Independence days

What a bizarre week.  Roger came down with a very bad cold or flu on Monday, and my job ever since has been to try to maintain my immunity from it.  This has involved staying completely away and checking into a hotel for the first two nights, and then camping out in the living room once I dared come back into the house.  He was experiencing a continual low grade fever that was still high enough to be of concern to both of us, coughing and sneezing and generally feeling extraordinarily crummy.  Something I wanted and needed no part of.

It's been weird and ungrounding.  While walking the dog on first night of this, Monday, I came up with the idea of escaping all of it.  I called the Langham (a fabulous, dripping-with-luxury hotel about five minutes from where I live) and told them my whole sad story: chemo, sick husband, if I get sick I'll die etc...... and let them come up with the magic words ("Manager's rate") on their own.  The magic words were forthcoming and the reduced rate brought the nightly figure down to a number I could almost wrap my head around. 

I noodled on the idea some more after I came home. I realized I'd have to sleep on the sofa, or pull it out into the sleeper (which would inevitably involve remaking it, cleaning underneath it, etc).  How much did I not want to do that?  Well, as it turned out, I did not want to do that a whole lot more than I wanted to retain my savings account.  So, at 11 pm, I threw a canvas bag's worth of vitamins and medications and a pajama top and ratty tee shirt and shorts into a bag, bid my very sick husband (and children, and dog, and cat) a hasty adieu, and boogied on out of there.  Ferris Beuller screeching the 1961 Ferrari GT California out of the high school parking lot had nothing on me.

Walking into the Langham, I am greeted by a marble table covered with silver vases filled with delicate pink peonies, roses, and tulips.  Their soft perfume permeates the room.  The lighting is cheerful but soft.  A sultan or an emirate from a middle eastern family, along with his family, are checking in before me. Women in elegant dresses waft past.  And I stand there with my Country Trading Post bag, my hastily wrapped scarf, my jeans and black tee shirt, hoping I look as extraordinarily pathetic as I feel (pathos equaling justification for the Manager's Rate), and thinking I probably don't need to work very hard with any of this.  The scarf pretty much tells the whole sad tale; no one is going to mistake me for a debutante tonight.

The great thing about great hotels is that they are invariably staffed by the nicest and most civilized people.  And I can do civility.  I find myself altogether able to live in that world.  I have vast inner reserves of entitlement (based mainly on vast reserves of untapped credit) that I happily tap into.  The sum total of all of this is probably less than the bored 10 year old daughter of the sultan or emirate's forgotten piggy bank, but hey... in this country, it will still work.  I find it easy to quench the panic at the numbers on the room service menu, and the valet parking overnight charge, and the tourism tax -- I really do -- and I proceed to totally indulge myself for not just that night, but the following night as well.

Luxury is quiet.  Luxury is cleanliness.  Luxury is looking out at a well-groomed landscape that seems to whisper words of profound peace and well being.  Luxury is standing on a bathroom floor that is tiled with marble that does not look like you could choose it from the shelves of a Home Depot, but rather was quarried and cut by swarthy Italians, and polished by hand by skilled multigenerational craftsmen.  Luxury is the murmur of soft voices by the pool, the tinkle of ice in crystal glasses, the occasional laughter at a clever turn of phrase.  Luxury is lighting that you can dim down to a soft amber glow, so if you wake up in the middle of the night unaccustomed to the high ceiling and large room, you can remember where you are quickly and sink back into the white sheets and pillowcases and return to a deep dark revitalizing sleep.

Luxury is reading about spa treatments like a menu of recipes, each more mouthwatering than the last.  Luxury is opening up the top desk drawer and contemplating a life where you would use the lovely pink pen to scribe a written letter on the pink bordered stationery to your beloved uncle summering on the Continent, and having a doorman post it for you.

I do luxury very very well.

At least internally. 

I stayed a second night so that I could have a full day to enjoy even more of all of it.  I did a little work in the middle of the day, and went to a couple of appointments, but at around 4:30 my son Spencer came over to go swimming.  I pulled out my swimsuit and realized when I put it on that we really did have a problem here.  It's a few years old (which means it's still new in my book), but it's stretched, and I've lost a lot of weight, and my boobs are still a construction site, and... basically, it was about as workable as wrapping myself in paper towels.  Add the very bald head and, well, it was clear I was not going to be doing anything but turning heads in a very bad way.  So be it.

I covered myself up with the old teeshirt and shorts and we went down to the pool.  It was a hot day and the cool blue water was infinitely inviting.  Young men in Langham shorts and shirts were walking between the chaises, taking orders and offering services, and I felt my shoulders and neck and back relaxing just being in the same picture frame as all of it.  We camped out in a shady spot (don't want to trigger that lymphedema!  Remember, Kathy, you're still only a visitor in this world of health and ease...) and I contemplated the long walk to the shallow end where I would enter the water and be able to hide all but the head.  While Spencer just went to the deep end and dove right in, I kept the tee shirt on, took off the scarf, and decided to just forget all about it.  I did the walk, I took the shirt off at the last possible moment, and the moment I got in the water I forgot about everything except how good it felt.

Heaven. 

The salt water was the perfect temperature and I slid into it with intense, almost heartbreaking gratitude.  For the next twenty minutes or so, my body felt great.  Not just OK, not just a cessation of pain, but fucking happy.  Going underwater with a bald head felt giddily terrific.  I moved it around underwater, just to feel the lack of the hair moving back and forth.  Coming back up, the air moved through the stubble and tickled it dry off my scalp.  Fantastic!  I attempted to do a little breast stroke and realized immediately how badly I need to start swimming again.  My surgically affected muscles are still sore and tight, and desperately in need of strengthening and stretching.  My whole body craves more toning and moving.  As soon as all this is over, I promised myself... we've got to start getting back in shape again. 

I swam with Spencer in this lovely pool, almost forgetting the grimness of the journey I am on.  And I slept for two nights without disruption, or concerns, or the nocturnal vigilance that comes with residing with people and animals and a household that you are connected with.  I was deeply grateful that, with two swipes of a credit card, this respite was mine for about 35 hours, and provided me with a deep rest and sense of tranquility, in addition to the germ avoidance, that was delicious to body, mind and spirit.  And yet, as much as I wanted to stay in that lovely moment forever, by the morning of the second day, I was ready to get grounded again, and come home and see what that was like.

Cut to:

Yesterday.

The fourth of july.  Independence day. My favorite holiday because it contains one of my favorite words (not "day").  Roger is still sick, but better.  I have spent the last two nights on the fold out couch, vowing to get a new mattress on it as soon as possible, moving my stuff back and forth from bedroom the living room and back again daily.  I am still a ronin, a wandering samurai, even in my own house as I strive to still avoid germs while making myself comfortable. 

My neck has been killing me for ten days by now.  Sparked by too much staring at a screen (I fear), it has settled into an intermittent problem that flares up (at best) several times a day, or just digs in like an ice pick in a Tarantino movie.  The doctor has said it could be a part of the treatment.  The injection they give me to stimulate the white blood cell counts (a nasty mother fucker of a drug) does seem to like to find your systemic skeletal weak spot and take up residence there.  So, the migraine during last round and the neck this round: this is my new curse to endure.  The chemo seems almost benign in comparison.

Remember the air conditioner?  I'm sorry, the new air conditioner that we put in at the beginning of this whole cancer adventure?  The entire four days of redoing our central air and heat, paying the big bucks to do it right, and fast, and as well as possible because I was going to be going through chemo this summer and the last thing I wanted was to be going through the heat while going through chemo at the same time?  Remember that? I believe I chronicled that saga at the beginning of this blog.  Well, the air conditioner -- I'm sorry, the new air conditioner -- stopped working on Thursday.  Why Thursday?  Well, of course it's because it's the Thursday before a three day weekend.  And why this  Thursday?  Well, because it's hot as fuck outside.

We wake up yesterday morning, on the fourth of July, on Independence Day, on my favorite holiday of the year, and look at the day.  Are we going to have our annual party with all our wonderful friends and hot dogs and beer and watermelon out in the back yard?  Hell no.  Are we going to see our favorite fireworks down at the high school at night?  Doubtful.  Can we make it to the parade that is, like, 100 yards from our house and that I love with a deep and undying passion for all of its small town quirkiness and silliness, from the chassis of the Rose Parade float that they drive through annually (not the float, just the chassis, because, well, it's our  Rose Parade chassis) and the bag pipes and the drumline with drummers who play at the beginning of the parade and at the end because, well, with a six block parade route, why would you not want to march in the same parade twice?  Are we going to this parade that delights us so every year?  Wellll... maybe.

We drag our sorry old sick cranky tired asses down there.  Actually, we make Taylor drive us down there (all three blocks or so away) and we drag our sorry old sick cranky tired asses, and lawn chairs, about twelve feet from the car to a shady spot.  We immediately feel a bit better.  I send Taylor down to Starbucks to fetch me some refreshments.  We recuperate from our long hike from the car.  We feel a bit better still.  And... it's good.  The parade is what it is, as usual.  With long gaps between old cars and the drummers.  One set of horses.  The great and thrilling Game of Thrones sound of the bagpipes.  It's hot.  We see some friends.  It's good.

Then we drag our sorry old sick cranky tired asses back home.

To our hot home. 

And by three in the afternoon, I am sitting on the sofa with a wet washcloth over my bald head, in my lightest flamingo jammie tops and shorts, stupified with pain and heat. Spencer and his best friend are flitting in and out of the house putting together a party for their friends from school and work.  They have just taken a 40 mile bike ride.  They are happy and energized and laughing.  I am about as far away from them, and about as far from that happy moment in the Langham pool as it is possible to be. 

I pop some pain pills and wonder if they will work.  I move from living room to bedroom and back again.  Roger is still coughing and taking it easy.  I binge watch a few episodes of Game of Cards and even Frank Underwood isn't capable of pulling me out of my misery.  Finally, after getting some reports from the back yard about who and what is going on out there, I give up and go back to hang out with Spencer's friends and co workers.  I cannot get it together to put a scarf on, or change from my flamingo jammies, or to do anything but (in a fit of elegance) leave the wet washcloth behind.

They were great about it.  There was a breeze and even though it was warm, it was more pleasant.  I spent an hour or so with the kids, and one of their kids (a charming first grader with long curly hair I kept wanting to offer to take off her hands), and they were great.  The pain pills kicked in eventually, I kept people laughing (or thought I did), and it ended up OK.  The sun finally went down, the temperature went down, and we got through it.

So, what's the point in all this?  Independence.  Sometimes independence from external constraints is required -- from the tyranny of the red coats, to the confines of school and work, to the regimentation of the daily schedule.  For a couple of days I had a break in my life, and was able to enjoy a taste of luxury and refinement and graciousness.  Sometimes that's what is needed. 

And sometimes we need independence from pain, a relief and a separation from what's going on in our own bodies and heads.  Sometimes we need a break from ourselves, and what's tyrannizing us from the inside.  That's harder to rebel against, to break free from.  But it can be done.  Sometimes just knowing that it is all temporary, that the sun will go down, that the temperatures will fall, is enough to get us through. 

In the end, this week was a series of dependence and independence days.  Even though I felt derailed and like a wandering samurai for most of it, eventually I was able to find respite and relief, enough to go on at least. 

It is out there.  And, when all else fails, I still have my credit card in my wallet.  And the name of the night manager at the Langham.