by Kaya McLaren
Mary’s tough love hurt Amy because she had cried when it had been her turn to speak. It seemed unreal to say these things about herself, to say that she had had stage two, type three, invasive-ductal breast cancer, four rounds of chemo, a double mastectomy ten weeks ago, and a radical hysterectomy less than two weeks ago. She had been through all that. All of it. And it was a lot. And it was still so fresh. She still could not believe that all of that had happened or that it had happened to her. It was horrifying to say it and horrifying to hear herself say it. Now, on top of it all, it felt as if she were being shamed and scolded for it, even though it was clearly with the very best of intentions.
She thought about a time a few years ago when Carly was upset about how one of her friends had turned into a mean girl and had begun to exclude her. Amy had sat next to Carly on her bed, where she sat crying. “Well, forget her!” Amy had said. “Just forget her! You deserve better friends than that, and now there’s room in your life for those better friends! Good riddance, I say!” She had wanted Carly to rise up and fight—not physically fight her old friend but fight the thoughts that were going through her own head about her worth. Instead, Carly had just cried harder. She hadn’t had any fight inside her at the moment. Carly had still been in the stage where she couldn’t believe this loss was happening to her. Now, Amy understood perfectly.
And she understood Mary’s good intentions too. But tough love wasn’t what was needed. What Amy had been looking for were examples of happy women leading full lives, women who had it on good authority that, like them, she would be okay. Women who could honestly tell her that her mastectomy wouldn’t make any difference in whether she was loved by her husband or anyone else.
The leader of the group said final words about how it was okay to whine and cry when it was new, as it was for Amy—that they all had been there. However, the second the meeting was over, Amy got out of there as fast as she could. The leader of the group asked with a friendly smile, “Well, did we scare you off?”
And with a friendly smile, Amy said, “I don’t know.…” But she did know. She would not be going within a three-block radius of this support group. She told the leader it was nice to meet her, which it had been, and slipped out.
As she drove home, she thought about all of the tragedy, all of the suffering, in the stories she had heard, and she thought that if that was all she had to look forward to, then saving her life had been a waste of time, effort, and money. And then for just a split second, for just the tiniest of moments, she had this other thought: that she had enough Percocet, oxycodone, and sleeping pills at home to end it now. Immediately, she recoiled in horror at this thought and the fact she’d had it. It made no sense. She had fought so hard for her life in the last six months, so why would she give up now? How did that make any sense at all? How had she sunk to these depths?
Surgical menopause had to be playing a role in it. Rationally, she knew her body was surely in shock from all it had been through. It made sense that she would be wildly out of balance. It made sense that this imbalance would be reflected in her brain. Pain used up a person’s serotonin, she knew, and she certainly had coped with her share of that in the last six months. Certainly, there was a part of her depression that was biological, and maybe it was a big part.
But it was also true she was overwhelmed by the changes she’d had to adapt to. And the grief she had for how her life and body had been was real.
As fragments of the support group fiasco replayed in her mind, she began to ask deeper questions still. What purpose did the support group serve? Was retelling one’s cancer story each month actually helpful? Maybe it was. Maybe it helped a person come to believe it had happened. Or maybe it picked an emotional scab. People seemed to think talking about things was the answer, and maybe it was. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe her tears had come in part because a shift was happening that had to do with cancer becoming part of her identity. Certainly, that was reasonable. After all, the world had been able to see her struggle and treated her differently—not badly, but differently—when chemo had made her bald. Even now, with such short hair and the tiniest remnants of her breasts, she could not deny that her outward identity had changed. But she’d never wanted this experience and she never wanted it to be part of her identity.
A couple of weeks before her last surgery, when she had been at her presurgical appointment, her surgeon had come in and said, “Well, let me tell you what I know about you, and you tell me if I left anything out.” She’d launched into Amy’s diagnosis, treatment, and mastectomy, and Amy, listening to it all, had started sobbing. Yes, she had gone through all of that. But the other piece was her doctor’s word choice: Let me tell you what I know about you. Not, Let me tell you what I know about your medical history—let me tell you what I know about you. Amy had wanted to stop her right away and say, Wait, that’s not me. Let me tell you about me. I love nature. Growing up, I spent my summers in two national parks and even now dream of visiting them all. I have a daughter who is a senior in high school this year. I’m terrified to let her go—terrified. I grow a beautiful garden. Tomatoes, irises, and geraniums are my favorites. I’m lonely in my marriage. My husband used to serenade me when we were young. I loved that. I miss it. Now I just write books about it, about all my romantic wishes, because even though they don’t come true for me anymore, I want other people to imagine them coming true for them. I used to love to paint when I was in college, but I haven’t done it in years. I want to get back into it. I am kind. I am giving. I am creative. And six months ago, I would have told you I was health conscious and healthy.
But she hadn’t said any of that. She had just listened and cried.
Maybe the support group would have served a better purpose if it had been structured differently. What would it have sounded like if each woman had said, Hi, I’m ____. I’m ____, ____, and _____. I also survived cancer. This month, this is what gave my life meaning and purpose, and made me so glad I was able to stick around: _____. This is still a challenge to me: ______. When I get discouraged or down, here is how I find my way back to happiness: ________. I am here. You are here. We are all still here. There is still joy within us and ahead of us.
What would it have been like if there had been little or no talking about cancer at all, but just an activity they could do together? Just an unspoken understanding while forging on with life together?
She was a woman who had survived cancer. She could not deny that. It was part of her experience and part of her story and part of the fears she still carried with her now. But while it would always be a part of her, she didn’t want it to be a big part of her. She didn’t want it to be her identity or be her new hobby.
When she returned home from the support group, she packed up all of her old prescriptions and returned them to the pharmacy, even though she really believed she would never actually act on that impulse she’d had. It just felt safer to have them out of the house, because she didn’t know whether she had bottomed out yet.
As she drove home from the pharmacy, she realized she wanted to have Paul’s guns out of the house too, but they were locked up in a safe, and she could put the spare key in the glove compartment of his car so that both keys would always be with him. Yes, she would do that. It was probably unnecessary, just like taking the pills back to the pharmacy, but taking these measures felt like a loving thing to do for herself. These were things she would do for Carly if Carly was going through a time of extreme imbalance like this. This imbalance was temporary, she reminded herself.
That moment she decided to save her own life was the same moment she decided to take the trip. It was when she knew with absolute certainty that she needed to go back to the places that would hopefully remind her of who she had been before all of this and who she still was deep down. The birdsongs and the beauty would hold her safely on the shore of the present moment so she wouldn’t drift back out into the stormy sea of the recent past.
* * *
She checked the
map before starting the car again. The park had four main entrances: Paradise on the southwestern side, where most people went and most climbers began their ascent; Carbon River on the northwest side, where fewer people went; Sunrise high up on the northeast side, which had expansive views and was one of the two places her dad had worked; and Ohanapecosh on the southeast side, a lower-elevation site that used to be a hot spring resort tucked into a temperate rain forest. That had been her primary childhood summer home. That was where Amy most wanted to be.
Not even a half hour later, she was there. She was finally there! Stepping out of her car, she first noticed the sound of the rushing river, a sound like a mother gently shushing a crying child. Closing her eyes, she could hear her own mother’s voice woven into it. She took a big breath and let it out, softening into the comfort and assurance of the sound of her mother and of Mother Earth herself.
Next, she noticed the smell, earthy and sweet like Douglas fir needles, the western red cedarwood, and service berries. Rich and heavy and moist. Wafts of the scents of campers’ breakfasts traveled through the air as well, mingling.
Everything was covered in moss here in the gentlest forest. It was as if the spirit of the forest herself liked to knit and made pajamas for the trees and blankets for the large boulders. Everything seemed lovingly cloaked in softness and tucked in for a peaceful sleep.
All around her she noticed plants that she hadn’t seen in decades and had mostly forgotten about. They seemed like familiar old friends—lady ferns and oak ferns, salal and kinnikinnick, trillium, vanilla leaf, bunchberry dogwood, glacial lilies, and bear grass.
She made her way from the parking lot to the visitor center, inhaling deeply, breathing this place that she loved right into the very center of her body. According to the ranger, there was one campsite left for that night. The next night was Friday, though, and the campground was booked. All the weekend nights for the rest of the summer were, in fact. Amy made reservations for all of the weeknights for the next three weeks, not terribly inconvenienced that she would need to change campsites every night or two. She was going to sleep in her station wagon, after all, so it wasn’t as if she would have to take down a tent and put it back up each time, moving all its contents as well. Sleeping in her car was easier than that and safer too. It had been one thing to sleep on the lawn outside of employee housing or in the clearing with the fire ring when she had been a kid, but it was quite another to sleep in a tent in a crowded campground full of people, many of whom knew nothing about keeping a clean camp. Ohanapecosh had plenty of bears. And even though she was clear that they wanted ice chests and not her, she had a hard enough time sleeping these days without the added element of listening for bears walking outside of her tent.
It was fine that the campground was completely reserved on the weekends all summer long because by then she would be badly in need of a shower. Maybe she would stay in a hotel at Crystal Mountain Resort or go on down to Enumclaw or Yakima and restock her food supplies. She would figure it out.
After she parked at her campsite and put her food in the large bear-proof box provided there, she set off first to the employee housing. At the far end of the campground, a trail led up the hill to the two two-story apartment buildings that housed the seasonal rangers and maintenance workers. Each year, they had stayed in the downstairs apartment on the far end of the complex farthest from the maintenance garage. Now, there were Tibetan prayer flags hanging outside of it and a bicycle parked near the door. In that moment when she could not go in, could not walk through the door and see her mom making pot roast and potatoes or something equally hearty, she realized that home wasn’t just a place but a time too. There was only a limited extent to which she was going to be able to come back home. She hoped it would be enough.
Around back was the big rock, the one where she and Alicia used to meet the other kids.
She patted it like a faithful old dog. Denny had given her her first kiss on top of that rock—a harmless peck, the summer they turned nine. If she could have gone back and done it differently, she would have married Denny Swensen. He had been as absolutely sweet as they came.
Walking on to the large stone campfire ring in a clearing just across the road, she found the trail to the Grotto after two attempts. The Grotto had been their name for a swimming hole at the bottom of a steep hill. Stepping on or over small fallen branches, she made her way to the part of the trail that involved hanging on to a rope while descending a series of rocks for about ten or fifteen feet. She had done it before. But she paused, unsure of whether her weak body would make it down safely and make it back up later on when it was time to return. If she fell, who knew how long it would take for someone to find her. The sound of the river would drown out her calls. Feeling too vulnerable to try, she sat on the edge among the sword ferns and lady ferns and looked down at the bright, aqua-colored water far below. She listened to the long, high, lyrical songs of the wrens that flitted about in the trees closest to her, their bodies small and brown, with a little white spot behind their eye. Sometimes, she thought she heard a hermit thrush in the distance, with a similar song that also had rapid highs and lows. Although she saw no flashes of yellow, from time to time she could hear a western tanager singing alto to the sopranos of the other birds.
It was then that she began to feel the weight of her body settle deeper into the earth, began to feel herself slow her rhythm, her breath, and her heart. When she walked, her footsteps slowed too. If she stayed on that trajectory of slowing down, she thought, she would eventually be in sync with the natural world around her. Slow enough to listen. Slow enough to smell. Slow enough to be back in the rhythm of peace.
Carly
As the days ticked on, Carly began to fall into a rhythm. Parts of the routine were still clumsy. There was definitely room for refinement. For starters, she would bring one or more of the books Great-Aunt Rae had left in her room to help pass the long days when there wasn’t enough time to join the guests but too much time to sit and think. All in all, she was pleased with how time had passed. There had been moments that had moved painfully slowly, like the moments she had lain awake at night listening to Great-Aunt Rae snore despite the earplugs. There had also been moments that passed too quickly, like when she had been trying to complete all her prep cooking before Great-Aunt Rae returned with the guests. And then there had been times that had moved at just the right speed, like when she brought up the rear on a trail ride on T. Rex, the gentle rocking of his walk soothing her like a baby in a cradle.
After she prepared what could be done in advance for tonight’s dinner, she crawled on T. Rex bareback while he was tied up in the shade of a tree, leaned forward, and just lay on him like that, like a baby monkey would cling to its mother. When she opened her eyes, she saw a coyote in a break in the trees quite a ways off, its eyes fixed on her. It was large and silvery, its winter coat not completely lost yet. Had she felt no fear, she would have found it quite beautiful.
Unsure of what to do, she slid off T. Rex, stood near the horses, and stared back, breaking only for moments to scan her surroundings, assessing whether there were others. If there were, she never saw them. The coyote sat down, but Carly did not. She held its gaze until at last it stood, turned, and walked back into the woods. She didn’t know whether it was gone for good or just gone for a while.
* * *
That night, after she had served the guests, she sat down at the dinner table to join them. One of the women stood, her glass raised. “I’d like to propose a toast—to Kathy, who has been cancer-free for five years now.”
The other women raised their glasses and cheered, “To Kathy!” but Carly froze. Just hearing that word, here where she thought she was safe from it, caught her off guard and threw her.
Great-Aunt Rae, astute enough to suspect it would, turned in time to catch a look of devastation on her face and said quietly, “Quick, go get that thing in the kitchen.”
“What thing?” Carly asked quietly, looking
at her, unable to interpret the look on her great-aunt’s face.
Great-Aunt Rae whispered her response: “It doesn’t matter.”
Carly understood. This was a happy occasion for the guests. If she was going to have a moment, Great-Aunt Rae wanted her to have it privately for the sake of everyone involved.
She stepped inside the chuck wagon, held her head in her hands, and took some deep breaths. When she thought she was ready, she rifled through a drawer for a large serving spoon, which she carried with her as she walked back to the table. She put it in the cubed potatoes next to the other spoon, as if there were supposed to be two. No one seemed to question it.
But later that night, after Kathy’s friends were immersed in a game of cards and Great-Aunt Rae was taking horses to the stream for one more drink for the night, Kathy approached Carly while she finished up the night’s dishes.