Rite Of Passage

I usually don’t go many days without posting but Hurricane Irene threw me off my regular game.  I’m the one who is supposed to grapple with life and death situations but turns out, the Fire Captain beau of seven years, was not having a fun time of it.  This is because Hurricane Irene elected to go straight through Virginia where the beau is busy making biscuit money by saving lives and property. 

What this meant for me was that I spent an anxious 96 hours on line listening to the calls from the fire department in Hampton where we works. 

The Internet is a glorious thing. 

I spent what little time I could spare away from the computer practicing my deadpan which is what the boyfriend needs and expects in a crisis. My family remarked that from the tone of my voice we could have been discussing a reality television show, not 100 mile an hour winds and massive flooding.   

I would never have been so calm when discussing reality television, mind you.  I hate reality TV.  The good news is, after the storm receded and the boyfriend was finally able to go home he found his roof intact, windows unbroken, his home dry (though the water did rise perilously high) and the power back on.  I don’t think he even lost a single steak out of his freezer, one of the perks of being gone for more than 72 hours during intermittent power outages.  His biggest compliant was the same observation I had when I was there during a particularly fierce tropical storm a few years ago: Bob’s neighbors do not seem to grasp the fundamentals of physics.  When you leave toys and lawn furniture lying about, they tend to act like lethal projectiles when the winds whip up.  If junior’s little red wagon doesn’t smash through your naked windows (and Bob covered his with plywood; another reason his house survived intact), they end up as causalities of the flooding. I spent a few curious hours picking up large toys and outdoor furniture that had somehow made their collective way into Bob’s expansive backyard during the flooding. 

 The odd thing was that after hauling everything to the curb, neighbors simply strolled by and picked up their missing items, like packages that UPS accidentally delivered two doors down.  It was the oddest thing.  I refrained from lecturing them all on how to pick up their crap BEFORE the storm hit.  That was because these are the very same folks who seem to think it’s a fine idea to allow their seven year old sons hands on access to bottle rockets and unsafe fireworks every fourth of July.  

Clearly, we have a difference of opinion on safety and they know Bob usually works the 4th of July though little Billy Ray wasn’t too happy to see my beau stroll downthe street to have a chat with him this past July.  Bob just happen to be off this past 4th and the boom-happy kids in his neighborhood were certainly not happy about it.  I spent all day reciting various versions of, “I told you so” and ratting out every kid in the neighborhood.  It was a fine time.  

I could not make it out there prior to Hurricane Irene however so the dogs, upon mandatory evacuation, were exiled to Grandpa’s house where they proceeded to lay siege to his life for the next few days and beg Bob’s brother for long walks so they could stake out the neighborhood.  They proved were most unhappy to be sent back home once the storm subsided. 

I feel another “I told you so” coming on. All of this turned out to be an exercise in frankly stupendous restraint on my part.  Whenever the beau called, he found me calm, collected, level headed and supportive.  In short, I was nothing like myself except the supportive part I suppose.  I also spent an inordinate amount of time silently communing with the seriously damp CNN reporters on Channel 56 as they shivered and shouted into microphones amid torrential downpours, braving the angry elements to report on everything from breached river banks to downed power lines.  

I learned from fighting cancer that I can actually be way more than I want to be.  I can be brave, I can be calm, I can be more than I am on any given day when the situation calls for it at least.  I was the one who counseled the beau to wrap his house in a cocoon of plywood and get the heck out of Dodge.  I even told him what to bring with him.  Don’t forget, I told him as he evacuated his dogs, the painting I had commissioned of you and the girls that is hanging on your dining room wall.  I knew this was the one thing he would be upset about losing if the storm did internal damage to his house.   

Cancer.  It’s a lesson in paring down to the absolute basics, in knowing what is truly important.  I knew it from my gut; your life, the dogs, insurance papers, some clothes, photos and that silly painting on the wall.  Nothing else mattered.

A few years ago, I owned a San Jose Sharks hockey jersey, oversized and with the player’s number 45 (former Shark’s player Jody Shelley) on the back.  I wore it through every surgery and through every major cancer milestone.  I made sure to wear it every third day after chemo, when the worst of the chemo would hit.  I made sure to wear a fighter’s shirt and number 45 through all of it.  It was and will always be, the most important thing I ever owned.  More than my house, the expensive sports car, anything.  And yet, when I met a young cancer patient undergoing treatment for leukemia, I didn’t hesitate.  I gave him my lucky Jody Shelley hockey jersey.

“When you are all better,” I told him.  “You find another cancer fighter to pass this on to. You’ll know when the time is right.” His dad stood watching, tears brimming in his eyes but the young cancer patient and I were resolutely dry eyed.  That’s because he and I knew what was really important.  Just getting to pass that jersey on to someone else was now a rite of passage, a message that we were going to be ok. 

May every cancer patient enjoy the same rite of passage and know what is important. Life, the dogs and a silly painting hanging on the living room wall. 

Nothing else really matters.