A Tabloid Look at 2009

WOMAN DUCT TAPES FAMILY TO CHAIR

BEAVERTON – Fed up with family members whose lifestyles take them increasingly far from home, Bonnie Gorshe found a unique solution: duct taping them to a living room chair.

“When I managed to get them all together for Christmas I had a little surprise waiting for them,” she said. Police called to the scene found Steve, Alex and Ian taped, full of cookies, and unhurt.

It is unknown at this time what pushed the wife and mother of two over the edge, but it is reported that husband Steve traveled extensively for business this past year, often overseas, and son Alex remained in Ashland after leaving college, a five hour drive away.

When questioned Ian said, “I still have a year and a half of high school left before college. I don’t know why she taped me, I haven’t even gone anywhere yet. I just wish my hands were unbound so I could play video games.” Alex attempted to negotiate his release by offering to come home more often, provided the gas was paid for.

Officer John Q. Madeupname had this to say: “I don’t know why they’re complaining. She could have used a hot glue gun. Those cookies are good!”

When "How Are You?" is a Trick Question

When people ask each other how they are there are only a few categories of answers that fit sufficiently into the socially accepted norm well enough to leave the questioner feeling as though the social contract has been satisfactorily fulfilled. The categories, from what I can tell, are these:

1. Fine, thank you. You?
2. Fantastic! (usually this person works in sales)
3. Pretty good, but (insert modifier common to mankind, such as fatigue, which can lead to further conversation of the commiserating and weakly bonding sort).
4. (Sharing current, actual, dramatic news, such as an auto accident).

Anybody stepping outside the bounds of these categories risks being shown an odd facial expression. Horrors! And yet in our busy lives when so much of our human interaction consists of little more than the polite question and the categorically correct answer it can easily come to pass that most of the people we interact with have no idea what is actually going on with us.

These days when people ask me how I am I have a disconcerting tendency to answer in a way that does not fit with one of the accepted categories. I have different categories, which depend on when the last time was that I was at the doctor and what the latest test result was. My categories are:

a. Fine! I think.

b. (gazing off into space with an odd expression) How are you?

c. (vague, undifferentiated arm waving) I should know more next week.

d. (dramatic shrug and strangled laugh) (description of some new symptom)

As you can imagine, I get a lot of odd looks in response, if not outright fleeing. But the problem is, I have cancer and a damaged heart, and “fine” is not really an honest answer. Oh sure, we all lie to each other all the time. But if I just go around lying then I create two problems. First, the caring people don’t really like to be lied to. They want to know what’s up. And second, life is a very lonely experience when nobody has the slightest idea what your life is like.

These are the facts of my health, which I am going to say succinctly to get it all over with. I promise not to turn into the whining old auntie who nobody wants to visit, and go into a long list of complaints, but there are a lot of people who don’t know what happened and who would like to know and perhaps even feel bad that I didn’t tell them, as though I didn’t care enough about them to tell them.

Several years ago during a routine physical my doctor found a lump on my thyroid gland which was tested and found to be cancerous (http://www.endocrineweb.com/capap.html). There were no symptoms. It is unknown what caused it. The gland was removed and I was given radiation treatment. A year later I was scanned and more cancer was discovered in my neck. I was given a huge amount of radiation. During the second treatment a whole bunch of damage was done to various other parts of me, much of which is under control, but the worst part was that my heart was severely damaged (https://health.google.com/health/ref/Dilated+cardiomyopathy). When this was diagnosed it was functioning at 7% (ejection fraction).

Fast forward through all sorts of weird stuff like losing all sense of taste for a while, damaged salivary and tear glands, new allergies, etc. (kicking each other under the table – sorry Auntie but we have to go, and um, walk the cat) My current status is that I am continually being monitored for thyroid cancer, and I have a heart that is a “mass of scar tissue” in the words of my cardiologist. I generally feel pretty good except my stamina is poor. I go for 3-4 mile walks to try to stay as fit as possible. I am unable to go to high altitudes because I can’t breathe well enough if the air is thin. Goodbye, mountains!

This is what it’s like living with cancer: last spring I had just gotten adjusted to the fact that I can’t go into the mountains anymore because of my heart, and had put the cancer out of my mind, when I went to a routine appointment with the cancer doctor. He found a lump on my neck at the site of the previous cancer. I then spent the entire summer having test after test trying to figure out what that lump is. Some of the tests seemed to indicate it was just a normal lymph node, and some tests were inconclusive. I never felt like I could make any plans because I didn’t know if some test was going to come back positive for cancer and I was going to have to have surgery, radiation, and all that again. The lump is still there but the latest test indicates it is almost certainly just a lymph node. So all summer it was present in my mind: did my cancer come back? Am I okay? I ran this train of thought past my internist because I don’t want to be paranoid. I said, is every swollen lymph node, every cough, every mysterious pain going to make doctors test me every which way for cancer again? Can’t I ever just relax about this? And he said, that’s just how it is when you have cancer.

This is what it’s like living with heart disease: you go to a doctor for anything, anything at all, and all they want to talk about is your heart. They spend a lot of time with the stethoscope. You’re like, hey, I sprained my ankle, or I cut my finger, and they’re listening to your heart.

The two biggest killers of women in the US are cancer and heart disease and I have them both, and neither of them was because I didn’t eat right or exercise enough or any of those things everyone is trying to do to increase longevity. But just watch, I will probably die from something completely different. That will make the best story!

The Reunion

Serendipity

The airplane flew right along the edge of the bay and my window seat looked out on the city where I grew up at an altitude low enough to make every feature recognizable. I got oriented with UC Berkeley, saw The Claremont where I would soon be staying, observed the rebuilt burn area which remains remarkably lacking in foliage of any discernable kind, and traced along through Montclair to my old house on the crest of the ridge at the end of Shepherd Canyon, Joaquin Miller and Montera schools, and Skyline High. Up until that point the idea of returning to my origins had been abstract. This flyover plunged me into Oakland so rapidly I felt my body parts would all fly apart. I wanted to grab my husband and say, “Lookit! Lookit!” But he would not be arriving until the next day and I was alone.

The Scent of Eucalyptus

I drove the rental car up into the hills, into the crazy winding streets that stymied the firefighters during the big firestorm. Coming from Portland the greens of Oakland seem gloomy and half dead. Olive, avocado, khaki, and dust are the colors of the Oakland hills. To appreciate the native ambience requires a willingness to sit peacefully in the sun and soak in the resinous aroma that rises to meet you on thermal updrafts from the hillside below, or to stand amid the eucalyptus trees in the fog and allow yourself to believe the rest of the world that has dissolved into whiteness truly does not exist.

Doing it Old School

There is a sign on my elementary school that tells people that the unauthorized may not go there, but nobody stopped me from walking a lap around the place and even peeking in the buildings because I look like someone’s mom. That’s all part of having grown up in the Oakland/Berkeley area in the 60’s, we think nothing of walking past signs that tell us we must not pass if we determine that the sign is unreasonable. We challenge authority. Some of this authority challenging was taught us by the occasional hippy teacher employed by the school district, as a matter of fact. To this day I decide for myself if I will walk someplace or not, read something or not, watch something or not, say something or not, because I am a self determining creature of the universe, and besides, I look like someone’s mom. This way I was able to see for myself that the cafeteria tables don’t fold down from the walls anymore.

I truly wonder how many years they will keep portables in the exact same places they have always been before they break down and concede these classrooms are not a temporary adjustment to a fluctuating student population and finally expand the building.

Old Houses, Old Haunts

Just up the hill from Joaquin Miller School is a rock that someone began painting before I was born. It’s pretty big now – noticeably bigger than the last time I saw it. If someone were to cut it in half there would be all these layers of paint and a little rock inside. I drove up that way, remembering the place where Katie Wright almost died on her bike, and visited my old-old street. Things really hadn’t changed much. The houses looked fairly well cared for and a little tired, kind of like me I suppose. I saw the house where Kristen Meredith, who did die, lived. Then I continued up the hill past Susan McConnell’s, Julie Lewis’s, and Aileen Scherer’s houses, and up to Skyline Gate. This was the point where a mood change began in me that felt chemical. I’d been having a wonderful time but when I got to Redwood Regional Park where I’d spent such a lot of time it all began to feel wrong. I kept driving up the hill to my old house, now occupied by someone I never met, glanced at it, turned the car around and fled. It just felt bad, wrong: I didn’t belong there. Skipping the last point of interest on my agenda, The Hills Swim and Racquet, I headed back down the hill.

The Claremont

“Is this your first time at The Claremont?”

Oh, no. I’ve been coming to The Claremont for one reason or another since I was a baby. My parents didn’t believe in babysitters and I was taken to all sorts of dinners and functions there. There used to be “dancing waters” which were people’s idea of quality entertainment in the late 50’s. You had to wear white gloves when you went there. As the years went by the grand old hotel went into a serious decline. By the time I was in high school it was in real trouble. My wonderful friend, the late Brad King (who I will miss the rest of my life), and I used to dress up in 30’s era outfits and go on dates that would include a visit there. Unfortunately there was almost nothing worth visiting at that point, it was more the idea of the place. I remember a Muzak company had rented space in the lobby, that’s how low it had sunk. A few years later Brad was hired by a Hollywood film company to be a liaison with Dunsmuir House where he was on the Board and where they were filming a ghastly movie called Burnt Offerings, and he invited me to the wrap party which was held at The Claremont. I got to hang out with Oliver Reed, Karen Black, the director and crew. Oliver Reed kissed me. (That’s another dead guy. Sheesh.) I was glad someone dumped some capital into the place and turned it back into what it is meant to be. I stay at The Claremont whenever I go to Oakland since the family house was sold. In Oakland it’s either been The Claremont or a scaremont.

The Reunion Itself

Does it say something when the invitation says it starts at 7:00 and you show up at ten till and there are already 50 people there? And that by the end of the evening there were 50 people more than the venue actually allowed? This gathering had a synergy to it. The jungle drums of Facebook had whipped people into a frenzy.

After 35 years we were just happy to see people, and it didn’t seem to matter whether anyone was in your clique in 1974 or not. If you remembered them and they had a lot of the same experiences as you, good enough. Because there were so many of us a lot of the conversation followed the same patterns, all shouted over the din. Where do you live now? How many kids? What are you doing? You look the same! You look great! There were conversations I would have liked to have had about how being from that time and place made us who we are and how we are perhaps a little different from people who grew up in other times and places. I have seen patterns and I have theories and I would like to compare notes. But five hours was not nearly long enough. Not when you just found out the vital stats of one person when, oh my gosh! Is that? It is! He looks exactly the same!

Will there be a time when we go to reunions and reminisce? Does that start when we are 70? Or did we just need more time? People tossed out tiny word pictures of the past and moved on to who they are now, which was a lot more interesting to me. Everyone was interesting to me. I regret that I live so far away from all but one person, Anne Wilson, but I am glad that Facebook has networked so many of us together. Just as our best pals in kindergarten are not necessarily our best friends in high school I get the feeling that adulthood has changed all of us in ways that would reshuffle who our friend choices would be.