If homemade cookies were a cancer cure, I’d be set

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Lately, I find myself watching squirrels quite a bit. 

This morning I sat in one of our orange chairs with my big, red mug of coffee and somehow almost an hour went by before I knew it. Only when I went to have a sip and found it to be cold did I realize how long I had been sitting there staring out the French doors to the green grass, old oaks and the small grove of redwoods outside, mesmerized by the skittering critters. 

A day earlier, Michael and I had spent several hours up at Stanford Hospital so he could have a bone needle biopsy. We had to be there by 7:30 a.m., so leaving the house in the early morning darkness felt almost like the first leg of a vacation. But rather than loading the car with suitcases and heading to an airport to fly off to Italy or Spain, we were off to Palo Alto with a walker in the back of the car for Michael to use and a backpack with books and snacks. Our friend Mark (my hero!) offered to drive us. 

I sat in the back seat while Michael and Mark were up front. The heat was blasting and I closed my eyes and listened to them talk. Their voices were low and it brought back a memory that may or may not be real. A memory of riding in the back seat of our family car when I was small and listening to adults whisper in the front seat and feeling as if I was wrapped in a cocoon of safety. Someone else was in charge and I could relax and let go. The curves of Highway 17 lulled me as we made our way over the hill. 

A few hours later we were back on the road headed home to Aptos. The biopsy completed and now we wait once again for results. It will be a few days.

This waiting is as frustrating as can be. I can only compare it to waiting for Trump to be convicted and sent to prison forever and ever. Amen. 

But this is worse. 

There are bright moments in all of this darkness, though. When we pulled into the driveway, I noticed a package on the front porch. Homemade cookies were waiting for us. My neighbor Christine had asked me a day or two earlier what she could do to help us. What sounded good to Michael to eat? I told her that during the night, when he can’t sleep and is on the couch, he loves cookies. When I get up in the morning, I find clues to what he has been snacking on and now know that carbs and sweets brighten his midnight wanderings. And, knowing I, too, love to indulge in such things, my dear pal Kathy had a dozen cookies shipped to me from one of my favorite New York City bakeries. 

We are loved. We are lucky.

For the past couple of months now, Michael has been sleeping in our spare bedroom. I hear him when he gets up and makes his way into the kitchen before settling on the blue couch for a while, hoping to catch a few winks. I have rolled up all of our Mexican rugs – mementos of a different life stage – and stashed them in a corner. The bare wood floors are much easier to navigate with the walker. I listen to make sure he doesn’t fall, but I remain in bed hoping to catch a few winks myself. 

I think about how supportive our friends are. I think about the past 40 years and all of the big and small things we have done together. I remember meeting Michael’s family for the first time and spending time in his mother’s kitchen in Springfield, New Jersey. The chaos at Thanksgiving. Feeding the ducks at the local park. The pumpkin pie from Geiger’s.The small things that make up a life. I am grateful to have these beautiful memories. They are feeding me now.

So I sit in my orange chair gazing out at the yard. The hungry green ivy devouring the back fence. The jays, with their cobalt blue wings, the woodpeckers dressed in black and white and red. The squirrels as they leap from branch to branch as if they believe they have wings. 

And I wonder, do they ever get scared?