I spent a little time in the hammock this summer, even more time on the couch. I have always loved the languid, laid back, mellow qualities of summer. But as much as I love this season, I’m usually ready for it to end about this time of year.
As the sun sets on summer, I’m looking forward to fall. The season of back to school has always connected with ideas of fresh starts, forward motion, and momentum for me. This is the time of year when we buckle down and focus. We re-establish routines, and get serious about getting things done.
My last does of Taxol was truncated after just a few minutes, so it’s been a month since I received a full dose of chemo. The unscheduled break is over, it’s time to restart this seek and destroy mission against those cancer cells. Tomorrow I go back in and we will start a new type of chemotherapy. I’m ready to get back into the swing of things and make some progress in this battle.
I’ve had the hardest time getting a good picture of you lately. You’re not one to sit still and wait for the shot. You’ve got things to do, places to go, bookshelves to climb. Each night when I download the photos from my memory card, I sort through picture after picture after picture of the back of your head. It seems I’m just following you around.
And that’s alright.
I love your sense of adventure. I love your curiosity. I love your explorer’s spirit. Well, except when I need a nap. I don’t know what we would do without a play pen. I’m afraid you’d be off trekking in Nepal by now if we hadn’t come up with some way to fence you in. Not that there’s anything wrong with trekking in Nepal. In fact if that’s something you want to do someday, far, far into the future, I hope you do. Just not yet. I’m addicted to your hugs and kisses, and I sleep so much better when I can hear your little baby snores in the next room.
I worry that you’ve been spending too much time trapped in our living room watching TV. On the other hand, you’ve learned things from the TV that I didn’t think to teach you. You learned how to jump! Seriously. Ok, well, your toes aren’t quite leaving the ground yet, but you get your shoulders and heels moving in an upward motion while you chirp “Jump!” It’s the cutest thing. I was wondering where you got that from because I don’t really use the word jump around you, and I’m really not much of a jumper. It’s not like I’ve been modeling this behavior. But then I watched an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba with you, and watched you jump along through the “Jumpy Jump Jump Jump Jump Jump” song. I wonder what other important lessons I’m forgetting to teach you.
As much as you love Yo Gabba Gabba, your favorite TV show is Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. You even recognize the lead in to the show where it is announced. You get up and squeal and dance, waving your little arms, through the opening and even through much of the show. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you as happy as you are while you are dancing to that theme song. My favorite time of day is when Ni Hao, Kai-Lan comes on because I love seeing you so completely enraptured. I’ve heard many kids have specific songs or shows that really get them dancing. Your Uncle Timmy used to go ape over the song “It’s so easy to fall in love” by Linda Rondstadt. Apparently when I was little my song was the theme song to the Davy Crockett Show.
Your vocabulary is just exploding these days. I don’t think I could even catalog all the words I’ve heard from you. Today I handed you a banana, and you said “banana.” Three syllables! That is so cool. You can name off body parts like nose, toes, ear, eye (although it’s quite alright if you refrain from poking my eye out while identifying the eyes on my face). Your favorite words at the moment are “ball” and the previously mentioned “jump.” You are getting so much more effective in communicating with us. I’ve been a complete failure at teaching you to sign, with the exception of the sign for “eat.” This is not your fault at all. You see, teaching you the sign requires that I actually remember what the sign is myself. It’s not happening. In fact you may actually be correctly signing entire dissertations at me, but I’m just not getting it. On the other hand, we have “eat” nailed. And that has saved us so much stress. At the very least, I know when you’re hungry. I completely understand why supermoms teach their kids to sign.
It’s amazing to watch your brain develop. You are figuring things out so quickly these days. Last month Mary Jane made a game for you that was simply a little canister with a slot in the lid combined with a stack of poker chips. You love that game. You’ll pop those poker chips in through the slot, one by one, then bring it back to me so I can empty it and you start all over again. Recently, you’ve started sorting the chips into piles of blue, red, and white, and then pushing them through the slot in groups by color. You are learning your shapes and anymore when I give you a cracker, it’s not so much a cracker as it is a circle or a square. You have also started counting, or at least I think that’s what you are trying to do. You’ll move a stack of items, like the poker chips, from one pile to the other, saying, “two” with each item. Every number is two, but I think you’re starting to get the idea. “Two, two, two, two…” You’re too cute.
You’ve gotten a lot more affectionate in the past couple months, and let me tell you, that does your Mama’s heart a lot of good. You’re still a go, go, go kind of girl, but now you take a break every so often and come over and give me a hug and a kiss. Unbidden. I love that. Surprise kisses are awesome! I think sometimes you know when I’m having a bad day and need extra hugs, too. You’re an amazingly perceptive little girl. I hope I don’t burden you too much with my illness, especially as time goes on, because taking care of Mommy is not your responsibility. But I do love your little hugs and kisses.
This last little piece I want to put in here because I think there’s a chance you might argue with me about it in the future. Your favorite food right now is broccoli. Yes, that’s right. Broccoli. If I’m eating broccoli, you will try to take it away from me so you can eat it yourself. I can eat chocolate all day and it’s safe, but my broccoli you will steal. That’s alright. You can eat broccoli all day long if you like. It’s that good for you.
You are growing up so much right now. I miss the little baby you used to be, but I am so proud of the little girl that you are becoming.
My father built floor to ceiling cupboards along the walls when he closed in the garage of my childhood home. The top shelf of these storage units was four feet from the ceiling, just enough space for a fourth grader to comfortably nest. I would climb to that top shelf with a blanket, a pillow, a flashlight, a jar of marshmallow fluff, and a book. Everything a ten year old girl needs for happiness.
And I was happy when I was holed away in my little nest. It was my space. My quiet time. My place where I could be wholly myself with no roles to play. And as the only girl in a family with four boys, it was a safe place for me to be girly.
But mostly it was about the books.
I loved to read. I went through several books a week, often reading an entire chapter book in one sitting. I loved the Little House on the Prairie series, Little Women, Little Men, and the rest of the Louisa May Alcott books, Kidnapped, Heidi, The Swiss Family Robinson.
I loved to read. Past tense.
Somewhere along the way I lost the joy of reading. Maybe all those years of mutlitasking caught up with me, because now when I sit down to read, I can’t just read. I have to be doing something else at the same time. If I try to read without some other distraction, my mind will find one anyway.
Maybe the the ability to enjoy a book has been educated out of me. Oh, I can plow through a book in record time if it’s for school. But the intensity of reading for data, studying for exams, and culling information for papers has left me impatient with florid writing styles that take their time in revealing information. Give me the facts, preferably in a bulleted format.
I suppose I could also blame this on chemo brain, which is a very real condition that makes it much more difficult for those who have endured chemotherapy to retain and quickly process information. But in truth, this situation began a long time before I knew I had cancer.
The frustration in all of this is the fact that the love of reading is tied up in my self image. I think of myself as someone who loves to read. I present myself to the world as someone who loves to read. The amount of money I spend on library fines and book stores would suggest that I’m the kind of person who loves to read.
What I love, it turns out, is the potential of a good book. Oh, and the cover. I love to judge a book by it’s cover. There’s nothing like finding a great cover paired with a well written blurb on the back to get my fingertips tingling. Oh, this is going to be good.
And it is, usually. For the first 20 minutes. If I make it that far. But odds are my toddler will climb to the top of the bookshelf, or I’ll realize it’s 6pm and I haven’t figured out what’s for dinner yet, or I’ll notice the polish on my toes is chipped, and this is just taking too long anyways.
What I really want to read is:
I was sad and my life was a mess
I got my hands on an unrealistic amount of money
I went to Italy and ate a lot of food
I went to India and met a very wise redneck from Texas
I went to Indonesia and fell in love
bulletpoints.
See, was that so hard?
But I hate that. The snob in me is cringing at what I just wrote. The snob in me wants to analyze Eat, Pray, Love, to argue about it and disect it and, and, and, … but that means I have to come up with the attention span I had in fourth grade – an attention span long enough to actually finish a book.
I love books. I love the idea of books. I want to love reading books. I miss loving reading books. I want to love reading books again.
Has anyone else lost and refound their book mojo? How did you do it?
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