socall me wren

Falling from the tree onto the porch, I sneak into the corner and hide. It is dark, mid-night, silky, foggy, thick summer night. The man. He is on his bicycle beside the house waiting for me. He starts to ride screaming “SAM! SAM! I KNOW IT’S YOU” crazy fucker. My shoes start chasing him down the lawn “I’M NOT SAM, YOU ARE CRAZY! GET OUT OF HERE YOU CRAZY BASTARD!” He cackles his maniacal taunt while spinning me into a conundrum. Who is chasing who, exactly?
Around and around in circles I chase him in the street. This scruffy old bearded man, hair as a lions, dirty as a gassy tractor sitting in the dead heat of summer, trying to sweat but can’t because it’s metal. My shoes run straight for the house, running as hard as they can, my hands fumbling for the knob because dirty old tractor man is right at my heels. Success! I run through, hurrying to untie the shoes. This is difficult seeing as the floor is covered in shoes. 20 30 40 pair of shoes just in the foyer. All down the hall, in boxes, inside of each other, shoes breeding more shoes. They are fucking rabbits, piling up more quickly than I can untie my own. Hearing his huffing behind me I bolt for the stairs. Shuffling again, where the fuck are these shoes coming from? I try to kick mine off at my pursuer but they get lost in the more shoes that keep appearing on the stairs. Now hundreds of pairs of shoes trailing the path of my feet, they fly out from behind me shooting as an old tommy gun. My tracker ne’er deterred, still has his gleaming eye on his prize. At the top of the stairs I turn sharply, tripping, slipping, gripping onto the door jam, throwing myself onto my bed. The shoes stop breeding. Waiting. The man stands in the frame of the door, breathing heavily, playfully watching me. Ready. He disappears and again I fall from the tree onto the front porch.

It’s been few weeks of compression, depression and the need for warmth and sunlight.  The end of winter is the worst for most of us.  Especially if we haven’t really gotten away from the biting winds or wet shoes.  Even the kids have said “Mom, we are tired of this. Can we move somewhere warmer”?  YES! Yes we can.  Seeing as my citizenship is still American, we can move anywhere in the states that is warm.   A neighbour has a little blackboard at the front of their house and they change the slogan every few days.  Just last week when the weather was looking promising, it said “Spring is coming!” and yesterday it read “Spring is here?”  That’s right folks, March doesn’t get any better than the dead of winter.  The only thing better is more daylight.  Yes, I am in a funk.  McErin sent me an email last night that really hit home (damn her).  I haven’t been around.  Not in any sense of the word.  Not online, not outside, not with my friends.  I tend to hide in my house and wallow in whatever shallow pain I can extract.  Sooooo lame.  And so like me at the same time.  It’s just too damned cold to get outside and run it out!  She was right, that McErin – I need a beach vacation.

So spilling a little of the past week on you, I will try and resist any negativity, but no promises.    My long time (23 years) friend and her family have found out their 5 year old daughter has cancer.  The tumour (Wilms tumour) is 10 cm and located on her left kidney.  In the CT scan they found spots on her lungs.  This girl is 5.  Yesterday the IGS team took a biopsy and installed a chemo port.  Just typing this is making it all more real.  Because if you knew this little gem or saw her anywhere at all, you would never in a million years guess she is sick.  The only part of all this that she isn’t crazy about is the IV in her hand.  But of course, she isn’t aware of what is happening to her either.    the Dr’s say this form of childhood cancer is most common and the recovery rate is upwards of 95%.  But what about those kids who had spots on their lungs?  Did they recover that quickly too?  When my father was diagnosed with kidney cancer, they didn’t wait to take a biopsy because they knew if they damaged the tumour, the possibility of the cancer metastasizing was dangerously high.  So they removed the kidney and the tumour before any more growth could happen.  Now, my father was a lucky man and didn’t need chemo, they got it all out with surgery.  But what about this little one?  Her parents are terrified and don’t want to know the answers.  Her mother, a lioness if ever I have met one, can’t muster the strength to fight for her girl cub.  At least not at the moment.    My love and prayers go out to this family.  They know tragedy more so than any other family I have known and they don’t deserve to be living in yet another nightmare.  I give credit to my own cubs though – they are heading up to Sick Kids as often as they possbily can, even if only for a moment or two.  Who knew they would be such nice kids?

And then there is Zsolt.  A close friend who was recently beaten nearly to death one week ago.  I don’t have any information at the moment – and to even think about all this tragedy is wearing on my head.

Yes, running away is always at the forefront of my conscience.  Like Billy Squier said – She’s a Runner