Our Love Story

First Anniversary: Still Dancing

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You fill up my senses like a night in the forest,

Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain.

Like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean,

You fill up my senses. Come fill me again.

Come, let me love you. Let me give my life to you.

Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms.

Let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you.

Come, let me love you. Come love me again.

–“Annie’s Song,” by John Denver

Steve and I celebrated 0ur first wedding anniversary this past Monday. We returned for a day to the site of our honeymoon, Grove Park Inn in Asheville, where we danced again to our “first dance” song from the wedding, John Denver’s “Annie’s Song.” The song still captures our love for the beautiful world around us, and our love for one other.

This year has held incredible joys, as well as some challenges we didn’t anticipate. But we’re still holding fast, dancing and laughing together. I am so grateful to have found this love, to have this wonderful man and partner beside me.

And hey, now we even share the same hair-do. ♥

Our story continues at www.stilllifewithcancer.com.

This is My Beach Body

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IMG_8012Like so many newlywed brides (and husbands, too), I got married, and then I gained weight. “Happy fat,” I’ve often heard those extra pounds called. I prefer “change chub.” Not because I’m not happy; I am! But I think the weight gain is less a result of the sudden onset of matrimonial bliss than it is the multitude of changes in daily routines that come with combining two adults’ lives: new foods and meal times, different sleep and waking routines, shifts in exercise habits.

Whatever the cause, I gained somewhere between 10 and 15 pounds those first 8 months of marriage. Not enough to qualify as “obese,” maybe not even “heavy,” but I’ve disliked feeling stiff and sedentary, not like myself, certainly not like the self that a few years ago was working out and running 5Ks.

IMG_8513 (Edited)I’m embarrassed to admit to being even more bothered by the appearance of my expanding silhouette in the mirror and the fact my clothes don’t fit right. I got so self-conscious about my newly rounded belly, which pudged out no matter how much I sucked it in, I was almost relieved when a day with friends at the lake was cancelled. Maybe I’ll have time to get back in shape before I go public in a bathing suit! I thought. I signed up for yoga and a running program and hit the Y a few times, my motivation definitely less health, more vanity. With a beach trip fast approaching, I began to worry over other perceived faults, like my winter white legs: all the better to show off the emerging spider veins, my dear. I contemplated scheduling a spray tan and went online to buy a couple new tankini tops to disguise my belly roll.

Then, a few weeks before our scheduled vacation, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

IMG_8261It was a surprise; perhaps such things always are. I went in for an annual mammogram and was given a clean bill of health. I returned ten days later to have a couple fluid-filled cysts drained—routine for me, as I’ve had benign cysts since my thirties. Whenever they grow large enough to be annoying or painful, I have them aspirated. The doctor used, per usual, the ultrasound to locate the cysts. As he rolled the wand over my left breast, I noticed something odd on the monitor. There was a dark mass, but it was missing a key characteristic of the manifold cysts I’d seen on the screen over the years.

“That doesn’t have the defined outline that a cyst usually does,” I said.

The doctor kept rolling the wand back and forth, back and forth. “No, that doesn’t look like a cyst,” he said quietly. “I think we’re going to need to turn this into a biopsy.”

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IMG_8493 (Edited)I would say the timing, as a newlywed, is awful, but when would it ever be good?

The cancer is treatable, survivable, thank god, though it’s going to be a long haul and an intense trip: 8 treatments over 16 weeks of chemotherapy, followed by surgery, then radiation.

Suddenly, it seemed pretty silly to worry over white legs and blue veins, or a few extra inches on my belly and hips.

My body is about to undergo a radical transformation. Chemotherapy will bring fatigue, and I will lose my hair. I may lose or gain weight, depending on how I respond to treatment. Surgery is a given, most likely a full mastectomy of one breast, possibly both. Mastectomy most always takes the nipple, and though reconstruction is a marvel these days, there will be scars. I have two small new ones already, from the biopsy and the port. And if my new breast or breasts are rebuilt from my own tissue, as my surgeon has recommended, harvesting it from my belly or back will make additional scars. (But, hey, maybe that “happy fat” will be useful!) Chemo can have permanent side effects as well, including early onset menopause. Pudgy belly and jiggly thighs notwithstanding, my current body may well be the closest it ever will be again to fitting the stringent beauty standards of smooth lines and seamless symmetry we too often impose on women.IMG_8238

As I pulled my slenderizing tankini top out of its package, I thought: WTF with these oppressive standards? Why have I—quite literally—bought into them?

A few extra fat cells, a few scars: they aren’t a threat to anything but vanity, a challenge to the ridiculously narrow and damaging ideas about beauty and the female body that women have had pounded into us for so many years. I would gladly accept living the rest of my life with a dimpled booty if I could trade it for my health, trade those fat cells for the cancerous ones growing in my breast that threaten my well-being, my very life.

But since I can’t do that, here’s what I’m going to do.

I am going to wear a bikini with pride. Now, and whenever I feel like it in the future.IMG_8444

I’m going to walk on the beach and search for shells. I’m going to go stand-up paddle-boarding. I’m going to read. Watch the sunrise. Hold my husband’s hand.

I’m going to embrace my body. It is strong, and it is vulnerable. It is normal, and it is exceptional. I will need to adapt, to gentle my body, in the coming months, because what my body, what every body, can do changes, contracts and expands over time. But whatever it can do is what matters. What it can think. What it can feel. It won’t always (ever?) be easy, practicing acceptance. But I am going to celebrate my body, for whatever it allows me to see or hear or feel or experience.

This is the only body I’ve got, and frankly, it’s on loan. Every body is. So right now, while I can, I’m going to watch the pelicans soar and dive. I’m going to frolic in the waves. I’m going to laugh as often as I can and cry when I need to. I’m going to fight, and I’m going to lean on my family and friends.

I’m a lucky woman: My body can still love. It can still know joy. It can delight, despair, heal. It, I, can still chase dreams.

It’s still life, just, for now, with cancer. And I will live it one glorious, difficult, deliberate day at a time.

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In the coming weeks I will be debuting a new blog that is currently under construction: Still Life, With Cancer. Once it’s up and running, I will link it back to FsFTB. I may still post occasionally in this space, but I hope you’ll join me on the new site to follow my story there. Until then, thank you and be well. 

The View from Here

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SquintingCouple

Squinty selfie

When my hubby Steve and I attended the local Wedding Crawl a few weeks back, we snapped a photo on the top deck corner of the Rooftop, Center in the Square. It was our attempt to reprise, in a spontaneous selfie, a shot taken from the same perspective on our wedding day, almost seven and a half months ago now. Behind us, in the background, you can see the peak of one of our Blue Ridge Mountains–which, I’m not sure–and slices of the roofs of the art museum and City Market building in our beloved downtown. The sky above and behind us is a bright, clear robin’s egg blue, the sky I’d hoped for the day we got married. In the foreground, we squint. The sun is so fiercely bright, we duck our heads forward, as we smile and try to open our eyes even a sliver against the glare.

The day we walked down the aisle, the sky was filled with clouds: rolling, steel-hued, oh-please-don’t-rain-clouds. That day, clouds were a disappointment. On the day of this photo, as we grimaced against the light, it became clear those wedding day clouds might have been a blessing. Now, as I gaze at the resulting picture, I’m reminded of a lesson I first learned on another set of cloudy-then-sunny days, long ago: you can attempt a repeat performance, but to reprise anything with any accuracy is nigh impossible.

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One summer during my twenties, I met up with my friend and former roomie Sara for a visit that included a trip to Six Flags, an amusement park just outside of Atlanta. It was a bit overcast that day, so the park was less crowded than usual. When the cloud cover broke into rain showers, the park all but emptied. Sara and I made a circuit or two of the indoor Monster Mansion ride during the worst of the rain. After it let up, we hit Splashwater Falls and made several trips down Thunder River—we were already damp, and there were practically no lines, so why not ride our faves multiple times, no waiting? When the rain stopped after an hour or two, we circled back to the car and put on the dry clothes we’d brought just in case. We returned to the park and stayed into the evening, playing Skeeball and enjoying the still-short wait times for a couple rounds on our favorite roller coaster, the Great American Scream Machine. We had such a great day and so much fun we decided to reprise our trip the following year.

Fast forward: when we arrived at Six Flags the next year, it was sunny—and steaming hot. The lines were outrageous, and, if I recall correctly, one or both of us developed a nasty headache. Sara and I had hoped to relive the fun of our first visit, but the attempt failed utterly. And our disappointment was doubled because our expectations were so high. We met up for a girls’ weekend almost every summer for several years to follow, but we never went back to Six Flags again.

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Aside from the dramatic change in weather, there were other obvious differences between Steve’s and my wedding day and the day of the squinty selfie. The day we married, we were dressed to the nines, color-coordinated, with hair and makeup (mine anyway)—not to mention the photograph itself—styled by professionals. We were surrounded by friends and family, high on love and adrenaline. On so many levels there’s simply no way to recreate that day. And maybe that’s as it should be; a wedding is, by definition, a special occasion, heightened in meaning and significance.

But not even an ordinary day can be exactly recreated. To paraphrase the wise words of Greek philosopher Heraclitus, no one can step in the same river twice: it’s not the same river, and you are not the same you. Time moves forward, and so do we. Perhaps a less eloquent way of putting it: there are no do-overs. Each moment in our lives is its own singular experience, and that’s good. That is, in fact, a gift. If we recognize it as such, we’re more likely to be present in the present. “Clinging to moments,” writes memoirist Helen Brown “is futile. The trick is to appreciate their beauty, do your best by them, and let them go as graciously as possible.”

In our reprised photo, Steve and I are a little older, a little plumper, a lot more casual, and decidedly more crinkly around the eyes than in our rooftop wedding portrait. In the months since we married, we’ve shared many more smiles, had a couple more arguments, shed a few more tears, and laughed loudly and often. We’ve snuggled and questioned and kissed and comforted through cloudy days and sunny. Each day, we discover and understand one other anew.

Yet even as the world changes and we change with it, we still stand side by side, surrounded by the town and mountains we call home, looking forward together. The view is pretty spectacular. Now we just have to be sure to keep our eyes wide open, so as not to miss a moment.

Woven Whimsy (more thoughts on nesting)

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Woven Whimsy: Stickworks by Patrick Dougherty, Atlanta Botanical Garden - Gainesville

View of Woven Whimsy: Stickworks by Patrick Dougherty, currently on display at the Atlanta Botanical Garden – Gainesville

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Woven:

Late 15th century, past participle form of weave: from the Old English wefan, meaning “to weave, form by interlacing yarn.” Cognates of weave include the Sanskrit ubhnati, “he laces together” and the Greek hyphe or hyphos, “web.” In the late 14th century weave took on the extended sense of “combine into a whole.”

Whimsy:

Circa 1600, probably related to whimwham, meaning “fanciful object” and whim, as recorded in the 1690s, meaning “caprice, fancy, sudden turn or inclination of the mind.”

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Patrick Dougherty’s “Woven Whimsy: Stickworks” at the Atlanta Botanical Garden – Gainesville. I was intrigued in part by the name of the exhibition; I am, after all, the bride who declared her wedding decor style “vintage whimsical.”

Artist Dougherty was in residence from late March until early April and created the unplanned sculpture onsite from locally harvested wood, branches, and twigs. He’s completed over 250 such sculptures and has said about working with sticks that it is “something that stirs the sense of simple shelter.” Walking inside them stirred in me the same dizzying mix of wonder, comfort, and occasional chaos that is marriage.

The sculpture creates a sense of both enclosure and openness, the whirling weave of the sticks suggesting at once movement and stillness. The outsize scale and organic simplicity places the experience somewhere between wandering beneath towering skyscrapers and exploring a cluster of fairytale cottages.

From afar, they look almost like baskets, and like all art, they hold more than the substance of their making. They feel, inside, like giant sheltering nests, if nests had doors and windows.

Nest:

Old English nest. Noun, “bird’s nest, snug retreat.” Cognates include the Sanskrit nidah, “resting place, nest.”

Nesting:

Adjective, 1650s, “making or using a nest.” Also refers to objects “fitted into one another.”

WovenWhimsy8

Where there is art, there is life. Long live whimsy!

 

All definitions adapted from the Online Etymology Dictionary.

catalyst: for change

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catalystread2

I am thrilled to introduce my readers to catalyst wedding magazine, the wedding magazine “for wedding space disrupters,” and to share that my essay, “Making a Together Home,” appears in volume two of this beautiful publication!

I love, love, love the impetus behind catalyst. The editors recognized that there was a certain sameness to wedding magazines: the brides featured in the style shoots were invariably young, thin, white, and heterosexual, and most of the articles seemed to presume a lavish budget and slavish devotion to trend as well as tradition. As a bride who failed to fit into a number of these categories—starting with “young”—I often found myself somewhere between amused and horrified at the wedding industry vision of the “ideal bride.” The real-life brides I knew, and celebrations I’d attended, were quirky, authentic, and lovely. The “real wedding” sections of some bridal magazines do feature unconventional couples and approaches, but where were the gorgeous styled photo-shoots featuring older brides and plus-size brides? Or wedding planning advice from and for same-sex couples, or stories of ceremonies that blended faith and cultural traditions? Where were the perspectives of couples who embraced love and marriage but eschewed the conventions and pressures of the wedding-industrial complex?

Enter catalyst, which editor Liz Susong has described as “a wedding magazine that value[s] diverse representation, challenge[s] gender roles, and [is] tireless in advocating for equality.” From the perspective of applied feminism, catalyst explores what “it mean(s) to choose marriage and plan a wedding in this moment in time–in this political and historical context.”

Clearly, the magazine struck a chord: since its debut last year, it’s received national media attention and has been picked up for distribution by Barnes and Noble. Check out this list of the Barnes and Noble bookstores around the country where you can find catalyst. One of them, I’m glad to report, is right here in my home of Roanoke!

It was exciting to find the magazine on the shelf and especially fun to peruse my essay—a humorous chronicle of the challenges encountered when two middle-aged people with full lives and fuller homes blend households—at the local Barnes and Noble in Valley View Mall.

Bonus: Barnes and Noble is also currently stocking the spring issue of bridebook, which features a brief story about our big day, along with those of a number of other area celebrations, in its substantial real wedding stories section.

When I first visited the bridal magazine aisle looking for inspiration shortly after Steve and I got engaged, I felt overwhelmed and under-represented. It matters, seeing faces, bodies, lives that look like yours, reflecting back at you from the pages and pixels of the media. I’m so glad and grateful catalyst is leading the charge, and I’m honored to have my work be a part of the change.

If you see a copy of catalyst in your local Barnes and Noble, snap a pic with it and share it below, and/or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @catalystwedco @40firstimebride.