This month’s musings may be a bit disjointed since I’m actually trying to write my column while driving back from the Thanksgiving holiday. Before anyone gets too worried about my safety I should probably make sure to say I’m the passenger, not the driver!
We tried something different this year. My brother’s two oldest daughters are both living out here in the Southwest. One works in Dallas and the other is attending school in Flagstaff, so we all thought it would be fun to rent a great big house in Scottsdale for a few days and use that as our “central” meeting place.
My mom had flown out for a visit a couple of weeks ago, so we were assigned the task of driving her from California to Arizona. It was sort of like a hand-off of the maternal kind. I had to be responsible for her wellbeing until I could make contact with my brother – and then he got to take over. When you are the oldest of six children and you have the responsibility of safeguarding your mother, you know you’d better do a darned good job. No one wants to be remembered as the kid who managed to lose the matriarch – or got her arrested – or took her to a strip club (although knowing my mother, all of those things would be great fun!)
Here’s what the drive from Santa Barbara to Scottsdale is like: you drive for about 100 miles where there is something fairly interesting to look at, and then you are in the desert. If you haven’t been in the desert let me just say – sand, cactus, more sand, even more cactus – and to top it all off air so dry you can watch your skin wrinkle (if the sun isn’t blinding you!)
What you have to wonder while you are whiling away the hours it takes to traverse the desert is just how in heavens name anyone ever got through this place (or stayed for that matter) before the luxury of fast transport and air conditioning. It’s very humbling to realize that not all that long ago people died trying to find their way through the heat and vast nothingness.
I found myself gazing out the car window and trying to imagine what it would feel like if you had pretty much no idea where you were headed, no concept of how long it might take, and no inkling of whether or not you would reach your final destination safely. As my mind wandered I began to realize that quite often I feel like breast cancer has sort of dropped me off in the middle of nowhere and I’m supposed to try to find my way home safely.
Since breast cancer first entered my life nearly 12 years ago, I have often felt like I was trapped in a sort of emotional desert when it came to feeling hope or joy. Memories of those emotions seemed to dry up and scatter to the four winds when I was diagnosed for the second time. It was as though all of the promise and optimism I’d been able to gather turned to dust. I spent many months feeling sorry for myself and being frightened. I felt like I had been cheated out of just being able to experience life without the constant worry that it was going to end prematurely.
On this recent holiday trip, as I pondered my fate and contemplated the passing landscape, I had a moment of complete clarity and joy (yes, joy) when I remembered that even the desert manages to bloom with just a little bit of rain. And when it does, it is so gloriously beautiful you forget that just a short while ago it was barren and forbidding. Perhaps this is what kept those pioneers on their quest. Perhaps this is what we should keep in mind when life seems to hand us impossible journeys – that beauty, joy – even hope may be just around the next bend!
I suppose at some point (hopefully not too far in the future) those of us who have dealt with breast cancer during this day and age will be remembered as pioneers as well! With any luck there will come a time where treatments (if they are still even necessary) will be painless and simple. Women will read about what we had to endure and make comments like: “How in the world did they get through it?” Or “Can you imagine, they went all that way in the wrong direction before they realized what they were doing wrong?”
Actually, what I’m really hoping they say if and when they hear about us is, “Breast cancer. What was that?”