Childhood Memories

Danda, it is now close to a week since the last chemo round. I have been thinking of you many times each day. Like Alexis, thoughts of you spur me to exercise a little longer, push myself farther, banish all negative thoughts, forget self-absorbed worries, and send only positive healing images across the Atlantic. I hope the angels have been watching over you as you have been sleeping off the invasion of the chemicals.
So I said I would tell you a few tales about our charmed childhoods in West Hartford—mine, your mother’s, and Lisa’s. The others were there too, but way in the background. Sorry, Geoff. You play a very important part in the Concord phase.
Memory #1: turning on “The Nutcracker Suite” on the record player, holding onto the barre that ran around the huge attic dance studio, pointing our toes as much as possible, and posturing as ballerinas, sometimes mincing, other times hurling ourselves around the room like whirling dervishes. It felt so “professional.” George Ballanchine, aren’t you sorry you missed it?
Memory #2: the “slide” in the yard and the terror it engendered in me. Two parallel inclined metal poles about a foot apart or maybe closer but it felt like a foot: our legs straddled the poles with our little bottoms in the gap between (never in a skirt, mind you) and “let ‘er rip!” I always worried I’d fall in between the poles onto my back and be a quadripelegic; I was scared of the “exercise” yet scared of being labeled a sissy if I refused to “slide.” So much ambivalence at such an early age (8-11)!
Memory #3: We had dogs at our house; your mother’s family had at least one cat (maybe dogs too? I have a vague sense of a Great Dane in there somewhere…). Dogs were familiar; cats were mysterious and unpredictable. We went to see the movie “King Solomon’s Mines,” and I came back for a sleepover with a head swimming with macabre images of African caves and wild animals. In the middle of the night, the cat jumped up and landed on top of me. I must have shot up out of my covers like a rocket, screaming about the tiger that was attacking me and calling for Aunt Bessie to come save me.
Last memory: a Halloween at the Smith’s. Lots of grisly sensations like slimy grape eye-balls and cold spaghetti entrails, but the most terrifying moment was opening the basement utility closet door and having Uncle Rob lurch out as the ghost of Oglethorpe. Hunhh? Where did that come from? Forever in my mind the two of them are paired, even though I have long since forgotten how he looked or what he did. Lisa, did that happen?
OK so the first memory is benign, but the other three are fraught with fear. Why the attraction to this house of horrors and the people in it, you might ask? Because it was “different” there, so exciting, a test of my courage, a test of my flexibility, lots of laughter after the heart-pounding moments, spacious high-ceilinged rooms, style in the furnishings and the art work, and the fun of childhood with my cousins before we became scattered to other places.
To compare the foregoing to your predicament is too far-fetched. However, what you are going through is so scary, so heart-stopping, as chilling as being trapped in a cave with no way out. Your resolve, will power, courage, flexibility are all being tested to the max. But you continue to battle back and you WILL find your way to the sunlight and the freedom and you HAVE laughed at the sounds of your little one burbling in his bath. You have my dear cousins—one by your side and the other two metaphorically there sustaining you—and your own dear cousins and family members and friends all over the globe supporting you. We’re NOT going to let you fall through the gap.
I wrote this before your latest post. Now after reading it, Alessandra, I am positively exultant! Yippee!!! I even put on the “Hallelujah Chorus” in honor of you and Handel!!! I’m breathing normally again. Praise be to God and your mental audacity and chemistry and your doctor.