Hello friends! I’m back! I have been dealing with some very frustrating technical difficulties over the last few weeks. Out of the blue WordPress was not letting me edit or begin a post. I got a pop-up error message that I tried to resolve using all the advice out in Google Land, as well as the (really crap) technical support provided by Bluehost, my hosting service. All to no avail. Finally, Chris asked if it might be worthwhile trying his old laptop. Et voila, here I am. I think perhaps the problem was that the latest updates to WordPress and Bluehost finally rendered the operating system in my laptop (which has reached its own iOS update limit) incompatible. The plan is to get me a new laptop at some point, but until that time I’m so happy to have a pretty convenient workaround.
It’s funny – before these technical difficulties I would sometimes feel self imposed pressure to get on here and crank out a blog post. Once I was unable to do so, I missed the blog so much!
Okay, so, my bird photos – I’m quite pleased with my new setup. I’ve put up my seed feeder right outside my kitchen window – about three feet away from the window. That’s not new. What is new is a large-ish branch that I’ve stuck into the ground about three feet from the feeder. When things get really busy at the feeder birds will use this branch as a pit stop before or after feeding. That’s when I get my photos. It provides a more natural background for my photos than a green plastic feeder.
Life is good here. My exercise routine is still going well. I ate too much this long Thanksgiving weekend. We got a milk steamer/frother which is so much fun. We’re almost all caught up with Doc Martin. I just finished a super busy time at work and am about to begin another super busy time at work. I am loving the newest Taylor Swift album (never thought of myself as a Swiftie but here I am).
I am SO glad to be back on here, excited to be photographing the winter birds, and really looking forward to sharing more photos with you.
I am a big fan of little books filled with many little essays describing things that bring joy or contentment. Ones already in my library are The Joy of Small Things by Hannah Jane Parkinson, Delight by J.B. Priestley, and Joy in the Little Things by Kerrie Hess. This summer I discovered a new addition to the genre, Things to Look Forward To by Sophie Blackall. I wrote here recently that I have a few trips I’m anticipating with great excitement, the first of which happens very soon. But there are some little things that I look forward to each and every day, so I thought I would share some of them here with you today:
Wordle – yes, I am one of the millions addicted to this little game. I love that you can only play it once a day and I love that a few people close to me also play it daily. “Have you played Wordle yet today?” is a common text between my friend Beth and I. Chris and I always use the same starter word (“adieu”) and so it’s fun to see the different paths we take each day after that first guess.
Worldle – Similar to Wordle in that you get six guesses. Different in just about every other way. Each day you are given an outline of a country or territory. With each guess that you make, you are given clues in the form of how many miles off you are and in which direction from your guess the correct country is. Beth and I also both do this one and are so pleased when we get the answer without the use of maps!
That first cup of coffee – On a work day I wait until I’m in the office to have that first cup and it is hilarious to me just how much I look forward to it. Such a lovely, lovely treat.
Having a moment to dip into whatever novel I’m reading – currently Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (loving it!)
That moment at the end of the work day when I can change into “play clothes” and relax
I nearly got up early this morning so that this post would be “Seven Mornings” – a full week. But, nah.
It struck me when looking at these photos that every day is unique. We go through life sometimes thinking it’s the same thing every day – same ol’ same ol’ – a sort of Groundhog Day vibe where we get up, go to work, come home, repeat. But no day is exactly the same as the one before it. The natural world we inhabit changes every single day. And we change too. Time travel is real, and we’re living it every single day of our lives.
Today is my birthday. I am 59 years old today. Nine years ago today I had no idea that I was soon to be diagnosed with a pretty significant case of breast cancer. Eight years ago today I was certain I’d never make it to fifty-nine. Yet here I am. And though I often find living this human life to be quite difficult, I am filled to overflowing with gratitude that I am still here.
January 31 is a bittersweet day for me. An anniversary of something I wish had never happened. A day I’d like to erase all memories of. The day I was diagnosed with breast cancer. A day that now marks my milestones in cancer survivorship. Today I am a seven-year survivor of breast cancer.
I remember the exact moment I heard the words. I was a teacher at the time. It was a snow day. I was sitting at my kitchen counter eating a healthy breakfast of a chia seed berry smoothie bowl. I had undergone a biopsy of a suspicious 9-centimeter region that showed up on my yearly breast MRI a few days before. My mammogram 6 months earlier had shown nothing suspicious, however having dense breasts made the reading of the films quite challenging. I was being screened every 6 months (alternating mammograms and MRIs) because of certain risk factors (previous biopsies, dense breasts, late childbearing, early first period) and I was also given a physical breast exam by a surgical oncologist every six months. The idea was that if anything ever did show up, we would catch it when it was tiny.
So there I was, starting to eat my smoothie bowl when the call came. It was my surgical oncologist. She told me to come down to her office and bring someone. I replied that I was on my way, but if it was bad news I’d like to hear it now. “It’s invasive lobular carcinoma. I can’t believe it,” she said. She sounded dumbfounded. A 9-centimeter cancerous mass. In case you haven’t figured it out, that is enormous in the world of breast cancers. Scarily huge. How could it have evaded detection all this time? I was soon to learn that lobular breast cancer is a sneaky son of a bitch. It doesn’t form nice, round tumors like its cousin, ductal carcinoma. Lobular carcinoma forms flat sheets of cells, then slowly builds upon those sheets. A lobular carcinoma tumor can live quite a while in lumpy, dense breasts without raising any particular red flags. It often can’t be seen on mammograms, and in my experience can also evade detection by MRI.
I got up and dumped my smoothie bowl in the sink. I had lost my appetite, and would have no appetite for literally about a year and a half (I don’t recommend this particular diet).
Ten months of treatment ensued, beginning with 8 rounds of chemotherapy. After my chemotherapy I had a repeat breast MRI. The results came in – no evidence of cancer. My medical oncologist was beaming. “I love when this happens,” she said. At her urging, I opted for a lumpectomy instead of the bilateral mastectomy I was leaning toward.
The pathology of the lumpectomy showed continued presence of lobular carcinoma cells, and no clean margins.
“That lobular cancer is sneaky,” I heard for the fifth, or sixth, or twentieth time. I had lost track.
Bilateral mastectomy and 30 radiation treatments came next, and then I was declared to be in remission. My hair was growing back. I was slowly gaining weight. But I was so used to being tricked by that bastard lobular cancer that I couldn’t believe that the cancer wasn’t still lurking in my lungs. Or brain. Or spine. It took me an entire year to realize that it didn’t matter if it was still lurking. What mattered is that I had limited time here on earth. That I had always had limited time here. That these were the golden days – days when I was healthy enough to do anything I wanted to do. Time was a-wasting and I needed to get busy living my life.
I will never be one of those people who say that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them. No, it is the absolutely worst thing to ever happen to me. But there were powerful lessons learned. Lessons I don’t know if I would have ever learned without some sort of comparable crisis. And those lessons were:
Life is short. Get busy living. NOW. I mean it! What are you still doing here reading this?
Love is all that matters.
None of us knows what is around the next bend in our lives. It could be something incredibly good, or heartbreakingly bad. The only thing we can be sure of is what is happening in this very moment. If this moment is mundane, or boring, or full of everyday frustrations – well, put that in the “win” column. I try not to get too caught up in things that might seem important but really don’t matter one whit.
I am currently living a life of gratitude. I know that I am beyond lucky to still be here 7 years later. I have lost several friends to cancer since my diagnosis in 2014. Every anniversary, every birthday is a gift. I love love love growing older. Bring on the wrinkles and gray hair!
When I was diagnosed, Sam was a freshman in high school and I honestly thought that I wouldn’t see him graduate high school. He’s now a senior in college, set to graduate 4 months from now. I’m pretty sure I’ll be around for that day. But a few moments ago I had a phone conversation with him, which ended, as they always end, with these words: “I love you, honey.” “I love you, Mom.”
Happy Thanksgiving to my friends here in the United States! This is a strange sort of Thanksgiving for just about everyone I know. Smaller gatherings, no travel.
Upon graduating college I entered the Air Force and spent several Thanksgivings away from family. After leaving the Air Force, I lived in Ohio, California, Texas, Illinois, and Ohio again. Some years travel for the holidays was possible. Other years it just wasn’t. I became used to different variations on the theme of turkey, family, and friends. Every year, though, brought the opportunity to reflect on the things that made me feel thankful. And there were so many things. No matter what else was going on. Thanksgiving 2009 was my family’s first Thanksgiving after my beloved brother Robert died. It was my first Thanksgiving knowing that my first marriage had ended. Thanksgiving 2014 saw me still in cancer treatment, and my dad had just died in October. Even in the saddest and strangest circumstances, I learned there was still much for which to be thankful.
Chris returned from California on Sunday. After spending that day in three different airports and two different flights, we knew that our Thanksgiving four days later needed to be different. Sam isn’t home for the holiday either, choosing to stay alone in his apartment for two weeks after his last day of work in a busy cafe. I will pick him up on December 6 and we will have a wonderful Christmas season together.
Chris and I have been avoiding contact with each other since he came home, wearing masks whenever we are in common areas of the house, eating our meals and sleeping in separate rooms. Tomorrow he will go to get his covid test, and if his results are negative we will feel confident eating our Thanksgiving meal together Sunday evening. It’s not a 14 day quarantine, but we feel pretty comfortable with the compromise.
I look at families that have the same Thanksgiving experience year after year after year and sometimes I am envious of those unchanging traditions, in much the same way that I am sometimes envious of couples who have been married for 50+ years. There is definitely something to admire in those situations; situations that my life has not provided. But I am so grateful that my life has given me the opportunity to see that even the things that I didn’t necessarily want to happen, even the challenges and deviations from the “perfect” life that have sometimes thrown me for a loop – none of these things have taken away my deep capacity for gratitude. Indeed, I feel that they have increased that capacity.
Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for you.
Michelle xoxo
P.S. If you want a squirrel-resistant bird feeder like mine, here is the link.
Two weeks ago I dropped Chris off at the airport – his first film job since covid began. He gets back tonight, and will be quarantining in a separate part of the house until he gets a covid test later in the week. Even though we will be somewhat apart after he gets home, it will be nice to have him back. His job often takes him away, but this is the first time he’s been gone while I am also working remotely. The isolation has been weird, and makes me realize just how hard this must be for people like Sam, his only actual human interaction being his work at Panera and one in-person class a week. Sam and I talk a few times a day these days, but the telephone is no substitute for actually being in the presence of another person.
I’ve leaned more heavily on the natural world during these last two weeks. Driving out to the sunset when the weather permits, going for my morning walks. I bought a new bird feeder for the back yard. It is supposedly squirrel proof, and so far (I’ve had it for 24 hours now) that appears to be true. The squirrels have given it many quizzical looks, have tentatively climbed part-way up the pole, but have not been able to figure out how to access the food. I’m taking videos of their attempts and will post them here sometime soon.
As I gain more experience taking photos, I have found that my best photos result not from any technical skill that I have (which is minimal at this point!), but from my ability to pay really good attention to what is around me. This paying attention is also a skill that I find gets better with practice. I spend many minutes just watching the trees and feeder outside my kitchen window before the birds even show up. Most of the photos I take get deleted off the memory stick immediately (if I had a nickel for every photo of a bird that ended up not actually containing a bird, I’d have a lot of nickels). The watching ends up being a type of meditative practice. I am so focused on being ready when a bird shows up that all of the usual unhelpful inner chatter that goes on in my head gets pushed aside.
The leaves have all fallen to the ground now, and I spent a couple of hours yesterday raking the last ones up and dragging them to the curb, where they will be vacuumed up by the city this week. The once lushly leafed trees look so vulnerable in their bare state. There is a red-bellied woodpecker that hangs out in my back yard, and he hammers away quite vigorously at the bark of my beloved trees, searching for insects to eat. As beautiful as he is, I sometimes find myself wishing that he would eat elsewhere. Still, I’m sure the trees will survive it. The benefit to having the trees so bare is that I can see (and photograph) the birds better now, which is such a source of pleasure.
Mary Oliver once said in a poem, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” She also said “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” The idea of paying attention runs throughout her work, and is evident in her loving and lavish descriptions of the natural world. Paying attention to nature has become so important to me, and such a source of solace for me, during this pandemic. And I’m finding that once I practice paying attention in one part of my life, it spills over into others. That, I’m learning, makes the work of gratitude (and it can sometimes be hard work) so much easier. Attention may be the beginning of devotion, but I think it is also the beginning of gratitude.
Now that the clocks have been turned back, I’m once again beginning my morning walk in daylight – while it lasts. This morning, as I was walking out the door, I was surprised to see a deer in our front yard. She was surprised to see me, too, but not frightened. What a lovely way to start my day.
Oh, yes – it snowed last night. I’ll post my photos of my snowy walk tomorrow.
“Ask a woman about her hair, and she just might tell you the story of her life.” – Elizabeth Benedict
As you can probably tell from the photo above, I haven’t been to my hair stylist since March 10. Before the advent of the coronavirus I had no intention, at least in the forseeable future, of going back to my natural hair color. In the pre-covid days I would actually get sort of embarrassed in the last days leading up to my stylist appointment. I couldn’t wait to cover up the unsightly stripe of steel gray that was invading my light brown coif like weeds in a pristine lawn. But over the last four months the idea of ditching the $100-every-seven-weeks habit of the past several years has grown on me.
Women have such a complicated relationship with their hair – too curly, too straight, too thin, too thick, frizzy, limp, wrong color. It seems rare to meet a woman who is completely happy with her hair. I know my own relationship with my hair has had its ups and downs.
From birth to about 12 years old I never thought about my hair at all. Then puberty came and my hair became curly, so of course I had to do everything I could over the next several decades to try to (mostly unsuccessfully) blow dry the curls into submission. At the ripe old age of about 46 I finally decided to embrace the curls. My hair color at this time was a natural light brown, and I would sometimes have my stylist add a few highlights to it. I was really rocking the curly hair there for a while, right up until I found out that I would lose it all to chemotherapy.
In order to ease the transition to baldness, I got a pixie cut. That lasted about three weeks, at which point my hair began to fall out in large clumps and I asked Chris to give me a buzz cut. Being bald didn’t really bother me. Honestly it was the least of my worries at the time. I was more concerned about surviving. I wore a wig to school, which was hot and uncomfortable, but I wanted to project some sense of normalcy for my third-grade students. When I wasn’t working I had a collection of berets that I wore when going out into the world.
When the hair grew back and got beyond the fuzzy baby-chick stage, I was shocked that not only was my base hair color much darker than before, but there was quite a bit more gray than before as well. I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t feel like my appearance matched the “me” I had always been. It seemed unfair that cancer took one more thing from me. At the same time, I felt incredibly grateful just to have hair on my head again. It seemed frivolous at the time to do anything about the color, but eventually I took the plunge and went back to my light-brown-with-golden-highlights look. The expense didn’t thrill me, but I never really thought about stopping.
Enter COVID-19.
Women all over the world have been grappling with their hair color during these last few months. Some turned to color-in-a-box (which stores apparently couldn’t keep on the shelves, the demand was so high). Many ran to their stylist as soon as restrictions were eased, and breathed a sigh of relief when order was restored to their hair. Many, like me, didn’t feel comfortable returning to their stylist even when allowed by local authorities. It felt too soon and we still didn’t feel ready. I’m thinking that sometime in September I may return (if the virus numbers improve), but I’ve made the decision that I won’t be going in for color. I may get a super-short cut to get rid of most of the old color, or I may just have it trimmed back to the length it was before the pandemic.
I’m keeping the color that I decided 5 years ago wasn’t “me”, because over the last few months I’ve come to realize my hair color actually isn’t that important to me anymore. Maybe it’s because I’ve realized that I’ve come to terms with the other things that cancer took from me. Maybe it’s because I realize that I actually love growing older and embracing the gray feels right and natural. I don’t know. All I know is, when I think about my “new” hair color and what it might look like when it’s all grown out, I feel happy and excited. That’s enough for me.
I’m a great lover of before-and-after photos, so with that in mind I thought I would share with you some pictures of my hair journey:
Baby me2010 – A few months after I decided to embrace the curls December 2013 – one month before my diagnosis The pre-bald pixieBald – doesn’t seem real to me nowThe post-bald pixie – with the darker colorMy hair color from October 2015 to March 2020
I am a huge fan of picnics! I think I’d rather have a picnic than eat in just about any restaurant. Even the simple sandwich-and-a-bag-of-chips is elevated way beyond its station by being involved in a picnic. I love setting out the tablecloth, unpacking the goodies from the cooler, and then just relaxing into the moment. When Sam and I visited my mother in Connecticut, we went on a picnic every single day. It was a way to enjoy the outdoors without coming into close proximity with other people.
Shall I tell you about my favorite picnic of all time?
In the summer of 2013 I traveled to London with Chris. Chris was working the entire week we were there, so I arranged to meet up with different friends each day and have adventures. One day my friend Sue and I climbed to the top of the O2 dome. Another day Sally and I had tea at Harrods. One early evening my friend Chris gave me a tour of London on his motorcycle (the first and only time I’ve ever been on a motorcycle – it was thrilling).
One day I arranged to meet my friend Dave at Borough Market. If you’ve never been to Borough Market, it’s an open air market with vendor stalls ranging from baked goods, meats, cheeses, candies…pretty much name something yummy and you can find it there. Dave and I wandered through Borough Market and bought items for a picnic – fresh bread, salami, cheese, organic apple/beet juice, brownies, and a meringue the size of my head (not actually the size of my head, but I love that phrase). We walked over to the lawn in front of the Tate Modern museum, I laid out my denim jacket as an improvised tablecloth, and we proceeded to eat our way through much of what we bought. Our eyes had been bigger than our stomachs, so we decided to eat only the savory items we bought and share the sweets with Dave’s wife Sarah when we met up with her later in the day (yay, two picnics in one day!).
If I had known I’d be sharing the photos with you these seven years later, I would have taken more and better quality photos, but you get the gist. It was a lovely, memorable day and I will cherish the memory forever.
One of these people is my friend Dave. To protect his privacy I won’t tell you which one. 🙂Meringues the size of your head!Yum!I don’t know about you, but they had me at “sticky ginger.”Picnic #1 – Savory!We made a friend.Picnic #2 – Sweet!
I hope you have a wonderful weekend, friends! Maybe a picnic will now be in your plans?
