Burning (Wo)man

Well, today has been interesting, to say the least.

I had just bid adieu to my brother and his girlfriend who were visiting this weekend, when my fairy godmother of sorts rushed in the front door shouting that her husband J is in the hospital with a staph infection from the Burning Man festival and that he might lose his leg.

A little Back Story. I have known SA my entire life. She is THEE most positive, energetic, magical person I have ever met. She is eleven hundred feet tall with a larger-than-life personality and a heavy Texas accent that swoops to the ground and back when she says her own very southernly-sounding name. Oh SA. I have written about her before. When I was very young, probably nine or ten years old, I had to write a paper on my "hero." I picked her instantly. Though I was too young to really understand or remember most of it, I knew that she'd battled breast cancer and she'd come out of it with both fists still swinging, leaving the cancer to die in a ditch somewhere with a bloodied lip and a bruised ribcage. The cancer had taken one of her breasts, but from it she'd gained the strength and wisdom to be a beacon of glittery magical hope for all the women around her who unfortunately fell victim to the "C" word as well. I remember hearing her say with pain on her tongue, "You can't choose the other seven." She was referring to the statistic that one in seven women in America is diagnosed with breast cancer, and she was devastated to find that women around her kept getting infected with the same disease she had just overcome. Even though my head was mostly filled with relationship gossip from the latest Babysitter's Club novel, I was touched through to the very tip of my soul with the realization that she would willingly endure all the chemo in the world if it would spare the rest of us around her. I think that was the first time I noticed the halo of white light hovering around the tips of her newly-budding curly locks.  I knew I'd found my hero.

I call SA my fairy godmother because as far back as I can remember, she's been POOF!ing into existence at my front door with whatever exactly it was my family and I needed most. Most of my clothing until age eighteen was supplied by the hundreds of Hefty bags that she'd hauled into our living room over the years. It was like a holiday every time her bouncing silver ringlets bobbed by the window, and all four of my siblings and I would crowd into the tiny living room with our pink faces lifted expectantly and our little fingers ready to pick through the piles in the official Sorting Ceremony (Harry Potter, anyone?). We would sift through the treasures, making piles for each member of the family according to who could yell, "I CALL DIBS!" the fastest or the loudest at each displayed item. This process was usually accompanied by homemade acorn waffles from my mom's kitchen and SA's exclamations of delight when my mom handed her a plate full of them topped with homemade strawberry syrup. "I must have done SOMEthing right in my life to be here in this moment," I recall her saying between mouthfuls of my mom's culinary genius. To this day, I repeat those words whenever I'm overcome by love or joy or any overwhelming nameless sentiment, and I always send a silent prayer of gratitude her way.

I wish I could say my prayers had worked. Or maybe I just didn't know what I was supposed to be praying for. Or maybe they DID work, and that's why the results from the biopsy she just had to have came back negative, proving that she ultimately (hopefully) has had the last laugh with her cell-blackening foe. I couldn't fist-pump any sort of response to that bit of news, though, because before my gallery show opened this week SA informed us all that she has two brain tumors sinking their wretched claws into a large portion of her cerebral matter. My mother, my little sister, and I all stood around her in the reverberating echo of all of our hearts hitting the floor and skidding to a halt under her shaking six-foot frame. We wordlessly placed our six hands on her head, willing whatever healing power we possess to wrap itself around her well-being. Willing God, Goddess, The Cosmos, The Powers That Be-- whatever entity is responsible for beating down resilient fairy godmothers-- to please, please spare this woman any unnecessary turmoil and please, please help her to defeat this brutal beast like she has so many in the past. And oddly... once we all recovered from absorbing the awful news, we all felt instantly that she would come out of this a victor. If anyone can overcome two brain tumors, it's SA and her rainbow aura of butterfly wings that hovers behind her, whispering a tribute to her healing powers and capacity for love.

The next day we went to lunch at the Big Sky Cafe in San Luis Obispo so that SA, also vegan, could get her organic, locally-grown, sustainable vegetable platter. She sat at the head of the table, her own head haloed by a circular tile pattern in the wall behind her, telling us stories of her experiences as a psychiatric nurse in a prison ward. She told us that she could will herself to give medical help to any criminal except for an animal abuser; that, to her, there was no forgiveness for taking out violence on an innocent animal. I held her words in the palm of my hand and then slowly, quietly tucked them into my pocket as I gazed at her pale face lit up by my fiery respect. She then added that if she had to tend to a child molester, she would "pack his balls REALLY tight" when... packing his balls... although I just realized I don't know what that even means, medically. So many stories spilled from her lips during that lunch, and we all sat transfixed by her experiences. Well, no, my sister Hannah and my mom were laughing hysterically, while my brother-in-law and I kept giggling nervously and looking from side to side at patrons chewing their food while SA yelled out yarns about wiping poop off of old mans' shriveled penises and how no one else would help the black doctors back in Texas when she was training because they all considered them "n---ers!" and such. Apparently she was THEE only white nurse who would sit at the lunch table with the black doctors and nurses, and because of this she returned home one day to find the KKK setting things around her house on fire. Jesus. By looking at her, you would never know that this bubbly woman with a memorable Southern drawl and size 11 ruby red slippers has in fact looked the Devil in the face during an arm-wrestling match and walloped Him into defeat.

So today, when SA came bursting through the door with a half-crazed expression, her voice breaking and her frame shrinking into vulnerability, we saw that she can bear any amount of pain or struggle on her own behalf: but to witness her husband of thirty-four years, her "gem," SUFFERING.... That was her breaking point. I slipped my purse over my shoulder, my hand into hers, and said, "I'm coming with you." Anything to stop the smiling woman with two brain tumors and a large scar for a left breast from crying.

Now, because of SA's current medical condition, she jokes that she's ALLOWED to be forgetful. But what the fuck's MY excuse?? There I was, helping her to scramble around her house grabbing the particular items that her husband J had requested from his hospital bed, and every two minutes we both had to stop and stare at each other with blank expressions, muttering, "What was I just looking for??" After about an hour of this, we decided we'd collected all the most-essential requests, and we headed back to the hospital, our arms laden with wicker baskets full of phone chargers and positive wishes.

On the drive back, I sat there patting SA's hand and sipping her home-brewed kombucha tea from a large Mason jar. She looked at me (while I nervously looked at the road she was ignoring) and said that I drank the tea like an addict. This was after I'd confessed that my bad drinking habits are mostly to blame for the thirty excess pounds ruffling around my body frame. I couldn't take offense to her words because SA herself is a recovering addict and is in her 27th year of sobriety. She is an avid member of AA and sponsors many people into a happy sober existence. She squeezed my fingers and announced that she was taking me to her next meeting. I screwed the lid back on the jar and started squirming with my internal discomfort. Is she right? Does she see through me to the things I've shrugged off and put on the back shelf of my consciousness? Or is she merely projecting onto me the struggles she's witnessed and experienced in her own life of overcoming a massive drug addiction? I can't know the answer. Because even as I know that I am not in danger of harming myself and am in fact in the healthiest mental state I've been in since I can remember... I know that I can only achieve so much when I am constantly handicapped by hangovers and financial duress from exhausting all my expendable income on "going out." I shudder at the slap I feel to my pride when I imagine actually attending an AA meeting. Actually admitting, to the WORLD, that I might just maybe belong in one of them. My mom and sister say they're curious and would eagerly attend one of the meetings just to see what goes on behind those anonymous doors, but... I literally shake in my hemp-hewn boots just THINKING about it. I turned to SA: "Okay, I'll go with you to ONE meeting... but I'm NOT introducing myself." She just smiled, called me "her little drug addict," and said I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to do. And left me to work out my inner demons.

Hm. I do believe everything happens for a reason. I am so glad I was here in San Luis today, here at my mom's house to answer the door when my heartbroken hero needed a shoulder to lean her shaking hand on as we marched down the hospital corridors. When she thanked me for helping her get through this one day, for writing down everything that she needed to remember so that her tumors couldn't push the information into oblivion, I looked up at her face lined with both determination and love. Gazing up at her soft blue eyes sparkling with tears and triumphs, I realized that if all I have to overcome is a roomful of strangers being privy to my affinity for Hefeweizen and cheap white wine, then, well, I can damn well put on my really large big-girl pants and do it. And as she hugged me again and I wrote my phone number in huge font for her on a scrap of paper in case she needed any moral support or note-taker in the days to come, I thought to myself, "You know what (singlewhitefemale)? You must have done SOMEthing right in your life to be here in this moment."