I wish I was like you, easily amused

This is something that I have made a point to post every Thanksgiving for two reasons:

1. My mom’s birthday is November 24, right around Thanksgiving.

2. Is there anything better you can give thanks for?

For whatever reason, I forgot to post this, but here it is:

1.

“Why don’t you take me to the park anymore?” I asked as I stormed into my mom’s room. She was resting from another round of chemotherapy, body gaunt like a starved and malnourished child. Her face was bloated, the rest of her body withering like a flower that hadn’t been watered in a week. My grandmother quickly pulled me out of the room and scolded me in Cantonese for disturbing my mom while she was napping. If my mom was going to get better, she needed her rest. It seemed like she was always resting, which was quite a departure from my mom’s always active and spirited personality. She always had the energy to take me to the park or to read a book with me. But not on this day. On this day, her body lay in disrepair from the poison they shot into her to kill the poison that was killing her.

I was only eight at the time. Not quite old enough to fully grasp the significance of the situation, but old enough to realize something was very wrong. I remember the moment perfectly: I was in my parents’ bedroom lying on their bed, waiting for my mom to take me to the park. The phone rang and my mom answered the phone with her usual cheerful hello. It’s one of the hellos that is always the same. She could have been furious at my dad or reading with me and she would have given the same cheerful hello. The kind of greeting you get from a receptionist when calling to make a doctor’s appointment. But this wasn’t just another phone call. My mom paused for a moment to let the caller identify herself and then asked what her test results were. Her back was to me, but I noticed her shoulders slump instantly. She hung up the phone and turned towards me, eyes starting to water, and gave me a hug. Getting a hug from my mom for no apparent reason was not so out of the ordinary. But this hug was different. It was as if she wanted to hold onto me forever, almost like this was the last hug she would ever give me. Finally, she let go and called my dad and tried to tell him, while choking back tears, that she had cancer.

I don’t remember whether or not we ended up going to the park that day. Knowing my mom, she probably took me anyway. But it doesn’t matter. All I remember was my dad being home from work earlier than usual and then all my relatives coming over one by one, hugging my mom, telling her everything would be alright, trying to mask their shock and sadness for the benefit of me and my younger brother and sister. But I knew better. I had heard the word cancer before. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but I knew that it meant my mom was very sick.

2.

My mom went into surgery soon after that phone call. The casseroles began to roll in and pile up in the freezer. For a week or two my mom was in the hospital recovering from surgery. My dad would go to her side immediately after work. At dinner time my grandmother, one of my aunts, or whoever was there that night to eat dinner with us would heat up a casserole and feed us. Then, it was homework, a little TV, and then bed. If we were lucky, my dad would be home early enough to tuck us into bed with his usual prayer: wisdom for your mind, strength for your body, and courage and compassion for your heart…Amen. Finally, my mom came home from the hospital looking tired and worn out. The surgery had gone well, and if everything went as planned, my dad said, she would be alright in a few months. But at that moment I didn’t care about a few months down the road; I was just glad that my mom was home and sitting at the dinner table with us.

Soon after, my mom started chemotherapy. I remember lying in her bed and noticing tufts of hair strewn about her pillow. She was very weak and usually needed someone to help her get to the bathroom. Soccer season was starting soon, and I wanted to show my mom how good I had become. I was afraid, though, that my mom wouldn’t be able to make it to any of my games. If she couldn’t even make it down the stairs on her own, how was she going to make it into the car and onto the sidelines of the soccer field? But, sure enough, she made it to every one of my games. There was a large hill leading down to field where I played my games that spring. If she was too weak on that day to make it all the way down to the field, she would sit at the top of the hill in a lawn chair, blanket wrapped around her legs to keep them warm, hand in hand with my dad. Cancer had stripped her of the ability to do a lot of things, but one thing it could not stop her from was showing up at my various weekend sporting events. While I’m sure she was suffering unimaginable pain and combating depression, she sat at the top of the hill, bandana around her head, cheering for me silently with a big smile on her face. She was doing one of her favorite things: watching me play soccer, watching me have fun.

3.

“Okay, time for lunch,” Mrs. Fried said after the daily math lesson we had. I didn’t pay too much attention during those math lessons. The material was so easy. But as soon as it was lunch time, I would jump out of my chair, grab my lunch from my cubby, and head straight to the cafeteria with my best friend Ben. Like any other second grader, lunch and recess were my favorite parts of the school day. As soon as I got to the cafeteria and sat down, I’d unvelcro my bag and take all my food out. As I pulled out my lunch on this day, I thought to myself, not again. Peanut butter sandwich, apple not quite cut the right way, bag of chips, and a juice box. My mom hadn’t made me lunch today, again. It’s not that I disliked peanut butter sandwiches. They were, and still are, my favorite. But this was the fifth time this week I had peanut butter. My lunch, and come to think of it, my whole morning routine, just wasn’t the same without my mom. She’d wake me up at about 8 and while I brushed my teeth and washed my face she would throw something together for breakfast. Sometimes it would be an egg sandwich or cereal or eggs and toast. As me and my brother and sister ate breakfast my mom would make our lunch. She’d take the bread out and then ask each of us what we wanted. Peanut butter, ham, turkey, roast beef. Whatever we wanted we got. Next we’d get some sort of fruit. If it was an apple or pear, my mom had a special different way of cutting it. Instead of cutting it down the middle twice and cutting the core out, she’d peel the apple and then slice four pieces off the sides so that there would always be two big round pieces and two thin smaller pieces. Then she’d fill up small water bottles with the juice of our choice and throw in a bag of chips and I’d have a good lunch to look forward to.

* * *

Now, fourteen years later, my mom’s cancer is in full remission. They say once your cancer has been in remission for ten years, the chances of you getting cancer again falls back down to the normal rate. So basically, my mom is cured, thank God. In the past, if you had asked me what it was exactly that made me miss my mom so much, I wouldn’t have been able to give you any sort of tangible answer. I probably would have come up with something typical like I never got to see my mom or I was afraid she was going to die. Trite as it seems, it holds some truth. The one thing I am most scared of is not death or rejection or a needle. The one thing I fear the most is my mom dying. But that fear wasn’t what made me miss her. Fourteen years later, looking back, it was all the little things that my mom did. Shuttling me back and forth to sports practices, taking me to the park, kissing me goodnight. They don’t seem like very important things. But, all these little things add up to something so much bigger. As they say, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. With my mom’s cancer, for about a year I was robbed of the simple little things that really meant so much more to me. I guess I just needed my apple to be cut a certain way.

Donate money to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation here.