Day 733: Pass the Mic: Listen to Your Mother Chicago, 2012

Before I get deep into describing the experience of last night's Listen to Your Mother performance, I'm going to give a shout out to Adam Yauch. I am old enough to have seen many celebrities of my youth die--usually of things like drug overdoses, alcohol poisoning, suicide, plane crashes, or gunshots. I can't remember any other famous person who holds a place in my memory dying of something as ordinary and sad as a rare cancer (of the salivary gland).

In high school, there were just a handful of current bands I gave a damn about, including A Tribe Called Quest, the Chili Peppers, Fishbone, and the Beastie Boys. We did all kinds of things we weren't supposed to do while listening to those albums--Check Your Head, Paul's Boutique--in a time when hip-hop artists played instruments, swore rarely, and wrote songs that were too long to play on the radio. Back in the day when we had radios. Back in the day when we didn't share those things we weren't supposed to be doing with anyone. Back in the day when we kept journals or just kept it to ourselves. And as I reminisce about those times, I wonder how those tired cancer arguments could possibly apply here. What...not enough attitude, moxie, will, talent? According to Dr. Richard Smith, the director of the Head and Neck Cancer Program at Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care, this type of cancer is "Just bad luck: not linked to alcohol abuse or smoking or HPV." And who are we to assume those things in the first place? Could the purchase of purple merchandise somehow have saved MCA?

Actin like life is a big commercial.

I'm sorry that MCA died from cancer when he was only 47. But I am so glad that for maybe the only time in my life, I got to follow his advice last night and...

Pass the mic.

Chicago listened to its mother last night, and the show was just magical.

I think the audience thought that as well, but that's not what I mean. We all did a great job, everyone sounded and looked wonderful, but that's not what I mean.

It was just a magical experience for me.

It's hard for me to describe why this meant so much to me, and I think to everyone else who was a part of it. I'm going to try to capture the things that I will always remember, and think of, about standing up on a stage and reading something that I had written in front of a bunch of people. I won't be able to do it justice, but it's my blog, so I get to try.

Listen to Your Mother Chicago 2012: I will always remember:

...how indescribably nervous I was during the audition. I had never read any of my blogs aloud to anyone before, and I had never done a real audition for anything before either. When Melisa told me my piece was beautiful, I assumed she said that because it was, in part, about cancer. It was so gratifying to learn that isn't what she meant at all.

...our first rehearsal, when I realized that a lot of the cast members knew each other, and I didn't know anyone. That is when I started to learn about this blogging community that I didn't know existed. Though I have been writing a blog for two years, in some ways, I don't know anything about what blogging really is. I don't follow blogs, or go to conferences. Shit, I don't even have twitter (or is it "a twitter?" hell if I know). It's been really interesting for me to see how supportive everyone is of one another.

...our second rehearsal, when everyone in the room just cried and cried during and after my piece and Tracey had a hard time even introducing Judy, who was reading after me. I know my blog makes Gabe cry, but before that moment I had no idea that it had the power to touch people who don't even know me that well. Not being overly emotional myself, I didn't quite know what to make of that. And again, I thought it was probably a little bit because of the whole cancer thing...but not entirely. I guess I have figured out a way to write the things I am too lighthearted to say out loud.

...how meaningful it's been for me to know these people who know me because I am a writer. When I was a kid, my friends knew to fold "writer" into their understanding of me as a person. I was sardonic, and swore a lot, and liked to watch sports and wasn't into girly things (well, except maybe shoes), and I was pretty lighthearted, but I could write intense poetry and prose too, and, well, that was just Katy. One of my friends from high school wrote me an email recently and said, "Did people really pay that much attention to your hair? I never really thought about it. When people ask me about you, the first thing I say is, oh, she's quite a good writer." But as an adult, people I have befriended have known me because of work, or kids, or something else. Anything I've written I have kept to myself, outside of what I write here. So these words come as quite a shock to some people who do not envision me writing them. And then, I met a group of people who didn't know any different, and saw this as just a part of me like all the other things they were getting to know about me. It's brought me back to myself, the way I really see myself. I will always be grateful for that, even if I stop writing this blog soon, which is something I assumed I would have done by now, but haven't yet gotten around to doing.

...that no matter what, my analogies are always a little bit off. When we walked into the theater for the first time yesterday, we all said...wow. Now, the Biograph/Victory Gardens Theater is not intimidating at all, and it seats just 300 people, but we were all acknowledging that this was real, we were really doing this thing. And so of course I said: "This is like in Hoosiers, when the kids walk into the big stadium for the first time." Thank God for the few women who understood my reference--or at least pretended to-- of a 1980s high school basketball movie.

...that after the show was over and we met in the dressing room, I thought of Hoosiers again, and I wanted to say "I love you guys," but I'm neither corny nor Gene Hackman, so I didn't.

...how I felt like I would crawl out of my skin with nervousness waiting for my turn on stage. I was third to last. But time seemed to fly by, and when Melisa said my name, I walked onto the stage, and...

...I did it. I didn't need to look down, since I had memorized the piece. I didn't forget anything, or fumble. I couldn't see my family, even though I had saved seats for them, because the lights were too bright to see past the second row. And yet, that helped me, as it didn't really seem all that different from reading the piece out loud in my living room. I know that it is an understatement to call my reading style "understated," and yet, people laughed at the right points. I heard all the sniffling and crying. I pointed in the general direction of where I thought Lenny was sitting at the end. And so, I did it.

...that the first thing Gabe said to me afterwards was that someone had cat-called me as I walked onto the stage. He sounded indignant at first, saying that as I walked up a guy right behind him said "aww yeah," and he wanted to slug him and say that's my wife! I didn't believe this story at all until one of our friends confirmed it. Being a guy, Gabe ultimately decided to be proud of this. Being Gabe, his pride was perhaps misplaced: "Hey...I picked that dress!"

...how my friends and family came looking for me, and I was so pleased to see everyone but also so distracted, because the only person I really wanted to see was my daughter.

...that I got to do something few parents ever get to do. While I am still alive, and presumably healthy, I stood up in front of a room full of people and told my firstborn child how much I love her, in spite of my imperfections and the bullshit that we have gone through as a family. I told her what I think of her as a person, and how much I hope that I get to see her become more of that person as she grows up. I told her that I don't want to die and that knowing her has made living even more important to me. In five minutes, I said just about everything that I think I would want to say to her, whether I had all the time in the world or whether my time was up.

...how she cried. She cried when I hugged her, and I thought it was because she was traumatized by what I had said, and Gabe thought she was just hungry. Now I realize she was tired and overwhelmed and really, really shy...because everyone in that damn theater knew who she was by name and it was too much for her at that minute. She was the only small child in the audience, so people were looking at her, nodding, knowing she was Lenny and knowing what that meant.

...how she looked when we went to pick her up at my mom's house after we went out for a drink with the cast. She was so completely asleep that she didn't move when Gabe took her in his arms, just like she was a baby, and carried her to the car.

...that everyone told me that Lenny would always remember this night, and that I agreed, all the while knowing that I didn't do this for her at all, I did it for me. Parenthood is a selfish, selfish, beast, but sometimes it makes us do the right thing in spite of ourselves. I will never regret having my six year old daughter in the audience last night.

...how my heart caught in my throat when I got home and realized it was really over, and how I realized that part of the reason that hit me so hard was that I now had nothing else to distract me from my anxiety over tomorrow's mammogram.

...the way we all--the cast, the producers--talked about "next year." We discussed which pieces to choose, what venue to use, whether the show should move to two nights as opposed to one. And, because we are adults, we did this in the most postmodern way we could. As parents, we know that there are moments that are incredible, but that will never be repeated. We are able to look back at the entire process that led to those moments and appreciate them, somewhat mournfully acknowledging their inevitably quick passing. We talk about next year because most of us know that we will never do anything like this ever again in our lives, and by speaking of it casually like it could happen again, we are admitting just how much this specific moment in time has affected us.

...that one of the joys of parenthood is that you get to take moments to heart that you don't even witness yourself. My stepfather told me that as they waited in the elevator in the parking garage after the show, people were looking at my daughter. So my mom said, "This is Lenny." And everyone else said "We know that. She IS beautiful."

In more ways than you could ever know.

Thank you to everyone who came to see the show, to every single cast member, and to the producers for giving me an opportunity that went way beyond giving an outlet for my voice. You helped me say something to my daughter that I could not otherwise say.

I love you guys.

Day 719: Cancer Cold

When you're a married woman, there are few things more annoying than the man-cold. You know what I'm talking about...when your husband is convinced no one has ever been as sick as him (that one doesn't fly too well in this house, for obvious reasons), and he can't do anything, and the kids are easier to deal with when they're sick. Now, Gabe has gotten much better about his illnesses. I don't usually feel like killing him when he has the flu. However, I am not the most sympathetic spouse in most circumstances. I've just had too much shit happen to feel bad for him when he doesn't feel well, and I know that bothers him, but hey, I never said I was perfect.

One night this winter, as one of the only snowstorms of the season descended upon us, Gabe decided to ride his bike to the dentist's office. A few minutes after he left, I got a call. A desperate-sounding person was asking me to help him up the hill. His chain had broken and he wiped out right in front of our house. I know he was in a lot of pain. His entire side was ripped up, his hip was badly bruised. But. Augie was so sick with what turned out to be bacterial pneumonia that I thought he would choke to death. He was crying, saying, mommy, please help me stop coughing. Then Gabe was lying on the ground in the living room groaning and Lenny was looking around wondering what kind of madhouse she was living in, and I told Gabe, very calmly:

"EITHER STOP GROANING IN FRONT OF THE KIDS AND SCARING THEM OR FIND SOME WAY TO GET YOUR GIMPY ASS UPSTAIRS! UNLESS YOU NEED TO GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM, IN WHICH CASE I WILL TAKE BOTH YOU AND AUGIE AT THE SAME TIME!"

Or something to that effect. I sat there dreaming of teenage boys, wondering when one would come along to shovel my enormous driveway so that I could actually get the car out to drive to the hospital. A little while later I saw the fifth grader next door shoveling us out without being asked, and I understood why Lenny was so head over heels in love with him.

So again, there are few things more annoying than the man cold, right?

Except, maybe, the cancer cold.

Cancer survivors seem to fall into two camps with illnesses. There are those who have severely compromised immunity for a long, long time, and they contract every illness around. Then there are people like me, who can honestly say things like: "I don't get sick. I just get cancer."

Seriously. Everyone around me is always sick with something--my kids, my husband, my mom, my friends, my kids' friends, my co-workers. And I NEVER CATCH ANYTHING. Then all of a sudden, I have a day like yesterday. I came home from work and just felt weird. My throat hurt and I had a headache and was dizzy. I felt like I had a fever, though I didn't. I fell asleep on the couch at 7 pm, right after dinner. I woke up around 8:30 and went to my real bed, watched a little tv, fell asleep again, woke up at my normal time and felt ok, went to work, went to the gym, even. As the day wore on, I got that vague feeling of sickness again. Right now, it's hard to talk. My throat is hurting more. I have a slight fever, my glands feel swollen, my head feels like it's swimming and it's hard for me to focus my eyes.

I have a cold, right?

I am hosting a visitor from Canada tomorrow at work so I have to be there all day, but I made an appointment with my general practitioner on Thursday to make sure I don't have strep. There's no way in hell I'm missing the Listen to Your Mother performance on Sunday, May 6, so I have to be healthy. You guys are all crying if you didn't get tickets. It's going to be amazing. Speaking of crying, during our second and final rehearsal on Sunday, there was talk of the need for an intermission after my piece due to the copious amounts of crying it induced. I don't know whether to be proud of that or disturbed, but I guess that means it moved people, right? So anyway, I have to get on antibiotics if that's what's going on here. There is something I have to say, and someone I need to say it to, and that is going to happen no matter what else is going on in the world.

Why am I writing about this, something so pedestrian and uninteresting? Well, because there is no such thing as a cold for me, not yet. You all get colds. I get cancer.

I feel these swollen glands and I think about my lymph nodes. My head feels so strange, not like a normal headache nor a normal bout of congestion, but something in between. I literally feel like I can't see. And I think about brain tumors. My body hurts, but only vaguely, nothing that shouts out that I have a 102 degree fever and therefore my body should hurt like it does with the flu. And I wonder about bone cancer. Then, I wonder if there's some kind of breast cancer metastisis that could lead to all of these symptoms at the same time.

You can tell me I'm paranoid, or ridiculous, or that I'm a hypochondriac. You can tell me to get over myself. But I ask you this: Why wouldn't you expect the worst sometimes, when some of the worst has already happened? I mean, everyone said it was just a clogged milk duct, mastitis at the worst. Oh wait, sorry...it's cancer. No, not one tumor. You've got three. No, not the normal kind that we can treat with maintenance medications. You have something more insidious, rare, and aggressive, something we don't really understand. But wait, I don't feel sick at all, I feel great, I am healthier almost than I've ever been!

I don't get colds. I get cancer.

Yes, I know it's been almost two years. I am more aware of that fact than anyone. In less than two weeks, it will have been two years since diagnosis. Two days after that, I will perform in the Listen to Your Mother Show. Two days after that, I will have a mammogram. Normally, I would be just so nervous and panicked about that test that I would be acting like a crazy woman anyway, but I have been trying SO HARD not to think about it. I have been having pain in my breast and I tell myself it's just because of my cycles, even though the pain is completely different and is more likely related to scar tissue. I am purposely not feeling for lumps. After all, I am going to have about 57 breast exams in just a few weeks, and what's a few weeks? I remember Gabe telling me he had felt my lump when we were making love a few weeks before I felt it, but he didn't say anything because he assumed it was a duct, and since I was nursing, he didn't feel it the same way again. I know he still feels guilty about that. But a few weeks didn't make any damn difference, not really. And I have things to look forward to, damnit! I am so close, this close, THIS CLOSE! to two years! I have to make it, I WILL make it with no evidence of disease, because I have been waiting with bated breath every day of these almost two years to be able to say that. You can't take that away from me! Right? Or maybe I should say, please?

But you know, there are so many before me who thought that who were wrong. So many who did the right thing, and lived the right ways, and were beautiful and strong and feisty and amazing and their damn cancer metasticized anyway. And there is no way to know if you will be one of those people, until you either are...or you aren't. So colds bring these fears out, because people like me rationally know that it could be something else. My mom has a friend who is a doctor who told her, there is no such thing as a simple headache after cancer. And that's the truth.

So that really is more annoying than a man cold. Stupid cancer.

It makes it hard to talk in normal ways sometimes. On the one hand, you get tired of all the people who ask "How ARE you?" like you have just emerged straight out of the grave. What is there to say? I never know. I mean, I realize that when people ask how you are in a normal situation, it's expected that you say fine, or great, or whatever, because everyone knows that the person doesn't really give a shit how you are. That's the point of small talk. But if you've had cancer, people do care, in the sense that when they're asking you how ARE you, they are asking, do you still have cancer? Can I move on to the next subject or do we have to get stuck in cancerland?

And the problem is that the answer is somewhere in between. I AM fine. Most of the time, I AM great. My life is normal...most of the time. But there are aspects of it that are not normal. When someone asks, how ARE you? I want to say: well, right now, and for the next two weeks, I am kind of...terrified. I am living in limbo. I am distracting myself with all kinds of really meaningful, time-consuming things, in part because I need to distract myself. I am worried in a way that I know you don't understand. I am in denial, or maybe it's not denial because maybe I'm really fine, but I am trying so hard to assume that I'm fine that it feels like denial.

Because, you know, I have to have a mammogram, and the first time I ever had one, I found out that I might be dying. So...that's how I am.

But I don't say any of those things, because it doesn't behoove me to be insufferable. Here's an example. I went with the kids to get haircuts last week. (Don't we look cute all cleaned up? And, for that matter, don't you love the picture Lenny took of me? I know now how she sees me! Crooked and crazy!) Now that I've committed to being a short-haired woman, I go every six weeks or so, but the kids hadn't been in 5 months. They went first, and I got them situated reading books (Lenny was actually reading, of course, and Augie just makes up insane stories, talking at the top of his lungs) when it was my turn. My stylist asked how ARE you, and all the thoughts I mentioned above went around and around in my head, along with thoughts of panic and despair over not having sold or rented our other house, issues with our jobs, worrying about what we will do about child care after school when Lenny starts first grade next year, and everything else.

And I said, "Well, I am really in need of a haircut."

What else could I say? After all, I'm not a man. I don't do well burdening others with my shit. I write a blog instead.

So now you understand why I rarely ask anyone How are you? When I'm leaving water aerobics and I see my dear older friend changing for the class after mine, I don't ask her that. When I see another parent getting his child dressed to go home from school, I don't ask him that. When a friend I haven't seen in a long time gets in my car so we can go somewhere, I rarely ask her that.

So what do I ask? Something along the lines of the following theme, a question that usually leads to a not-so-short answer that is often just shy of the truth:

"Are you ready?"

Day 682: LTYM Chicago Rehearsal

Today we had our first rehearsal for the Listen To Your Mother performance. I honestly loved every piece, and am more excited than ever to be a part of the show. You all need to stay tuned so you can be sure to buy tickets—soon, I promise—because this is going to be a tear-jerker for sure! And it will be funny too. Well, not my part so much, but no one who is still reading this will find that surprising. It’s interesting how you can see yourself in the pieces that other people write, even when the experiences they are referring to differ greatly from your life. I will admit that I didn’t cry upon hearing any of these, but then again, I never really cry, so it would have been more surprising, I suppose, if I had. I did laugh out loud, and I was still nervous before it was my turn, though not nearly as nervous as I was during the auditions. A few women talked about how they had been inspired by everyone else’s work, how hearing these pieces made them want to go home and hug their children, tell them how much they loved them.

That’s when I had another of those “is there something wrong with me?” moments. I came home and told Gabe about the rehearsal, let him know that the show really is going to kick ass. And then I said, here’s what bugs me sometimes about how I’ve dealt with cancer, epilepsy, car accidents, marriage, motherhood, what have you. I don’t think any of it has changed me. I don’t feel any different at all. Those epiphanies, they just aren’t happening to me.

I’ve written about this so much it almost doesn’t seem worth repeating. I know that cancer is supposed to make me grateful for the little things, grant me some perspective, enhance my sense of humor, make me more of a badass, or something. But I don’t think it has. I’ve always appreciated life and I’ve always been kind of a small, pissed off little pill of a person. After hearing all of these amazing stories today, rather than pondering the deeper things in life, I still thought, shit, how bad is traffic going to be getting home? And I was still glad that I got to spend the afternoon away from everyone. Even when stuck in the car, I could just crank up the stereo and jam.

No matter what, I still do strange things, like write a blog about this, rather than about yesterday, when the kids and Gabe went with me to volunteer on the Chicago river for ROW. Augie is the biggest cheerleader for the team, screaming “GO ROW!!!” at the top of his lungs so they could probably hear him on the south branch of the river (we were at North Avenue). After the kids had decidedly lost their shit and had enough of the temptation of wanting to jump into the putrid, fetid water (are there other words that could work here? Foul, abhorrent, disease-laden, I’m trying here…), we went to Lincoln Park Zoo, and then we found a little place to order some burgers and ate outside in the 80 degree weather. That was a little bit of domestic perfection, St. Patrick's Day 2012 was.

I just don’t feel like writing about it, though. It was an awesome day, and today was beautiful as well. It just seems like everyone’s beautiful surely must feel the same, right? I mean, what is there to say about it, about joy? There have always been beautiful days, though apparently none this warm in March in almost 150 years of record-keeping in Chicago. Living here means that weather will take you by surprise, and you will change your plans, and do things at the spur of the moment, and cancer doesn’t do a damn thing to change that. Cancer doesn’t change the weather, it doesn’t make you laugh harder or feel more deeply. It simply does its best to kill you (as others have noticed; a recent google search that led to my blog read “does triple negative breast cancer always kill you?” Boy I hope I didn’t lead that searcher down a path of depression and doom), and you can hope that you are doing your best not to let it and that in the end, the part of you that doesn’t have any tumors will win.

I just don’t think I’m going to find that moment when the new Katy Jacob please stands up. She’s just here, hanging out, a little more marked up, hair a little shorter, fuse a little shorter for that matter, than before. After getting home today, I decreed that we needed ice cream after dinner, so we went to Rainbow Cone and Augie wrecked havoc there as usual. And then after enjoying family time and laughing with the kids and Gabe, I decided I needed to take a walk, at 7:30, in the dark, rather than help give the kids baths. I got home in time to put Augie to bed, but I literally fled the house almost as soon as I got back in it after my afternoon away. I don’t feel guilty though. Beautiful weather like this doesn’t come around often enough, and I wanted to take a walk at night, and my husband seemed kind of sort of ok with it except for the part where he’d had enough of the kids (see, he didn’t have cancer, I guess he doesn’t have that larger perspective I’m supposed to have received at some point), so I went. And damn, was it a beautiful night. That air you can barely feel until the wind picks up for a minute, when your body almost shivers but then thinks better of it. I will admit for those 40 minutes, I didn't think about the kids at all. I was putting one foot in front of the other, moving fast, happy.

I just don’t feel like there’s anything that I’ve heard, or seen, that has changed me fundamentally, other than the general fact that living life changes everyone. I’m still the same as that little girl, the one who at Lenny’s age had never had a seizure, didn’t remember what it was like not to know how to walk, wasn’t yet aware of her own death, and yet…Wasn’t I the kid who grew up in a non-religious household and asked my mom if she cared if I prayed? She said sure, go ahead, and I gave it my best shot for a while, asking for important things like my family’s health and happiness, and world peace, and other things that didn’t seem selfish at the time. And then at one point I went back to my mom and said, hey, remember how I was trying to pray? Yes honey, I remember. Well, the thing is mom…I was just talking to myself, wasn’t I? I sighed, and went back to my room to play.

See, at six years old, I was the same—thinking too much, kind of droll, kind of pragmatic, and then on to the next thing. And even then, I loved a good story, almost more than I loved anything else. I’m still the same. So come out to see the show. It will be interesting—life just is.

Day 666 (spooky!): Listen To Your Mother, Chicago!

Wow! I am so excited that I really don’t know how to write this blog. But I won’t let that stop me! I did something a little (ok, light years) outside of my comfort zone recently, and decided to audition for a show called Listen to Your Mother, which showcases performers reading original work about motherhood. It started in Madison, WI, in 2010, and expanded to a bunch of cities last year; it will be performed in 10 cities in 2012. AND I WILL BE IN THE INAUGURAL CAST OF LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER CHICAGO.

Can I get a WHAT?! That’s right! Me, on a stage! The show will take place on Sunday, May 6, at a downtown theater in Chicago. I heard about this opportunity from an old friend and colleague on Facebook and decided what the hell, sent an email without allowing myself to think about it, and asked for an audition. The auditions were on a first come first served basis. I got one, and then I thought:

What have I done?

I mean, I HATE reading my creative writing in public. I always have. This audition would require me to reduce one of my insufferably long blogs to five minutes or less in spoken words, and I would have to, you know, read it--in front of people. It would even involve eye contact, and the potential for public emotion.

If you ask me to discuss global payment systems in front of an audience of hundreds of people who have higher levels of education and income than me (academics, CEOs, you know what I’m saying), I have no problems doing this. I can even be funny, and self-deprecating, and interesting. I will be nervous for maybe thirty seconds beforehand, and then just totally rock it out. I can do youtube videos about boring economic topics as if they were going out of style (which should never happen, because they are actually more relevant than most of youtube). But just don’t ask me to do PERSONAL things in public.

I’ve said it before in this blog: I don’t do that. I watch at karaoke, I don’t sing. I’m not a big fan of PDA, no matter how much time I’ve had to spend removing Gabe’s or some other man’s hand from my ass. I disallowed toasts at my own wedding because I didn’t want to hear people talk about us. I would rather the attention was placed on my children, my mom, the furniture, than on me.

And I NEVER read my personal writing out loud. I’ve always been this way. I won a decent amount of poetry and other literary awards in school—grade school through college--and I would always be asked to do a reading as part of accepting the award. So I would do it, somewhat quietly, hating it all the time. People could tell me I did well, that I have a nice voice, or something else, and I would just feel sick. I have always walked away when someone was reading one of my poems. It is only after nearly a decade together that I can let Gabe read a poem of mine when he’s in my presence. He often leaves the room to read this blog, because he almost always cries. I am kind of an awkward person around crying, even with my own children. So it’s for the best.

It just feels too personal, too intrusive, to read these rambling thoughts out loud. I can write about anything here in cyberspace without ever having to confront the reality that someone who is a real, actual person, is reading it. At the same time, I didn’t really come by this blogging thing honestly. My reasons for blogging are really inherently selfish, and strange. I am not a normal blogger. I did not do this to be heard, to unleash my voice, to engage in a community, or even to share my experiences. I did this because I had cancer, and I couldn’t bear to pick up the phone and talk to anyone. I was scared and mystified and I was trying to save my close loved ones from having to have painful conversations. I can’t count the number of times in the early days when I would overhear Gabe saying, “I can’t talk about it. Just read the blog.”

So it served its purpose, and then it just morphed. At first, it was cancer therapy for me, albeit cheaper and a lot closer to home. I said things here that I wouldn’t have said to an actual person, because I have that tough-Katy persona and I don’t like to admit to my weaknesses. The blog was very meaningful for me as I saw how people supported me through everything, when they weren’t close by or didn’t know what to say. It helped me feel the love, you know? And then I got a little political with it, as I began to feel that we have framed breast cancer in an injurious way as a society, so I used this medium to speak out against that. I decided to say things I didn’t hear a lot of other people saying, and I put pictures on here that I know have been at times disturbing. Sometimes, ironically, this blog has made me feel isolated, as I was stuck in cancer-land, overwhelmed by my life, and people were somewhat afraid of me, so they sought me out in virtual ways while I lived my physical life in a very small circle.

And then at some point, I began to do this because it made me feel better—not to talk about cancer, but to write words that left the complicated stratosphere of my brain. I have thought about stopping this blog so many times, wondering what there is left to say. It seems lacking in purpose, self-aggrandizing. And yet… here I was saying I would read it in front of people, with the ultimate intention of reading it in front of a lot of people, on a stage, in a theater in Chicago.

God was I nervous before the audition. My family did not understand this. You wrote those words, Katy, you own this. You’ve had much worse things to be nervous about. Well, yes. I hear you. It is much worse to be nervous for 24 hours while you wait for the results of your core needle biopsy (women talk about those as if it’s a single procedure. Let me state, on the record, that when I had that done, they did not one but seven. SEVEN needles as thick as your finger in my breast). Waiting two weeks for BRCA results leaves you wringing your hands a bit. Having nightmares about shaving your head, feeling your heart explode out of your chest as you close your eyes and hand over your arm for a poisonous cocktail that will have effects you can’t even imagine, all of that is difficult on the nerves.

I’ve done big things—gotten married, delivered babies after months of nerve-wracking pregnancies, decided to put myself through graduate school and buy a condo at the same time when I was single, working full time at one job and part time at another and essentially flat broke. I’ve had huge fights with my husband, walked away from people I loved so much it was like they were a part of my body, held my breath when my children hurt themselves until I could see the final result. All of those things made me jumpy, maybe even a little bit crazy.

But just because life has happened to you and it has been difficult, that doesn’t lessen the impact of other things. Cancer-related nerves are in a category of their own and are steeped in terror and sadness. It’s not fair to compare the nervousness of waiting for chemotherapy with the nervousness of an audition. Just because one is worse, doesn’t mean the other isn’t real. So this was just me, nervous about reading something personal in front of three women in a coffee shop. In the scheme of things, it was not a big deal—but at the time, it was a very big deal to me. I am not a theatrical person. I have never done any stage work. When I read something, I read it with little affectation, as if I am holding a regular conversation with you. This does not seem particularly interesting to me. I practiced at home and thought, who wants to hear that? And then I thought, well, I can think of a few people. They might be too young to sit in an audience in a big city show, but didn’t you write this for them?

I knew what piece I would choose right away, and I knew I would have to make it much shorter and more succinct in message. I figured I would never get chosen, but I could print the piece off and use it as a present to be read when the kids were older. So when I practiced, I pretended I was reading to them.

I got to the audition early, as Gabe decided to drive me and take the kids to the lakefront to run around, something they don’t usually get to do, given how far our neighborhood is from the water. The woman who was looking for LTYM folks kept thinking the next person was me, but several women were brought back before it was my turn.

But your turn always rolls around, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t want it to, it always does. So I stood there, and cut to the chase, and read it. I knew that the subject matter would catch the small audience by surprise, and I knew they would act as if it didn’t. I stumbled a few times. I finished. One woman told me it was beautiful. Of course she did—I just admitted to three total strangers that I had cancer and talked about being afraid that I wouldn’t see my kids grow up; what else is there to say?

I was done, and I was relieved. I was proud of myself for doing something so outside of my comfort zone. My stepfather asked me why I was doing the audition, and I told him how I found out about it. No, that’s not what I asked you. Why are you doing it? My mom asked me something similar: What is this thing you’re doing, what is it for? And I didn’t know how to respond. Why have I ever done anything? I told you, I just hit send on the email and then I had to go through with it. It’s like getting married or taking a job or having a kid or buying cereal or spinning when you don’t know how to ride a regular bike or picking out your clothes for the day. I don’t know why, or what the process is behind these decisions. I did this audition and told myself I was glad I did it, even though I wouldn’t get picked, because I might have regretted it if I didn’t do it. Those closest to me told me it would be a great experience for me to just try, and that’s what I did—tried for something I knew I couldn’t do.

Or so I thought. I guess I did a good job, because I was cast in the show. The email that provided me with this news included some really nice comments about my reading, which surprised me. So good God—I have to do it AGAIN. A bunch of times—rehearsals, the show. More people. A stage. The potential for crying. Jesus. Now I am REALLY nervous, and excited. A little proud even. Kind of wondering what the hell I was thinking. It’s only one show though, and as Gabe said, well, you can do anything once.

Baby, I said, sometimes you can do things multiple times that you thought would kill you to do once. So yeah, I can do it. And if I don’t make it out of this mess, my kids can read this blog, and know I loved them, and also know that I was willing to talk about how much I love them in front of a lot of strangers, which is the last kind of thing their small, stoic, unsentimental mom was ever apt to do.

The show is on May 6, two days after I will acknowledge (celebrate seems like the wrong word) my 2 year cancerversary. That isn’t technically two years NED for me; that will be June 4, two years from the day when I had the cancer removed. But May 4 was D Day for me in 2010 (Diagnosis day), and every cancer survivor I’ve ever met starts the countdown on that day. And on May 8 I will have my next mammogram; if all goes well, I can go to yearly scans rather than every six months, which seems hard to believe. I guess I can tell myself that when I’m going completely insane, driving Gabe nuts and being out of control with nervousness for several weeks before the May 8 scan (because that happens every time), that it’s just stage fright. And in some kind of irony, or fortuitousness, or something, LTYM Chicago will donate some of the proceeds of ticket sales to Bright Pink, a nonprofit that seeks to provide resources to young women diagnosed with breast cancer. Can I get another WHAT?!

The real question is, with all of the emotional things happening around the beginning of May (including the breast cancer walk that will progress directly in front of my new house on Mother’s Day), how will I actually get other things done? You know, like my job, and raising my kids, and housework? This should get pretty interesting.

I’ve decided that if I ever turn this blog into a book (as everyone says I should do, though I have no real interest in promoting myself or turning this into, you know…WORK), I know what I’ll call it:

Curveball.

Life has sure thrown me a few of those. Some I’ve caught, some I’ve dodged, some have hit me square in the face. Some I’ve thrown back. I guess this is one of those, this fact of me going up on a stage to give some strangers a very short glimpse into this strange little life. So take that, breast cancer. Right back at ya.