2024, in response to the prompt “Describe a memorable birthday”
My two most memorable birthdays – one dismal and one joyful – lie only 12 months apart. My 60th and my 61st birthdays.
In the spring of 2010, a few months before I would turn 60, I went to the doctor because of a lump I could feel in my breast. The doctor felt it and said, “You’re going over to radiology today.”
“I can’t,” I offered, “I’m busy this afternoon.”
“You are now,” she answered.
There followed 30 days of scans, biopsies, consultations, and cascading bad news.
My breast cancer got sequentially renamed – “malignant”, then “triple negative”, and “aggressive” and finally, “metastatic”.
But I had a fearless oncologist. She tried to get me into a new clinical trial that I ended up not qualifying for. One morning she called me at 6:30 am to say she’d been thinking about me all night and decided to change my chemo plan. I was bleary-eyed and could only stutter “Yes, ma’am.” And she was honest with me, from the beginning.
When she first told me my diagnosis, I was overwhelmed with contradictory emotions. Yes, there was fear, but there was also, surprisingly, an underlying feeling of relief. For the first time in my life, I would get taken care of. I would be the receiver, not the giver.
I’ve always worked – I got my first job at 16; I worked my way through college. I’d been a working mother throughout my 30s, 40s and 50s – an exhausting life on any planet. I was a teacher — a middle school teacher – another compassionate but stressful load to carry.
I don’t really remember feeling sorry for myself through all those middle decades, but maybe I should have. Maybe I should have complained. What is it called today? Self-advocacy, yes, and “setting boundaries.” But for better or worse, women of my generation and background were raised to be strong and selfless.
So, for the first time, I did get taken care of. My friends and colleagues signed up to bring dinners. My kids visited from Berkeley and San Diego. And my husband became a pillar of positive energy and support. He camped out in medial offices to get appointments; he insisted on juicing beets (yuck) for me every morning because he’d heard it built immunity. He refused to read my medical diagnoses and assured me daily that I would be “fine”. This was new and out of character. I had always been the strong one. I remember wondering “Who IS this man?”, and I began to believe him. Maybe I would make it. And, to be completely honest, as much as I hated the chemo, I enjoyed the attention and the nurturing.
Until I didn’t. After spending the whole summer struggling with the poison that is chemo, my upbringing reasserted itself. I called work and arranged to teach half-time starting in September. No one understood why, least of all me. I could have stayed home for months on disability. I could have played the grateful invalid for God knows how long. But I went to work. And then in mid-October, I ended up in the emergency room. High fever, flu symptoms, chest pain. They let me go home again the next day, but on quarantine, at least until my surgery on Oct 28th. No visitors, no activities, no working. I cried for hours. “What’s the matter?” an old friend asked on the phone. “I just want to work.” I sobbed, surprising myself.
“Watch a documentary on sled dogs,” she said.
So I watched a couple. Turns out sled dogs LOVE to pull. They LIVE to pull. When the musher sets up the sled, the dogs go into a frenzy, clamoring over each other in the kennel. “ME, pick ME!” Once the chosen dogs are in the traces, the musher occasionally has to force them to stop and rest, or they’d pull until they collapse.
Hmmm.
I had sufficient time to think about this, in quarantine, sitting at home, trying to get healthy enough for a double mastectomy on Oct 28th.
My generation suffers from contradictions unique to our era. We were raised by women whose role in life was giving and supporting, feeding and nurturing, and always putting themselves last.
But me – I came of age in a time when women were beginning to rail against the shackles of that role. Feminism, environmentalism, social change – my head believed fervently in these causes, but once I was married and a mother, my heart didn’t. I followed my mother’s example too often. Children, husband, money, work – all those things came first. I found myself constantly compromising, reshaping myself, trying to make everyone happy. And now, at 60, forced into a corner where I had to think about death, I did not slip into regret about lost opportunities. I fell back on that which I knew. Work.
My 60th birthday came and went, just another day in bed. I did recover from the surgery, I tolerated the 6 weeks of radiation well, and finally got my first good news. It seemed there was only one metastasis, and it had shrunk slightly. If it stabilized, if there was no change for five years, I could consider myself healed. And by some miracle, deserved or not, I am still alive, 14 years later.
So I celebrated my 61st birthday the following October. My hair was growing back, my energy was returning, I was back at work, I was grateful. Dozens of friends and family members came. We cooked food together, sang karaoke, drank a little too much and laughed at fate. My best birthday ever.
I worked another 10 years – until I was over 70. And I still don’t know why. In fact, I still do some tutoring and teacher training. Officially, I say I like the extra money, but I suspect that’s not all of it.
I hope it’s more than just female respect-seeking.
I hope that as I approach old age, and sit judge on my life, I rule in favor of having lived a life with meaning. I hope that I become able to forgive myself for ignoring my own needs and for not setting a better example for my own daughter.
I hope I come to peace with an understanding that sled dogs are not martyrs. If they keep running when they should quit, it is out of courage and devotion.
When they beg to be put in the traces, it is because they long for the success of the team.
When they show self-sacrificing dedication to work, they rise above individuality and find a higher social consciousness. A oneness with the universe.
And I hope that the universe … I hope the universe is grateful.
LIFE AFTER WORK 