Bethany's Blog

I submitted this story for the CBC Literary Awards earlier this year. Its creative non-fiction and pretty much is a summary of my last year or so. Its about my family and how it took a tragedy like breast cancer to make us appreciate our mum.

I didn’t win or get long- or short-listed. So, if anyone wants to offer feedback, it would be much appreciated!

Brenda Stensen pulls the frozen dinner out of the refrigerator, slowly and cautiously, so as not to rip the stitches underneath her arm. She taps the door closed with her fingertips and pauses. A stout, shrinking woman, she stares up at the congested kitchen calendar, checkered with various appointments in varying colours. Chemotherapy has been written in red on Mondays and Saturdays. Black ink marks homecare visits on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the Wednesday and Sunday boxes, Brenda has written in dates and visits with loved ones that she knows would have not otherwise been arranged, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was suffering from a life-threatening, -altering and -shattering illness.

She could ask her son or husband to help her make real food, to lend a strong arm to pull a pork roast out of the oven or to stir some tomato cream sauce. But, she’s resigned to doing things for herself, afraid of the rolled eyes that will barrel down the stairs towards her upon her request. She’s not yet used to being fawned over and is hardly expecting it, especially after having spent the last 30 years arguing with members of her family over matters that now seem entirely trivial at this point in her life.

It’s 6pm on Friday night and Bobby Flay’s Throwdown is on. Brenda is getting her dinner ready and is just about to start her television routine, unaware of the flatness that has snuck into her life in the back pocket of her sabbatical. After 30 straight years of working for the government as a contract administrator, she has never taken more than three days off at a time, a break that has always been used to care for an ailing family member. By the time her children were old enough to take care of themselves, she had reached that pinnacle of adulthood, an honour requiring all qualifying parties to now turn around and take care of their own parents.
Her daughter, Bethany, opens the front door to her mother’s townhouse. She’s here on her weekly visit, a tradition that was established promptly after her mother informed her that the lump the doctor found, and previously assured her was nothing more than a harmless abnormality, was, indeed, malignant.

She had moved out with her boyfriend exactly 6 months prior to that day, after her parents voiced their disapproval of her relationship with a man who was 10 years her senior. She had not seen her immediate family since then, and not until she showed up in her mother’s recovery room the day of her partial mastectomy. The train ride to her hometown was spent sweating and pacing in the aisle, very similar to way in which her mother did when a 15-year-old Bethany stayed out until 4am with her questionable company. But, in exactly the same way it took place on multiple occasions 10 years ago, Bethany was there when her mother woke up. This time, however, she had not drunkenly snuck upstairs and crawled into bed, but was instead standing over her mother’s bed, clutching her hand which now seemed smaller than she had ever remembered. They have both had a hard time letting go ever since.

Today, she and her mother watch television in silence, like an old, married couple who have finally said everything they needed to say to one another. Brenda will occasionally comment on how delicious Bobby Flay’s dishes looks while Beth responds with a surprised remark about his pleasant disposition. They carry on until about 2am when Bethany falls asleep. Her mother stays awake, reminded of the nights when her baby girl would drift off while she read the African origin stories that her daughter, even as a newborn, could not get enough of. Determined to impart some knowledge of her culture to her children, Brenda has always been impressed by the unusual rationality of mythology, these fantastic and unbelievable stories that somehow always manage to make sense in the end.

Now, after sharing several good cries on her daughter’s lap over the fact that her breasts may soon be removed, she has bitterly accepted that Bethany has entered adulthood. Her 25-year-old daughter has officially graduated to that familiar stage in a person’s life when they must turn around and take care of their ailing parents. Brenda is well aware that she’s the one being cared for now, a fact which somehow seems to disappear at 2am every Friday night and stays away until noon, when Bethany wakes up to make chocolate chip pancakes for the family.

After breakfast, Brad loads his mother into their car and transports her to her chemotherapy appointment. He leads her by the arm, as though her boney frame has somehow been replaced with porcelain and could shatter with any amount of additional pressure. They never say much to each other while driving. She’s asked him enough about when he plans on finding a job, and doesn’t want to press the issue, possibly inducing yet another rage-filled episode. Instead, they play the license plate game, making up words by scrambling the blue, metallic letters. Each word is worth 1 point. If they can somehow integrate the numbers, it’s 2.

She waits in the doctor’s office, a bright, white room with fluorescent lights filling all but a few inches on the ceiling. Brad informs the nurse that they’re there, while his mother reads an article about Rabbit Breeding in one of those completely irrelevant doctor’s office magazines. When her name is called, she’s greeted by a woman who is not her usual nurse and makes the type of small talk Brenda hates, rehearsed and uninspired. Once she’s in the room, she changes into her gown and waits for the nurse to bring in her IVs. The nurse promptly finds a vein and begins the drip while Brenda places her iPod buds in her ears.

The drugs begin to stumble through her bloodstream. She can feel each one differently and distinctly. First, the saline, striding quickly and stealthily, only tripping on the occasional blood cell. Next is the anti-nausea medication, which passes through smoothly and confidently. Now, it’s time for the chemo, which has to be pushed through, heaving and wheezing. She can feel the pressure on her veins when it stops to take a breather, resting its arm on a wall while it catches its breath.

It’s during this time that Brenda closes her eyes and imagines herself in her second life, a coping mechanism taught to her by the therapist in her weekly Cancer Survivors meeting. Her second life is supposed to be the life she wishes she was living, pictured in her brain from a first-person position. But, Brenda’s second life isn’t one that she wishes for; it’s one she’s already possessed. She’s not sky diving, or sitting on a beach, or dancing at a nightclub. During a time when she could still say her family was whole, she pictures herself reading to her 6-month-old daughter, peering over the baby’s big, bald head, to see the words in the oversized picture book. She reads African myths and creation stories, of which Bethany’s favourite is the tale of Bumba. He is the African deity who created the sun and moon by vomiting them up after a terrible stomach ache, an origin story so absurd that Bethany had to hear it over and over again before she could believe it.

Her head begins to spin, as the pictures come to life, as the pages turn rapidly and become a flipbook. Bumba, a large smudge of a god, sits on his throne in the middle of a vast expanse of dessert land. It is dark, and only the outline of his globular body can be seen. He knows it’s time to eat, but can only feast on the darkness that surrounds him. As he takes it in with one continuous sucking motion, the pages continue to turn, before stopping on a still image of him clutching his oversized stomach. He writhes in pain as the darkness cannot be contained inside of him. The pages begin to turn again as he opens his cosmic mouth and retches. A gleaming daub of a golden glow pours from his lips, drags itself across the edge of the page and pulls itself up into the sky. The world around him illuminates and Bumba is defined in light, as more than an anonymity that blends into the darkness. The light brightens and intensifies until Brenda’s eyes shoot open.

When she wakes up, the IV has been taken out of her arm and she’s dressed in her Lee jeans and the Kitten-emblazoned sweater her husband bought her for Christmas last year. She’s groggy and feels like her head is ten times too big for her brain. She takes her steps down the hall slowly, tapping the ground with her small toes before setting down her whole foot. When she makes it back to the waiting room, Brad, and the two Brads sitting on either side of him, are drawing in their sketchbooks.

While driving home, he tells her “I got a freelancing gig. I’m gonna be designing web themes for a marketing firm’s clients.

She replies “A-N-P-T. Pant.”

“92 to 89, for you”, he says, and smiles.

When she arrives home, Bethany is reducing the mix for her chicken pot pie while her father rolls out the pie crust.

“Hey, Bren”, Suresh calls. He’s follows up his greeting with a compliment that only seems insincere because he’s never been the kind of man to dispense praises: “Your hair looks pretty”. He gestures to the wig that sits on top of her head, somewhat askew. Brenda heads for the living room and plops down on the leather couch Suresh has just bought. Shortly after his wife was diagnosed, he had given the house a thorough clean and bought new furniture for each of its communal rooms, a frenzy which Brenda perceived as a sign of surrender.

He was visiting his family in Guyana when his wife found out about the status of her tumour. At that moment, at 8:15am, his chest heaved and he felt like a bubble had been blown up and burst in his heart. He wrote it off as gut rot, and continued his trip as planned. When he returned home, Brenda did not ask him about his vacation; the simple “how was your day/night/vacation without me” conversations had been redirected and focused on their children a long time ago. She only told him that she had breast cancer, a revelation which prompted a similar staggering pain to the one he felt that night in Berbice. He couldn’t decide if it was regret or remorse, but it never went away; it was only compounded by the feeling of intense fear for his wife’s life which triggered an onset of a vaguely familiar feeling that he had always wished he could have been strong enough to have all along.

Brenda watches Judge Judy while Brad scribbles in his sketchbook and Suresh plays Hearts on the computer. When the final verdict is drawn, Bethany appears in the living room with a chicken pot pie in her hands. She slices it on the dining room tables and hands out plates to everyone. Suresh asks if everyone wants to watch a movie after dinner and the family shrugs, as if to say “Sure, why not?”

Brenda, still feeling light-headed after her treatment, looks around the living room. Somehow, her second life has transcended into her first, and she can’t help but feel like she’s become her very own origin story, like Bumba, whose sickness brought light into the world. Like all creation stories and myths, her’s is fantastic and unbelievable, with enough plausibility to somehow make sense. Brenda’s large breasts, which were a symbol of her motherhood and protruded like mountains, could only bring her family closer together upon their amputation. Only now, is she able to pull her son, her daughter and her husband in close enough to feel her heartbeat and synchronize their own to harmonize.

At 10pm, after the movie that no one really paid attention to has ended, Bethany heads home, promising to call when she gets there without her mother even asking her to. Brad looks up from his sketchbook and gives her the universal head nod for “see you”, as Suresh calls out from inside the kitchen. For a moment, in mid-goodbye kiss, everything stops, as everyone wonders what they’ll do for each other in order to make it through tomorrow.

I’m beginning to realize that not everyone in the world sees things exactly the same way that I do. Actually, no one in the world sees things exactly the same way that I do. Or even remotely similar to the way that I do. Or to the way that anyone else does.

I realized it yesterday when I was walking past a jewelry store that I’ve been in a few times. It had a For Lease sign in the window, and I thought to myself: That sucks. I went into the office and told my coworkers about it and they replied in the same way, as if all prompted to by some invisible  dialogue conductor: What store?

I find it strange that the same thing I walk past and stop to look at everyday can go completely unnoticed by the dozen other people in my office. We all walk the same way to work, but I’m the only person who can name off the majority of the shops that line my morning walk. Maybe its because I’m a shopaholic. Maybe its because another coworker is busy watching the faces of the people who cross their path, or staring at the ground, or looking up into the sky.

It makes me wonder about bigger things. Like, if anyone else sees the homeless man who sits outside of Royal Bank with his dog everyday. And if they do, do they all worry about the well-being of the dog? Or, do they remark on the foul smell emanating from either – or both – of them? Or, do they clutch their bags and wonder why he just can’t find a job – or wonder what’s gone so wrong in his life that he doesn’t have any family that will take him in?

Is the way I see things the right way? There are hundreds of ways to look at one particular thing or situation or person. We all have different backgrounds and have been through varying experiences that influence our perception of the world. Not everyone is going to see the rainbow after the thunderstorm, and not everyone is going to see the danger lurking around every city corner.

My family is like a soap opera. Just a step away from being like the kind of epic, generational family featured in book-prize winning novels. With dozens of aunts and uncles spawning a copious collection of cousins, there’s bound to be some drama.

But there are so many characters and storylines going on at once so tuning in just once a week isn’t enough. You have to have one family member that you’re constantly in contact with. So, if you’ve missed an episode, you’ll always have someone to fill you in – or set your TiVo.

We’ve been through so much with so many triumphs, trials, rivalries, heartbreaks, betrayals that the seasons of our lives together cannot be recalled in detailed in one sitting. I’ve become so emotionally invested in secondary characters, second cousins, great aunts, that I rejoice at their victories and I lament at their downfalls.

We’ve been through so much together – and, at the same time – apart. I’ve followed them for decades and I can’t stop now. I know that something exciting or disgraceful or rejoiceful is just around the corner – and that everything will turn out okay for those in which I am most emotionally invested and to which I’m most attached.

I went to BMV yesterday and picked up quite a few books. I feel like reading, more than anything else, is the best way for me to really ‘practice’ creative writing. I see phrases I like, literary methods I never would have thought of using and take notes so that when I sit down to write, I’ll have those things in mind.

Out of all of the books I bought this weekend, I think The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (Michael Ondaatje) has been the most influential. Mostly because I don’t understand it at all.

The fact of the matter is that everything is so completely over my head. His expressions, his language, his literary devices, his metaphors (if you can even call them that). I don’t understand anything. I have to read and re-read and re-read again to make sense of the poetic webs that Ondaatje weaves through his unique stylistic loom. It is only after about 3 read-throughs that I can really understand what he is saying – but by that time, I’ve thought about it and picked it apart so much that I’ve somehow inherently internalized a tiny bit of his style. It’s gone through my filters and brain functions and bloodstream until it finally settles somewhere in my subconcious, where it will sit until I’m ready to use it in something I’ll write.

I’ve been reading an essay by Anne Blott to accompany The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. She does a fair bit of analysis of the text and provides explanations for some of the poems that I don’t understand.

Recollecting sex with Angela D, Billy articulates the contact of bodies as if they were machines tensely working against each other, her body spitting electricity from the sheets to his arm and pinioning his hands:

Again, in a later scene, Angela straddles him and hangs her legs tight, “like clothespins,” to his shoulders (p. 68). The insistent metaphors of Billy as gun and as train reinforce this mechanization of the sex act.

The first time I read the passage in the book, I knew that they were having sex (a discovery I was pretty proud of, seeing as I had trouble comprehending much until this point). But, Anne’s essay provided a whole new frame of reference. Aside from the word “machines”, I didn’t really consider the mechanization of the act.

But, now that I have, it really stresses the importance of accompanying all actions with some sort of undertones. Whether its reflecting the climate of the times, the relationship between the people involved or an aspect of the main character’s personality – the undertones and themes may not seem to provide a purpose, but when a reader discovers them it brings so many things together.

The book is only about 100 pages long, but if I continue analysing it like this, it should take me a good 3 weeks to finish it. But, it will be so rewarding in the end because I’ll have learned so much about creative writing and collected a few techniques that I can put into my own literary arsenal.

I don’t know why this blog is quickly turning into a memoir about my coming of age as an adult, but oh well. Eventually I’ll depress old old ass so much that I can no longer bear to write about my sagging tits and Crow’s Feet. Kidding – my boobs don’t sag at all.

Anyways, one of the biggest challenges I’ve undergone this year was finally dealing with all of the changes that took place in my friendships. I grew up with a really tight-knit group of friends. Going to school together and living within city block’s of each other lent itself well to seeing all of my closest friends everyday. I don’t think we ever spent more than 2 days apart, even during the summertime when we weren’t forced into the confines of highschool.

Now, I think the last time I saw everyone was in May. I don’t know how that’s happened, but I suspect that is has to do with the fact that I’m so caught up with all of the things that I used to swear I’d never let get to me.

When my mother was sick, my family doctor asked me if I had any friends to talk about it with. I told her that I hardly see them anymore and that I’m lucky if see anyone twice a month. She told me I was lucky that I even saw them that often. I guess its a universally-accepted notion in the adult world. Between being caught up with 40 hours of work a week, keeping your romances under control and doing your own laundry – there’s no time to really venture outside of that to see friends, no matter how close you used to be.

So, I guess that’s where I am. Spinning in the eye of a full-grown tornado, as my family, my boyfriend, my apartment and my office whirl wildly around me. I don’t know if I need to come to terms with that fact that hardly anyone has attempted to keep in touch with me or deal with the guilt of neglecting those that were once the most important people in my life.

So, I’ve gone through the hardest year of my life so far alone. It feels like a rite of passage, as if I’ve gone on a year-long vision quest, out in the treacherous urban woods of Downtown Toronto by myself.

And, what that vision quest really taught me is that I can probably survive anything on my own – and that although the intensity of my friendships cannot even compare to what it was a few years ago, it’s still there. I still have my friends, as far apart as we may live or exist in our personal lives. Nothing can really take away the wonderful years and amazing experiences I’ve had with them. And, I’m thankful for that.

In September, I will celebrate my first anniversary of officially being on my own. I previously thought about moving back home because I hated being a real adult, but recently I’ve settled into my adulthood, and I realized I don’t hate paying bills and doing laundry and cleaning up after myself. It’s not the freedom I enjoy; it’s the responsibility. Call me crazy, but that’s it.

I love knowing that I’ve paid for everything myself, that the roof over my head’s been funded by my own bank account. It’s not the greatest place in the world – I hate it, actually – but it’s mine. I don’t love it but I’m proud that it belongs to me.

Grocery and furniture shopping have become my new hobbies, replacing day-long conquests to the mall for shoes and cute dresses – although I do enjoy the occasional visit to Balisi. Sorting through my bills has replaced the weekly clubhop and the pounds of McDonald’s and Twinkies that made up the majority of my diet have been swapped for Women’s vitamins and the dreaded veg.

I used to wish that I hadn’t tried to grow up so quickly, but now I couldn’t be happier that I had. It’s not like my young life is over; there are still lots of adult adventures to be had, like buying a house, raising a puppy travelling through Europe. I’m glad I graduated from going to house parties and getting hammered every other night, so now I have more time to venture out on worthwhile journeys that only adults have the pleasure of embarking on.

Granted, I don’t think I’ll ever come to terms with the fact that I’m called “M’am” when I’m on the phone with the bank. And, the fact that the anti-aging aisle in Shopper’s Drug Mart is where I spend my lunch breaks nowadays.

I never really thought my dad would be the type of person to have feelings. Actually. I never really thought of him as a person. He was just ‘dad’, as if a father was some kind of protective creature, not human but with a hominal form. Tough-love flowed like blood, and he had fishing rods for bones. He was a source of advice, money and cooking lessons, like an automatic bank teller full of words and recipes.

I think the first time I viewed him as a human was when I found out he was colour blind. It was like finding out that Superman was vulnerable to kryptonite. It answered the begging question of why all of his pants were khaki-coloured and his entire wardrobe was a grey scale. Although the questions that had been answered were somewhat shallow, it revealed some insight into his human form.

From that point on, I started to identify with him. He was flawed, just like me. He put his khaki pants on, one khaki pant leg at a time. It was then that conversations began, instead of one way advice, directed at a nodding teenager. His advice became more rooted in personal experience, and I began to see more into his past and understand him just a little bit more.

Luckily, that discovery came at just the right time, as our family started to undergo some trying times. Mental illness and physical illness plagued the household for several years, and it helped to have a mutual emotional connection with both of my parents.

Now, I’m 23, and we’re just beginning to get to know one another. I’ve moved out of my house, and we’re graduating from a father-daughter relationship to friendship. I look forward to getting to know him as “Brad” instead of the poker-faced father figure. I don’t think he’ll let me call him “Brad”, but I’ll try.

I was waiting for my mum to pick me up at Kipling subway, when I overheard a man nearby telling his friend about his latest visit to the doctor:

“I just went in with a fever”, he said. “Next thing I know, they’re calling me back with test results that I’m HIV-positive”.

The last part of the sentence faded away into the ambient noise of distant subway cars and honking horns, goodbye kisses and hello how are yous. I could still hear the word ‘HIV-positive’, however.

When he revealed the diagnosis, he spoke matter-of-factly, as if he had been living with it for years and was simply recalling the day his life changed forever. It was only when he began talking about his previous tests, all for the same disease, all of which were negative – until now.

My heart was wrenched. I hunched my body and swallowed back what I was afraid would be a sob. As the gulp of air passed through my chest, I felt one, big, heaving heartbeat.

He hung up just as my mum pulled into the Kiss and Ride. He headed down below onto the subway platform. I wanted to tell him that I was recently in a situation where someone I loved was faced with a life-threatening illness. I wanted to give him the comfort he needed, that he wasn’t getting from whomever he was speaking to over the phone, that I had to offer. I wanted to share my story and tell him how everything turned out okay, and how everything will turn out okay for him, too. That many diseases we encounter today are no longer death sentences like they were ten years ago.

I wanted him to hear all of the pieces of advice and wisdom, that I discerningly picked from caretaker message boards, from a real person. Or, maybe I needed to do it for my own good, to finally talk to someone real about what I had seen someone through.  Whatever the reason, I know the conversation would have ended in tears.

Instead, it ended prematurely. I only hope that the man will find similar words of wisdom  from friends and family.

Sitting at my desk, eating a bowl of damp, sticky cereal. I’m skimming wikipedia articles about authors, reading between the lines of the “Early Career” segment. I need to find a hint, a clue, something to tell me what I need to do next to fulfill the dreams that were manifested in my nubile brain throughout my entire educational career.

I try to find the answers in my in my fantasies, in the conversations I have with myself, interviewing the hottest young author on the market right now. Trying to find something in my dreamed-up, non-chalant responses that will point me in the right direction.

“So how did you get discovered”, I ask, as the host of a daytime talk show on my daydream network.

“Oh,” I begin, as do all important people, when they want to seem entirely blasé about something a regular person would be overjoyed about: “I had just submitted a short story to some contest, and I won. Then, a literary agent took notice and got me to sign a book deal with Random House.”

“It’s happened all so fast for you. Have you had time to let it all sink in?”

That’s called using The Secret, isn’t it? I’m secret-ing this so hard, I might just give myself a hernia if it doesn’t happen soon. But, I suppose it would require me to write something, wouldn’t it?

In 20 years, I don’t want to be someone who has always wanted to be a writer. I want to be a writer.