She is the smartest woman I know. We first met when we were three. She came to visit my kindergarten. I convinced her to get into a little red wagon and pulled it around as fast as my stubby little legs could carry me. I then let it go so that it crashed with a satisfying thwack into a brick wall. It was the kindergarten equivalent to hazing -- we did it to all the new kids. She somehow saw past that introduction and we became “bestest friends in the whole wide world” – until we left for respective boarding schools after 8th grade.
Today, some 35 years later, our lives could not be more different. I probably have more common experiences with the kid that mows my lawn than I do with her. But there we were, once again connected. This time by that disease that doesn’t recognize class, age, education, profession, or marital status – breast cancer. And once again, I find myself being strangely thankful for this curse/blessing.
When she told me she’d been diagnosed I swung into gear, able to provide a little encouragement, a little advice, a little perspective and an offer to take her to chemo. I knew that when you’re going through this, you need to laugh and I figured I could dredge up enough silliness from our childhood.
Even in the two years since I went thru it, you can tell that things have improved. When she picked me up at the airport, she looked wonderful, wearing a chic wig and looking much better than anyone going in for round 4 of Andryomyacin and Cytoxan has a right to. She’s incredibly positive and coping and very pragmatic about the challenges she’s facing and we spent a fair amount of time talking about wigs, and radiation and the usual stuff. (my biggest accomplishment of the day was to get her to wear the wig that was most unlike her former coiff. It was very blonde, very cute, and made her look like a cross between Doris Day and Meg Ryan.)
But mostly I learned who she was and just how extraordinary a woman she really is.
She’s so different from most of the people you meet every day. Incredibly smart, literate, articulate, THE authority on what she does. But totally self-effacing and far more interested in what you have to say and your view of the world. She doesn’t babble, like most of us do, she chooses her words carefully, and it’s always the exactly right one. She has never lost the thirst for knowledge and the drive to know more that she had when we were in grade school. She listens carefully, and comments on what you say with extraordinary insight, forcing you to look at what you just said from an entirely new light. She observes, listens carefully and connects dots before you even realize there are dots. It astounds me that I used to be able to keep up with her academically (okay, don’t go checking my grades, I may not have been consistent, but occasionally I managed)
What was wonderful about the last 24 hours was that it turns out that although our paths have diverged so much, we still share a tremendous amount of common bonds that go far beyond breast cancer. And even beyond a common hatred of the Bush Administration. We both love to garden, and use it as a refuge from the hassles of dealing with cancer and other and the other vicissitudes of life. We both still miss our dads, and still have great memories of our childhoods, whether it was getting lost in the woods in Connecticutor playing on the beach in Long Island. Mostly, she reminded me of what we do have in common, a love of words and literature and thought provoking discussions. An appreciation of beauty and art, and Paris and language. So once again, I find myself feeling grateful to this thing called cancer for giving me, yet another unexpected gift.
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