A Kick-Ass Fairy: A Memoir

by Linda Zercoe

Exuberant and exhausted, we made our way back to Ellen’s car, six and a half hours after we had begun. As we took the blind switchbacks down the mountain at breakneck speed, the Allman Brothers on the stereo, I said to Ellen, “I want to have a party, a goddess party.” She looked over at me with a raised eyebrow that said continue.

  “Let’s celebrate the circle of life, celebrate the maiden, the mother, and the wise women—the cycle of death and rebirth. What do you think?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  I sent out e-vites with a beautiful picture of Gaia (the daughter of Chaos), mother earth herself, to the women-only party. It would be at my house, outdoors, on the Saturday after the summer solstice. Everyone was instructed to come dressed as a “goddess,” whatever that meant to them, and bring scarves for swirling, twirling and to prepare to really let go. We were going to celebrate being women—powerful divas, Gagas, and real goddesses—and do it with song, of course.

  Feeling inspired by the project, I decided to paint the picture of Gaia that I had found on the Internet for the invitation to use as the backdrop for the karaoke stage on the back deck. In the picture, Gaia was emerging from the earth with her shoulders as the mountains, her head covered in flowers, birds, and butterflies. Rays of white, teal, mauve, and yellow light radiated from her head. Her loving gaze was toward the virgin horizon, as if just her intention was enough to create the beauty of the earth. A river began at the nape of her neck and flowed down to the life-filled oceans that were her one breast. The other breast was inhabited with the animals of the forest. I went to an art supply store and bought a five-by-four-foot canvas and decided to paint it in oil to maximize the experience of all the colors.

  After struggling to fit the canvas into the back of the SUV, I picked up Ellen and we went off to a craft store to buy party supplies. There we bought flower garlands and sprigs for the wreaths that guests would make for their heads. I selected twenty-four spools of satin ribbon in red, pink, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple to cut into lengths to decorate the tambourines I was giving as party favors. We searched the store for floral tape and spools of wire for attaching the ribbon. After filling the cart with all the supplies, we waited on the long checkout line, exhausted, having spent all this energy creating.

  Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I blocked out the painting, began to lay out the base colors, then the figure of Gaia herself. As the painting was taking shape, one day Ellen came over for rehearsal.

  “Do you think I could paint one little corner of this painting?”

  “Absolutely!” I said.

  After I’d finished Gaia’s face and head of flowers and started blocking out the animals, I asked Ellen when she wanted to start her corner. She said, “I don’t want to ruin it.” I didn’t push. That was one of the great things about our relationship. Nothing was forced, everything was accepted.

  We practiced some duets. Coming from the world of classical music, Ellen didn’t care for pop. In song, she was a jazz and blues gal; I was the blues rocker chick. We intersected at the blues. Like a couple of teenagers we practiced the karaoke versions of the Cranberries’ “Dreams,” “Sisters” by Bette Midler and Linda Ronstadt, Everly Brothers duets, and “Telephone” by Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.

  The plan for the party was that each person would pick the goddess they most identified with from a list I’d selected. The four options were Athena, warrior, goddess of justice and truth; Artemis, goddess of the hunt and nature; Aphrodite, love and beauty; and Hestia, hearth and home. Each goddess group would select one song from each of three categories—Women’s Empowerment, Songs of Heartbreak, and Screw Him songs. Then they would get up and perform them—no contests, just for fun. All the songs were ones everyone would know.

  Ellen arrived at the party a vision of beauty as Artemis. I was Athena. She had curled her hair. Her makeup was beautiful; she was even wearing eye shadow. She told me she’d spent the whole day getting ready and painted her fingernails just for me. Her dress was a silk-and-lace sheath in teal and brown that her husband had purchased as a gift for her in Hong Kong years before. It had been in storage until the party. She was radiant.

  The guests sipped Bellini champagne punch as they made the wreaths for their heads and decorated their tambourines, giggling and sharing stories of their lives. We had an incredible Hestia-inspired potluck dinner and spent the rest of the evening singing, dancing, celebrating each other, our lives, and good times. Our ages ranged from mid-20s to mid-60s, but everyone there was young. Just like the famous cartoon that can be seen alternately as a girl or an old woman, if you looked carefully in each face you could see the joyous, carefree expectancy of the maiden, the loving glow of the mother, and the knowing appreciation of the crone.

  At the end of the evening, after everyone else had left, on the back deck under the full moon, Ellen, Clara, Kim, and I, each of us in various states of grieving, did shots of limoncello. We drew from the deck of goddess cards we’d forgotten to use at the party and laughed as we interpreted their meaning, arguing whether they applied to each of us.

  Late in the evening, I walked Ellen to her car, where we embraced and wished each other well. Then Clara, Kim, and I shared a group hug and said goodnight. I walked back through the house picking up all the debris, the petals fallen off flower sprigs, the scraps of ribbons, a couple of tambourines forgotten, a flower wreath left behind.

  Later in the week, watching the video, I noticed the sparkle had returned to my older, and maybe wiser, eye.

  Epilogue

  April 13, 2011

  I’m on a women’s tour in Ireland sponsored by the New York Institute of Jungian Studies entitled The Realm of the Goddess: A Women’s Pilgrimage to the Sacred Sites of Ireland. I am hoping to connect with the earth and the “crone” or wise woman—the next phase of my life.

  April 14

  I am finding Ireland to be very magical with the lush green hills about to burst into bloom. The Irish broom brush is flowering in golden yellow. The idea of the fairies, the fairy trees, the beautiful farms with the rock walls, the little cottage homes seen while along the way to and from our sites, look like the Easter bunny is about to come with bouquets of tulips and daffodils. While looking for the crone, I found my child goddess here instead, further confirmed by the etched card I purchased of the elf Fairy Heart. I have reclaimed her. I’m even giggling! I realized that the Goddess—the child/maiden, mother and crone—has always been within me. I can also see her within the beauty and power of each and every woman I have met.

  April 19

  I found HER! After visiting the Library of Ireland and calling up books about fairies dating back to the 1600s, I decided that I want to get a fairy pin or charm as my souvenir, a symbol of the trip. So today, while I was walking the streets of Dublin looking for a fairy to bring home, I got shivers up my spine when I finally found my fairy in a store window. She is a silver charm that wears a red enameled motorcycle helmet, with stars, goggles, and red lipstick. She is dressed in a green skirt and over-the-knee shiny black Christian Louboutin platform boots with their red soles, and crystal-studded garters. Her arms and legs move. I bought her and a chain to hang her from as a necklace. She is my charm. She is me—the Kick-Ass Fairy! She is me whole—with all the parts of me reclaimed. And now I know I have always been a Kick-Ass Fairy.

  Later, in the fall of 2011, after doing some research into what I could do to make a difference, I contacted the Clinical Genetics Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. Even though it was going to be weeks of work, I wanted to participate in the clinical study on Li-Fraumeni syndrome that was just about to start. After speaking with the study nurse about the criteria for participation, I received a large package of information that needed to be filled out. There were booklets of questionnaires to be answered, family trees to be made, medical problems to be described.

  For weeks, I pored over the five four-inch binders I had accumulated of medi
cal records, surgeries, pathologies, and lab reports to fill in all the relevant information. I was struck again by how amazing it was that I had lived through all of this. I called aunts, uncles, and cousins to gather data. I called my mother, but she was no help since she did not remember anything. When I finally gathered everything, I sent it all to the NCI.

  In November, I had another surgery for yet another lung cancer (making this the fifth primary) in a different part of the same left lung. This one was also small, requiring no further treatment. Once home, I collapsed into recovery. I spent two entire weeks in bed watching all five seasons of The Wire.

  I knew it was going to be a happy Thanksgiving. I chose not to go down into the deep and just be grateful—grateful for my prognosis, for dodging the bullet, grateful for my doctors and their skill and for the technology that they do have that can find these little tumors before they kill me. I was also grateful that they could reuse my scars.

  Unfortunately, though, by February of 2012, my body went into lockdown mode. I had to start wearing splints for problems with both of my feet (plantar fasciitis), splints for my wrists (carpal tunnel), and immobilizers for my elbows (epicondylitis, or tennis elbow). One night while I was lying in bed, I thought, I look like the Tin Man. I was practically wearing full body armor and thought I looked just like a warrior. I had been in combat whether I was conscious of it or not.

  Toward the end of that spring, I joined a pool to loosen up my muscles and joints. I figured if I can’t take the steep hill, I will go around it. If I can’t go around it, I will blow it up. I knew, after all was said and done, that I was a CANCERIAN, but not just in the sense of the horoscope.

  I am a Cancer Warrior, a fighter with a hard shell and a big heart. Not just a survivor but a member of the Legion of Cancerians. I revel in all the drama of life, while learning how to live, living to love, and ready to fight another day if I have to. But I am, was, and always will be a Kick-Ass Fairy!

  In June, right before we left on the plane to go to the NIH in Bethesda, we hired contractors to continue the remodeling of our house, our home. We are continually reinventing our lives.

  I know I will live to see Brad walk the lawn at the University of Virginia when he graduates from college next year! I believe the best of my life is yet to come.

  Really.

  Thank you for reading

  We invite you to share your thoughts and reactions

  Acknowledgements

  To Family and Friends:

  I would not have been able to live to tell this tale were it not for my children, Kimberly and Bradford. Their precious souls, their personalities and interests were the spark that lighted my fire every day. I thank them also for their tolerance and for loving me in spite of my flaws.

  My deepest gratitude goes to my husband, Doug, who lives all of our marriage vows every day. You are a great man, honorable, loyal, and have been my Steadfast Soldier. Your unwavering support allows me to soar and your provocation inspires the fighter in me. You have allowed me all and loved me unconditionally. You held me up when I couldn’t walk, fed me when I couldn’t feed myself—relieved my pain when I couldn’t do for it myself. You took it all from me and gave it back transformed. I love you on the cellular level.

  I am grateful for and appreciate my parents Bruce and Frances for sharing their greatest gifts, for dropping everything and coming across the country to be there to support me and my family and for being at the top of the list of my greatest life teachers.

  During a life of crisis some friends come and go and even family members turn their backs when they can no longer tolerate the crisis. They seek relationship elsewhere. To those friends and family—I thank you for the support and love you just for being you and for what you were able to give, for as long as you did.

  To the friends that stuck by me through thick and thin for close to a lifetime:

  Nancy, I thank god I didn’t listen to my mother. We’ve walked together through the fire many times. I love you, my heart of hearts.

  Clara, my California soul sister/surrogate mother/friend, what can I say? Many times it was only because of your willingness to hold space for me and listen that I was able to face another day. We’ve shared it all, love, death, joy, laughter and I love you, my Ethel!

  My love to Robert, you have been my brother and friend for so long. Thank you for being just what I needed all these years—you—true, kind, and cherished.

  For my friend Lyn, you have been such an angel and a prominent color in the thread of the tapestry of my life for the last twenty years. You are so much more to me than a friend. I am grateful for you and our group, The Hidden Assets, Mary, Jane, Kelly and Jan. Our friendships and gatherings and celebrations are the infrastructure that holds together the entire year, year after year. There have been many laughs, the sharing of life’s trials as well as good fortune with this tribe. Thanks to each of you for holding up the mirror and helping me to grow in ways beyond imagining.

  Many thanks to my friends at book group who offered too many flowers, cards, casseroles and cheer as well as ongoing friendship and help above and beyond: especially Joanne, Susan, Kathleen, Lynne, Leslie. A special shout out to Mary M! Twenty years of thanks to Jacqui, another great teacher, kind, loving and true. I thank you all as well for your support and early critiques of my manuscript.

  For the Health Care Community:

  During this journey I have encountered and dealt with many physicians. I appreciate them all for their years in training and dedication to their profession and for the challenges they face every day. You are heroes. There are some doctors that I have met who I consider exceptional. Not only are they extremely knowledgeable and current in their fields, but they also connect and see the whole patient, and that has made an extraordinary difference to me while facing extreme challenges. I want to name them here and thank them for being over and beyond the norm. The Exceptional Doctor awards go to (in no particular order):

  Dr. Donald McKean

  Dr. Margaret Tempero

  Dr. William Hoffman

  Dr. Henry Ward Trueblood

  Dr. Bradford Prescott

  Dr. Peter Carroll

  Dr. Thierry Jahon

  Dr. Roseanne Gorey

  Dr. E. Shelly Hwang

  Dr. Susana Ortiz-Unda

  Dr. Orlo Clark

  Dr. David Jablons

  Dr. Harvey Young

  Dr. Stephen Rothstein

  Dr. Matthew Sirott

  Many thanks to all the doctors behind the scenes, the anesthesiologists, pathologists, and especially the researchers for their innovation, passion and the hope they give the world. Little by little, they work to make sense of our biology so that someday soon their research may lead to a cure and there will be no more patients with cancer.

  Of course I want to shout out thanks to the hundreds of sister/brother nurses who took care of me when I couldn’t care for myself. You are angels here on earth! You are now nameless, but I remember your faces. I see you as incredibly awesome—the heroes of all the heroes. I want to give a special shout out to Brian, Anna, Elizabeth and Shane.

  I want to acknowledge the psychotherapy community for its commitment and desire to facilitate healing. I accessed your skills often. I especially want to thank the therapists that support the population of cancer patients and their caregivers, usually on a volunteer basis. You are also unsung heroes. I want to give a special shout out especially to Trisha, Erika, Frances, Ron and the many other professionals at the Cancer Support Community of the East Bay.

  Hospitals are like a town with many people working separately to create the whole. There are the people that bring in your food tray, the pharmacists, the stockroom people, the transport people, the radiology assistant, the phlebotomist and lab assistants, the admissions clerk, the discharge planner, the medical records person among many more. I’ve visited your town too many times to count, but I thank you for your dedication and hard work. I want to acknowledge first UCSF Medical Ce
nter for being truly a center of excellence in all that they do. I want to acknowledge Stanford Hospital for excellent care. I want to thank John Muir Medical Center for the care its staff provided when times were simpler.

  Also, my thanks to all the practitioners of non-Western body medicine I have seen. The acupuncturists, Chinese medicine doctors, somatic energy workers, massage therapists, cranial sacral therapists, myofascial release specialists (shout out to you, Dana). You help to complete the circle of healing that was and still is necessary.

  Please see my Resources page for the many books that also helped me on my journey.

  The Craft of Writing:

  With respect to writing, I took only one English composition class in college. I never gave any thought to being a writer. So besides having many stories to tell, I want to thank all the incredible authors I have read for helping to open a door into other worlds and perspectives.

  While I never set out to be a writer, I worked hard to learn the craft. I want to thank Caroline Goodwin, a poet, former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, and a Senior Adjunct Professor in the MFA writing program at California School of the Arts and a continuing studies instructor at Stanford. She watered the seed of an idea that I could write a book. She encouraged me to ford the stream and bring my story, “a story that needs to be told,” into the world.

  I want to thank Adair Lara for her humor, for being a great teacher, for hosting a wonderful writing salon, and for the early critiquing of my manuscript. Brave, compassionate and experienced are you. Thank you for helping me to focus on what’s important to the reader and to me. You helped me to re-pot the plant and inspired me to not get out the chainsaw.

  For members and mentors on my pro team:

  Thanks to Alan Rinzler, my developmental editor, for taking me on and helping me to prune and water the tree to encourage it to grow in the best way. I appreciate your direct sharp wit and wisdom and all the support you’ve provided since then.