Hey there New Year, how YOU doin?

Hey pals.  It’s been a while.  Last we talked, I’d had a bad playdate with Tamoxifen.    

I saw one of my doctors today.  I have a bit of a doctor crush on this guy.  Oh who’m I kidding?  He saved my life!  I have a real crush on him.   Point is, he had huddled with the other doctors in my little cancer care trifecta, we have a new game plan and we're good to go.

Good news, bad news?  The bad news was that it didn’t just go away when the drug left my system.  The good news is that there was something to help me shed the effects of the Tamoxifen, another drug. (Well played, Big Pharma, well played…)  

So now.  I feel really good.  I finished out last year’s 1000 mile goal having done 775 myself, and brought to nearly 1200 by the incredible friends that sent hard won miles run or walked in my name.  Such big love you all. Serious.  More surgery in about ten days, I'll keep you posted.

This year’s resolution?  1000 miles again.  I can’t escape the big round, wonderfulness of that number, of making it dwindle, the miles ticked away slow but sure, my own determination right there in a number.  This year though, any self powered miles – biking, running, swimming – whatever.  If I make it happen, it counts.  I’m 34 miles in and I’m having a blast again.

No big secret that there weren't many people sad to see 2011 go.  What was it?  My only theory is that saying “Twentyeleven” all the time got us tongue tied and annoyed that we haven’t really universally decided how to address saying what year it is  (“Twentyten?”  “Two Thousand Ten?”  Why is this so hard?!?).  But really, twentyeleventwentyeleven – no flow.   Twentytwelve is all kinds of smooth, I’m really hopeful.

2011.  The end of my marriage, cancer.  There was sad so harsh it made me dizzy. 

And then there was rescue.  There was love and fun so vast, so deep, so textured and heartbreakingly tender I could not have dreamt it up.  I made an offhand, drunk comment to my friend Dax a few years ago that you can’t ever be happier than you are willing to be sad, and I believe that.  I hit all the extremes in 2011.   It was not a year for middle of the road.

New Years Eve dinner, I asked my kids what their best memories of the past year had been.  These babies have been through the shit with me.  What happened to me, happened to them, and there has never once been a moment where they did not astound me with compassion, with diligence, with intellect and humor and irony (Ok, not Luke, he’s not ironic yet.  He’s still pretty Three Stoogey).  So for real, I wanted their answer.  I wanted to hear what it was that they held up as good, what they cherished, the sparkly crown jewels of their memory.

They all thought for a beat (again, maybe not Luke, he was really into the shrimp cocktail).

Em said “The Best Day.  We had The Best Day.” 

We all smiled and shook our heads, agreeing.   No question.  The shared memory was that good, that the residual perfection in our heads was thick enough to go visit before we put words to it. 

It had started as the worst day.  Early October, I was in the darkest of the dark.   I’d gone for a run early in the morning.  I came home, Emma and I argued.  We never argue.  Matt and I argued, we always argue, but it still stinks every time, gets us all twisted up and out of whack.  I showered, and before I was even dressed I needed to get out.  Out of the house, out of the town, I needed to put miles between me and where I was. I told the kids to get ready to go.

There was that dead calm parent voice.  Where you tell them what to do and They. Just. Do it.  What I felt was so pure and straightforward , they knew not to question.

I took about 43 seconds to throw food into a bag, lift our beast-of-a-dog into the car and  head off.  I drove toward Evanston.  Twenty minutes in, the mood thawed; Matt played Katy Perry songs and we sang and car danced and I made fun of him for buying Katy Perry songs. 

We picnicked at Northwestern.   Crazy October warm seeped into us.  We talked, we looked at the skyline - there's always that teensy bit of awe.  We finished lunch, we stashed our stuff in the car, walked over to Clark St. beach and settled in the sand just a tiny way past the waterline of the lippy little waves. 

We spent the next four hours there.  No toys, no extra sets of clothes, no towel, no snacks, no drinks, no nuthin’.  Kids dug holes (to China, for real), waded into frothy rolls of wavebreak, got their shorts all soaky.  I stretched out next to the dog, yellow sun baking down on me, making me squint and smile and squirm a little at the plain gorgeousness of a hot, blue skied day at the lake in October.

That was it.  It was the day they picked as their favorite, the one that outweighed all the days that were less-than.  We had parasailed and roadtripped, jetskied, water parked and wave rode.  Not those.  It was us on a beach.

Em told me the next day that one of the reasons that day was so good was that it had started off so bad.  That we’d come off of such a crappy start, and turned ourselves to the sun in a way that loosened us.  I know that I surrendered that day.  To loss, to grief, to my anger at the stupid fucking cosmic calender that delivered heartbreak and tumors at the same, damn time.  I let it all feel as bad as it was trying to feel, and in that, kind of magic.

I tend to get romantic about hard times once I’ve healed sufficiently.  I’m so grateful for how good it feels to be better, that I am grateful even for the pain that delivered me there.  That’s 2011. 

2012 though. Say it: 2012.  I’m telling you, all kinds of smooth.