Thursday, August 30, 2012

Hello? 

May I speak with Mrs. Broyles, please? 

May I ask who's calling?

This is a courtesy call for breast cancer. 

I'm sorry, Mrs. Broyles is not available to take this call.

So what is this? Is breast cancer suddenly polite enough to call ahead? Easy answer to that one. Hang up immediately.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Why does "noone" bother me so much? I finally googled it today to see if it meant what I thought it did and to find out if I have been wrong all my life ... like the time in high school the spelling champion confronted the cheerleaders over "A-L-R-I-G-H-T, ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT." That would be "all right," don't you know. Not sure if I'd caught it or not, but I've never forgotten the legitimacy and honor our valedictorian wanted to bring to our school.

I have seen a lot of changes and morphs and some I just face with some degree of "whatever" but noone is messing with my head. How could anyone, and seemingly everyone, agree that no one can so easily become noone. Noone. That's Old English for noon. Urban Dictionary, my help for all the nonsensical letters of communication - lmao - the hippest of the hip and coolest of the cool defines noone as The incorrect combination of "No one." But hey, that doesn't seem to be slowing anybody down. Noone is going to listen.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Each birthday that has a "0" in the ones column generates some sort of anticipation ... yippy 10, wow 20, eh 30, whoa 40, ack 50 ... and so on and so forth. But when I hit 50 I was sooooo grateful to be alive that I threw myself a grand paella party and invited all my most dear and longtime friends. My daughters and sister helped me cook up a storm, rally flowers from the neighbors and help string white lights along the porch - all 600 square feet of it. Celebration galore. But, I was still 50, and lots of life was behind me.

A trip to Puerto Rico less than a year later as a new widow provided a moment when I went to sleep on the beach in the past and awoke, looking through palm fronds to clear blue skies and the future. So as I turned my gaze upon what might lie ahead instead of living so much in what had already passed, The Unit - that's those two daughters of mine and my sister and me - urged me to take a look at what could be some firsts after 50.

The Firsts After 50 list became an official reality with a whitewater rafting trip (a quick aside here based on a typo I just made ... think about what you get when raft is mistyped and the "r" and the "f" are transposed - haha). The list grew to contain my first trip to Europe and my first time speaking French in a French speaking country, making my own bassoon reeds and actually performing on them; learning to drive a stick shift not just in theory but in practice, and owning my own little manual "all-wheel drive to go anywhere" (and did) sporty car; serving as my own contractor and lining up the building of an entire house. A New Year's pledge resulted in finally being able to "turn the corner" on crocheting and I made scarves from yarn from local llamas. I built my first successful fire in a woodstove and became a master of fire building in the big stone fireplace in my house and in our cabin. I cooked over an open fire. I was in my 50's before I allowed the Democrat in me to stand up and be counted. I see these are essentially many things I'd always desired but felt too timid or constrained to try.

My Firsts After 50 list also includes losing my mother. But a few years later I added the joyous first of marriage to my Frank ... his true first at age 58. A honeymoon to Nova Scotia added my first bowl of seafood chowder to my list. I became a mother-in-law. :)

And, I saw Ringo in Nashville and Paul in Las Vegas before it was too late ... for them or for me.

P.S. And, how could I forget!? Another first after fifty ... knowing how to use a corkscrew!

P.S.S. I remember AND have new experiences so, this will simply be the continuing list:
  •  a cruise to the Caribbean
  •  riding a tandem bike ...




Monday, August 27, 2012

I wonder what Heaven is doing right now. What's going on? Is there a feast? Is there wonder over the struggles below? Does Heaven laugh over my concerns that my spider veins match my Royal Purple robe?
There is so much of Rhonda. There is so much to love and to treasure. So says my beloved husband.
I have showered. But, before, I have drained the tubes. I have measured the output. I have cleansed the wounds. I have dried. I have bandaged. I have held the tubes. I am a woman dressed in a silky crimson nightgown and wearing a silky royal purple robe. Live it and feel it.
My sister named it. We call him "Mr. Possibility." That would be my husband. He is a possibility thinker, my sister says. She named what I knew. Each day brings round new possibilities, and it is a wondrous way to live. Seems like I've read that somewhere before, heard it from the pulpit. But do we usually trust it, or live it?

Oh the wonder of it ... time together every morning, on the couch with devotional reading, coffee and notepads, and "simply musts," and ponderings never left without hopeful outcomes ... always watching to carefully tend a possibility, to find a way in a way that those who give and those who receive are Ultimately Blessed. Mr./Ms. Possibility ... a cavalry to the rescue for those who are sinking.
I am enraged. While I read of politicians who speak to me of familiar and safe political subjects, of inappropriate and dishonorable conduct of the other, of how much more money one party dumps into strip clubs than the other party (strip clubs which represent mutually consensual abuse and which do nothing Positive for anyone), and of retrospective conditions, successes, and failures of the USA, I cannot help but desire better.

You want my vote? Speak to me so that I and thousands of others can find common ground for betterment of all. Speak to me so that I and others quietly reflect on what you have said so that we are inspired to come forward to work with you and for you. Speak to me saying you do not know the answers though you know the needs and the questions. Speak the needs and the questions to bring forth citizens who have resources and passions and desires to implement the answer you may not know.

Speak to the life circumstances of those of us who live in the USA, who gain greatly and beyond measure from living in such a country but who are challenged. Speak to the men and women who have lived a truly honorable life of contribution to family, community, nation, and indeed the global state, who lose enough in later years to need provision. Speak to the unacceptable circumstances and lack of options available to honorable elderly men and women who still look for dignity that they have worked decades to achieve for themselves and others. Speak to parents whose children do not have the option of a path for self-sufficiency.

Speak to me of implementing programs and jobs and corps that serve the employed and care for those in need. Does that go against your politics? The day there are no more physically devastating and disabling diseases, no catastrophic changes to life goals, no lack of opportunity for those who desire it then I might be willing to listen to trite rhetoric from the podium that sadly reflects your current politics.

Right now, I'd simply prefer a collection be taken of what might otherwise go in the G-string. Use it to help someone in another month of rehab or nursing home care or home health or health insurance payment or to awaken a mind.

Elvis has now left the building.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Maybe if I could make them a fashion statement. Tie them up in a scarf, or dangle them like a flippy ponytail, then maybe I would have more affection and patience with my four dear JP drains. Poor little under appreciated things. Can't help it that they are the clean up crew of the surgical process, doing a very important job. I am bored of this. Gotta' paint the old barn every time I go out in public just to feel like I pass for myself. But, I'm getting there.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

I couldn't help it. Upon learning that a new acquaintance is a nurse, the Glinda voice invaded my head and my first thought was "are you a good nurse or a bad nurse?"

All nurses work beyond what seems to me to be humanly possible so I really have not exactly a complaint as an observation stemming from my most recent two nights in the hospital.There are good nurses and there are bad nurses. Much of what defines each category can be affected by experience ... some things come only with experience. But baseline nurse entry point should be that they want to be there. If you don't want to be there, please don't try to humor me with your empty presence.

To the Bad Nurses: Folks are suffering dear ones. Condescension doesn't accomplish anything. Disregard, either. Showing greater fear over unexplained bleeding than your patient doesn't raise you in the ranks. Failing to do a little research to find an elusive answer to one of my questions only limits your own development and leaves me feeling like a non-essential being. Truly, we really don't expect perfection. We know honest mistakes happen and that often we simply cannot be the center of your shift. We know the job requires nearly superhuman efforts of intensity for the whoooooooole time you are working the floor. But, if you don't behave as if you care if I live or die, do I really want you bedside? Actually, strike that. You don't even have to care whether I live or die because I can't even begin to imagine being emotionally engaged in your job where loss swoops in regularly. Just don't imply that either/or is satisfactory ... we all want to be rooting for the same goal.

To the Good Nurses: Folks are suffering dear ones. Acknowledging there is a person with presence, history, and at least some sort of future before you lifts a heavy pall. Regarding your patients with honor and respect releases the need we have to prove ourselves worthy yet again. Offering assurance even if all indications are to panic sure does calm the weary soul. And keeping my question with you and coming back to me with an answer indicates to me that your patients stay with you even when you are absent from them, focusing yourself on edification, on the noble, on the helpful. You behave as if you care if I live or die. Thank you.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

I'd rather be the oppressed than the oppressor.
She bounded into the room with expectation and energy as though she had just come from another part of our city, the seventeen year old did, and not as though she was one week into a year long exchange program from a country literally half way around the world. She and her fellow adventurers around the table shared with us mentors their fierceness and passion for freedom, travel, wisdom, vision. Seventeen?

Weighing this now, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that I must have been a total idiot until ... well until just recently. And I may still be fooling myself. Looking back on beliefs and experiences in my childhood and adolescence that both shaped me and "shook my world" I see um, eh, things like the shock I felt when I first saw a woman driving a car with a perfectly able, licensed male passenger. Oh, my. She must be dominatrix. He must not be quite right. And, the only way to outsmart harm and/or death was to never venture beyond - beyond whatever was the prescribed boundary of the known, proven, and accepted.

This experience is good for me, as it would be for everyone. I find myself nearly as shaken by these youths around the table, so far from home, trusting the goodness of people in the USA as I was by that progressive female driver. But, now, I celebrate the shake up.


Tuesday, August 21, 2012



This image is not often far from my thoughts. Artistically dramatic, representative of a place and time now both physically and theoretically gone it captures a moment when two lives met briefly then parted to divergent paths. I know the rest of the story for the handsome sailor, my father, and the then beautiful city of Port-au-Prince in the country of Haiti, but the story of the little boy is lost to us. Was it lost to him? Does he still live a story?

Just like the search for the kissing couple in Times Square celebrating the end of WWII, or the green eyed girl on the cover of National Geographic I search in my mind's eye for this little boy. I wonder. I hope.

Monday, August 20, 2012

The weight of the world is no longer on my shoulders says the pleasingly full young model in the Playtex bra commercial. Mine neither, honey. The big c took that problem off my chest seven years ago. And for a woman who claimed to not define herself by her body I sure have been doing a lot of that recently.

14 months into a try for reconstructive/restorative surgery I am still hoping ... hoping for success in a return to what was, in a sort of space age plastic way that still seems appealing. First up is that I am grateful for life. Any adversity I encounter I know would gladly be picked up by any number of women who no longer have the option to be annoyed. There is beauty beyond the cultural expectation as proven by my husband who married me before any of this reconstructive process began, and it was not a pretty sight. The feel of the touch of his hands on my chest, though, the warmth, the care, ahhhhhhh ... especially because the only touch since the removal had been the hands of my surgeon on regular 3 - 6 month check ups.

So now whenever there are honorable attempts to educate and enlighten the greater community regarding breast cancer, I am not impressed. I am not interested in the color of healthy women's bras. I am enraged at feeling my own loss again. When I cannot grocery shop or look for shoes or watch a football game in October without having what I live beyond brought to mind, generally in a shroud of cleavage, I am not impressed. Oh, and that "Save the Ta-Ta's" bumper sticker? Last one I encountered in a parking lot after a long shift on my feet at work I felt like taking my key, scraping through it, then taking a BIG BLACK SHARPIE and writing over it "It's Too Damn Late!!!" I mean, really. Really? Can't we somehow do better? Surely.


Sunday, August 19, 2012

I wonder what brought her to the front porch that late summer evening. Was it to enjoy the sunset and feel the breeze? Was she there for space and distance, a house grown too small for breath? Was the lure of the porch to sit quietly and watch the slow traffic or to get a pick up from the world beyond? Did she go to the porch to smoke a cigarette and try to shake the day? Was the porch just far enough but not too far? Did she look at the choices of other people in the area? Did she hope something would be different on the porch? Or, did she go to the porch to wait an arrival, to be closer to the embrace?
We can all feel pretty good about ourselves most of the time with tidy observations about ourselves and our own qualifying affirmations about ourselves that give us value and worth - that is until we are caught square in the sights of a four year old, a purely blistering place to get caught. Part of the blistering heat is the fact that the observations are based on fact as seen, not prejudiced with predeterminations of any kind.

It happened to me last Sunday. Two of the little cuties were playing at the bottom of a stairwell. Hey look watch this they say and bound from the second step to the floor, nearly bouncing as they land, so pliable and fresh they are. Ooooooh, say I, wow! I can't do that. We know, one dear one says - because you're old. You're old like my grandma ... and away they went.

Well, fact is, I am at least as old as their grandma, but how could they not be fooled? Don't they see how well I've taken care to get it together every morning to face the day?. Don't they see youthful edge that prompts folks to remark that they don't know how old I am but I look younger than that? Sheesh ...

The hardest part of the sight of a four year old is that it is truly reflective of truth. Am I bothered by a snarly twenty-something who disregards me because I am old? Some, but not as with the four year old. The twenty-something type is loaded with all sorts of disregard - with which I myself was once loaded - and it's easier to chalk their purpose limiting observations of my age up to being their problem. But these guys in the stairwell called it. They still liked me, still thought I had some value I guess. Point was, I just couldn't jump those stairs cause I'm old.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Happy Anniversary!

We say August 15, 2012 is the day things changed. Suddenly everything was clear. We were married again, just a few weeks after our first anniversary. And, just like a baptism, we were married that August day by immersion - immersion into the absurd, the rediculous, the unexpected, the uncertainty, and the need. All good things after all, it seems. This man I had married had chosen me and married me when all my chest held were flat, reaching, scars ... all that remained after the removal 7 years earlier of that which made me (I had supposed) a desirable woman wife.

Two days prior, I had entered the hospital for a two day stay to undergo the LD flap procedure of breast reconstructive surgery. Mind you, this was the sixth surgery of a 14 month quest for breasts. I had been weary and scared and disappointed and frustrated but all the while eternally grateful for life and hope and love.

Anyway, that was on a Monday. Once awake after my surgery, I watched him sleep in the hospital room beside me. Missed him during the short times he was away from my room. Tuesday came and we planned a hospital room date for later in the afternoon/early evening. But then, the bleeding was odd. Too much? Am I bleeding internally? Take my blood pressure! Check my oxygen level! I don't seem to be able to swallow! Is that a normal side effect of anything my body is going through?? I saw tears in his eyes. He left to go to the bathroom. Back by my bedside, calmed a bit, we started examining the planned date, but he wasn't there anymore. Where had he gone? Was this too much? Was the love he affirmed for my self-described half-woman self really more than he could muster?

Yes, yes, pressing presentations looming at work. Yes, yes, must take care of the animals at home. Yes, yes, yes, yes ... Watched a bit of a movie on our date. Fell asleep. Kiss kiss goodnight. Sleep well. Love you.

Then it was a Wednesday. That August 15 day. Time to go home. Coordinate my ride home around his presentations due at 10:00 and 10:45. So glad for the going/coming home! But, where is he? And now, where is she?

We pull into our sweet drive at the front of our sweet house just a couple of miles from the hospital. I am still groggy from the drugs, but not so groggy that I don't catch sight of a big orange cat on our front porch. Meeklo. The big orange cat who is a housecat. Not an outdoor guy at all. And he is on the front porch to greet us.

"Uh, Frank?" "Yeah, I'll tell you about that. Haha. Was going to tell you when the time was right." Entering the house I see a couch cushion resting against a wall. "Well, you see the dogs came in before I was ready for them. And I had to get the cats. And I closed the door and got the cats, but then Daisy the dog pushed the door open and muddied up the couch. And destroyed a pillow. While I was out of the room." Selah. "Honestly, Rhonda, the days did not flow well without you. Life was hard without your presence and your help. I was scared and feeling fear of loss like I have never felt. I couldn't concentrate. Things fell apart."

"Honestly, Frank, the hospital room was barren when you were not with me. I need you Frank. You give me strength and confidence and assurance. And I know you need me.We need each other. We are limping and incomplete without the other."

And we knew it in a new way that August 15. Another anniversary to celebrate.