May 2012
1 post
Ignorant Superstition.
The Joy Report: Mother’s Day! This is the first mother’s day, I think, since becoming a mother, that is actually less rather than more work. Usually I am buried under dried play-dough figurines and expectations and all the same old chores and responsibilities, when what I really want is to run off to the movies by myself in honor of the day. But today! My kids made me go back to bed...
March 2012
6 posts
Holy Week Mini-Prayer Throwdown.
Rafe dances in the lavender, 2003, Beverly, MA.
Don’t you want to be this free, this tuned-in to Creation? Here’s your chance.
I sent this challenge out to my church, and posted it on my FB page, and now it’s your turn. Are you something of a writer? Do you wonder about God, have a regular prayer practice, wish you had a regular prayer practice? Here’s a way to...
Clean Scan #6.
People!
I’m home again home again jiggity jig, on this fine Boston spring day, with another clean scan under my belt. Yahoo!
This is how I feel today (super-sleuth types will note that this is not me, but actually my daughter in a fabulous denim pantsuit I picked up for her at Goodwill last week):
Things went so smoothly this morning—scan at 8:30, visit with the beaming Dr. B at...
TGFF!
I got a CT scan and Dr. B appointment for Friday morning. YES! And a health insurance number. I’m so mad about private health insurance right now that I feel like doing something bad, like posting it here for all of you to use. Impersonate me! Go stock up on meds! Get that thing done that you’ve been putting off for ages! Hell, I think I even get chiropractic—knock yourself...
Hold the phones.
So ($%&*(!@) I’m not getting my CT scan tomorrow. Peter started a new job a few weeks (back at Mothah Hahvahd), and the health insurance hasn’t gone through yet. We don’t want to be on the hook for $10,000 clams so I’m postponing until we’re sure we’re solid.
I was pissed when I found out. And cried. And yelled at Peter, because there was nobody else to...
Reaching for spring.
Bugambilia, Colima, Mexico, 2012.
The other day we had a hazing orientation for our church’s Prayer Team, which was accepting new members. I called it an orientation because I don’t see myself as the resident expert Pray-er. Rather, I said, “Doubtless every person in this room thinks they are ‘bad’ at prayer—but collectively we are very wise and experienced...
Oh, Mexico.
The Anxious Joy Report:
So, I’m really pleased with myself: I made it to T minus 11 days before my next CT scan before becoming insomniac this time (hello 3 am!). This is a full 2 weeks closer than in previous cycles! I feel like the stalked, learning how to sneak up on my stalker. Those who like to pray early and often: you can start your routine CT scan prayer engines. I go to Dana...
February 2012
5 posts
Ars Moriendi.
I’ve been thinking about death somewhat more than usual the last couple of days. A woman in my church, one of the few elderly people we have left, took a bad fall and it is touch and go.
Her five children, all in middle age, have overcome various differences and disasters to flock to her side. For the last several days, they have fretted and wondered and dithered and cried about whether and how...
PTSD.
Hello old friends!
It’s been a long time. To be fair—I was on vacation for three of the last five weeks that I haven’t posted. Would you be writing blog posts from the Napa Valley, or the island of Kauai?
But I’ve missed you, and missed writing, though the longer I went, the harder it seemed to get back to. Not a case of too little to say, but too much—that old thing. Anyone who has ever heard a...
December 2011
7 posts
Occupy/Bethlehem.
Last year, on this day, I was just getting out of the hospital, with a white blood cell count just over 500.
Last year, on this day, I was preparing for Christmas Eve services by making sure my surgical mask fit properly over my nose and mouth.
This year, I am fielding phone calls from families looking for financial assistance, setting up the dais for baby Jesus, praying with other people who are...
Clean Scan #5.
You know when Dr. Butrynski’s face looks like this:
…that the news is good.
All clear, people! I am still, as far as the CT imaging machine can tell, cancer-free! Now, to revel…
Here are a few pics from earlier in the day. Checking in:
Drinking the kool-aid. Or in this case, Crystal Light raspberry and iced tea artificial flavored beverage, infused with contrast dye for...
WatchGosh. Last year on this day, I was in a hospital bed on the 6th floor of the Brigham, streaming a lot of episodes of Lost, and feeling so, myself. Bald, scared, bored, sick, neutropenic, masked, confined to foods cooked literally to death, and wondering if I’d be home for Christmas. What a difference a year makes!
I’ve lamented here in these pages that I’m not the mother I’d imagine I’d be. I’m...
Osmosis.
the
Early in ordained ministry, I learned the trick of osmosis: the little I remember (humanities major!) from 9th grade biology, is that semi-permeable membranes permit passage of some amount of fluid while holding back too much. They do this to equalize the pressure and share the load, but they know when to stop: the organism never takes on MORE of a substance than there is outside the...
The Bell Curve and the Bell Jar.
I’ve been having a helluva time lately. Not depressed, exactly, nor obviously anxious. But I’ll be going along just fine, and suddenly find that I’m dizzy, or have trouble finishing a sentence I’ve started, or my chest will hurt, or I’ll start crying. Brain tumor? Heart attack? Nah. Anxiety.
Maybe it’s the bill I got for my last two routine CT scans, which just serendipitously...
Occupy/Advent.
Hi dear ones,
Remember the alternative Advent calendar I do every year? Well, I’ve done it again. Some of you snuck onto my snail mail list last year, and have it in hand already. For others of you, who’d like an electronic copy, email me at revmolly at yahoo and let me know. A little picture, if I’m tech-savvy enough, of the calendar is just below, and the content of the letter...
November 2011
2 posts
Nip/Tuck.
You may have been wondering where I’ve been. Well, I could say that I’ve been really busy, and it’s true that work has gotten more intense, and life in general is pretty full, but I hate that fallback refrain of the early 21st-century. Controlling for unforeseen circumstances like cancer, sick kids, and the apocalypse, we’re all, more or less, in charge of how busy we want to be. So it’s not an...
Eve Ensler: Suddenly, My Body.
This TED talk by Eve Ensler is awesome. I think about poverty a lot of the time, the Earth a lot of the time, and cancer a lot of the time. Not because I’m a saint—the opposite. Because I know how little I’ve done and am doing in the face of injustice.
I’ve also been thinking about all this more since last week’s breaking news of Herman Cain’s sexual harassment habits, and the...
October 2011
5 posts
Beatitudes.
I feel so lucky that every time I preach I get to spend hours digging deep into the Bible, turning over old words and looking underneath them for worms and bugs and gold, thinking about modern stories and how ideas and people and words and anxieties and pleasures and longings get to connect up across space and time. I learn lots, every time I preach, and feel a little closer to the Heart of all...
A Protestant at a Catholic Funeral.
The Spaciousness Report: Joy can be cultivated, but she can also be a bit of a minx. Sometimes she comes, and sometimes she doesn’t, even when you do all the “right” things. So the Joy Report will still appear now and then, but so will the Spaciousness Report. Because Spaciousness, she is very reliable. If you stop doing shit and just breathe, she shows up every time. I...
Will.
For years, Peter and I have been intending to do a will, and never getting around to it. There was always something better or more pressing to do when we had a little time on a random Tuesday evening (Novels! Wine!) or a Saturday morning (Soccer! Sermons!).
Then I got sick, and we thought: no, really, it’s time. Not to be morbid or anything, but we do have two scrumptious children, and in the...
No Is the New Yes.
A friend of mine made the following pithy comment a while back on this blog, “No is the new Yes.”
YES!
I mean, NO!
One of the adventures of life after cancer is how to keep living all the lessons you’ve learned, long after everything goes back (or forward) to normal. One of my post-chemo resolutions was to say No more, so I could say Yes to things I really, really wanted to do. Or, more to the...
September 2011
5 posts
Aging.
Well, loves, it’s beginning to look like I’m going to get old after all. If my cancer’s going to come back, it’s likely to come back in the first two years after treatment. I’m eight months into that waiting game, with no evidence of disease.
I don’t know if this is cheating, but I’m posting a sermon today. It’s one I preached almost four years...
Clean Scan #4.
Dear ones,
We just got home from Dana Farber, and Scan #4 (counting from my midtreatment CT scan last September, and the two that followed end of chemo) is CLEAN. Yahoo! Yippee! Jump for joy!
I’m in the middle of another juice fast. But we stopped at Trader Joe’s on the way home and my spirit right now is saying: Prosecco. Salami. Figs with goat cheese. Life! all kinds of ways. I can...
The easier we have it, the harder it is.
Peeps,
The What-My-Body’s-Doing-Now-Report: quarterly CT scan at Dana Farber tomorrow. Please pray for a CLEAN scan and another lovely, relaxing 3 months off to live my life to the fullest.
~
I’ve been reflecting a bunch lately on how the easier we seem to have it, the harder it is for us when things don’t go our way. And reading the Sunday Times Magazine cover story from...
Open Water.
Tuesday night, I was in a panic, that hot nest of feelings that is so hard to get out of. I couldn’t figure out why, exactly. Was it the phantom pains and bloating and shortness of breath (tumors or middle age?!) I have been having for a couple of weeks? Was it the difficult/awkward conversation I had been needing to have, that I kept putting off and off? Was it good old working motherhood come...
One World.
So, I thought about not posting last week, that sad-day I had. Especially because I know so many of my church folks read this blog, and I didn’t want them to experience Discouragement By Osmosis. [For the record, it was the opposite: they encouraged ME. I serve the best people in the world!].
But, while I started this blog to keep folks I know abreast of health developments, I continued it...
August 2011
4 posts
Two Worlds.
Most of the time, my cancer-patient-past feels far behind me, as if it belonged to somebody else’s life. But into this happy existence the cancer-reality occasionally comes crashing in. Like repeated noisy interruptions into the Regularly Scheduled Healthy Person’s Life.
Today is one of those days, with lots of rapid-cycling between Healthy High-Functioning Person and Cancer...
Peeps!
The Jimmy Fund Telethon is running to day...
Acrophobia.
Hello peeps!
Sure is a little weird to be out of the habit of blogging…and maybe a sign that the Holy Spirit Portal is shrinking? Closing? I won’t say that yet. I still need it. But I’m not in twice-a-week-catharsis mode, at least not this summer, that’s for sure. We’ll see what the Holy Spirit says about it.
Any old hoo, I did want to write. I’ve been back...
Guest Post: Endurance.
Peeps, I have a farmer friend named Amanda whose writing knocks your socks off. She is the lead farmer for our CSA, and also writes Notes from the Field every week for the newsletter that reads like a sermon/poem. This one reminded me so much of my cancer journey that I wanted to post it here. Plus it’s just so juicy and delicious.
By the way, we are great. I had my 41st birthday at camp...
July 2011
2 posts
Evolution of hair.
Peeps! I’ve missed you. I promised myself and the kids a S-P-A-C-I-O-U-S summer, which means not a lot of organized camp type stuff for them and extra time with chemo-liberated Mom, which means no time for Molly to sit and blog. Which I actually really miss! But, spontaneous trips to Walden Pond and popsicles on the back porch are a pretty decent substitute.
I am feeling pretty hot. Mostly...
June 2011
8 posts
Clean Scan #3.
Hello sweethearts,
A clean scan today! Everything looks totally wonderful inside my body.
Anyone ever read Grover from Sesame Street’s “The Monster at the End of the Book”?
“…and you were so worried…”
Thanks for the prayers. I likely won’t see the inside of Dana Farber for four months! Though it was wonderful to sit and dish with my ol’...
Recurrence.
Don’t worry, sweethearts, this post isn’t about an actual recurrence. I’m just musing about it. My quarterly CT scan is tomorrow, and that has the old anxiety mill rolling and churning and gurgling and grinding again.
A friend of mine got sober recently. He got sober on his own about 10 years ago, but he was what they call “a dry drunk”—he did it without AA or other supports,...
Always/Never.
I am feeling a little better about my tear ducts. One thing that helped? I remembered that always/never thinking doesn’t work and isn’t true anyhow. You know always/never thinking? It’s often a tool for us married folk. “You NEVER tell me you love me,” “you ALWAYS leave the toilet seat up,” and so on.
Yesterday, I was ruminating on a guy in my...
60 People.
The Duct Report: all signs seem to indicate that the tear duct surgery did NOT work. I am feeling pretty sorry for myself, pretty depressed about it in fact, and don’t want to talk about it. Is it redundant to say that I want to cry?
Here is the seat I sat in, for Dr. Annino to stick scissors in my eye and a hook up my nose to take out the tubing. This sobering image should sufficiently...
The tears of my tears.
Peeps, I go to Dana Farber tomorrow to get the stents (aka little silicon tubes holding my newly made tear ducts open) out. AT LAST. They have been driving me bonkers. I am giddy with excitement. And nervous. About the outcome.
I *think* I will find out right away, or maybe within a couple of hours? if the surgery worked, or if I am doomed to be teary (and snotty, since my tears currently run...
Recovery.
I had such an excellent day yesterday. It started with one of the empirically best things: a yoga class at b.e. Yoga with Blanca. Blanca is THAT good, and you should go RIGHT NOW. She is a Mexican-American firefighter in Somerville (that should tell you something right there), and started this amazing yoga studio in Union Square. Blanca, and the yoga, are so good that am I am going to bestir...
The Art of Doing One Thing at a Time.
Back in college, I abandoned my work-study job in Dining Services and the compulsory blue polyester uniform in favor of waitressing at the local late-night pizza establishment. If I had to work my way through school, I was going to do it on my own terms, and waitressing at a dive seemed much cooler than ladling out broccoli chicken penne to my fellow students from behind a steam table, demeaning...
May 2011
7 posts
The End of the World, Part 2.
Another beautiful day. Thank you Boston! You make us want to stick around a little longer. You too, Earth!
I had a couple of further thoughts on the whole end-of-the-world scenario, especially since Harold Camping, who set us aflutter with last Saturday’s prediction of the Rapture, now has amended his statement to say that last Saturday God weighed in with a “spiritual judgment”...
The End of the World.
I know I am 3 days late and an apocalypse short, but I just wanted to weigh in on this whole ‘end of the world’ panic.
When I was diagnosed with cancer last year, I think the movie 2012 had just come out on DVD. Being someone who can’t look away from train wrecks—vomit on the street, B action movies advertising Armageddon, etc—I had to watch it. Of course, it freaked...
How To Groove On Life.
Dear Boston,
I know you harbor secret jealousies of Seattle and San Francisco. But that is NO excuse for the weather this past week. Seven days of fog and rain, really? Really? YOU need to be the best Boston you can be, and not worry about being cool like SF or Seattle. Who even listens to grunge rock anymore? And you are cool, in your own way. Nerdy, but sweet, and cool in spite of yourself, not...
Butter.
Oh, people! What a nice weekend. Almost enough to give me the courage to stare down 4 days of cold rain forecast for Boston. Almost enough to tolerate hour after hour of Caillou’s grating voice on PBS Kids (Carmen is home sick with a fever). Almost. We went to Les and Sam’s in Western Mass. My flower farmer friend? It is Official New Life season, and we planted potatoes, and Rafe wrangled...
Rituals.
A couple of important anniversaries are clanging around. Just the other week, I celebrated being one year out from having half of my left lung removed. This Saturday is my cancerversary, the day we first visited Dr. Butrynski, when we learned that my tumor was cancer. On June 1, the first day of chemo.
Honestly, the conscious mind has forgotten so much. The amnesia they say flows in after cancer...