Fear of...

Is there ever a point in your life when you begin to feel completely safe? When the trappings of your childhood, your high school heartaches, your college embarrassments, and your adult mistakes all fall away and you can just stand there and feel completely safe?

I’m not talking about breast cancer. I wish it were that simple. I am being photographed on Monday for a book project that a woman is doing on breast cancer survivors, and she asked me to write up my “story”.

Now, every breast cancer survivor has their story. They may modify to suit their audience, the situation they are in when telling it, or how they need to use it. For this situation, I have been asked to look at how I overcame the trial of being diagnosed and going through breast cancer. And my first reaction was “HAVE I overcome it?” And I didn’t mean in the literal sense of being finished with treatment or moving into a place of survivorship. I meant, when I asked myself that, “have I reached a place in my life where I feel safe from harm, from things that will come back and haunt me no matter what they are?”

I have a fear of clowns that goes back to being an impressionable age when the movie “Poltergeist” came out and that darn evil clown attacked the child in her bed. I don’t like loud cracking sudden thunder (or any loud booming surprise noise) and I am pretty sure this goes back to an incident as a baby when my dad and uncle cracked cue sticks down onto a pool table and laughed at how I jumped up in reaction in my chair. I have little fears and mini-breakdowns in anticipations of specific meetings at work only based on how previous meetings have gone (I attended an excellent workshop once about the conversations we have with ourselves in anticipation of things like this – still hasn’t helped though!).

So I wonder, if at the ripe old age of 85 or 90, should I be lucky enough to live that long, will I feel so truly safe that I will not feel intimidation or fear about anything I once feared? Will I no longer shiver slightly when thunder booms? Will I be able to laugh at clowns instead of only see evil lurking in their eyes? Will I think that I overcome those things that once I was certain were out to harm me? Or will I have to wait until I have moved beyond this world and look down upon those things and simply laugh at myself?

Even worse, what if I am killed by a raving lunatic clown with a thunderous voice? Will I then look down from above and say “HA! I was right to be scared!” ?

Tack Trunk Project

In the fall of 2008...ish?...I was serendipitously introduced to Jo Wickline and her lovely stable out at LJL Farm. You see, I rode horses as a teenager. It was more than that. I lived for horses. I began at around 11 and rode until my mom and I moved to the Gulf Coast at 16. I rode at 3C Horsemanship School (which back then was 3C Farm) and was lucky enough to be there when the Cornetts still bred and trained American Morgan horses. I rode their foundation stallion, Shakers Shoofly, as well as his son the World Champion 3C Avenger. I showed Morgans at regional shows, placing as high as 3rd and qualifying for Worlds. But I was also privy to more than the average "equestrienne" student at that age because I was so into it and there so much of my free time. I saw foals born, mares bred, colicky horses tubed, colts gelded, and helped with many young horses at various phases of training. Not all of that was retained. Some of it was just doing what I was told and not completely understanding the motivation or reasoning behind the doing of it. But all of it lay in my heart and the memory felt a little like one of those jewelry boxes with the ballerina that some girls have and women keep around to admire.

So when my mother in law had taken up riding lessons and invited me to come out, I fell in love with Jo, with LJL Farm, and with all the horses out there. Not long afterwards I began riding a Thoroughbred not owned by Jo but kept there. Brite was once a racehorse and had the issues to go with that. He also was more than 15 years old, had been tried out in just about every style, as well as completely not ridden for long stretches at a time. So I had a project. Suffice to say that although he is a sweet, gentle, and soulful horse, and I had a wonderful time with him for about 8 months, things ultimately came to a close last September. I was thrown (if you ride horses, you are going to get thrown!) and hurt and that was the end of me riding Brite.

Once I recovered, Jo offered a gorgeous gelding by the nickname of Snickers up for lease. I jumped at the chance and the rest is now history. I am in love with him. His real name is Del Rey Rhythm, he's 6, 16.1 hands, was raced as a 2 year old, then barrel raced, and then eventually ended up with Jo. I have been working him in some dressage as I train to learn this art myself - interesting way to go about it.

Anyway...as one knows when you own or lease a horse you very quickly acquire a lot of stuff and you need someplace to keep it! Jo has a great tack room at LJL but one also needs a little storage outside of the room. I decided to resurrect an old trunk of mine that Brian and I used as a coffee table.


Actually, as it turns out, this trunk had a history.


Before Brian and I painted it a boring brown with black trim I had used it to store blankets while at college. It's metal and cold and clanky. Not cedar or padded...
My mom used it as a place to store her scuba diving equipment. I remember it always having the smell of saltwater and sand and being slightly musty. But I had no idea that before that, it used to belong to her father, my grandfather. It was his Army trunk from World War II. This explains the Army green color it once was. And the leather handles that have fallen off.

However, now, armed with spray paint, spray gloss, and some beautiful customized decals from the extremely talented Elizabeth Moyer at Moyer Custom Decals.... I have this!

Notice the hot pink, the dressage rider, the sparkly black...yep...it couldn't be more ME if it tried!!!!

Not bad for an old Army trunk :-)

Friendship Introspection, Part II

A look into friendship, for me, could not be complete without a discussion of the friendship I share with my husband, Brian.

Brian and I met through mutual friends while working in restaurants in the late 1990's. We opened a restaurant as part of a training crew, and spent many long hours together. At first, we even hung out as friends, and he actually had a crush on another gal. I had no feelings for him other than friendship, but I do remember watching him do some computer training and thinking there was something special about him...but it was not a ground-shaking, earth-shattering "this is the man I am going to marry!" moment. A bit later, he asked me out and the rest is history. We dated, fell in love, and married.

Some where in between the dating and the marrying, I realized he had also become my best friend. And that friendship became no more apparent than when I was diagnosed with breast cancer upon the return from our honeymoon. Brian had to cease being my husband, to cease being someone with needs and wants, and even dreams. He had to become someone who could support me and listen to me completely unselfishly. He had to become the person who would cook for me, clean up my vomit, and get my prescriptions filled. So very NOT the image of a newlywed husband.

Now he is the person who I want to spend my free time with, who I think about calling first to share a joke or a tidbit with, and who I want to discuss almost any topic with.

Almost :-)

We have our differences, of course. We swim in them and enjoy a good debate now and then. But mostly, it is the long discussions where we are in complete agreement and simply are looking at things through different colored glasses that I find the most enjoyable because I learn so much from him. He's so smart!

And of course there are times when we have the boy/girl disagreements that spring simply from being of opposite genders. The times when I want to turn to someone else and say "Can you believe he just said this?" and have them affirm what a complete doofus he is, and what a complete genius I, obviously, am.

These are the times that are difficult for me. I can't call my husband to complain about my husband! Especially since, being a man, he would try to fix something that simply can't be fixed!

:-)

These are the times when a completely different friend is needed.

Friendship Introspection, Part I

Over the years I have had the pleasure of having moved from one city to another by being the child of a member of the Air Force. Both my mom and my dad (and my step-dad) were active duty at certain points of our lives and so I grew up in never having lived in one place for more than 3 years until we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and I enrolled in 6th grade at Kings Mills Middle School.

I am also an only child. Being an only child and one who has moved around, I honestly don’t have much recollection of my childhood years, especially school years. I don’t remember my friends from those years because they were so random and scattered. I think not having anyone else to connect those times and places to limits my recall capacity in some way. I remember summers, spent with my grandparents in Marion or Ashland, Ohio; or at a Bible camp a couple times. I remember a friend here and there who I saw every summer because they lived near my grandparents or were at camp. But individual grades or teachers are out of reach for my memory and always have been.

Cincinnati and Kings Mills is where things start to settle into my head better and I have a clear memory of my friends there, my teachers, the classrooms, the fun and the laughs and the things we learned. From there my mom and I moved to Ocean Springs, Mississippi where I would graduate high school and find another set of friends. I have to say that after years of moving around the States, living in the south truly felt like home for me. I don’t know if it was the pace, the beach, the food, the colors, or everything combined but there is a kinship I feel with the Gulf Coast. I only have to read something from there or start to recall a memory out loud and my drawl will kick in (Brian adores it).

I traveled over to Mobile, Alabama to attend college, graduated and stayed on (even after my mom had moved back “up north") there until 1996, when I decided that it was time to move on. I packed up and headed to Columbus, Ohio where I met and married Brian, where we live now.

Beyond school, my friends came from work. My college years (as well as when I moved to Columbus) were filled with friends from the restaurant and bar world. These are great friends who are seriously down for a good time. The memories (and sometimes the lack there of) that I have of concerts, crawls, football games, after parties, and on and on…oh my. Thank goodness the Internet was not around then. Just sayin’.

However, I am very happy to say that because of the Internet I was able to reconnect with and am able to stay connected with many friends with whom I have lost contact through the years. I’m not a good letter writer and I don’t really like to gab on the phone, so email and Facebook have made the world smaller for me.

To be continued . . . 

Ho Ho Hold on a Second...

I have a confession to make: last year Brian and I did not put up a Christmas tree. Now, while you pick your jaw up off the floor (or laugh at me for sounding so melodramatic about it) realize that for the previous eight or so years we have had a very firm tradition. As soon as we can after Thanksgiving, we travel out to Granville to the Timbuk Tree Cutting farm and pick out an appropriate tree. We cut it down, struggle to fit it into the car, and bring it home. We also walk around Granville and take in the sights. I love eating at the soda shoppe cafe there, and take comfort in the fact that my maternal grandmother (Gloria Woods "Glo") went to school at Dennison and not much has changed. We stop at the little book store and usually buy a few books. We always marvel at the size of the houses there.

We put the tree up and haul out the decorations from the basement. Each of us has a large collection from years of gifts but mine is particularly special. Every year as far back since I was a baby both Glo and her mom, my great-grandmother (Grace Danner) would give the children ornaments and write the names and the year on them. Not long ago, my mom started giving me Christopher Radko ornaments, including his annual breast cancer awareness ornament. After Brian and I married she started also gifting us the annual White House collection ornament.
Seriously - we have a collection of collectors pieces as well as sentimental, priceless artifacts with history all their own.

And last year we did not put up a tree.

So this year we did.

And when we hauled out the ornament box I opened it to find that mold had invaded the box.

Not just invaded - taken over and won.

As I made my way through layer upon layer of ruined ornaments to pick out the ones which were salvageable, I found my self becoming more and more upset. But why? These were only material artifacts. They cannot replace the memories I have. Many were handcrafted and of felt or wood. Some were even made by Glo or Grace themselves. Certainly in my teen years, I didn't appreciate these gifts. They hold no monetary value and I wouldn't make any money on eBay with them. But as I sat there and lifted out a fabric unicorn that was a gift from Glo and marked my Christmas as a 5 year old and the fabric crumbled with mold and mildew, I crumbled inside. Is this what it's like to grow old? To feel your memory slip away? Neither Grace nor Glo are around to ask them what the ornament meant or why they chose it for me. Maybe that's why I became so upset. The sodden pieces of fabric and mold covered wood were ties to the past that help sustain something, even if it truly doesn't exist anymore.

I salvaged what I could, vowed to purchase new containers and Brian promised to store them in a different area of the basement. When it was all done the tree still sparkled with the multi-colored disorganized glow of a homespun, non-designer tree. And I know that even in the years to come,when we don't put up a tree, I will haul up the ornaments and check on them, and maybe even take them out to adore them one by one and admire the tenuous gifts they hold.

Welcome Anabel Allgood!

In the true testament to the age-old cliche that "Life goes on" my wonderful, sweet friends, LeAnn and Aaron Allgood brought Anabel Allgood into the world yesterday.

LeAnn and Aaron are not only physicians (so they are brilliant!!), but she is also a powerful ally in the war against breast cancer too. I first met her when she was a mere young 'un in the breast fellowship program at Grant Medical Center in Columbus. This is a really tough program wherein one spends months at a time in several specialties that touch upon breast cancer. And this is after one has already been a doctor and a surgeon for a number of years. We became fast friends and she was just in the early stages of dating Aaron. He was definitely a keeper, too. Completing his family practice residency in the Air Force at Wright Patterson in Dayton and seeing LeAnn whenever he could.

Together with Brian, the four of us spent time together, and our friendship grew as well. LeAnn and Aaron married on the west coast in a private ceremony in a manner that completely befit them - but my cousin Krissy and I helped pick out the dress. And when she completed her residency and went into practice, I will never forget when she came into my office bummed out about having to deal with the administrative side of practicing medicine..."I just want to take care of my patients!"

Then they embarked on this adventure to adopt Lucas from Guatemala...AND move to Arizona...which she chronicles on a blog ...and we all warned them..."You will definitely become pregnant now with all this happening..." and sure enough!!

Life goes on....

Welcome Anabel!!

All the things I am thankful for...

I am thankful for. . .

1. My husband: the fact that he builds a fire every night, takes out the dogs before bed, and makes coffee every morning. I am so thankful that he takes care of me in all the small ways.
2. My dogs: they are sweet, nuzzling, warm, wiggly, smelly, kind, funny, smart, and teach me something new all the time. They have made my life better.
3. Cancer: weird huh? well it made me change so many things and made me a braver person.
4. Hockey!: the NHL Arena has been a place for me to learn and grow as a fan and I have found new friends! And I am now an official Columbus Blue Jackets nerd!
5. My car: again . . . weird . . . but it's cute and I love it and it is almost paid off!
6. My iPhone: okay this is insanely materialistic of me - sorry!
7. That Barack Obama won the election. 'nuff said.

I hope that the coming year brings peace and change. I hope that sanity rules and love reigns supreme. I hope that intelligence and strength are not looked upon as conflicting sides of the story.

And I hope that with each day we are closer to losing fewer and fewer young women to breast cancer.

Happy Thanksgiving.