by Taylor Black
So one night, when Mike Jordan was away on a business trip, I was elevated to the exalted position of head coach with the added responsibility of “steady pitcher.” I penciled in the lineup. Taylor was batting last, of course.
I was having control problems as bad as Tim Robbins in Bull Durham and in the bottom of the second my youngest daughter arrived at the plate, the aluminum bat on her tiny shoulder. I had already nearly beaned two girls—thankfully we didn’t have a mascot for me to bean—but those tykes had the common sense and good coordination to move before the ball hit them. And now I was about to pitch to the pomegranate of my eye and I reared back and tossed the sphere underhand toward the plate but the ball’s trajectory was errant and I yelled, “Move, Taylor.”
Taylor chose that moment to try out for team statue. The ball plunked off her left shoulder. She did not drop her bat, she stayed in position. She was indeed a statue, except statues don’t cry.
“Child abuse!” a smart aleck father yelled from the stands.
Thanks pal, I really needed that, I remember thinking. I knew the guy and I wanted to race into the stands and give him a knuckle sandwich, but hey I was supposed to be a grown-up wasn’t I? Right. Men are never grownups. We are still ten-year-old boys inside when we step on a baseball diamond. But my guilt in plunking my daughter grew with every nanosecond.
“Take your base, honey,” the umpire told Taylor, but she stood as still as Michelangelo’s marble, the tears rolling down her face, the disbelief filling her eyes. My father hit me with the ball, her contorted face seemed to proclaim. My own daddy! Slowly, with the help of some unseen Aphrodite of athletics, the statue pulled a Galatea and became ambulatory and began a slow walk to first base, rubbing her left shoulder with her right arm. I felt awful. Oh, it’s not that I hadn’t spanked her before. She made the term “terrible twos” an extension of alliteration as in Taylor’s terrible tantrums at two and her bottom had been warmed on more than one occasion during that trying annum as my palm had nearly hit heating pad status, but to hit her with a ball? Only a cad, a cur or some other type of wretch would hit his daughter with a softball.
Taylor learned a thing about adults that day as well; they lie. Softballs are not soft, they are hard, at least when they hit you. A Nerf Ball? That’s soft. A beanbag? That’s soft. A softball isn’t soft.
I called time and walked penitently to first base. I took a deep breath and looked at my bewildered little girl. “Are you okay, Tale?” I asked.
She nodded. Thank heavens the tears had stopped. It always amazed me that there weren’t more women plumbers in the world, for a girl could turn a faucet of tears on and off so easily. I hugged her. Normally it was Taylor who initiated the hugs, Taylor who seemed to need the hugs, this time, I needed the hugs.
The Red Sox lost once again, 23-17. We didn’t have a closer.
Chapter Nine: A Father’s Worst Fear
On September 22, 2000, my ex-wife Pam took Taylor to the emergency room after she fainted in a shower at Pam’s house. Her mother’s intuition kicked in and I was glad of it for what was about to begin. The following day, Taylor began a diary of her experiences.
I realized, when I reread her first entry from that life-altering night when the brain tumor was discovered, that Taylor culled her diaries and used portions of her journals when she delivered a speech at the Swan Hotel in Disneyworld at the American Cancer Society Convention two days before the terrorist attack on the United States of America.
On the afternoon of the 23rd, Taylor returned to my house and told me what had happened. Our world, as we had known it, had suddenly changed. She would later write that the light seemed to go out of my eyes at the moment when she told me she had a brain tumor. I don’t recall that. I recall being stunned, as if someone had sucker-punched me in the stomach. There are so many moments that I wish I was able to relive, because the shock of the moment was so devastating it seemed to wipe out some of the images, like photographic film being exposed to a blinding light. I remember saying to Taylor, “You can beat this,” with a voice that tried for authority, but I’m sure rang hollow with doubt and fear. She was certainly frightened. I was terrified. Was the brain tumor benign or malignant? That was the question. The tumor in her head was the size of a peach. I remember trying to shake the image of a peach out of my mind. Why couldn’t it have been the size of a cherry? Or a pea? Maybe then I wouldn’t have been so terrified. A peach seemed so big to me. A few days later, a day before Taylor’s scheduled surgery, Taylor wrote in her journal.
The past few days have been a whirlwind. It’s like a haze has come over me. Everyone is sending cards and calling. They look at me as if they have just run over my puppy. It is a look that reaffirms the magnitude of what is happening. I feel like I need to wake up from a nightmare.
I remember her saying something like that to me at the time and “I know” was all I could reply. But I didn’t know squat. I realized she just wanted me to listen to her vent about the things she had no control over. My daughters had taught me the lesson of listening to women which is often so difficult for a man; a man wants to fix it, right then and there. And sometimes there is no fix or the woman is working out her own solution to a problem by talking about it. That was what Taylor was doing at that moment.
I guess you could say this is the antithesis of Christmas, Taylor wrote. Besides the whole tumor thing, this would be a pleasant time. Missing school and seeing everyone. Doctors and tests, doctors and tests. They are not even sure what kind of tumor it is. This seems so unreal. Until last week, I never spent the night in a hospital and now I’m going in for brain surgery. Maybe after I do this then it will all turn out to be no big deal and everyone will feel stupid for getting crazy over nothing.
She went on to write about her beautiful long hair; she wanted to keep her hair. What seventeen-year-old girl wanted to lose her hair? The next day after that journal entry she was scheduled for eight hours of brain surgery and I remember kissing her cheek and taking my leave to allow her to gather things for her hospital stay.
Her sisters were throwing a pre-brain surgery pizza party in her hospital room when I arrived a bit later that evening. Taylor had a brave little smile as the twins teased her about a number of things not related to her impending surgery. I marveled at how close sisters were, unlike my brothers and I, who were never really tight. There was something about sisters I realized in that moment, for the sisters of this sibling sorority had drawn a protective curtain around their youngest member and were trying to give her strength for her upcoming ordeal. I realize women are superior to men in that regard: caring for others. It was so obvious in that hospital room that night, when all my daughters, both step and biological were all there together, drawing strength from each other with our own family version of Steel Magnolias. Oh, the girls welcomed me, all of them, but my presence certainly wasn’t necessary, and after a few minutes I walked over to Taylor and gave her another kiss on the cheek. She smiled again, looked straight into my eyes as if surveying my soul, and grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze as if to reassure me that everything was going to be okay. Sometimes things are said through the silence of a look and this was one of those times.
But it was only beginning. The next fourteen months would be the greatest challenge of all our lives as Taylor would document in her journal.
Chapter Ten: Dad Starts a Journal
I agreed to keep a journal through her ordeal as a companion to Taylor’s diary. From brain surgery to recovery, that sort of thing, journals that would someday become something of an “Anne Frank and Dad” of cancer, something that might help other people face the disease, to show how we coped, how we overcame, how we triumphed, because, of course, we were special, we were the chosen ones, the ones who would beat cancer like cyclist Lance Armstrong. After all, things didn’t happen to us, they happened to that vague, nebulous group of “other people” but now, suddenly, they had happened to us, but we of course “were special.” My feelings weren’t
unique, it is something most people feel: being special. Bad things happen to others, not to us, and there I was, keeping my journal for September 29, 2000.
“My daughter Taylor entered Martin Memorial last night. Brain surgery was scheduled for today at 7 a.m. and the operation should last until the early afternoon. Brain surgery! Lord, in heaven, why Taylor?
“The waiting room is filled with Vaughn Monroe memorabilia: the Big Band leader’s RCA jacket, two 78 RPMS and a trumpet, a photo and an oil painting given by his family after he died in the hospital in 1973. None of the younger family members give a fig about Vaughn Monroe or even have a clue who he was. ‘That paths of glory lead but to the grave,’ Thomas Gray once wrote. That epigram certainly applied to Big Band leaders. I might add, that one generation’s ‘star’ doesn’t necessarily twinkle in the next.
“Family: the room is populated by my ex-in-laws and my stepchildren. Grandma Virginia, sister-in-law Barb and my brother-in-law Ronnie. Cousin Lisa, Courtney. My stepdaughter Tracey and twin stepdaughters, Jenni and Beth. Taylor’s brothers: Chad and Todd. Seven children, a large Catholic family.
“But I need sunglasses for the glares from my ex-wife Pam. And perhaps even a crucifix or some garlic. Even though we have been divorced thirteen years her hatred for me is palpable, but I am too concerned about Taylor to engage in our own version of Family Feud. It is amazing to think that this surly faced woman is a person I once adored and with whom I created two lovely daughters, the youngest of whom is under the surgeon’s scalpel at that moment. How did loving turn to loathing? That’s a story for another day, I think. I do something nearly impossible for me when I see her: I keep my mouth shut.
“The family chit-chats about nothing, as if the sounds of banality can ease the fear and tension in the room. I bring history essays to grade; there is comfort in correcting grammar, as grammar can be corrected. But can Taylor be corrected? Cousin Lisa, a high school science teacher (who will later become an FBI agent) has a stack of lab reports to mark. Other family members nervously leaf through the out-of-date magazines that dot the waiting room coffee tables and end tables. No one speaks of the operation as if we speak of it we will jinx the surgery. We are a family that avoids discussing difficult subjects like alcoholism or substance abuse as if by not talking about our problems they will magically go away, like the end credits on a movie. But unfortunately, there is always a sequel around the corner.
“The head nurse in the operating room comes out after a few hours and speaks to us. Her son is one of my students. It is one of the blessings of a small town like Stuart: the interconnections among the residents. She tells us everything is going along okay and they are “debulking” the tumor. But it is not “encapsulated,” a condition we had hoped for as that would indicate the tumor hadn’t spread. An “encapsulated” tumor would allow the surgeon to go in, cut it out, and that would be the end of it all with a ‘lived happily ever after.’ But there is no Fairy Godmother in this scenario, no turning this pumpkin into a royal carriage”
* * *
For Taylor there would be no glass slipper, no “happily ever after,” for the tumor was malignant and we would be given three different diagnoses over the ensuing days which, I must admit, tested my faith in the medical system. How can one feel confident with a diagnosis de jour? I believe even Job might not have enough patience for this.
Courtney, Taylor’s closest sibling, would be the most affected, both short term and long term. As Taylor was led to ICU for recovery, Courtney walked beside me down the hospital corridor to the exit and did something she hadn’t done in years; she took my hand and looked at me with moist eyes as if asking me for reassurance but silently realizing I had none to offer. I felt like such a failure as a father. All I could offer Courtney were my tears.
Sometimes Taylor comes to me in my present thoughts and tells me, You weren’t a failure as a father, Pops. You have to know that, Pops. It was out of your control.
I reply that I know, but I still felt that way.
And her voice invariably reminds me, Feelings pass, Pops. Just like people do.
Chapter Eleven: Cinderella’s Castle
Taylor was in ICU post brain tumor operation. Tubes were up her nose. She was in the arms of Morpheus, the mythical god of sleep. She appeared so peaceful. Tranquility Base, my eaglet has landed, I remember thinking.
I just sat there beside her in the ICU after her first brain surgery and held her hand. I thought, I’m a good father. I protect my girls. Once again I felt like a failure. This was all so wrong. Hell, I smoked for 30 years. I should have the cancer, like my father who died of lung cancer in 1974 because he couldn’t kick the cigarette habit. Shit! Not Taylor! Why God?? Why Taylor?? It is a question without an answer, at least in this lifetime, but it is on the top of my list in case St. Peter meets me with, “Do you have any questions?” Of course I might wind up in the “other place.”
Get back to the story, Pops, Taylor says in my mind. You’re digressing. She was always catching me when I digressed in a story.
Flowers were everywhere in the ICU. What is it with flowers? We give them to the sick, we give them to brides, we give them to the dead and we give them to our mothers. There is a language of flowers, a vernacular known to females and the FTD Mercury guy, and like most men I am illiterate. Taylor had a rainbow of colors in the intensive care unit. Remember “Rainbow Bright,” Taylor? I asked my sedated daughter.
As if on cue Taylor wakes up and smiled at me. I squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. The squeeze was surprisingly strong.
In my mind it is 1974. My sixty two-year-old father was on his death bed at Bryn Mawr Hospital. His cancer metastasized and caused a blood clot and a resultant stroke that impaired his speech. Then the pneumonia infiltrated his lungs. He could only squeeze my hand to communicate as the stroke had left him speechless, a man who was the international president of a labor union, who was accustomed to addressing a couple thousand union members in convention hall. Dad was in Who’s Who in America but he couldn’t even speak to me and there was so much left unsaid between us, so much forgiveness that needed to be shared and was shared, I suppose, in the gentle squeezing of hands between a father and a son. In my mind as I sat in the ICU I saw my father’s palsied face, but it changed into Taylor’s. My father, my daughter; I shivered. I couldn’t stay long: There were other family members waiting and we could only have two people in at a time in ICU. And I wanted to be alone with her.
I asked God to help Taylor that night and I tried not to be angry with Him. What was the name of that play? Your Arms Too Short to Box with God? But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to throw a punch at old Yahweh.
People all over Martin County began praying for Taylor. The second grade at St. Joseph’s. Catholics. Jews. Fundamentalist Protestants. My brother the Quaker started prayers at the Friends meeting in Brooklyn. I called Jim, my Mormon friend, in Utah. Taylor was put on the Mormon prayer list. I figured it couldn’t hurt to be ecumenical. Everyone was praying for Taylor. Only seventeen. Why Taylor, God? Why us?
I remember sitting there in the ICU and thinking of Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyworld. The girls liked that mythological castle when they were young. Every little girl’s dream programmed by the silly fantasy that Prince Charming would make everything right, that a man would save the woman every time. Hallmark hogwash Disney denial, I would diagnosis it. When Taylor was little and posing with Courtney in front of Cinderella’s Castle, she once asked me, “In the movies why doesn’t the girl ever save the boy, Daddy?” I answered in real life the girls often save the boys, Taylor, and sometimes the boys don’t even know it.
On my wall in my den as I write this sentence is the poster of Taylor at 5 and Courtney at 7 standing at Disneyworld with Cindy’s Castle in the background. It is a picture I took that came out so well I had it blown up into a poster and laminated so that it wouldn’t fade over the years as my memories have. In that poster, the girls are pre-Piaget age of reason rug rats who b
elieved in Santa Claus—or Sandy Claws as Taylor used to call him. They also believed in the Easter Bunny and the Valentine Bird, an invention of their maternal grandfather, who created the avian of amour as an excuse to indulge his granddaughters with more candy and himself with a half-gallon of vodka.
But back in ICU…I guess my mind wandered off to thoughts of Disneyworld and Cinderella’s Castle that night because the fantasy of the Magic Kingdom was preferable to the reality of a daughter in an ICU. I knew that we were certainly going to need a touch of magic in the coming days and I wished Tinker Bell would show up and sprinkle some fairy dust so Taylor could fly away to Never Never Land, or that we would wake up and all of this would be merely a bad dream.
* * *
For Taylor Y2K turned out to be as bad as many had predicted, although her computer didn’t crash in 2000, but having a brain tumor operation can kind of besmirch even the best of years and although she had a boyfriend she also had chemotherapy. Still everyone was hopeful as 2001 began, especially Taylor.
Taylor’s Diary
January 2, 2001