I’m not one for complaining about my age–God knows with breast cancer beating down my neck I appreciate every day I’m here, it’s much better than the alternative–but honestly, the condition by which I have to direct a young life to, say, phone me when I don’t have to pick you up rather than drive across town to find you don’t need me for another hour is a new one to me.

Like you can’t call me to tell me the event is going long–on that cell phone I bought you?  The one in your pocket?  The one that you do mad texting every waking moment with, the one that costs me beaucoup bucks each month?  The one that….aw, forget it.

So now here’s another problem for me with my TEENAGER.  This teen can read.  You shake your head and say DUH, let’s hope so–

but for a blogger, that makes writing difficult.  I can’t just explode the personal lives of my family on this web page–not only is that insane and likely to land me in Mommy-I-Hate-You-Land but it’s rude.  I wouldn’t want anyone to do that to me and lucky I’m not growing up in this generation. The worst my mother ever did to me was write notes on my napkin in my brown sack lunch.  I was never embarrassed by that, either–which tells you what a geek I was–

but my kids would FREAK if I did that today.  It’s unCOOL.

Yet I blog….which is like public napkins in everybody’s lunchbox from here to Taiwan, Denmark, Argentina, New Zealand and….you get the picture.

So here I am, the new mother of a teenager–and all I can say is that I will try with utmost sensitivity and compassion to not bleed the inner life of my child here in cyberspace.  And I’ll start now by revealing only this:

if I have gray hair before my time, you’ll know I did not AGE myself….I had help.

From my teen- – -r.

but it caught me by surprise this week as I clicked around and saw at the top right-hand of my screen a little face–not a real person, but a computer-drawn face–and her name was, of all names, Ann.  As I looked at her name, spelled just like mine (no E on the end either) I read this underneath it.

Please make sure to visit Ann, our Virtual Assistant.  She can guide you
to the information and tools you're looking for on your secure member
website, Insurance Navigator.  Ann is here to help you, any time, day or
night, 365 days a year.

How my namesake was available any time, day and night, 365 days a year was beyond me–except of course that she wasn’t likely Ann at all–or at least not one woman named Ann.  I assume she’s a thousand different people–or at least a dozen, who take her name and role of helping someone figure out what is next in their effort to book a flight, find a doctor or pick a piece of furniture– once the automated responses are used up.  I’m just guessing of course because I didn’t research it–I was just staring at this little face who had my name..

..and then I found her again, on the furniture site.  And again, same name–although this time it was Anna–at another website–and I began to wonder–what’s up with the name Ann?  I mean, clearly there are not resumes flying around in cyberspace with the number one customer service qualification being the name ANN–and with no E. (I envision those old signs in Boston circa 1910, saying “Irish Need Not Apply” but these say “Anns with Es Need Not Apply.”)

I guess the name Ann must stir up something kind, or common, or at the very least helpful–a bright-eyed girl jazzed on coffee and Redbull who won’t eat, sleep or celebrate a holiday unless you are completely satisfied with your purchase.  Clearly these people who named this VirtualAnnie have not met me.  Yes I can be kind and sometimes I am helpful.  Common?  Well, like beauty that’s in the eye of the beholder.  But up all day and night, 365 days a year, non-stop, to guide you?  I think not.  Heck I may be writing this blog now but it’s been weeks since I put finger to keyboard and all I can tell you is I’ve been busy. Staying alive is hard work–between infusions, tumor markers, trips to Europe and picking up dog poop–oh, and the laundry–I have had zero time to help anybody.  And this month ain’t looking so hot, either.  I just bought a house, so I’ll be a-moving–and you know what that means…

boxes, boxes, boxes and hey! more boxes.

So, if you get on a website and see the virtual assistant Ann ready to help you, any time, day or night, 365 days a year, give her a wave for me.  But don’t under any circumstances expect this Ann with no E to be anything like that Ann with no E.  I can give you about 10 minutes of my time in about a week and a half–if you bring me a latte and pick up a box.  And if you catch me at infusion I can sit with you for an hour.  But other than that–I’m outta here–

…which may mean I start spelling my name with an E.

“Sure then you’re here in Ireland now. Enjoy it!” he smiled to me after wondering why I’d only be spending 2 days on the Emerald Isle. I explained that my quick trip to the land my great-great grandfathers both came from one hundred or so years ago was actually not a slight on the Old Sod but a genuflection to it. After all, this trip was meant to happen in France–Paris to be exact–a planned-by-my-husband, romantic getaway for the couple who’ve been through hell these past 8 years battling breast cancer.

Yet I’d always longed to see the green country where my roots once grew in two strangers’ lives–men I’d never know but would hear tell about during constant sing-a-longs round the family piano growing up. As I absorbed every word of “Wild Rover” and other folk songs coming from my Grandmother Murray’s lips, but belonging to every Irishman and woman on earth–and all who love them–someone would inevitably mention that on both sides of my parents I had Irish forefathers; my mum’s great grandfather and my father’s father’s father–and I’m sure I’m off a ‘great’ or 2–who were either, in no particular order, a grave digger or an ice man or a politician or or or or…–who came from Ireland in search of a better life.  As a kid looking round the singing clan belting out songs to my nana’s piano-playing I decided they must have found that better life here in the USA. Or at least handed it down to me.

Which is why I asked my husband for a slight detour to Dublin before hitting the City Of Lights.

Sure I have breast cancer and all the fear and frustration that goes with it. And certainly my life is no day at the pub–unless the pub serves infusion drips in a pint glass. But standing there looking at the green ink freshly drying on my foreign passport I felt incredibly, enormously, powerfully grateful and happy to be right where I was, just as I am: an American in Ireland.

With any luck, my Irish ancestors felt the very same way as they saw whatever stamp they received freshly drying on immigration papers that meant, “yes, you can come find your new life here in the United States of America.”  And though they’d never know it, their great-great granddaughter–whose full name bears both of their surnames–would do just the opposite a century later, in a hopeful search not for something new but to connect with a hidden past in her own life, and–wiping away a surprise spring of tears–

she’d find it

“Mommy blogging” is what I did before cancer swept back into my life in 2010. I blogged at a site for mothers in the state of Maine, and I loved discussing the ins-and-outs, ups-and-downs, laughs-and-snorts of raising two little people in the 21st century. Occasionally being a breast cancer ‘survivor’ would slip in and that was fine–but I didn’t focus on that. I focused on living life as me, and also as somebody’s mother.

However, when I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer–also called Stage 4 (and there is no Stage 5 if you catch my drift)–my world turned upside down. I began to write in the perspective of my new world because I couldn’t do anything else–it was what I lived. My blogs, always about my day-to-day grind with a hint of laughter because I love to laugh, now focuses on living, loving, mothering and wife-ing as a cancer fighter–with a hint of laughter because I still love to laugh. Not that I wanted it to be like this, but it’s what’s happened. And I write no longer a first-timer to cancer, but a life-timer to the disease.

So my friend was saying to me this morning, “you should mommy-blog again. You were so good at it.” And I had to smile. I did like sharing the craziness of kids with the world. BUT..

the weird thing about the Internet is people feel like they can just slice into you if they want. That’s the awful side of blogging–the comments. Back in the old days, being a journalist meant you wrote a piece and people read it. After they read it they might give their comments to the person next to them, the people at the bar, or the Sunday morning crowd gathered at the diner after church. If someone really hated what you wrote, they’d write a letter or call the paper. But never, NEVER did they get to spew junk at you in the blink of a send-button, endlessly and successively, just because they could. But with the dawn of endless sharing that is the Internet, any reader can go to the bottom of an article, blog or comment and just rail against the author.
And they do.

Back when I was a Mommy blogger, this is the kind of thing that happened to me:

I once posted a tongue-in-cheek reference to Madonna’s latest baby adoption, noting I was available for adoption by the maternal superstar because I was so tired of picking up after my own kids I could use a mother myself. I got comments like,

“Who the h-ll do you think you are? Do you think you’re as good as Madonna?”

Another completely missed my attempt at humor:

“are you against adoption? Don’t you know those children need love?”

I wrote something similar in humor about Raychel Ray, who is a wonder kid of cooking and was everywhere from videos on TV to the moving screens in my grocery store to almost all the magazine covers in the food section of the store. I got comments like,

“Oh why, oh why can’t we women stand up with one another? Why do we have to tear each other apart?”

..and another who wondered who I thought I was, “because you’re sure not as great as Raychel Ray! And you never will be!”

Of course I got plenty of nice feedback from people who either liked what I wrote or thought it was funny. And respectful “I don’t get it, but thank you for writing” comments are a gift–because someone took the time out of a busy to day to spend with me, even if they didn’t agree with me. But honestly, I don’t need that other crap in my life now. I didn’t need it then, either, but with tumor markers, IV drips, and kids who don’t need nurturing from a mother dealing with all that plus nasty comments from folks wielding a new version of the ‘poison pen’, I bow out. I have enough ugliness on my own day-to-day plate: I don’t need a heaping helping of anybody else’s.

In “the old days” of writing, being awarded the job of writer for either “My-Local-Town” paper, “The New York Times” or all places in between was the only credit you needed to be viewed as a talented writer. Now it’s about how many hits you get, how many links you have, how many google words say whatever about which-what-where-who of your website…

and it’s all C-R-A-Z-Y to me.

I just write what I feel now. And mostly what I feel in every ‘mommmy’ moment I have–including just this morning when the two children I brought into this world, and love more than anything except their father, brought me to hide-behind-the-bathroom-door tears, is that–

what if I’m not here to have these ‘nutty’ children drive me crazy in the years to come?

Sure they can make me anxious with their sibling strife and pre-pubescent antics. And yes I have to discipline them so that they become well-adjusted adults. But unlike the mother I once was–who could joke about them making me C-R-A-Z-Y and wish Madonna would whisk me away and pay for my boarding school-

now I’m like, what IF some other woman did have to adopt them, because I wasn’t here anymore?

Which I’m guessing would be a real buzz kill to the cute, funny “mommy-blogging” trade.

That’s when the joke’s not on Madonna, or adoptive parents, or angry blog commenters or the millions of children wishing they had parents–but on me.

So here’s to you, Madonna–and to Raychel Ray–and to all the mommies out there who love their families and blog about it. I’m with you–all the way. I just can’t be like you any more. I have to be this now, this mother with the life-threatening disease.

Yes it suck–but at this point I have no choice. I’m mommy-blogging my way. No it’s not as light-hearted and funny as it used to be, but it’s still kinda light, and it still can be funny–

even if it turns out that the ultimate joke is on me.

In fact, they’re at their lowest. But you should know that with tumor markers that comment is a bit of a red herring (which I think means either ‘misleading’ or a small, weird colored fish.)

I mean that tumor markers are like temperature: whether it’s 72F, 78F or 69F, it’s still warm–you don’t need a coat. It’s when the tumor marker–or the temperature–hikes significantly–say from 70 to 110–that you know the environment’s gone nutty and you may want to vote that Green Candidate into office after all; or in my case, get yourself to the oncologist ASAFP.

The strange thing about tumor markers is that like cancer itself, markers don’t behave uniformly in all patients–at least that is what my doctors tell me. Some people’s cancer doesn’t even equate to them–they may have low markers and lots of cancer. To me that’s like needing a coat in 100 degree weather–it’s the “HUH?” factor. But check off another day in the land of cancer–some days the whole show is all weirded-out to me.

Speaking of me–

so my tumor markers are as low as they’ve ever been–hooray! I am so grateful for the reasons why–whatever they are. Could it be the great meds? My rockin’ oncologist? The vegan-no-dairy-no-white-sugar diet I put myself on? The weekly workouts with my trainer-and-friend (Madonna ain’t got nothin’ on this lady)? That crazy Fiji Water I drink before my infusion, that for some reason opens my veins and helps the nurses put in the IV? Or maybe the amazing support of my family and friends, who stick with me through this whole messed up bumpy up-and-down ride of literally a lifetime?

And then there’s you reading this–what kind of positive thoughts do you send me that boost me along and factor into the decline of these tumor markers…

I may never have the total answer. And for me I don’t really care–

as long as it keeps working.

Take this weekend for example: I was in a fashion show. Now I know that’s not huge news–about fashion shows. Lord knows they’ve been around decades and longer, and many a waif-like creature makes his or her living strutting down the ol’ runway hoping to get attention to So-And-So’s latest textile extravaganza.

But all of those people in those shows–and I can say this with certainty–have boobs. Even the guys have them–well not really boob, but certainly nipples.

So this weekend I was in a fashion show and I worked that runway and I helped a great cause get money for their fundraise–

and I was breast-less to boot.

Today, as I had my infusion to ward off the breast cancer that continually pounds my left lung wanting to get in (since I took off my breasts, it can’t get in there anymore)
I was drinking my Fiji Water to help open up my spindly little veins to the medical miracle drugs that are helping to keep me alive and I was chuckling to myself–what a weekend.

Catwalk, music, lights, strut. It may be Monday but I can’t get Friday out of my mind. Sure it felt like just another fashion show to the rest of the audience. But to me?

It felt sooooo good.

We made an offer on a house this week (maybe we will get the place, maybe we won’t–a lot depends on boring stuff–offer acceptance, house inspection, the banks not collapsing again–HA! I jest on that last one. Sort of…)

and…

3,000 miles away, on the other side of my life and this country, my godmother’s home is now for sale. This is the same place I grew up next to and hung around in, drank coffee in the kitchen and sipped cocktails on the deck. It’s a place that is as close in my heart as the home I actually grew up in–literally and figuratively–since the properties sit next-door to each other and my folks still live in the house I grew up in.

But because Darlin died last year at age 90, having lived a long and loving life as the wife of my godfather, the mother of 6 and the godmother of a few lucky kids–including me–her home must now be sold.

And I am reeling in the strange coincidence that her home should be for sale at the same time that I may be buying a house.

I push away the sad comparisons–like how special moments were shared in her house and now it’s going, the memories fading–and pull toward me the happy ones. Like how Darlin’s “in the real estate market” at the same time I am (I’m pushing that one but I either smile or I cry so I choose smile.) How we shared so much–her motherly caring of me, my daughterly adoration of her. How when she got older she suffered from breathing issues and how with metastatic breast cancer I did too. How I would call her as she was attached to her oxygen mask and she would perk up and in her special way of speaking say “Why Ann, it’s so nice to hear from you Dah-lin!” (since she always called the little ones in her life Darlin the name stuck back on her. We always called her ‘Darlin.’)

There are many more comparisons I could make between her life and mine, but I won’t. Time is short and my point is made: Darlin and I had a special bond.

And maybe, 3 months after her death last December–to the week–here we go again: her home for sale, my attempt to buy my home–happening at the same time. They say there are no coincidences in life–at least that’s what I’ve always heard.

When it comes to me and Darlin, I’d have to agree.

The first thing I felt when I heard this–beyond incredible humility at being compared to anybody so cool, courageous and female–is that I could see my resemblance to Amelia Earhart, too–but not in face. I could see it in the story of her being lost–her at sea, me in this freaking metastatic breast cancer world.

But my friend who compared us wasn’t getting that deep; she was just saying “her smile, her laugh and her spirit remind me of you.” So I pulled myself back from my mental cancer brink long enough to smile into the phone and say, “thank you.”

I think my friend said she’d been watching a show on Earhart which included photos and clips of the famous woman about to hit the skies in hopes of being the first female to solo her airplane around the world. After I hung up the phone I went to the official Amelia Earhart website to read up on her and find out what happened the day she was lost.

According to the site, in 1937 she flew into cloudy weather after leaving New Guinea in the Pacific headed toward Howard Island, a small piece of land that she never reached. After a 4 million dollar search, the US Government called off the search for Earhart, her navigator Fred Noonan and her plane. She had made it 22,000 of the 27,000 mile trip before she was lost at sea. She almost made it.

Which of course freaked me out. I mean, considering that she was so brave and so optimistic and that she almost made it and then she didn’t–well you can figure out where my comparison-mind was heading: “Damn..”

..and then I read a quote from a note she left her husband. Leaving a note was something she did in case the unthinkable happened–which it never had until this time. The quote is this:

“Please know I am quite aware of the hazards,” she said. “I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”

And then I saw it. Okay, I thought, so I do have something in common with Amelia Earhart–besides a smile, spirit and laugh. I have her same mindset–at least this one, the one that says I will do this. Of course, unlike Amelia I haven’t chosen my present “flight path.” And if I could parachute out of this plane I would in a second–but that’s not an option. I’m seat-belted in whether I like it or not.

So I’ll keep the spirit of Amelia Earhart with me–not the one that lost but the one who wanted to win. And when I get worried I’ll remember that like her, I need to be out there in the world making my stand on what a cancer person can achieve in his or her lifetime–no matter what the disease wants, achieves or tries to steal from me/us.

And if my plane crashes someday, somebody else will pick up the pieces and set to flying out there on their own–until someday one of us makes it to the day where they land in a world devoid of breast cancer.

That’s a world record I have a feeling Amelia Earhart herself would have celebrated.

To say I was honored to be there is an understatement. For me, a cancer person fighting the battle every day that Science is trying desperately to save me from, to be able to shed light on what it’s like to “be” a person with cancer is everything. It’s everything because I’m lucky to have been asked to speak to this distinguished group; it’s everything because I am alive and not gone to breast cancer, and still here to be able to speak to anyone at all.

So I’d like to take this time to thank all those who sat and listened to me. Those who didn’t do what they might have done today–have lunch with a friend, go shopping, be at work, draft that deal, visit with friends or one of a hundred other things that people can and do make happen in their free time. Today all those people carved 3 hours out of a busy Friday to listen to me an others speak about what The Jackson Laboratory is doing to help fight cancer–and how they might help the Lab win that battle; and if they help the Lab win that battle then–maybe, just maybe–they’ll end up helping me win my battle, too.

So to all of them–and if you were there, I’m talking to you–thank you.

And before you worry that I was molested or somehow ruined in any way I will tell you I was not. I was in the airport. And trying to get through security, the shiny metal things on the front of my shirt made that 360-radiation-thing you have to stand in to make sure you’re not a terrorist upset. So I needed a pat-down–on my chest.

The Transportation and Safety Administration woman designated to check me out stood there, strong and silent. She looked at me with eyes I assumed had seen a lot: big breasts, small breasts, cleavage, covered, underwired, no-wired, old, young, t-shirted and no-bra’d. I was certain she’d had her share of discomfort from the patted-down who didn’t like the idea of a stranger touching their fronts. If she only knew she was about to touch somebody for whom that entire issue died 8 years ago this week with a double-mastectomy-no-reconstruction. I looked back at her and wondered what she’d make of me–not the small breasted nor the small chested but, for lack of a better term, the de-breasted.

“It’s your shirt,” she waved her powder-blue-gloved left hand at my flat chest in explanation for my deterrence. “The machine doesn’t like those buttons.” Her eyes met mine. “I’m going to need to feel around–” she stumbled, “here.” And she waved at the area where my breasts would have been had I had them.

I looked at my own chest which is flat but not obvious-to-the-eye gone. I keep myself trim so it’s not so clear to anyone who doesn’t know my story that I have had a double mastectomy without reconstruction. Of course when I say that I mean it’s not clear to anyone’s eyes: somebody’s hands are another matter. You can count my ribs if I let you.

I was just catching up to the reasons why I’d been stopped– this had never happened to me before and I wasn’t exactly with it–until she started to pat my stomach. I smiled because it tickled. Then she looked at my eyes and readied her hand to move up a few inches, maybe waiting for me to complain? Or react? Or at the very least acknowledge what was about to happen so that if I was going to complain I could do it now and save her a lot of trouble..

“I don’t mind,” I smiled at her. The blue latex glove rubbed on the material of my shirt as it slid up an inch to the area where my breasts would have started where they still there. For a beat, nothing in the airport seemed to move for me: not the airport itself, not the travelers behind me eager to get to their gates, not the TSA agent’s hand. The whole moment was the complete opposite of TSA testing/finding something dangerous: this was TSA testing and finding something missing instead.

The agent looked at me. I have no idea if she knew. Her hand rested for a millisecond on my ribcage–the only hard thing on my front frame for the last 8 years. That second clocked like hours for me. I couldn’t let her hang there in confusion.

“I have no breasts,” I said, smiling. “Breast cancer,” I shrugged as a quick means of explaining 8 years of hell. And to ward off any “poor you” looks from her, I smiled again and said, “It’s all good.”

She looked at me, same dead-pan face she started with. No recognition of what I’d just admitted. “You’re all set,” she said.

“Okay,” I answered her, moving quickly past her blue glove. I grabbed my computer, bags, jacket and ticket spread out on the conveyer belt like a lawn sale. Pulling on my shoes I thought–8 years into this battle with breast cancer that I am fighting and for the moment winning and that’s right, I am all set–

and lady, you don’t even know the half of it.