Mid-weekend, in one frightening shared epiphany, Ramona and I remembered our lack of legal status.

“We don’t have a single piece of legal paper to document our” – I counted on my fingers – “twelve year relationship.”

“Our mortgage?” Ramona suggested as a joke.

But we both knew, in a medical crisis, a house document did not count as proof of domestic partnership.  If something went wrong in surgery, Ramona and I were unprotected.  Critical decisions would default to my feuding parents. They loved Ramona, they supported our relationship, but we could not take the chance that sanity would prevail.  We could not count on their ability to agree on anything, never mind trust in their willingness to step aside and let Ramona make decisions.

Monday morning found me in the office of a lawyer friend filling out medical power of attorney papers and answering questions I expected  (“In the event you are unable to make decisions for yourself, who would you like to designate as your guardian?”) and questions I didn’t (“Do you want to be resuscitated in the event that you stop breathing?”).

The second Monday appointment found me in a dentist chair.  Two temporary crowns needed to be replaced with permanent ones.  The procedure had been scheduled a month before, and I considered blowing it off, but learned in pre-surgery information that permanent crowns were recommended during intubation.  Intubation.  A word I had never used in conjunction with myself.

The dentist asked from behind her mask, “How was your Christmas?”  Tilted back in the chair, I didn’t know how to answer.  Good?  But the next day sucked?  I went for direct. Her eyes crinkled.   Over the next months, I would witness many people absorb this information, feel the weight of each one.

By the time we arrived at the third Monday appointment, Ramona and I were worn out.  Cursory research had yielded the information that the surgeon was well respected and liked by colleagues and former patients.  Since his hands would be in my belly the next day, I wanted to more than like him.

A little after 4 p.m., Dr. Donald “Call me Chip” Wiper came into the waiting area and ushered us into his office.   Over the next hour and a half, he was respectful and patient with Ramona’s many questions.

Gone was the shocked, silent Ramona from Friday.  Today’s Ramona was scared, steely, and determined to know everything.  I let her take the lead. My tongue still tingled from Novocain.  She had started with the inevitable, “Are you sure there hasn’t been a mistake?”

Dr. Chip, who must have been asked this same question everyday of his practice, responded as if explaining the process of validating biopsy results was the most important thing in our world.  Which it was.  When Ramona asked about the progression of clear cell ovarian cancer, he moved to sit between us on the couch and drew a diagram, which he then gave Ramona to take home.  (I later discouraged her from placing it on the refrigerator.) He was encouraging, even while emphasizing the aggressiveness of this type of ovarian cancer.  We would know more after the biopsy of the internal organs and lymph nodes, he told us, but early indications were promising. As we listened to him explain the surgery and outline the recommended course of chemotherapy, our confidence in him grew.

During the drive home, we confessed: we had already fallen in love with our doctor.  Dr. Chip was our age (late-thirties, early-forties), sandy-blonde handsome, and smart.  A hottie.  We honored “the bisexual within” despite the seriousness of our situation.  We recognized the emerging crush was emotional, but he had spoken with both of us, building a relationship with both of us.  When I explained the medical power of attorney papers, and recounted my morning in the lawyer’s office, he had acknowledged the extra stress we were under.

“Thank you for bringing the papers in.  Unfortunately, they are important.  You should probably take an extra copy to the hospital.” He paused. “I’m sorry you had to do that today, or any day, actually.”

That night, after the long, long day of appointments with the lawyer and the dentist and the surgeon, when Ramona and I were in bed and all the calls had been made and there was nothing left to do, I fell apart.  I didn’t want to lose this life we had built.

I felt Ramona smile against my neck. “Thank God,” she said, “I’ve been the one killing you off.  Now it’s your turn.”

She had been trying to kill me off since Friday, the day we got the diagnosis.  “I can’t imagine a life without you,” she whispered each night into the dark as we held each other.  Which meant, of course, she was imagining a life without me and it was freaking her out.  “You are everything to me.  What if you die?”

I hadn’t known what to say to this woman who was my partner and my love and the stoic in our relationship.  It had always been my job to worry about our future.  Now her stable world was crumbling and I didn’t have an answer to “What if you die?”  I could only wrap my body around her and tell her I loved her and tell her we’d know what we know when we know it.  I was surprised by my own calm faith.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman

Silence stretches between the members of this new group of wannabe-comics, an unfamiliar state of being for most.  The scraping chairs, thrumming fingers, and tapping feet all make it clear that sitting still isn’t usual, either. Someone lets out a loud raspberry sigh and it echoes like a bad joke off the walls.  Monday nights for the next six weeks the plan is to meet here and learn to deliver the funny.  But right now, it’s just silent agony.  I have ample time to question the wisdom of signing up for stand-up comedy classes while in the middle of chemotherapy treatments. I had hoped to be laughing already.

Comedy coach Tim Ferrell ends the pain. He surveys the eleven of us, sprawled across a half-dozen of the Comedy Connection’s wobbly tables, and states with flat assurance, “That was five minutes. Five long minutes examining your navels, each other, the fly buzzing around the tables. Five minutes you wished to hell you could get out of.  Five minutes to question why you paid good money to be here. That’s the point. You just felt it. Five minutes is a fucking eternity when a comic’s material isn’t good.”

We nod with herd-like agreement. Five minutes had seemed so short when he first talked about developing our five-minute comedy “sets”.  Now it’s a lifetime.

Tim moves to the next lesson and gets interrupted mid-sentence. “So the first rule of comedy is -”

“Don’t talk about comedy?” quips the guy who lives in his parent’s basement.

“That’s another kind of club, kid.” Tim shoots back, fast and dry. “Nothing is a secret here. That’s why comedy works. No, my friends, the first rule of comedy is:  Don’t try to be funny.”

Keep their attention but don’t try to be funny.  I breathe through Tim’s explanation as my tummy rolls over. “Nothing turns an audience off faster than a hungry comic desperate for laughs. It’s your material that will be funny, the way you tell your story.”

He jerks his head toward the lighted stage, a low platform, one step up from the sticky-beery floor.  He knows all we see is the mike in the lights. He knows we carry rookie dreams of quick fame. “If you thought you could get up there and just wing it because all your friends pee their pants every time you open your mouth, you are wrong. You will fail.”

Tim pauses, the bill of his Yankees baseball cap lifts to almost reveal his eyes. He wants us to know this next part is important. “This is a writing class, and whether or not you write in a notebook, on a computer, on a napkin, or the back of your hand, I don’t care.  Whether or not you write in full sentences, bullets, or haiku, I don’t care.  But you will write.”

Half the group groans. I take out my Moleskine notebook and get ready. The fireman from Biddeford grabs a napkin from the nearest table and asks me for a pen. While the words fail and writing fight for top billing in my head, I distribute extra pens from my bag to classmates. The confidence I felt before the class puddles around my feet.  I can write foundation grants, a killer business memo, thank you cards when I remember to, but can I write five minutes of comedy?  And then stand on stage in front of a mike? This says fail already.

A hot-flash makes its way up my throat and a waterfall of sweat rolls off my head.  I yank a bandana from my bag and wipe my scalp, hoping no one else noticed. They didn’t. They are each as self-absorbed as I am right now, their eyes on Tim but their ears listening to their own internal versions of self-doubt.  Tim hears us, though.  Or he’s just done this routine a million times.  “By the end of seven weeks, you will each deliver a solid set.  I promise. I’m here to make sure you don’t fail. Nobody fails in my class.”

Nobody fails in my class, I write with relief.  With three of my six chemo treatments still to go, my lackluster consulting practice on hold, and my family in crisis, I need some success.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman

As my lips closed around the plastic circle and water tipped from the Poland Spring bottle into my mouth and down my throat, the thought intruded: What else am I drinking with this water?

Plastic might be my enemy.

I never asked myself “why me.” I obsessed about “how.”  There’s no history of ovarian cancer in my family. No breast cancer.  No prostate cancer.  No lung cancer, even though the branches on our family tree are gnarly with long term, late stage nicotine addiction.

Did plastic water bottles cause my cancer?

Was it the time I sprayed the outside foundation of the house with insecticide, seeking to annihilate every single rampaging black ant, and the spray nozzle spilled poison, saturating my gloveless hands?

Was the white powdery flea collar I slid around the neck of my childhood cat safe for either of us?

Was it polyester fibers, or even those new “natural” ones known as rayon and tencel?

Hairspray? Hair gel? Nail polish or makeup?

Supermarket vegetables? Chicken? Beef? Pork? Eggs? Milk?

I eat organic now.

And when the needle entered my vein, infusing my blood stream with the pharmaceutical toxins meant to save my life, I fought the thought, What will this cause?

A year after completing treatment, I signed up for an “Environmental Racism” course to understand the impacts of mining, logging, and other industrial activities on people of color.  As a diversity junkie, I thought I signed up for the “racism” part.

One hour into class, the truth hit me:  this was about cancer.  Did a polluted environment make me sick? Was I raised in a house built on a waste dump? Was my home on a brownfield?  Was there, is there, asbestos?

And then, what if it wasn’t something tangibly toxic?  What if it was psychological?  Had depression caused my cancer?

Was ovarian cancer a penalty for not living my real life?

Stagnant work, spotty success, fractured family, stuck in Maine – all daily disappointments.  Daily disappointments add up.

I avoided this line of inquiry.

A friend, trying to be helpful, told me that every human carries some form of cancer cells.  “It’s just that the cells are dormant in healthy bodies.” I questioned this but never checked it out.  What if it was true?

The doctor upped my anti-depressant. And I worried about pharmaceutical toxins again.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman

Clutching the mike is what new comics do.  It gives the illusion of control.  Not a bad thing to want, standing on a stage and performing stand-up comedy for the first time.  After the opening joke explained away my bald head – “Never piss off your hair stylist” – the audience was in.  I relaxed my grip.  A little.

The club was packed, most of the people there for me. The Mistress of Ceremonies acknowledged this, opening her arms wide in greeting to encompass everyone.  “And now, the person you have all been waiting for!  A closeted social worker who can show you how to use a condom, but prefers not to: Cathy Kidman!”

Hearing my name, I took a long breath and exhaled a quick prayer to the universe. Help me.  I thought about the family, friends, and healthcare professionals who had filled this comedy club to support me.  We had traveled an imperfect path to get here tonight.  I willed myself to hear their loud applause and whistling.  Willed myself to walk confidently, as if I did this everyday, from the back of the dark bar through the tight arrangement of tables and chairs, up onto the stage and into the light.

I saw black, the audience hidden.  Well, at least they could see me.  Seven months ago, that was a question mark. To buy time while my eyes adapted to the glare, I adjusted the microphone and lowered it to my 5’2” height.  Faces in the front began to emerge.  My partner Ramona, my mom and cousins were in the back. From there, they’d be able to give me a full report on the audience response.  I wanted to learn from my hits and misses.

I spotted an aunt and uncle seated with their good friends at the table to my left and felt a moment of warmth.  Then alarm.  What if they didn’t think I was funny?  What if no one did?  The crowd to the right of the stage were strangers in their twenties. Beer bottles covered their tables and the smell drifted up.  They had laughed loudly at the previous comic’s penis jokes.  Too late to second guess my material now.

I leaned into the microphone and said, unplanned, “I am feeling the love.” Laughter greeted me. “We love you too, Cathy!” someone yelled from the back.  I grinned in response and allowed their energy to seep into my bones, anchor my feet.  The audience was still in darkness, but I acted as if I could see each person.  In my head I heard, Take your time. This is your audience now.

“I don’t know how I feel about same-sex marriage,” I announced.  The audience went silent, unsure. “When I was a young lesbian,” I began, and then stopped because their laughter interrupted my flow.  I continued,  “When I was a young lesbian, my lesbian elders taught me that marriage was a form of patriarchal enslavement. Now those same lesbian elders are reading Lesbian Bride Magazine and hiring wedding planners.  It used to be a lesbian had a truck and a dog.  Today it’s a minivan and an adopted daughter from China.”

By the time I was done, I had poked fun at gays in the military, racial profiling, and the belief in Maine that a meal at the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet constitutes a multicultural experience. My five minute set ran for twelve and it felt like two while the audience laughed throughout. Everyone, including me, was a little dazed when I finished.  Then the crowd was on its feet, clapping and whooping.

This was glorious.  This was better than anything I could have imagined.  This was worth every failed practice session, every failed joke, every tear.  This was almost worth ovarian cancer.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman

Betsy’s first words to me: “How’s the constipation?”

I instantly knew she understood. Chemo, hair loss, fatigue, nausea – these were the usual things people talked about with those of us who had cancer.  Not shit. Not lack of it.  Not the immobilizing, bloated, out of control, backed up, doubled-over painful, I’d-give-anything-ANYTHING-just-for-a-real-poop existence.  But Betsy was up for it. I loved her. I hardly knew her.

We met the previous year.  Betsy was a manager for a community action agency, a member of a coalition that hired me to facilitate several meetings.  After the first meeting began, Betsy walked into the conference room, her head in a scarf, telegraphing chemo to all attendees.

“I just finished a treatment. Sorry I’m late.”  I was the only one surprised.  She was talkative, present, unfazed.  I found myself staring at her, then not.  Then doing it again.

As people filed out of the meeting, Betsy introduced herself to me and apologized again for arriving late.  I asked and she told me, “Breast cancer.”  We talked briefly and that was that.

I received many, many well-wishing cards when the news of my diagnosis spread.  Some were funny, some inspirational.  Betsy’s card said, Call me, if you want. Here’s my number.  When I received it, I thought, that’s really thoughtful.  And then set it aside, in the pile next to the couch. I had lots of friends. I wouldn’t be reaching out to a stranger.

A couple of months into my treatment, when I was feeling every bit as down about having cancer as the brochures in the doctors’ office waiting rooms predicted I would, I grabbed the pile of cards seeking the inspiration and encouragement they were meant to convey.  I got to Betsy’s and stopped, realizing I was lonely in a place I hadn’t known I was hurting. It turned out, I didn’t have that many friends who understood cancer.  And I hadn’t believed I would get this down or get this lonely.  I thought I was protected by my years of therapy, years of moving through my dark places already.  Sure, I struggled with depression, but I had a spiritual base.  I had prayer and meditation and friends and a gratitude for today.

None of which protected me from the impotence of constipation.  After an abdominal surgery, everyone checks to make sure the bowels are working.  Each person who entered my hospital room – doctor, nurse, Ramona, family member, visitor – expressed preoccupation with my bowels.

“Have you passed gas yet?” they asked.

Mortification ebbed to numb acceptance of my exposure as I lay in bed, waiting, waiting, to pass gas.  I could not go home until I could answer yes to the gas question.  But the bowels were not moving. No gas came.  My first bout of constipation had set in.

The surgery had caused “adhesions,” some kind of internal scarring, complicating the normal course of recovery.  By day four, I was crying out for a doctor, sobbing from a pain worse than the surgery.  Ramona could only pace the room, undone by my distress, as I lay on my side, yearning to crawl into a fetal position and cradle my wounded self.  A resident showed up, talked to me through the side rail of my bed, meeting my eyes.  “If I give you a pain killer, it will cause more constipation. I know this hurts, but we have to wait it out.” I looked at his young face and thought, there is no “we” right now.

There was no “we” as the adhesions collided with the cumulative effects of my treatment regimen.  Every chemotherapy treatment resulted in constipation.  Every pill prescribed to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy caused constipation.  I became crazed waging an anti-constipation war.   Senna, Mylax, Fiber One, bran, prunes, Colace.  I returned to drinking caffeinated coffee, placing faith in caffeine’s ability to move bowels. I drank more water than I thought I could hold.  My bathroom became a ready room.

I will not discuss what happened when my efforts were successful.

Constipation-induced depression had humbled me.  I dialed Betsy’s number and stepped into connection with someone outside my circle, someone in the know, someone who understood powerlessness. How’s the constipation?  Betsy wasn’t looking for the plucky cancer survivor response and I didn’t give it.

“Oh, thank you for asking!” I laughed, before downloading my despair.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman

I am called to Tim.  An awkward reality for a supposedly neutral, have-no-favorites aunt.  It took me years to understand the pull to my nephew.  First I had to acknowledge it, let my heart explore the guilty edges before I could look head-on.  Ramona had no such guilt.  She is matter of fact.  It is not a case of favorites. “We saw Tim be born.” He is the only child whose birth Ramona and I have witnessed.

“Holy shit!”  I exclaimed as we watched the purple glob of legs and arms exit my sister and slide into the world covered in goo.  This was was more of my sister than I had planned to see in this lifetime.  In fact, I hadn’t planned to see it at all.

Our being present for the birth was an accident.  A happy accident, if Ramona is asked.  We had stopped by the hospital, on the way to visit a college friend, to encourage Laura before she went into full delivery mode.  Sort of a pre-birth, last time you are somewhat child-free, just in time kind of loving visit.  Mom was her labor coach.  Ramona and I would be redundant.

We entered the hospital room to find Laura pretty far along, judging by the stress on her face and Mom’s strained frequent encouragements of “You’re doing great.”

The labor nurse, a military bearing informing her every move, noted our entry and barked, “You two.  Over there.”  She pointed to a spot by the windows and placed the surgical table between us and the door to the hallway.  The only door out. “Don’t move. Stay out of the way.”

I looked at Ramona. We were in labor.  We wouldn’t be sitting by the lake, laughing in the sun with old friends. Instead, I was here watching my mother stroke my sister’s head while I stood, strategically placed, viewing Laura’s exposed contracting and expanding private parts.  As I digested our imprisonment, Ramona  joined mom in the coaching.  “You’re doing great, Laura!  Awesome.”

Awesome? Deep breath.  I could do this.  Hee hee, ha haahh.  This would be be over soon.  Heeh heeh, hahh hahh. The baby would be born, it was all about the the breathing and going with flow.

We had learned of Laura’s pregnancy the day she visited us at our home, when we lived outside of Portland in a rural town. Laura had never come out before, so we were curious. We were also a bit concerned that she was coming to tell us she wanted Abby the cat back.  Not going to happen.

Instead she announced that she was pregnant.

“Can we have it?” I blurted.  Ramona shifted in her chair.

“NO!” She exclaimed, hands automatically landing on her flat abdomen, protective already. “It’s mine. I’m keeping it.”

We all laughed awkwardly, eyes roaming around the living room until we settled again into the situation.

“What’s the plan?” although I suspected the answer.

“I’m going to move back up from Rhode Island, stay with Mom and Dad.”

“Right. Cool.”  Pause.  “We are here for you.”  Except now she thought Ramona and I would steal her baby.  Well done, big sister.

Who’s the father remained unspoken.  I felt around in my brain for a respectful way to ask.

“Can I ask who the father is?”

“Will.”

Who? My face must have telegraphed my question.  I’d never heard this name.

“We were dating.  Briefly. He doesn’t want another child.” He already has one? “I’m raising the baby on my own.”

Ramona and I absorbed this. We had often discussed why Laura, who is funny and smart and cute and ethical, continued to bruise her heart with losers.  It was not really a stretch to figure out, but I didn’t tell Ramona.  I recognized in myself the tidal pull to be loved, the lengths I would go to protect a shred of an illusory relationship.  I got lucky with Ramona.  Unfortunately for Laura, she had not gotten lucky and this particular loser would play a permanent role in her life, even if he thought he wouldn’t.

Laura’s labor moved into the eighteenth hour.  Cries of “Push Laura!” and “You’re doing great!” and “We see the head! We see the head!” had not resulted in a full child.  The doctor was concerned for the baby.   He told Laura it was time to do an episiotomy.  Miserable, Laura just nodded her head in exhausted agreement. I had a vague understanding of what this meant.  But when the episiotomy scissors sliced a cut between my sister’s vagina and her anus (oh my God am I seeing this?) and she tore and tore, my understanding became permanently clear.

My mind had no time to process before the doctor demonstrated NFL quarterback expertise, effortlessly receiving a small, fast river burst of blood, placenta and baby into his awaiting hands.  Then, in one nifty move he turned the baby around and deposited him, covered in the purple goo, onto my sister’s chest.

“What is it?” Mom wanted to know. “What’s the gender? What are you naming the baby?” Laura had not shared names and Mom was done waiting.  Laura examined the baby.  Crying, she announced, placing emphasis on the pronoun, “His name is Timothy Joseph.”  Named after our revered uncle, Timothy Joseph Murphy, the man who stood as a father for Mom, a grandfather to us, and a namesake for our niece Alexandra Murphy. The it, the baby, the boy, was now Tim.  And we were all in love.

Pheromones. That was what Ramona and I would think later, because we could come up with no reason why we couldn’t get this child out of our heads.  He was all we talked about. Visiting him was all we wanted to do. “Let’s go see the baby.” “Let’s go hold him.” “What do you think the baby is doing right now?”

Ramona shared the birthing story with everyone she saw at work, at the gym, and with any friend we ran into at the grocery store or out to dinner.  “I cut the umbilical cord!” she proudly declared, usually neglecting to add that she almost amputated the doctor’s hand in her rush to grasp the scissors when he asked, “Who wants to cut the cord?”  So I told that part. Then I showed pictures.  This is my baby, I said, No, not really, but I seem to be gaga.

Ramona’s phenomenal coaching during our unexpected baby delivery session earned her impressive fans. The maternity nurse and the doctor asked if she had ever thought of being a midwife.  They also said, “If you have a baby, we want to be your team.”

Mom and Laura did not miss this.   After Tim was born, Ramona becoming a mother was the topic of conversation. Arriving for one of my surprise visits to hold Tim, I found Dad, Mom and Laura in the living room admiring the baby.  His toes and fingers could not be counted too many times.  I curled up in the rocking chair with him while Mom and Laura launched into a brainstorming session about how Ramona could become pregnant.  The words “sperm donor” and “turkey baster” sent my Dad fleeing from the room.  Not an image most father-in-laws want in their heads.

Another time, Mom’s exuberance nearly blew out my eardrum.  She had telephoned to chat.  “What’s Ramona up to?”

“Trying to get a position as a mail carrier. She wants to get out of the distribution plant, be outside in the air.”

My well-tuned ear picked right up on her disapproval silence. “Mom, what did I say?”

I expected a quiet, slightly hissed response.  Not vehement outrage.

“Out in the rain and the cold and the wind?! That is no kind of job for the woman who will be carrying your baby!”  This from my mom, who had once scorned PFLAG, the support organization for parents and friends of lesbians and gays, as “too in-your-face for me.”

The pregnancy campaign finally fizzled, Mom and Laura caught up in the daily activity of raising Tim.  Ramona and I fell again into our own routines, our physical need to see, touch, and smell our infant nephew receding to a distant ache.

What hasn’t faded is the visceral recall.  The image of our nephew flowing into this world, the adrenaline rush of watching his life emerge.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman

“Cathy, I wanted to talk with you.  Can you come outside?”  Tiny, sturdy Aunt Anne is halfway out the the rickety cottage’s banging screen door as she invites me to join her, away from the cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins, sisters, brothers and mothers who comprise our annual Old Orchard Beach reunion.  Aunt Anne is my great-aunt on my mother’s side of the family; her husband, Tim, was my grandmother’s brother.  The last time I saw her was at my fortieth birthday party in April.  She had been one of the surprise guests.

Aunt Anne walks me to the trunk of her gold Buick sedan, the car Uncle Tim used to drive before he died fourteen years ago. “I have a present for you.  I didn’t want to give you just anything for your birthday, so I thought about it for awhile.”  I am touched by the thought of my great-aunt spending time thinking about the right gift for me.  We are not a birthday-gift-giving-family.  Gifts are offered only if you attend a party or holiday gathering and you are perceived to have a close enough relationship to obligate the gift.  “Close” is defined as immediate family and their progeny.  In-laws are questionable.  Children under eighteen are the sole exception to the closeness factor, and gifts will be bestowed upon a niece, nephew, grandchild, or child of a cousin if the child is the focus of a party.  Not attending the party or holiday gathering automatically nullifies the necessity to give. If a close family member doesn’t bring a gift, even when they “should”, the obligation to give expires when the party or holiday gathering is over.  There are lots of ways not to give a gift in my family.

Aunt Anne opens the trunk, blocking the cottage from our view, providing an instant privacy screen.  I surreptitiously scan for a package.  Instead, Aunt Anne reaches into the purse she had locked in the trunk and withdraws a small brown paper package and a letter.  “I want you to have Uncle Tim’s ring,” her voice hushed. “I brought you out here because I didn’t want everyone to see.  There was a lot of speculation when Tim died – everyone wanted his diamond ring.  I want you to have it.  But don’t tell anyone.”

Don’t tell anyone. “Anne.  Wow.  Thank you.” My throat is stuck and Aunt Anne’s face, the face that has had the same number of wrinkles for my entire life, is suddenly blurry, the wrinkles smoothed.  For a moment, I see the younger Anne, the woman Uncle Tim married. The strawberry-blonde pin-up girl laughing in a framed 1940′s magazine advertisement.  Aunt Anne’s one moment of fame.  I wipe my eyes, take the package from her.

She stands next to me,  head level with my shoulder, as I read the brief note in her small handwriting.  In it she tells me Uncle Tim was always proud of me.  Proud that I went to Smith College.  Proud I was so smart.  Proud I was a good kid.  Tim would want me have his ring.  She tells me that we kids were important to both of them.  She tells me that I know what having nieces and nephews means, she has seen what I do for mine.

Aunt Anne watches as I unwrap the overly-taped package to reveal a battered jewelers box. “The original box,” she informs me.  Inside is a man’s gold diamond ring, three stones set in a white gold square face.  This is the ring Uncle Tim wore everyday, on his pinky.

“I’m overwhelmed.”  My eyes fill and I look from the ring tucked in the box to Aunt Anne and back again.  This is more than we ever give each other and more sentiment than we openly share.  Anne is a no-nonsense Yankee.  Her eyes are dry. “You don’t have children,” she states, matter of fact.  “I know you know.”  She hugs me, closes the trunk, turns and returns to the family in the cottage.

I head away from the Buick and the cottage, move to my own car for privacy.  Cry by myself.   Think about Breanne and Murph and Matt and Tim.  I do know what nieces and nephews mean.  I do know.  And I think about what uncles and aunts mean.  What they meant to me.

When he retired, Tim Murphy was the Chief Liquor Inspector for the State of Maine, in the days when liquor could only be bought in bars or state run liquor stores. If you wanted a liquor license, you went through him. If you already possessed a liquor license, you feared him.  Uncle Tim, all five feet four inches of Irish willfulness, was passionate about enforcement.  That passion was superseded only by his love of family.  Uncle Tim was a father to my mom and a grandfather to her children.  He looked after my twenty year-old parents, bringing groceries for them and clothes and toys for an infant me.  Once, he arrived at their apartment to discover my mother in ill-fitting clothes, unable to conceal her second pregnancy.  My brother Bruce had been conceived two months after I was born.  Uncle Tim simply took my mother shopping.  No judgement, only action.

As a family, we feared Uncle Tim even as we revered him.  Once, he showed up unannounced in my seventh grade biology class.  “Where’s Cathy Kidman?” he boomed as he charged through the classroom door.  Paralyzed with embarrassment, I could only stare as he announced, “I’ve come to take her to the Youth Center.”  The Youth Center was Maine’s juvenile correctional institution.  I was too mortified to look around to see how my classmates responded to the news that straight-A-never-get-in-trouble-Cathy-Kidman was headed to the youth center.  “It’s okay, Mr. E., he’s my Uncle,” I reluctantly admitted, relieved Uncle Tim had not flashed his handcuffs.

Unexpected visits like these were how my brother and I would find out we were going to visit Tim and Anne.  Uncle Tim would swoop in, scoop one or both of us off for a couple of days – and later my younger sister, Laura – and return us fed, often with newly purchased clothes.  Bruce loved it.  Laura seemed indifferent.  I never lost a slight dread.  Uncle Tim was loud, demanding, always right, and lived to tease us.  Around Uncle Tim, I felt like I maybe might possibly be doing something sort of wrong even when I was asleep, as I imagine many bar owners felt.  So I kept several books with me to read and hide behind, not that it worked.  My reading never went unnoticed.  It was his constant opportunity to tease me.

I hold the open box, the ring glinting, and remember.  Uncle Tim standing in the summer sun, shirtless and hairy, commanding the smoking grill at each Old Orchard Beach gathering.  Uncle Tim sautéeing his pan of chopped buttered onions and grilling steaks for the adults who don’t eat lobster and the hamburgers and hotdogs for the children who do, but who wouldn’t be getting any anyway.  Uncle Tim gathering nine small bathing suit clad cousins together like ducklings and marching us single file down one seemingly endless block.  Uncle Tim stepping out into the crosswalk and compelling the respect of the street, his military posture negating his white-haired chest, bathing trunks, and flip flops.  Uncle Tim raising his hands to signal “stop” in both directions, the hot summer traffic forced to obey.  Pedestrians gawking as the nine of us filed past him, none of us daring to run or get out of line.

Our sole destination: Gregory’s, the corner convenience store that sold everything a vacationing family might want for their week at the beach. Styrofoam surf boards, beach balls, and towels. Price-gouged beer, milk, cans of soup, toothpaste, and sunscreen. All crammed into narrow aisles.  But none of that existed in our eyes.  We were focused like lasers on the rows of candy and ice cream.  In the long year between summers, anticipation of going to “The Store” with Uncle Tim fueled endless conversations.  “I’m getting every hot-ball there is.” “I’m getting every fudge-cycle.”

Uncle Tim, the authoritarian source and symbol of our summer joy.

It’s getting hot in the car, but I’m not ready to go back to the cramped cottage and face my family.  I’m still thinking about Aunt Anne’s words. We never asked why Tim and Anne did not have children.  Between them, there was a twenty-five year age difference.  As children with same-aged parents, we cousins thought the two-and-a-half decade chasm answered any questions.  “He’s too old to be a Dad!”  Besides, he was our “Fungle Dim,” our bigger-than-life uncle, and we certainly didn’t want competition for his affection.  As young adults, we remained curious but did not ask.  Uncle Tim and Aunt Anne formed their own family unit, their privacy not to be intruded upon.  I observed Uncle Tim’s loud behaviors, his all-consuming presence that I both admired and dreaded, and a context emerged for the snatches of exasperation overheard in my childhood.  “Aunt Anne is a saint.” “She’s the only one who could put up with him.” “Can you imagine if he had his own kids?”  So I sometimes wondered if maybe it was a good thing, maybe the universe took care of him and Anne.

Not having children.  The importance of nieces and nephews.  Yes, I understand.

Don’t tell anyone. This will be difficult.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman

Marty Linsky is unimpressed with my ambition to join Donald Trump on The Apprentice and his slightly raised eyebrows indicate only marginal amusement with my stand-up comedy endeavors.  I had not planned to tell him about either during our informational interview, but now, over coffee in the Portland International Jetport, I seem unable to stop talking.

We had arranged for me to pick Marty up at the end of his training engagement and drive him here before his flight home to New York.   Since the moment he climbed into the passenger seat of my Jetta wagon, I have talked nonstop.  I blurted about adaptive leadership, the connections I saw with my consulting.  “I am a fish who has found my ocean!” I gushed. “Adaptive leadership is a perfect framework for all the diversity work I have done!”

I downloaded my entire career.  Domestic violence work to United Way to domestic violence again.  A stint with public radio and television before working for an AIDS organization.  Preaching the gospel of condom use across Maine.  A graduate degree in social work and building a nonprofit organization for gay youth.  By the time we stood at the American Airlines ticket counter, he had heard how the gay youth organization became the foundation of my organizational development consulting.  As we slid upstairs on the escalator to the coffee-deli bar,  Marty heard about my favorite consulting gigs – the seven weeks in Micronesia (they honored me with a pig roast when I left) and the four years with a college athletic department (Ramona has a lot of great sweatshirts now).  Somehow, I had refrained from actually tugging on his coat sleeve like a five-year old child and shouting “Notice me! Notice me!”

Now, sitting over coffee, I am telling Marty about The Apprentice and comedy classes.

The point of an informational interview is lost.  Marty should be the one speaking.  I should be the one listening.  Somehow, I know it’s the steroids. But I am powerless over my mouth.  I am beginning to suspect, but no one has told me, that steroids cause the equivalent of a manic PMS.   When I had a functioning uterus, I could count on every frustration or sadness being magnified for one week each month.  Big tears, big sadness, emanating from a real, but small kernel of disappointment.  Each month provided a hormonally-induced opportunity to examine and accept or discard what the kernel could reveal. Talking at Marty, I feel the sinking awareness that this steroid-induced mania is right this moment magnifying an anxious insecurity way larger than a mere kernel.

Marty listens patiently to everything.  His bright blue eyes, unnerving behind his spectacles, miss nothing.  He manages to convey detached yet empathetic interest.  He is intrigued by my culture change work with the college athletic department, so he asks questions about that.  I confess the crux of my call to him.  That consulting was fun at first – it  paid the bills and no one was getting beaten, thrown out of their homes, or dying.  I was good at it.  Competent.  “But now I’m bored.  I’m looking for more. Competence is not passion.”

An airport worker, in his fifties or so, approaches our table.  I finally stop talking.  “I noticed your ‘CHEMO BITES’ button,” he says awkwardly.  “May I ask what kind of cancer?”  My hand reaches up to my hat, fingers brush the button.  I’m so used to it already that I forgot it was up there.  I look at Marty, who smiles at me and sits back in his chair, interested in the exchange.  “Ovarian cancer,” I tell the man, “but my prognosis is excellent.  I should be fine.”  I always add the I should be fine. Ovarian cancer is a heart stopper and I don’t want people feeling more concern for me than they need to.  It’s hard to witness, over and over again.  His eyes well up anyway. “Really,” I assure him.

“My sister died of that,” the he shares.  “She suffered for years. She’d have liked that button.  God bless you.”  I reach into my coat and pull out an extra button for him.  Wonder if I should stand up and hug him or not, then choose to shake his hand from my sitting position instead.

“Does that happen often?” Marty asks after the man leaves us.

“All the time.”  My life is out of control, I want to say. I am supposed to be having a coffee about my career and instead I am comforting the bereaved and passing out CHEMO BITES buttons.  Instead I am being a good-cancer-soldier with a plucky, survivor attitude.  Instead I am nattering on about The Apprentice and stand-up comedy when I want to be, oh I don’t know, something different and better than this!   That’s why I called you!

I drink my coffee.  I’ve talked enough already.  I feel overexposed.

Marty returns the conversation to our work lives.  He has listened (what else could he do for the last forty-five minutes?) and informs me that his current career began in his forties.  He reminds me I am still young, there’s still time to explore and find meaningful success.  He tells me about the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and outlines their MidCareer Program.   It would be a good fit, he says, for where I am right now. Two hundred middle-aged students from all over the world, all on a path to discover what’s next, who enroll for a year to earn a Masters in Public Administration.  A degree they don’t necessarily need.  Just like me, many of the students already have advanced degrees.  It’s not the courses, he emphasizes, but the people and the connections and, literally, the world of opportunities that being in the program opens up.  It’s life changing.  Plus, he adds, as if life changing hasn’t caught my attention, there is more opportunity to study adaptive leadership.  Marty tells me I should really think about it.

After our coffee, when Marty gets on his plane back to New York, I think about it a lot.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman

Inbox stalking is never an attractive avocation.  Three days have passed since my brave little email swooshed into cyberspace, hopes clinging to it like an invisible attachment.  On day three, the awaited reply dings in. “Yes, I’d be happy to meet with you.”  Back and forth exchanges result in a date several weeks out, after my second chemo treatment. Ecstatic, I begin obsessing. What does a bald woman wear to an informational interview with a leadership guru?

Months before the diagnosis, I participated in a multi-part workshop on “adaptive leadership,” much hyped as new and exciting. It’s rare that leadership theories turn out to be either.  Marty Linsky, global consultant, Harvard Kennedy School of Government faculty member, and co-author of Leadership on the Line, changed my thinking.

The temperature had spiked in the posh hotel’s conference room, without anyone touching the thermostat.  Sweaters and jackets were removed, absently placed on the backs of chairs  Our sole focus:  the compact instructor in the suit and tie, commanding the front of the room, stealthily pissing off his students. “How can you possibly know what you believe in, until what you say you believe in comes into conflict with something else you believe in? I always said I had two number one values. I believed in self-actualization and I would never do anything to hurt my kids. Then I got divorced. When I had to choose between myself and my kids, I chose myself.”

That did it. In a room of middle-aged professional adults, Marty’s choice of example was a direct hit.  Only a nanosecond of shocked and wounded silence passed before an angry hand flew up.  The bait had been taken.

The hand belonged to a woman in her forties. She spoke from the perceived safety of the round table where she sat with her five colleagues. “I was in an abusive relationship,” she stated. “I protected my children by leaving. I put my children first.”

“Yes,” agreed Marty, facing her defensive assertion with the neutral calm of a Caucasian ninja. “And you chose a divorce, which your children experienced as painful. In their eyes, they were harmed. You made a choice between competing values. In seeking to protect your children, you hurt them as you freed yourself.”  Silence greeted his response.  Marty continued, “It’s really tough to face those kids, who you have promised you would never do anything to hurt.  For me, that was thirty years ago and, to this day, if you ask my kids what was the worst thing that ever happened to them, they would say it was the divorce. Even more painful was looking in the mirror and seeing a different person than the one I wanted to I believe I was.”

Riveted, I watched with rising discomfort as the participant continued to argue with Marty.  She could not hear his point, nor could many of the others. They were too busy flopping, like this woman, on the floor of the boat Marty had so neatly reeled them into.  Sending us off to break, he prepped us for the next conversation. “We are loyal to our own ideas of ourselves. When this is threatened, the heat gets raised.”

Indeed.

“What is he playing at?” the participants asked each other over coffee and small Danish pastries, reluctant to discuss their own competing values. The women, congregating in the restroom, told each other that men didn’t understand divorce.  Uncomfortable, I sat alone at my table.  Reflecting.

When Dad divorced Mom, what values had come into conflict for him? What had he prioritized? Did he consciously choose?  And what had I prioritized to reach this point of career ennui?  What beliefs were in conflict?

Now I was in dangerous territory. My hands circled the too-small hotel coffee cup. What idea of myself was feeling threatened right now?  Observing Marty, fully present and alive, radiating passion for what he was doing, my stomach churned.  A familiar story of myself was playing in my head, the one that tells me I don’t deserve to be successful, to go after what I really want.  The one that tells me the life I have lived to date, even with all I have accomplished, is nothing more than a pale version of what my life was really supposed to be. If only I knew what that was. But that was a misdirection. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to stand in my own brilliance, like Marty Linsky had just done. I wanted to inspire people to change their lives and their worlds.  I wanted to do this free of concerns about what others think of me.

Nibbling my stale Danish, a hard truth. I have been more loyal to the idea of myself as a woman who is not living up to her potential than I have been to the idea that I am a woman who is worthy of, and has already realized, real success. I have spent more time cultivating, watering, and feeding the destructive belief of what I think I don’t deserve than nurturing the belief of what I do.

Ouch. This facing of truths stung.  It challenged and cut through the righteousness upon which my self-efficacy was anchored. No wonder the other women were hiding in the restroom.

When the training resumed, definitions gave form to my break-time ah-hah.  An adaptive challenge is one in which only the people with the problem can solve the problem; adaptive leadership, the activity of mobilizing people to recognize and solve their own adaptive challenges.  It was working so far for me.

Disquieted but engaged, I counted the days until the next training.  Even after the cancer diagnosis, I wanted to believe I could still attend.  That proved unrealistic. The full hysterectomy and cancer-staging surgery, the burst incision, and the every-three-weeks for four months treatment schedule made continued participation impossible.  But the adaptive leadership experience stayed with me.

Post-surgery, moving gingerly between a horizontal position on my bed to a horizontal position on the couch, I pondered the life choices leading up to this cancer moment, the ideas of myself to which I had declared loyalty.  That building an innovative gay youth organization in a homophobic state was only a minor achievement. That spending the first fifteen years of my professional life in social work and nonprofits was noble. That success didn’t have to be financial.  That I was a worthy speaker and consultant, good-enough-for-Maine, but not ready a for a prime-time big-city career.  That a White lesbian from Northern New England can only go so far in this world.  I knew when I hit upon on a self-deception – each stressful realization triggered sudden hot flashes, dripping sweaty anxiety across my body.  Lying in bed, hand on bandaged belly, damp from the illuminating hot flashes, I knew no one else could swoop in and fix this problem. Yeah, a doctor could surgically remove the cancer, shoot me up with chemicals, hope to obliterate all the cells.  But I’m responsible for my beliefs.  I’m responsible for my life.

“Change means loss,” Marty had declared. “Change always means loss. Even if it’s a good change.”  Ovarian cancer is definitely a change, definitely a loss. Loss with a capital L.  I ran through the roll call of Losses:  health, hair, uterus, work, income – even my parent’s marriage made the list. They all require giving something up. They all require telling a different story if the outcome of my life is going be different.  Change will mean making difficult choices between what is precious and what is expendable, and it’s not just the tangible stuff.  It’s the intangibles that keep us stuck.  Until we are brave enough, desperate enough, to let them go.

In the January light, my eyes traced the crack in the plaster ceiling above the bed I share with Ramona, my relationship with her the only thing not causing hot flashes at the moment.  The crack ends at the bare light bulb, the fixture broken years ago when we moved into our home. Staring at the gray bulb, I asked myself:  Am I willing to change the story? Is the old one expendable yet?

I climbed out from under the covers and emailed Marty.

© 2011 Cathy Kidman

“You have cancer.”

The space between my brain and my ears fills with foam, buffering sound.  The pastel exam room, small when we walked in, is suddenly cavernous, the doctor farther away on her swivel stool. Her mouth opens and closes and I think, I’m supposed to be catching the important stuff.  I lean forward to hear, feet dangling from my perch on the exam bed, where I sat out of habit even though I’m fully clothed.

“It’s an aggressive type of ovarian cancer. ‘Clear cell.’  I wish I could tell you that it’s a good kind of cancer, but it’s not.”

There’s a good kind?  Did she just say that?

“If you have to have a cancer, well, this is not the preferable kind.”

Yes, she did say that. I have the less-preferable-bad-clear-cell-kind. Of ovarian cancer.  Well, at least it’s not breast cancer.  Everyone has that. See, ovarian cancer can be preferable. I stifle a nervous laugh.

I look over at Ramona, my partner for thirteen years, seated in the chair reserved for caretakers and family members, and wonder how she is taking this. She has foam in her ears too.  She seems to be listening, but her face is closed down.

Ramona had thought this morning’s 8:30 a.m. phone call from Dr. Vaughan, asking us to come to her office, meant she wanted to check my stitches.  On Monday, an ovarian cyst was removed through a laparoscopic procedure.  At worst Ramona thought we might learn the ovary couldn’t be saved.  This was simply a detour visit on her way to the gym.

I didn’t dissuade Ramona on the drive over, now I wish I had. I knew there was no way the unscheduled request to “come in this morning” could end well.  Besides, today is Friday.  The day after Christmas.  No doctor invites patients in on a near-holiday.  The quiet office, the hushed conversations, the long wait despite the lack of patients – all indications that something was up. Now Ramona just looks broken and I can’t do anything about it.

And Dr. Vaughan is off her game.  She is less clinical than she was on Monday, when surgery over a slow work week seemed a good idea and the holidays twinkled like a reward in our future.

“I knew on Tuesday afternoon,” she says. “I didn’t want to ruin your Christmas. ”

I feel bad we ruined hers. Catch the irony.

Now she is talking faster, shuffling papers in folders, her professional composure cracked.  She does not want to be telling me this information.  Just five days ago, she showed us the pictures from the laparoscopy and said, “Everything looks healthy, perfect, pink.”  The biopsy was just routine.

She makes wet eye contact with me, then Ramona, then me again. “I checked and rechecked the charts for the last few months and we did everything right.”

Dr. Vaughan is worried that she missed something, that she let us down.  It’s sweet that she cares so much. We all thought it was a regular ovarian cyst.  We followed it like a regular ovarian cyst.

“I think the cancer is early stage but we won’t know until after the surgery, which I’ve gone ahead and scheduled for Tuesday.”

Yes, I nod, like this everyday conversation. Of course there will be surgery.  That makes sense.  I guess I didn’t have anything else to do next week.

“You will most likely undergo chemotherapy.”  Or for the rest of this year, apparently.  Wow.  This means I won’t have to work.  Ouch, big guilty thought.

“There’s one other concern.  The surgeon asked if you plan to have children.  I told him, at age thirty-nine, I thought you’d want to go ahead with the surgery.”

Right, yes, Ramona and I nod together.  No children.  Aggressive ovarian cancer trumps womb preservation.

In the car, Ramona tells me that she didn’t hear much past the first sentence.  Good thing, I tell her, that one of us listened.

“Did you catch the part where I have surgery on Tuesday?” I ask.

Yes, she assures me.  She got that.  I squeeze her hand as we drive home, Ramona repeating, “I just didn’t see that coming. Did you?”

© 2010 Cathy Kidman