Carolyn’s husband is normally the map holder when they travel, and because he is not accompanying us, I am given this job. I quickly find, however, that Carolyn needs very little mapping help in Brussels or Paris. She has traveled here many times for business. She takes me to many of her favorite places – great little boutiques in Brussels where up-and-coming designers sell new designs you can’t find anywhere else. Tiny cafés where locals eat and incredible food is served with beautiful presentation (Au 35 is my favorite in Paris.). I learn espresso accompanies champagne quite well when one is suffering from jet lag but socializing and selling art. I am introduced to Parisian-made shoes that are only available at a small shop in Paris not far from Notre Dame.
The final night we are in Paris, having had a long but wonderful day at the Musee d’Orsay, Carolyn treats me to dinner at L’ Atelier de Joel Robuchon near our hotel in the Saint– Germain. Our walk through the sixth district is brilliantly colorful. Fruit and flower stands overflow with tantalizing scents and bold palettes. The restaurant seems to pop out of the darkness as we arrive for our reservation. The yellow gold neon sign romantically lights the black facade of the entry. Inside, red barstools become our perches. Red glass candle holders emit a warm glow on the countertop as we are seated looking into the kitchen. Carolyn orders for us in French, knowing which wine and dishes are best. I remark on how artistically they are plated - almost too perfect to disturb. This night is the culinary highlight of my life. It ends perfectly with a pairing of chocolate and wine (I write it down to remember it for next time - Banyuls Galateo, Coume del Mas). Reading later, I laugh at the coincidence that Joel Rubuchon’s food philosophy/mantra is “Eat the truth”, and Carolyn’s philosophy of life with artists, friends, and family is “Face the truth.”
Chapter 22, Los Angeles, 2015
HOPE IS IMPORTANT
“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet, and peace activist.
Driving to Los Angeles, the day before Carolyn’s third surgery, we make a plan. We have to go by the hospital so Carolyn can have transponders attached to her head, which she must wear for twelve hours prior to surgery. They look like small suction cups held together by a solid wire cord. She is given a special body shampoo to use on her entire body prior to surgery and other pre-op instructions. Carolyn has become vanity-free as of late and after the hospital, with transponders attached to her head, she asks me to take her to lunch and a manicure/pedicure. We keep our car parked at the hospital and walk a block to a neighborhood salon.
No one takes a second look at Carolyn when we step inside. It dawns on me that being barely a block from a major hospital, this isn’t the first woman they’ve seen with transponders on her head. The salon is bright and airy with floor-to-ceiling windows showcasing the pink back wall. I ask Carolyn what color she wants and she shrugs. I choose one for her, “Malaga Wine,” that I remember her requesting back in Ojai. I eye the small Italian Bistro across the street and ask Carolyn if I should call in an order. “Let’s just go there,” she says.
“Ok,” I answer. Dines and I spent countless evenings in this small restaurant when we lived in Los Angeles. The patio has only four tables and inside there are only eight or so. Carolyn and I sit inside. It’s a warm day, but she has been unusually cold - a side effect from her treatment. The restaurant has warm yellow walls. Pottery from Deruta and pictures of the Italian countryside serve as decor. Carolyn fiddles with the cut rosemary in the mason jar vase on our table. It makes the immediate air around our table smell like rosemary, and I breathe in deeply, relishing the fresh odor. Carolyn is having trouble reading the menu, so I list a few things I think she may enjoy. She decides on Lomita Di Vitello Al Rosmarino - a large veal chop with rosemary and butter served with market vegetables. Carolyn’s appetite has increased due to her pre-surgery steroid dosage. Top shelf food is the perfect match for her top shelf cocktails.
After lunch, Carolyn wants to have a nap. We go back to our hotel on Sunset Boulevard, The Mondrian. I have so many memories of this hotel. Once upon a time, it was impossible to book a room at The Mondrian. The Sky Bar was the hottest bar in town and often the rooms were booked just so its occupants could secure their names on the entry list. “Do you remember hanging out at this hotel, Carolyn?”
“Yes. There were mattresses,” she says.
“That’s right! I remember those - pool side - very avant garde for the time.” The lobby still reflects designer Phillipe Starck’s style. In an odd way, it’s comforting to be revisiting a place from our past. Memories of being twenty and carefree rush into my head. I miss fun, carefree time with my sister. Our conversations of late are all about glioblastoma or cancer treatments. When she naps, I take out my cell phone and open Facebook Messenger. I type her name into the search bar and up pop the exchanges we wrote before she got sick. I realize we haven’t had these online exchanges in over a year. There’s a link to the decadent George V Four Seasons Hotel in Paris. I read her comment that this is where we should spend Christmas 2015. In one post she shares a link to a hilarious YouTube video and asks if she too has “bitchy resting face.” I read articles we share with one another on education, cooking, writing, mothering…God, I miss this back-and-forth daily dialogue! She naps a few feet away from me in the bed, but she seems so far, far away now.
Chris arrives before bedtime and takes over her pre-surgery requirements - a full body shower with special soap and special shampoo. I have helped her with this before, and it’s nearly impossible to execute without the suction cups falling off of her head or something getting tangled in the cord connecting them. I walk down the hall to my room. I am not sleepy, and I know from her two earlier surgeries that this will be another sleepless night. I will look at the ceiling and worry. Rolling on my side, I imagine all of the worst outcomes possible. Shit - I didn’t look up how to explain paralysis or blindness to Matson. Note to self: email the elementary school director in the morning to update her about Matson’s mom and ask what she recommends. Second note to self: Call Mom and ask if she has Dad’s cane. If Carolyn won’t use a walker, she might consider a cane.
“B-O-U-N-C-E…B-O-U-N-C-E.”
Carolyn awakes from her third surgery, remarkably, with no paralysis or blindness. I joke with her that I’m going to call her “Kitty”, because she apparently has nine lives. The aftermath of this surgery feels worse than the last one. She moans about intense head pain. Relieving Chris, I sit silently in her recovery room.
The walls are white, the bedding is white, she is hooked up to multiple tubes and bandaged on her head and arms. Her complexion is gray, like the sky outside her window. The air-conditioning blows cold. She is under four blankets and I sit, watching her sleep, wishing I had brought a sweater. I wish the deli that used to be across the street was still around. A cup of warm soup would feel healing. I sit in the silence of her breathing for two hours until Chris returns. He will stay in LA for the night, maybe two, waiting until Carolyn is cleared by the doctor to come home. I ride the elevator to the parking garage, and a young couple holds each other. The woman is softly crying. The man has bandages on his head. I wonder if he is a brain cancer patient like my sister. Is it the beginning of their journey? In the car I turn on NPR, hoping to distract myself with the latest news. It doesn’t work. I just cry and cry. I am crying for that young couple. I am crying for Carolyn, for Chris, for Matson, for my mom, for my family, for myself. I hold the leather steering wheel with my right hand and I pull down the bottom of my eyes with my left hand thumb and pointer finger. When I do this, the tears fall down my cheeks instead of clouding my vision.
Carolyn comes home to Ojai the next day, convincing the doctor she was unable to sleep in the hospital. She recovers in my quiet guesthouse. Everyone is told not to bother her, but Chris and I check in on her from time
to time. Matson and Emma, our helper, are occupied making turtle-shaped cookies for the second grade trade fair. By the end of the week, Carolyn is able to rejoin us for some meals and even a vodka tonic poolside when our friends, Don and Mark, visit from Los Angeles. Carolyn is less herself, but she feels good enough to sit with us. Each surgery seems to take her further away. Carolyn and Mark watch a soccer game. She has never liked sports. She’s also claiming not to like red wine, even though she has been a red wine aficionado and collected it for years.
Chris surprises Carolyn for her forty-sixth birthday with a trip to an elegant Mexican resort she has always wanted to visit. It seems she can’t really remember wanting to travel to the exclusive location and complains about leaving Ojai. I help her pack for the trip and tell her how nice it will be to relax away from everything in California. Her MRI reveals significant swelling but we are told this is normal, and they will evaluate everything in a month at her next appointment. When she returns from Mexico, she will begin another new vaccine treatment for glioblastoma, a drug called Avastin. Insurance in the United States doesn’t cover cutting edge vaccines, and it seems unfair to me that all people don’t have access to this treatment. Carolyn hasn’t been working, and I imagine this will drain so much of the resources and savings she and Chris have put away over the past eighteen years. Chris’ parents have generously volunteered to help fund this treatment, but I can see in their eyes what I am sure is evident in mine. Our hope has shifted to despair. We cannot tell her we don’t think this treatment will work. Bank accounts are drained and savings are transferred to checking. No one believes she will live.
Chapter 23, Lake Tahoe, 2015
I CAN’T READ
This family needs some rejuvenation! The kids are off to camp, and Dines, Chris, and I plan a week nearby at Lake Tahoe. Carolyn and I have been coming here with our families for the past five years. It is our special spot. This is the one week of the summer where we agree to do nothing but float on the lake, read on the shore, and enjoy one another. Carolyn is again very unemotional about a trip – shrugging when asked if she is looking forward to vacation. She sits on the beach with me the first day we arrive, bundled up despite the high temperature. We look at the blue clear water and I remark on the beautiful scenery - pine trees, mountain tops surrounding the lake - some topped still with the winter’s snow. She is physically weak, and we have rented a golf cart. I ask her before we leave Ojai if I should pack her wig in case we want to go out. She says, “No.” She wears a simple cotton cap someone sent her for summer. This will be the first year I will be in charge of all the cooking and luckily, my dear friend, Lisa, whose daughter is also at camp, is staying with us to help. Cooking is not relaxing for me like it was for Carolyn. I don’t have the patience for it or the sophisticated palate that craves a gourmet meal the way she does. Dinner at my house often resembles appetizers more than actual meals. Cheese and crackers and a small salad is my signature offering. Knowing how much Carolyn loves cooking and food, I pull a new work of fiction out of my bag that I have gotten for her - Kitchens of the Great Midwest. It is about the daughter of a Minnesota chef who grows up to be an even greater chef than her father. I really think she will enjoy it. I hand it to her. “I can’t read,” she says.
“What?” I say in sheer surprise. “Since when?”
“Not for a long time,” she says.
“But you’re always looking at the paper or a magazine or your phone!” I exclaim.
“Just pictures,” she says.
I am aghast. Carolyn has always been a voracious reader. I am still trying to work my way through her favorite book list:
1. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy 2. One Hundred Years of Solitude –Gabriel Garcia Marquez 3. Love in the Time of Cholera –Gabriel Garcia Marquez 4. Personal History - Katherine Graham 5. Another Country – James Baldwin 6. The Vanishing Moon – Joe Coulson 7. Yellow Raft in Blue Water – Michael Dorris 8. Two Part Invention – Madeleine L’Engle 9. The Goat or Who is Sylvia (a play) – Edward Albee 10. ‘Tis – Frank McCourt (She said to never live in New York City without reading this book). 11. Madame Secretary – Madeline Albright 12. The Night of the Gun – David Carr (written by Carolyn’s dear friend.) 13. Curried Favors (a cookbook) – Maya Kaimal MacMillan, Brian Hagiwara, Zubin Shroff 14. The Corrections – Jonathan Frazen
“I’m so sorry,” I tell Carolyn. “You loved to read.”
“What am I going to do?” she says flatly. “It is what it is.”
There will be no more New York Times reading and latte drinking on Sunday mornings when we have time. I can’t scribble on a napkin and pass it to her when we are at some boring event.
“Let’s just enjoy the lake,” I say, trying to hold back my tears. “Okay,” she says.
I help Carolyn into a red Tommy Bahama beach chair. I hand her her water bottle. “Cold,” she says. I stretch a beach towel over her lap and place another around her shoulders.
“This is so beautiful,” I say with the knowledge it will be our last summer together on the shores of Lake Tahoe.
Chapter 24, Northern Minnesota, 1980
SCOTLAND’S BURNING
When school is out and summer vacation begins, our favorite thing is hearing Dad announce we are going to the cabin! This means a four hour drive from Minneapolis to northern Minnesota – the Iron Range specifically, to a small township –population sixty-called Britt. My great-grandfather bought this property in the 1880s, and three of his children built summer homes on the shore. We always stay in my Great-Aunt Mary’s cabin. It is painted white with light green trim and has a small, red-brick chimney that you can spot a half mile from the house on the drive in. The rutted road leading to the cabin is completely overhung with green trees. We emerge, astonished by the sight of our Little Sand Lake, a pearl dropped into the wilderness. Great-Aunt Mary had once named this property Windcrest, but we just call it “the Lake.”
The first thing Carolyn and I do after unloading our bags is to put on our swimsuits. We wear matching suits my mom bought us at Pappagallo at the start of the summer. Little Sand Lake awaits us, and in our minds, this lily pad-filled lake is even better than having our own pool. We pick wild hollyhocks from the yard to make dolls –using the full blooms to make skirts and the closed blooms to make heads, gorgeous ladies that we spin and release onto the surface of the lake and watch them “dance” above the water. The dragonflies often became emergency helicopters and we make large waves with our arms to create a storm. Carolyn and I rate each other’s cannonballs off the end of the dock. Hers are always better than mine as she is able to quickly tuck her body into a somersault-like position before hitting the water. We love the rowboat! We paddle out to a dense lily pad-covered area of the lake (this holds the row boat still and prevents too much drifting). We pull the oars into the boat and lie back and look at the clouds. There are always more in the sky here than there are back home in the city, and we spend hours pointing out the cloud formations and what they look like – an umbrella, a bunny, George Washington! Sometimes we fish for sunfish, crappies, or walleyed pike. We often catch enough for dinner. My grandfather built a swing out of birch trees, and we swing for hours each afternoon. Dad brings us occasionally across the road to Auto Club Lake. The bottom is rock-filled, not sandy like our lake. We swim, open-eyed, underwater and pretend we are mermaids.
The biggest highlight at the cabin is lighting the sauna. It is a miniature version of Great-Aunt Mary’s cabin, light green instead of white, and only steps from the lakeshore. There are two rooms inside the sauna - one to change and one to soak up the heat and wash. The changing room has a long bench that my grandmother upholstered out of her old dresses during the Great Depression. There is a tiny window over the bench, and the drapes look like they are made out of flour sack dish towels, most likely also a creation of my grandmother. In the bathing room, one huge barrel of water is heated next to a wood-stoked stove– usually for the entire day. Another barrel is filled next to it wi
th cold water. After a day in the lake we use the sauna in shifts; Carolyn, Mom, and I often go first, together. Inside, in the tradition of our Finnish relatives, we share stories while we soap up and wash with a loofa, pouring pails of water all over our bodies.
My mom begins, “When I was a little girl, my father had eight brothers and sisters. His father bought property on this lake so his children would bring their children here in the summer, and we could enjoy our whole family being together. My father, your Grandpa Vern, was a great swimmer. He was the champion swimmer of our town, and, one year, the whole state! His brother, Hugh, was a champion diver. This lake was their happiness in the summers, and the brothers spent a long time building an enormous diving structure far off the end of the dock. They constructed three levels. Uncle Hugh, of course, often chose to dive from the tallest level for the most difficult dive execution. The family would sit on the hill and on the dock to watch Hugh and Vern in the lake for hours. When the afternoon sun began to cool, we would all head for the sauna and bathe and share stories. Sometimes we sang.”
“We love to sing too, Mama! Can we sing right now?!”
“Yes. Let’s sing what we’ve been working on.” As of late, Carolyn and I love perfecting “rounds” – Scotland’s Burning is our favorite.
“Scotland’s burning, Scotland’s burning. Look out! Look out! Fire fire fire fire! Pour on water. Pour on water.” We sing this round at least five times, but more often ten times. We get so hot and worked up singing that we have to exit the sauna in a quick dash and jump off the end of the dock into the lake. We dive under the surface of the water to find those diving dock bases, but we determine they are too far out. Wrapping us in our towels, Mom regales us with tales of the uncles rolling in the snow during the winter as a break from the hot steam when the lake was frozen. Dad is usually painting on the front patio of the cabin when we emerge, lobster red, from the sauna. He smiles widely and announces it is now his turn.
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