Charmed

Sixty three. That’s how old I am today.

A year ago, I wasn’t sure the shape I’d be in when I got here. I look at a picture of myself holding my newborn granddaughter, Audie, and though I’m not as bald as I would become, I’m getting there. And there is weariness in my eyes. That 62-year-old’s eyes, well, you can barely see them — eyelashes gone, the light of them, even in the presence of dear Audie, shows hardly a twinkle.

Maybe it’s because I’d spent much of that day crying. My sister and sister-in-law had sent me a gift, and when I opened it, I found what feels now like a hundred charms threaded on a silver chain, charms sent to them from friends and family from all points in my life. Well, if you’ve read much that I’ve written, you know that I’m all about charms. I have two full charm bracelets and now the necklace, and when I first pulled it out of the box I was fairly certain my sister was thinking I was dying. And she wanted me to know how much people around me cared about me.

Certainly there were days in those first few months of treatment that I thought I might. And some of the tears easily fell from remembering those dark days. But I laughed, too, through that puddle, knowing maybe even then that this thing would not kill me. At least not yet.

The necklace weighs several heavy ounces. It’s filled with pieces of my life, like charms of buttered toast and an Outlander book, a hot pink dress and a yellow submarine, typewriters and clouds, a crown and a tea cup, a pencil (and its sharpener, dogs and the Empire State Building, sand dollars and a hamburger, an artichoke and a bird, Bible, crown and peony — (just to name a few) and every single one of them comes with a story all its own.

I wore that necklace every single time I had chemo until it was over, except it wasn’t. On those days last summer and fall, I felt as if I was taking with me a full scale of armor to fight this thing — with the help of all those who had charmed me. And in the hours when I sat in the chair, I fingered each gift, remembering the people and the stories.

Two pieces of buttered toast. Malone and I sat at her kitchen table as pre-teens and teens, eating buttered toast after school and talking about boys. (Today Malone is home after almost a week in the hospital fighting COVID-19. She’ll be fine, but her challenge, this time, has been more than a couple of pieces of toast can cure.) Yellow submarine. My brother — Beatlemainiac that he is — sat close to the stage at last year’s Paul McCartney concert in Raleigh on his own birthday.) Clouds. My niece, whose 2-year-old question: Do Clouds Sleep? still has me pondering. Peony: my mother. It’s the only thing she ever gave me that I seem to be able to grow.

The crown looks like the one that sat on Queen Elizabeth’s head during her coronation, the charm’s original owner the mother of my dear ABSU, who bought it when the two of us saw the crown jewels as seniors in high school. The dog from my college suite mate turned neighbor, Grace, as a reminder of all the dogs we’ve walked together and loved in almost 30 years of neighboring. The cardinal: my sister’s reminder that our father is never far away.

I could, as they say, go on.

There would be no writing about it last year. Most days when I looked at the necklace I cried just thinking about all the people represented in it. I cried for the reason behind the necklace and for the fact of it. I cried because the sheer weight of it felt a lot like the weight I was carrying.

I’m embarrassed now to say that when I learned I’d have to continue treatments for another year, I put the necklace away. I can’t say why, really, but anger at the state of things likely had something to do with it.

Today I’m feeling better. I have hair again, though it looks as though it belongs to someone else — the salt and pepper and curls in no way resembling the (mostly) straight blonde sprigs I had last year. And no, my hairdresser wasn’t hiding my gray all this time! (My sister can’t get over the color when we FaceTime. Nobody in our family ever had this color, she says.)

This morning I pulled the necklace out again, fingering the silver jewels for the story each one tells. And I put it on. And took a selfie. Because that’s what you do when you are 63 years old and can’t visit with your mother on your birthday but want to show her how much you’ve changed. (She’s 92 and COVID confined at home, at least away from me right now.)

Anyway, looking at this new woman I saw something I hadn’t seen in so many months — something I thought cancer had taken from me forever.

Light. Sparkle. Twinkle. Blue. And yet, there it is. I hardly recognized myself.

(Well, today, I actually went into a store to pick up my lunch and noticed the mother of one of my son’s high school friends. Masked (she was as well) I spoke to her, but I don’t think she recognized me either!)

Tonight I (tried) to hold Audie, her squirrelly self no longer satisfied to sit in my arms. And it was grand. We are both so big now.

Tomorrow, very early, I’ll be back in the chemo chair for what will begin, once and for ALL, the countdown til I’m finally done — mid-November. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. And done.

I’ll be wearing the necklace again, armed, and charmed, to begin what promises to be my next good year.

whole food

i spent a long lunch hour today with friends i have known my whole life, celebrating a birthday... our shared history unspoken between us, but sound.

i have known one of them since kindergarten, the two of us sharing those first lessons in creating angular letters on the chalk board. Later, we three shared  reading groups, basketball and  cheerleading tryouts (one of us AlWAYS sat on the sidelines.) 

endured algebra class and diagramming sentences, weathered boyfriends (a few of whom we have in common), college angst, the uncertainty of new marriage (and the 30+year kind), parents who perplex, siblings who sometimes don't give us what we hope, or sharing the complexity of being an only child.

today we weather elderly parents, children launching themselves or who attempt, siblings who have never needed us before but now who suddenly do. all difficult things.

though i don't see them often enough, they make me whole, somehow, in a way only home can do. 

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

we turned the page on the calendar, and...

my hall closet is crammed with coats. black wool coats, long and short. crisp spring toppers, fleece jackets and thin, hooded parkas. so many coats between my husband and me that we hang them on top of each other so they'll fit snugly, waiting to be pulled out when we need them.

you would think we could put the lightweight jackets away to make room for our winter coverings. but in the first month of this new year, i have worn practically all of them, some days changing out coats by the hour from fleece to topper to wool.

last week temps hovered in the teens, so wool it was, along with long johns and muffs for the ears. by the weekend, rain moved in with humid warmth and even the hooded parka was too much. the next week, the fog lay so thick by my mailbox that i could hardly see the street, so the jacket it was. today it's 60 degrees. tomorrow they're calling for snow.

i don't remember a winter this fickle, yet when we turned the calendar to 2014, we found the weather to be a mirror for what the month would be.

art by

@

debucket

i was so ready to turn the page, (and yes, i still do use a paper calendar), to bring out my 2014 planner and mark the squares with all the good things to be: a. trip to paris. paris! family visits (and not in the hospital), a new fitness routine. i was so ready to leave last year behind with all its changes and losses and move full force into hope.

on new year's eve, my husband and i found ourselves 500 miles apart, he making his resolutions alone in a Hampton Inn in Paduca, Kentucky, and me out with friends sharing ours at one of our favorite restaurants. his aunt was in the hospital, and since she has no husband, no kids, no siblings left, he was the only one to see about her. pull on the wool and prepare for winter.

on my way to dinner that night, i checked in with my son and learned he'd had great news at work. i felt the sun breaking through the clouds. on the first day of the year, i planned my trip to Paris. on the second, my husband headed home in a blinding snow storm. wool again. by the weekend, the temps hovered near 75 degrees, and all was steady, no coat required. then good news again: Aunt Betty left the hospital, and our daughter shared her own work milestone. i found myself thinking, well, maybe we can put our winter buffers away.

on the fourth day, we opened our home to the family of the newest priest at our church — or he would become one the following day— welcoming them with a warm fire and hot soup, filling our house with laughter that seemed to have been absent for too long awhile. on the fifth day, we witnessed as priests surrounded him with the powerful laying on of hands. all warmth and bright sunlight, hope. 

on day 6 i had my annual mammogram, opting for the new digital kind, bracing myself for a minute discovery. but all was clear. on day 7, my great-niece celebrated her first birthday — steady winds and bright sun, little outerwear needed.

then on day 11, the wind shifted, and i felt myself pulling on my heaviest coat to brace for it: the dog and i hid in the hall bathroom as trees swayed and 65 mile-per-hour winds passed overhead. and just about that time (i later discovered) my boss was having a heart attack. he is 44 years old. day 13 brought triple bypass surgery for my friend, and hours of waiting and days of fear for wife, my friend, and his three young daughters. on day 14, a dear friend lost her husband, 66, to

frontotemporal dementia

. on yesterday we bid him farewell.

today the winds calmed. the sun came out. the boss's health has improved. things settled in the the family. 

yet my coworker said she was tired. last week her dog almost died, had to be raised up in an oxygen chamber at the vet school, and today she felt the pieces of january weighed her down like a giant wooden puzzle.

we are just about done with it. january. a month i have loved for its fresh start, for the fact that my son was born at the end of it. but i'm weary, too, from all that has happened to those around me. i know the fatigue, the sadness and fear that grips them.

so i long for snow, the makes-you-stay-put kind, the watch-the-world-transform-into-swirls-of-white-and-crystal kind, that finds you pulling on that wool you are so tired of and heading outside. to hold your sleeve out just-so, to watch the tiny iced-jewels — each of them their own sculpture — rest on your sleeve, to show you that despite all, hope is there. God. Is. There.

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

circles, all around

my purple room friend is a gentle prodder. she had not heard much from writemuch these past few weeks and was wondering what i was thinking. writemuch in fact was, too, wondering what i was thinking, as this, my double-nickel birthday week began. 

it began in fact with circles. walking in circles, that is, which when i think about it, is pretty much how my mind works. i start out thinking i'm going to clean out the pantry but that leads somehow to the bedroom closet which leads to the tomato patch which leads to the kitchen window sill which makes me hungry which leads me back to the pantry. and on and on. or how my day goes. circle my block three times with the dog and his friend. spin the tires to work and back. move from desk to copier to kitchen to church and back again. circles.

back to walking. i don't know much about labyrinths or their mystical properties, but there is one where i work. sometimes i walk up through the grass to take pictures of it, but as of last week, i had not actually walked it in a good long while.

but my week began there, with my purple roommate and the others who occupy the work hall with me. our instructions were to walk in silence, and if we bumped into each other along the path not to worry about it too much. that's life, isn't it? distancing ourselves from each other, then circling back, bumping into, distancing again. oh, and we might recognize it as how we meet God on occasion. distancing, bumping into, circling back. letting God circle us sometimes.

i set out on the path and walked those circles and thought, thanked, questioned, petitioned — tried to listen to something more than the soft scuffle of my shoes on brick.

i found myself thanking God for all my years however poorly i have sometimes lived them. just to get up in the morning to begin the circle is a blessing. as i turned a corner down the path (which is really a yellowish sort of brick road) my thinking turned to my hope for my children, which is easy and hard to think about at the same time. both are at corners, each facing change that is unknown and surprising. and as my week began, it was hard for this mother to sit tight and watch, to wait and see.

another corner. another thought. the husband. the job. the community i work for. my own ability to do good in that world and the larger one. what people think of me. and who i really am. heavy and light. light and heavy, thoughts kept coming as gentle as the slow breeze circling me.

back in the office, one of my work friends said they noticed as they turned the corner each time, their thoughts turned a corner, too, their conversation shifted. just like mine.

when i started out my career so many years ago, i worked for a tiny daily newspaper, taking pictures of friday night lights and check presentations. i spent hours in a dark room wearing a shiny yellow apron, dipping my fingers in developer and fix, watching an image emerge from blank paper. the next job — my second one — lasted only one year, yet i wrote and wrote and wrote, made awful mistakes that somehow were forgiven and learned much from them. i learned how to lay out a newspaper, to tell a good story. that job led to this and that through the years, to the job i have now, taking pictures, writing, teaching, designing, questioning. a bit of every little thing i've learned in these 30 years. and last week i produced a little magazine for the people i work for, using all of those skills. circles.

that second job, too, changed me the most, set me on all sorts of paths. it's where i met my husband. got my first dog.

on thursday of last week, my son landed his second career job. oh, the hope i have for him. circles.

on friday, i headed home. if you are born in the South of course you may live anywhere but you are always from one place. on the eve of my birthday, i broke hushpuppies over barbecue and stew at my childhood kitchen table, listening to my parents talk. when i asked them if i was early or late, my mother said a little early. and i learned something new: i had been delivered not by the doctor who was my father's partner, but by the nurse who worked for him much of my childhood. Both doctors were busy with a patient when my mother couldn't hold me in anymore, so the nurse pulled my screaming head into the world.

my mother had a couple of gifts for me. one, a small pillowcase hand-embroidered by an elderly neighbor more than 50 years ago. miss applewhite was blind, and though we can't figure out how, she designed a perfect bouquet of flowers with circular centers, never dropping a stitch. i had used this pillowcase as a child. circles.

yesterday, i spent my birthday lunch over burgers with my boys, then we drove around the block to where my son's new office will be. my supper shared with "friendless" friends whose son shares his birthday with me. more circles.

back in the spring, i took part in an online writing community. each day for 37 days we were to answer a prompt. i was working on my novel at the same time, so on some days, i skipped the prompt, including this one on day 11: notice all the circles you see today.

i guess the circles were tired of me not paying attention.

as is usual when i start to write, i have no real notion of what something is about. just a little niggle in my head. blind-like, i fiddle with stitches that seem not to connect, until somehow something whole emerges, just like images from the developer in that dark room years ago.

circles. 

like double nickels taped to a birthday card from my lifelong friend. a new camera and lens from my family. candles for my patio. a casserole dish decorated with a labyrinth of circles. the last of the season's tomatoes on the window sill. zinnias. the communion cup.

circles, all around.





 writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.