping the deck furniture and priming it for it’s eventual coat of bright apple green. Repotted the habaneros, purple basil, and purslane. Took a long walk which deepened the tan I got in Mexico. Am planning something involved and delicious for dinner.

It’s crucial I stay busy today. Tomorrow is my six-month scan - contrast CT, chest X-ray, with their requisite early appointment times and painful IV installations. Though tomorrow is nothing more than routine procedures I have undergone a dozen times through this wooden rollercoaster called cancer, I know the day is rushing toward me where I have to face the results, whatever they might be. What direction will my life take me in the next few days? Can you fathom the deeply existential and absurd not-knowing of all this? Bustling through the dirt in my garden and washing paintbrushes and making shopping lists because it forces me to stay in the present, and all I am given to know is that time feels like it is slowing to a stop; the large machine awaits.

I’m terribly scared and nervous, which helps nothing and no one.

Today is the one year anniversary of my diagnosis.

Since then I’ve become a published author, created two well-known blogs, designed jewelry for the Golden Globes, become a resident of Andersonville in an apartment that’s almost too big, evolved into a gym rat, begun my first vegetable garden, read seventy-seven books, deepened meaningful friendships, scheduled a vacation to the western coast of Mexico, come closer to inner stillness, danced like a maniac, learned how awesome vegetarianism can be, drank 527 green smoothies, expanded my minifig collection to a really ridiculous number, thrown some epic parties, grown closer to my parents, bought a pair of jeans that make my ass look incredible, worked full-time from home, taken naps whenever I needed one, and in the process, have become a calmer and healthier (not to mention happier) person.

Sure, I spent a lot of that time engaged in other, not-so-wonderful things - things involving stitches and bandages and infections, plastic tubes and white boards and measuring my pee - but you’ve got pages and pages of posts to read all about that, should you need a review. I certainly do not.

I have spent the days leading up till this milestone worrying about what it all MEANS. You know? THIS DAY MUST MEAN SOMETHING. I must commemorate it in a meaningful way! It’s the artist and writer in me, I suppose. However, upon sitting down at the breakfast to which I treated myself this morning, it dawned on me: just having the opportunity to meet this mile marker on the road of my life is meaningful. Anything else is just flair on my TGI-Friday’s vest, isn’t it? There is no button better than the big ‘I’M STILL ALIVE’ button. Besides…look at that list! I had a rare manifestation of a difficult cancer and went through hell to banish it! Radical surgeries, months of radiation, permanent changes to my voice, et cetera, ad nauseum. I could have stayed sick. I could have stayed sad. I could have stayed down. But I didn’t, and I am starting to believe that it’s because that is not how I am wired.

That’s the lesson this year.

The spinach seedlings now live in their own container, along with new seeds sunk today. Ditto the Genovese basil. Purple basil and purslane seeds planted, just to see if they’ll come up this early. Kale, habanero, and strawberries looking healthy. Diabolical machinations include grabbing lemon thyme, thyme, rosemary, sage, and chive plants within the next week, acquiring long rectangular containers for the terrace ledges, and looking into grape tomato varieties. Everything smells like earth and it’s incredible.