“Does Bill like cow heart or tongue?”
Just one of those questions Mom can ask that makes me feel like I’m one in ten million people: the daughter of beef farmers.
I knew the answer to this question. “Mom, even if Bill doesn’t like those, he’ll say ‘yes’ just to tell the story later about eating them.”
After 30 years, I not only know Bill’s stories by heart but can predict what might be the subject of a rare new story.
We’re celebrating our anniversary weekend at Liam’s cross country meet in New Hampshire. We’re older than many parents of 16-year-olds, so our flights to tropical islands for long weekends are a few years off. For our 30th, I’ll be content with a road trip to New Hampshire; we should still have a good showing of leaves clinging to branches.
That annual we-should-go-north-to-see-the-colors pull harkens every year. Indeed, the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the Green Mountains in Vermont are dizzying in their dazzle, but driving around Massachusetts is equally as stunning, perhaps just in smaller doses.
I drive the same route every morning when I take Liam to school. There may be a quicker way, but the one I take curves past gold and crimson maples behind tall stone pillar lamp posts… t’s at beautiful ivy ablaze and crawling along a chain link fence with a lake as a backdrop… veers down tree tunnel-lined streets in the same mosaic fall hues… moseys by a small Cape Cod-style house that sinks into the background whilst framed by leaves the color of fire on trees and on the ground. What we miss en masse on the mountains can be fine-tuned brilliantly in closeups.
Noticing these sights requires a kind of widening of the shutter—like how a camera’s slower shutter speed captures images at night—to subconsciously register the ordinary that is experiencing a metamorphosis. Unlike the metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterfly, the final result of this process is bare boned trees. The spectacular burst of whimsy and light happens midway through the journey. Now.
I went for a walk in our local forest with a friend last weekend. The showy trees cast their brilliance onto the lake showcasing their mirror image. So full of themselves! On fall walks, I scan the ground for one leaf. On this walk, it wasn’t a gold or red-hued leaf that got me, it was a brown oak leaf one-and-a-half times the size of my hand. Struck by its enormity and presence, I stopped mid-conversation and picked it up. To my actions, my friend responded nonchalantly, “That’s a big leaf.” Why is it that my holy-cow moments strike so fiercely?
We missed going to an apple orchard this year. Last weekend would’ve been the last opportunity to pick apples. I was going to work that in on Sunday, but after consulting with Liam, we decided that everyone else who had missed the season would be trying to make up for it the same day. We didn’t need to wait an hour in line for fall food or festivities. We went out for lunch and bought two 15-pound dumbbells for him instead; I pointed out the trees against the blue sky outside of the sporting goods store.
Last week, I peeled one color off of fall when I trooped into Massachusetts General Hospital Friday afternoon for my annual visit with my oncologist. On the drive into Boston, my mind went back twelve years to the days in the chemo suite and to parking at the hospital during a time when they were trying to stop non-patients from parking in the hospital’s garage. For two months, a parking attendant stopped each vehicle and asked, “What brings you here today?” Caught off guard, I answered with the purest reason: “Breast cancer.” Then, having proven my legitimacy, I was nodded into the jowls of the parking cave. This proof-of-entry haunts me whenever I park at MGH. I’ve been whispering “breast cancer” at the garage entrance every visit since then.
At my appointment Friday, my doctor said, “You know, it’s been over ten years. You don’t need to come in here every year any more. You CAN, but you don’t have to. Sometimes the anxiety of coming in isn’t worth it.”
And I hadn’t even told him the parking garage story. I’ve graduated from this fall event. And truthfully, I’ve never appreciated my favorite month of the year being laced with pink. I’m more about the colors of fall than the color of breast cancer.