Blink, and how you see the world can quickly change.

I have never been more grateful for the kindness of friends. To have people to reach out and quickly hold my hand when I feel myself slipping, so I do not fall, or so that when I fall I remember that life does not truly ever leave you completely alone. I know there are many in the world with greater problems, and my turn to help will come. For now it is a waterfall of relief to know I have picked good friends, and they me.

Years, years ago – probably 6 years now? – I remember taking a walk to the beach by myself. With a small carton of chocolate milk and a pack of lights I just walked around, wanting to be alone, but not really needing to be alone. A little cat started following me and spent most of that night sitting by my feet keeping me company as I drank my milk, taking away my loneliness and whatever it was that made me put on my slippers in the middle of the night.

Little steps.

I have never met such despair. Everyone says to be positive, that nothing is over yet, but I feel as though I need to commit all this fear and desperateness out into a great void. I need to fold myself up and wring all this negativity out of my body so I don’t cry like a baby everytime a picture of what I had always expected the next few years to be comes before my mind’s eye.

I took leave for today with my sister. The plan had always been to be take my mother out for a nice lunch. Take her shopping. Just us three girls and our mother.

I don’t bring it up in front of them because I know they are feeling what I am feeling, which is profound regret. Why hadn’t I chosen to take last Monday off instead? Before any tests had come back we could have enjoyed one fine day, no spectre of the next 6 months floating above our table.We had talked of going to Vietnam early next year, because I knew my mother would like what I had seen while I was there. Now I have postponed this trip. Some part of me has postponed it indefinitely, and the other part has merely pushed it to once her treatment, whatever it is, is over. The other part wants to hold the despairing part down under water by the neck and drown it.

Before her surgery my mother told me she had been looking forward to going out. She wanted to pick out a new pair of spectacles so we could get it for her. This wasn’t the Christmas we were expecting.

I cannot even think of how my father must feel. I have known my mother 24 years. He has known her almost 40. I fully expected to have to take care of them at some point – the see-saw always tips the other way and you find that you are the one sitting bum to sand, carrying up the other at the far end. I just never thought it would be this soon, this sudden, this random.

I need to stop crying and start solving. I’m sending this far out and far away; I shall watch these thoughts crumble like dry mud. I hope what takes its place is stronger than I am feeling now.

Just told my mother, tried to do it jokingly, told her not to go into the light, but couldn’t finish my sentence. Cried and made her cry. Told her not to worry about next week or next month or next year and to just focus on having the strongest will possible for tomorrow.

Why does today feel like I am saying goodbye? Those fish.

Is this normal? I want to sit in my mother’s room tomorrow night at this time, and talk to her and laugh about tonight.

Christmas today, woke up because the sun was shining onto my face, and I desperately had to take a slash. I walked outside and nobody was home. I thought, they must’ve all decided to go to church after all. And noone had woken me up.

Felt sorry for myself for a little while, and then took the opportunity to talk to Michael properly and tell him, “I am scared.”

Fear comes in little jolts. Small pinpricks that suddenly leap out of nothingness and then quickly dart away again, like stupid little fish in a pond. I have to remember and see, that they are stupid little fish in a pond, and that when you put your feet in water, or rather, are pushed into the deep end of the pool without warning, that fish will come, as fish do. And you cannot blame it for being what it is.

We went out for lunch, where we have always gone for lunch on Christmas Day. We ordered the same dishes we have always eaten, except now the family has grown by the count of six. Now when we sit at a round table, we are usually eleven. My mother has ten other people in her family now, and we all love her very much, which is why the doctors’ offices were all reduced to standing room-only yesterday.

I imagine I can hug her around her belly so tight that I am absorbed again – until the folds of her body bend and melt around mine, and I am once again floating back inside – and I can kick out this bastard fourth child and fend off its sick, and its putrid fear, and its stinking fish.

My sister and I sat on her bed just now talking to her, and my sister said, that anything can happen. She said, we are all made by God, every cell, even the bad ones, and He can do wonderous things. She said it with firmness that I honestly wish I had.

I don’t want to be scared, or worried, I want to be brave and be firm – but I still feel like I am eight years old, and I just want my Mum.

Today I found out that my mother could be ill.

The understanding does not quite catch at first when they talk about proteins, markers, levels, blood. It is a normal phone call, and I ask some normal questions, and then when I understand, I cannot ask anything, and each deep breath I release seems to deflate me.

Deflate. As in balloon, round rubber ball, basketball, round meat ball, black flesh tumour, pain, and mother. Deflate me.

I hate that I am unable to speak properly when I am upset. I dread the visit to the doctor. Somebody always needs to be the strong one, isn’t that right? She has carried me for much of my life, how will I carry her if I can’t even entertain the thought of whatever long trek uphill is to come without fielding hot tears? Useless.

I met Michael after work for a while as I walked around, steadying myself and making sure I was done being a child before I came home, and still I couldn’t say anything to him – couldn’t describe the thousand Holocaust-grey images running through my head. Still can’t, and frankly won’t until somone tells me for certain, it isn’t some false positive, some crazy unknown result.

It strikes me now that everything in life is a void waiting to be filled, some thing to be vanquished, conquered, climbed, scaled, won. Doubt is a hole that waits for, and looks for faith to fill its recesses; like dust to a white glass tabletop, faith isn’t always easy to see. Mountains in the world have always been taken by some man or other, and scientists seek answers to questions of – science? Science? Something.

What kind of a question is a cancer? What is the answer to your own self?

What kind of a question are we all?

CONSPIRACY!

Swine flu is wreaking…

MAY HAM!!!!

What in Tarnation!?

Chickens roam the grounds of my office throughout the day; because there’re so many trees around they usually keep to the safety of the greenery but sometimes an odd rooster crosses the road and forgets where he is (I think) and this usually results in him frantically hobbling around on the concrete in front of the lift lobby in circles as he tried to avoid people walking in and out of the building. I can imagine his little chicken voice in his little chicken head. “Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no…”

This afternoon I’m on the way to lunch with Xiao, when I struggle to remember the collective noun for “chickens” and I can’t for the life of me summon the stupid word!

I know it is a gaggle of geese, and a murder of crows. A bed of clams, a bury of rabbits, a school of salmon, a bevy of swans, a band of gorillas, a buncha dudes.  But I can’t remember what a group of chickens is called!

I can only think of a plate of chickens, or a bowl of chickens. Xiao said it was a “scop” of chickens, but she made that word up. So we are not as smart as we think.

Meh.

I miss you like nuts when you’re not around.

But I shan’t tell you, just because I’m me!

Meh.

Conversations with strangers.

Tonight, as I am taking the number 48 home from work, I see an old lady with a beautiful sari.

Her skin glows despite her age against the vanilla white sari she is wearing, and my eyes notice first the delicate flowers embroidered along the edges of her sweeping dress, then the gold bangle around her tiny right wrist that seems to have become an extension of her skin over the years. Her hair is pulled back in a grey bun, and she looks around the crowded bus calmly. You can read some faces and know that the stories that toss about beneath them are angry, sorrowful, empty, or painful, and I read hers to be none of those.

I want to meet her eyes and tell her that I think her sari is lovely, and I want to ask her what her name is, if she is somebody’s grandmother, mother, wife or lover. I imagine her to appreciate the compliment of her dress, as all women would do. I imagine her to tell me her name, and comment about the rain, or the noisy air conditioning on the bus, or my tired face. I imagine her to tell me stories. I imagine her to tell me that some people I meet will be beautiful like brass vases, that some will be made of stone, and that some will have hearts with walls that are thinner than the lace on the hem of her sari. I imagine her to say that some nightmares will be dreams I will not shake off for years, and to remember that my broken heart will heal and be broken many times over again, sometimes by the same person, and sometimes by someone I do not know. I imagine her to remind me that the day always ends, and another new one always comes right after, and that this is the most important thing anyone can tell me.

She says none of these things, of course. Before I can meet her eyes and smile at her she is swept away, off the bus, off into the rest of a story that I will now never hear. But I hope that when I am 70, when some tired 20-something year old tells me that my dress is pretty, that I can tell her these things.

Ok! Enough reflective thought! I’m going to watch Invader Zim now and eat peanut butter cups!

For Chrissypoo

Chris says:
u WILL update ur blog today and apologize to it!
joyce says:
fine fine fine
Chris says:
yay. anyway, i gotta go now
Chris says:
have a briefing
joyce says:
ok
joyce says:
be brief!
Chris says:
in briefs!
joyce says:
and a briefcase!

Why the hoo-hey are they called briefcases anyway? Do people keep pairs and pairs of briefs inside them? Because if I owned a briefcase, you know I would defo do that. A secret compartment for mah secret briefs.

I’m very sorry I’ve been ignoring you blog, I’m sorry I tell all my random shit to Michael now. He’s unworthy, he’s unworthy. I’m-a gonna blog again real soon.