The Hazard Chronicles

After a long, restless night of travel, I am sitting in the Spokane airport this morning. The time is 4:31 a.m. This is 7:30 “my time” so I’m wide awake, but I’m guessing I’ll be pretty beat by the end of the day. During the course of the next 4 days I will go to 4 separate job interviews. Hopefully at least one of them is productive. The other objective of this trip is to make contacts with people who will be able to help us with our move to the area after I (hopefully) get a job. Before Rachel dropped me off at the airport in Cleveland we noted that this next week could be either “one of the most important weeks of our lives,” or it could be a “total waste of time and money.” Tune in next week to see how things turn out.

Anyway, this last week was really good...well, actually I’d like to say that, and for the most part it was, but overall it wasn’t good at all. Before we go there though I have to apologize to Rachel and Evelyn for not including their spectacular date night in last week’s post. Evelyn had a wonderful time at Chuck-E-Cheese’s and came home with a lot of cheap little toys that she won (most of them have since found their way into the garbage- or Jackson’s mouth). We really enjoy this tradition we have started of taking our kids on a one-on-one monthly date and I really hope that we will be able to keep it up as they get older.

So, why was this week pretty much a bummer? That is a hard question to answer, but at the same time so simple to explain. This week we found out that my mom has cancer.

My dad called to tell us while we were on the way to Playhouse Square on a date. We had just realized that the ice-cream shop that Rachel had mapped out for us to eat dissert at was actually an ice-cream factory with no samples, and I was in the middle of teasing her mercilessly for her mistake. When my dad called we jovially talked for a little while about Rachel’s misdirection, but then he said that he was “calling with a little bit of bad news.”

At that point the first thought that went through my head was that our family cat had died. But then I realized that she was already dead. But then I realized that I actually didn’t know if she was dead or not, and that if she was, it didn’t really matter to me. She was a good cat, but I just wasn’t all that attached to her. Then again, maybe I should feel bad that she died, whenever that was, because she was, after all, a part of the family…

So involved was I in trying to remember if our poor stupid cat was still counted among the living that I must not have totally registered my dad’s explanation about how Mom had gone to the doctor and they found a tumor via CAT scan that was about the size of a baseball. I don’t think that it dawned on me the implications of was being said when he explained how the tumor was discovered to be malignant and how the next day my mom would be in surgery having half of her colon removed in a frantic attempt by the doctors to remove the cancer before it had a chance to spread.

No, I don’t think I really realized what was going on at that point, and to tell you the truth I still don’t. The thing is that we have no definitive answers. We know it was cancer, and uring the surgery the doctors discovered that it had penetrated the intestinal lining. Because of this there is a good chance that chemo-therapy will commence soon after the recovery period from this surgery. But we don’t KNOW. The doctors tell us that on Tuesday or Wednesday they will have more answers, but that until then we just have to hope for the best.

I think I am good at just hoping for the best. Another word for it is DENIAL, and I am a master at this. When I get sick I don’t admit it to anyone- not even myself. If the car makes a bad noise I convince myself that I didn’t hear it. And if my mom gets cancer I utterly refuse to believe that it is actually happening until I have irrefutable, concrete evidence that I can’t deny any longer. At least this is what I tell myself.

So what did we do when we found out? We went to Playhouse Square and watched Shrek, the Musical. We laughed and we cheered. We had fun. We HAD to have fun. I FORCED myself to have fun. I have never concentrated so hard on having fun. Because the fact that this actor with green makeup is dancing around the stage making burping noises somehow lets me believe that I am still in control and that nothing has changed since we received that dumb phone call. Somehow, if I can still laugh at this play, then I know that everything will be okay and that the biggest problems in life are about finding ice-cream factories instead of parlors and worrying about a maybe-dead cat who (sorry Sara) didn’t really mean all that much to me.

…But really I am scared.

My mom and dad. Aren't they the greatest?

Here we are at Playhouse Square

Evelyn and Adalie- The two most beautiful little girls in the world!