"If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time."
— Chinese
Proverb
Uncertainty sunk to its nadir tonight, on my arrival home to discover the remains of an attempted burglary over the late December holiday. Not to worry, Port-citizens, these are Western Massachusetts thieves, where I am mostly residing these days.
The discovery followed a white-knuckle drive along the pike, earnestly listening to the news that another defender of democracy had joined the ranks of the slain. That Bhutto was without the proper fortification our democracy could have provided her is no longer material.
The day had begun by listening to a compassionate but realistic physician outlining specifics of chemotherapy and advising my friend that only she will know when it is time to cry uncle. (If you find yourself envisioning, reader, an image of a kindly male doctor, change it. This medico was a girl.)
I find myself, this week, quitting certainty. Certainty has been steadily exiting-stage-left over the past month, anyway, since the body of my friend Marya was found to have cancer in it (not her spirit though, no sir-ee).
Come to think of it, certainty has been leaking slowly away in a trajectory that dates back to childhood and upon inspection looks suspiciously a lot like life. Youth is wasted on the young and all that stuff.
The discovery of the burglary was well-timed if it is viewed as a variable to support my thesis that nothing is certain. I would have said, last week, that such a discovery would make me crumple, sink, curl up on the floor and sob.
Guess what? It didn't. Not only did it not force me to the floor in a headlock, I found myself beginning to laugh wryly. Then to giggle, which led to a laugh for real which ultimately led to a guffaw when I got on the phone to Marya (still in the people's republic of Cambridge) to ask where she keeps her checks.
I'm usually a strange mix of wishy-washy and black and white. I am impulsive or plodding, ready to accept full responsibility or to give it away wholesale, and full of daytime conviction that withers come night. I recognized shades of me in a recently published newspaper piece about feuding and conflict (thankfully I was more typified by emotional reactivity than narcissism, the two main personality types that tend to hold grudges).
I have assiduously ignored the smoking question since the cancer visitation. That's because I have been smoking. I smoke on the side porch wrapped in a prayer shawl made for me when my mother was dying. There is nothing relaxed about it, every move is tense and purposeful, crossed legs, crossed arms, looking at the birds and the occasional cardinal, dragging deeply.
When you are undergoing work up for cancer, the paperwork gets ridiculous. One particular intake form was exclusively about smoking and smoking habits. We have all been asked the questions: Do you smoke? How much? For how long?
Cancer historians want to know how deeply you drag, whether you take it in your mouth, down to your throat or whether you breathe it all the way in. If you are a breather-inner, they want to know how long you hold it, and if you ever blow it out your nose. They want to know if you ever smoked menthol, or cloves. Each question feels like a damning judgment, another pound of the gavel, rather than the data collection it is meant to be.
All I can do at this point is assign my own answers to these questions to the quit-if-you-can compartment. Because I am finding I cannot. Not right now.
So many apples on my family tree are gone and I am learning to forge my own way. I rely heavily on my triumvirate of angels ("In the name of my mother, my stepfather and the holy bassist, Amen"), the opportunity to write and a very small but very extraordinary set of individuals and animals for guidance.
But not even Atticus' gentle, predictable, reliable and certain ways can mask the fact that the uncertain road ahead is just not visible from here.
Here is one for Todd. Your kind demeanor will be missed. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.
