Can I interest you in everything, all of the time?
I’ve always loved stories about alternate universes. I’m super jealous of characters who walked through a magical doorway or slipped through a fold in time or jumped into a mirror (or got swept away in a twister?), only to end up in a slightly different place.
Sometimes I feel like I have been thrown into an alternate universe, just slightly different from the one everyone else is living in. While other people are going out to eat and taking trips and changing careers and moving to new places and planning for years in the future, I feel like I can only plan about three weeks ahead, at most. (That’s how long I usually have between doctor’s appointments.)
At my immunotherapy appointment earlier this week, the tech who took my blood asked how long I’d been coming to the cancer center. I told him it’d been since last August. He then asked how long I’d be in treatment.
“Well…” I said. “Forever, I guess.”
“Ahhh,” he replied. “A lifetime subscriber.”
It might sound kind of callous out of context but it made me laugh. I was so glad he didn’t spout an “I’m sorry” or a “you’ll get through this.” I imagine most of the people who work there are the least likely to say something like that, since they work with cancer patients day in and day out, knowing that no matter what they do, cancer is an asshole with its own agenda so they can’t make promises or give false hope about the future.
But anyway...this lifetime subscription makes it really hard to plan anything. And not only does it make me feel like I’m living in the darkest timeline, but it makes me wonder about the other timelines. About what I’m doing in them. If things are different, even a little bit.
My family came to visit last week. Did you hear that? My family! Came to visit! Last week! In person! Not inside a computer! Like they got on an airplane and we got to see them and hug them and hang out for a full week. And though there were several reminders of how much things have changed, it was also a welcome reminder that some things don’t change. My dad is always going to make terrible Dad Jokes and be incapable of sitting down when there are Dad Things to do like filling ice cube trays or making sure the trashcan isn’t too full or teasing my mom mercilessly. My mom is always going to try to talk to me even if I have a book in front of my face (once I complained about this and she replied with “Jennie, if I didn’t try to talk to you while you’re reading, I’d never get to talk to you”) and point out things she thinks we’ll be interested in and try to make everyone smile. My sister and I will always turn back into 12-year-olds, even though our fighting nowadays is all in fun, not malicious and mean (as only sisters can be) like it was when we were kids (like when we fought so hard we once ripped my bedroom door off its hinges).
Still, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining how things might have been different, better even, if I were, well...better. Everyone else would sit down for their normal meals while I made and gulped down my everyday smoothies, explaining that, while I can eat other foods, it’s no longer really enjoyable and it’s definitely not easy. Food is now about staying alive, not comfort, so I try to make it as quick and easy as possible.
But sometimes I’d let myself imagine what I might be eating in a reality where this hadn’t happened to me. Maybe I’d have an omelette for breakfast, chock full of cheese and whatever leftover veggies we had. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich with potato chips shoved inside (try it, it’s awesome) for lunch, with a side of carrots or grapes or strawberries or, most likely, more chips. PIZZA FOR DINNER EVERY DAY. Brownies for dessert! Alas.
Still, I can’t really complain (well, I CAN, and I do, but I won’t right now) because there were so many things we were still able to do together. And I try to focus on that, I really do, even when the loss of those other things feels so BIG. Because there are still lots of good things.
The weather was beautiful while my family was visiting and I got to take them to some of my favorite places. We went hiking at the place Joe and I visited before and after my treatment. We took a day trip to San Juan Island to look for orcas and porpoises and seals and SO MANY BIRDS. We had rented an Airbnb on a lake and spent some time swimming (especially when it got super hot out). We played games. We just hung out and chatted and sat in comfortable silence (I’m really good at that now) and read and watched for the wildlife we kept seeing outside the house: an eagle that flew by several times a day, ravens across the lake (!!), a muskrat that swam by each night at dusk, a dougie squirrel that yelled at us from a nearby tree, and swallows that swooped overhead from dawn until dusk, flying through the air and dipping into the lake for bugs. (I even got to hold a grumpy baby in my hand when he found himself in the hot sun on the porch, moving him to the shade before mom eventually came to feed him and he took off after her.)
It was wonderful but it wasn’t enough time. It never is, is it? Not even in a slightly alternate universe, one where COVID and cancer never happened, one where we didn’t have to wait a year and a half and a surgery and sickness to see one another. But it was enough for now. And in this timeline? It was really all I could ask for.
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