A Little Bit of Folklore

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2011 7:50 PM, EST

A Little Bit of Folklore

I was starting to think that the loss of Bess and Gretchen was clouding my creativity…but it seems that my return to “normal” has gifted me with another blog posting. Thank heaven's! I was starting to think I had run out of stories...

Lil’ sis Jayme and I shared a room growing up. As we grew older, we were exactly like the Tanner girls on Full House. We had tape down the middle of the room, and Heaven forbid Jayme cross that line. It took us years to grow out of that, and it took us years to get there.

Mama was a single working mother – A Supermom in every way. I can’t imagine having 3 girls as naughty as we were. My guess is that it causes a little bit of a flair for the dramatic, and a tiny bit of embellishment. It’s a kind of folklore to listen to her tell a story…it seldom varies from the first time she tells it, but every time you hear it you are left thinking, “There is no way that this was thatdramatic!” But then when you hear it the same way every time, you have to wonder…I guess that’s how I learned to hear and to tell a story. And now I’m going to tell one like I’ve heard it. Keep in mind I’ve heard it a million times. I don’t recall this particular incident, so I’m telling it as I remember it...from someone else’s perspective. But after all, that’s what folklore is, right?

We all hear thumps in the night from time to time. A Christmas tree falling to the ground at 3am when you’re the only one home (oh, yes, this happened to me last year and it was terrifying). A dog moping about the house. A child who discovers that he needs to go potty in the middle of the night. But what if you are in your 30’s, with 3 girls in the house, nuzzled in their beds? And thump. You wake up – eyes wide open, but not quite focuses. You see nothing but darkness. Your eyes adjust. No more noise. You are on your way to falling back to sleep…thump. Back up – focused right away. You get up, check on the kids across the hall, sleeping angels as they are. So sweet. You smile. You go to the other child’s room…another angel. You smile and go back to bed. THUMP! Full alert! You get the revolver and you are ready. You check on the kids again. All three sleeping. Thump, thump. Oh, that’s your heart this time. You walk around the house, and…nothing. Nothing. You breathe. You hide the revolver, and you go back to sleep.

Morning comes. Normal morning. Nothing out of the ordinary. You are making breakfast. Your little girl comes sleepily wandering into the kitchen, dragging feet (this is where the story gets a little stretched – I mean, first of all anyone who knows me know that I am bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning…and there is no second of all).

“Mama?” I said.

“Yes, Beanie?” Mama responds, cooking.

“Something really weird happened last night,” I continued.

Mama paused – eyes wide open, spoon in hand. “What happened?”

I began to pull up my nightgown slowly. Now you can just imagine the absolute fear in Mama’s eyes as her little 6(-ish) year old daughter says something weird happened and then raises a nightgown. Sheer terror. I continued to raise my nightgown, only to reveal that the something weird that happened was that I woke up from a night of deep sleep, completely distraught that I was covered in My Little Pony stamps. Jayme apparently kept thumping into the Barbie Doll house when she heard Mama getting up to check on us. You can also imagine the comic relief.

I was expecting to come back to work and to have this “new normal” that I’ve been hearing about. I returned Wednesday, and I would just like to extend a warm and genuine bit of gratitude to my co-workers and leaders, who have been extremely supportive throughout this entire process. The fact of the matter is that the work is the same; the people are the same; and the daily life is the same. But I am my “new normal.” I am different. I will live my life, see things, eat and see differently. I know it sounds funny to think of it this way, but cancer has been a little bit enlightening.

No matter what your diagnosis, your prognosis, your disease, your circumstance…you learn from it; you grow from it. I've heard before that it is not our experiences that define us, but how we handle them - I disagree. I believe that our experiences define us. How we handle them defines us. What we learn defines us. What we do with the knowledge defines us. We are often scared of the thump (or the lump as the case may be)…but we can often look back on it with a little bit of reverence…a little bit of embellishment…and a little bit of humor, and find the beauty in it. And so it is with my new normal – finding the joy in the circumstance as I remember it.

Please pray for health and peace this week for Jayme (despite the My Little Pony assault, I still love her!) – she is pregnant, and she is having her routine mid-pregnancy ultrasound next week!! Love you, JayJay – Can’t wait to meet that little Baby Teague!