Crying, Cookies, and Caricatures…

Crying…What seems like ancient history now, last April, I wrote on this blog the following comment about crying…”I’d like to cry; but there are not enough tears in the world to cry about this…so why start…” I still feel the same way, but sometimes tears show up, planned or not. When does this cancer patient cry? In the shower, no not about my body or the mutilation of it, but about whatever thoughts I might be having at that moment. Crying in the shower is good. The water’s running anyway. You don’t have any make-up on. Best of all, no one can hear you. And if they do, they can ignore it or pretend they didn’t hear. Right when you go to bed…that’s a good time to cry. Again, no makeup, not bothering anyone; and you can just go to sleep when you’re done. When I hear about someone I know or a loved one of theirs who has cancer, I can’t help but cry; because I know that the effect on everyone in their family is devastating and that they have the battle of their lives ahead of them. Mostly, I try to stick to crying alone. It’s better that way. In my job, I have people cry in front of me often, mostly adults but sometimes kids who are in my office because they’re in trouble. It’s always hard to know what to do when an adult cries, but that’s someone else’s tears, not mine. I don’t like to put anyone in the situation of having to deal with my tears; I think crying is personal and introspective. Most recently, I almost cried…when talking to Patti about her daughter who had breast cancer at 25 and now is saddened, at 29, to have to wait years to start her family. But, fortunately, Patti and I were able to get past the moment…I said, “Don’t get me started; I could cry all day.” And we moved on with our work. I almost cried in front of someone last week, but I held it back. I was on the table to have a CT scan to prepare for radiation treatments. Mike, the technician, was a really nice man and was dealing with what I’m sure he’s very accustomed to…people under stress. I told him I was having some anxiety, and he told me to think about my breathing, that the slower you breathe, the less anxious you will be. Good advice. I almost cried when I told him that it’s just a little difficult to have just finished chemo and to now be back on a table again preparing for another adventure in treatments. Somehow, I held the tears back; and I survived the scan. I imagine that each person’s tolerance level for holding back tears is different. I think mine’s pretty high, but I feel that one day the dam’s going to break; and whoever’s around me at the time better hope that Noah’s not far away. It’s going to take more than a rowboat to escape the ocean I’m holding back.

Cookies, a great comfort food. Cookies can remind you of so many things. Right now cookies make me think of J.J. Whenever he comes over, we make cookies. You must be guessing that I buy the kind all cut out for you to just put on the cookie sheet and bake. We made pumpkins and ghosts for Halloween; and now we’ve made an assortment of Christmas shapes. Sometimes we frost, and sometimes we don’t. Five year olds tire of carefully decorating with little dots for buttons and eyes on the snowmen and little strings of color to show lights on a tree. After a certain amount of time, a five year old, just lets the frosting rip on one of the shapes. Guess which cookie gets eaten first? Of course, the one loaded with frosting. The only difference between a five year old and an adult is that the child does what he’s thinking about, while the adult thinks the same thing but holds back with some silly sense of decorum. Cookies also remind me of years ago when I was a stay-at-home mom. In those days, I really created the cookies. Mixed up the ingredients, rolled out the dough, cut it with a cookie cutter, made the frosting. Yikes! What a chore that sounds like now. Also, long ago I had a recipe for cookies I made every Christmas season. I know I made them with chocolate and sour cream and then decorated them with chocolate frosting and red and green sprinkles. Probably my fondest memory of baking comes from when I was a child. I grew up in my grandmother’s house. She had a pantry, not what is commonly referred to as a pantry now [a cupboard with shelves]. I mean…she had a pantry! It was a walk-in pantry. There were a million good things stored in there on shelves and in drawers. Plates, bowls, cooking utensils, spices, etc. When I was very small, I used to stand on a bottom drawer next to my grandmother while she prepared doughs and other stuff for baking. She made great pies, and she made donuts very often…just dropped them into a steaming bucket of oil, fried them, and took them out to drain and cool…but not for long before someone ate them. My grandmother was a gentle person. I wonder if my grandchildren will ever describe me that way??

All right, caricatures…Here are some Dictionary.com definitions:

A picture, description, etc., ludicrously exaggerating the peculiarities or defects of persons or things.

A representation, especially pictorial or literary, in which the subject’s distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect.

That’s what I am right now. I am a caricature of myself. The wig…yeah, it’s something like my hair used to be…sort of red, sort of blond. But the hair is so thick. Women my age just do not have thick hair like that, well maybe some, but I didn’t. To me, the wig makes me look ridiculous, unreal. The damn eyebrows…now, they’re really a riot! To draw them on, there’s not even a hint of where to start. I have no memory of my own eyebrows. I know they weren’t very long, certainly not arching way over and past the eyeball. Every day’s a new adventure in drawing on my eyebrows. In the end, though, they are made of pencil, not hair. So, between the wig and the eyebrows, I am a caricature of myself. Oh, sure, Thank God, my voice is still the same, my brain is still working, and I’m still the irreverent person I managed to develop into over the years; but I do not look like I’m supposed to look. Speaking of irreverent, I remember once saying that I was slightly irreverent; and someone who knew me well said, “Slightly?” Anyway, people who didn’t know me B.C., don’t know the difference, which is pretty funny isn’t it? They actually think I have thick reddish, blondish hair. They probably think that I’m a little quirky for my age and that I like to draw on my own eyebrows. I think people who have known me for awhile look past the caricature features and just see me. For each and every person, you have to face yourself in the mirror every day. You have to look at weight gained or lost, wrinkles showing up, eyebrows that need plucking, other unwanted facial hair or growths, happiness or sadness; but what you see is you. When you finish your make-up and your hair, you have accentuated the positive and minimized the negative. You have enhanced your image to something that pleases you and you believe will please others. When I finish my make-up, draw on my eyebrows, and put on my wig, I don’t see me in the mirror; I only see the caricature of me.