The day is sunny, birds sing outside. Trouble seems far, even impossible today. But I must sit down to write Chapter Two, because there is more to my Fairy Tale.
You will remember that we left me in the Black Hills, while my chemo nurse worked in a cubicle. As she toiled with poison I danced in the woods, my imagination taking me from big trouble.
But I would return to the real world sometimes, for my body needed my attention. To try to eat good food, to keep my medical appointments (even if they were scary). And to brush my teeth. You see, every night I would calculate if I had energy to wash my face...and the answer was always no. But brushing my teeth was a priority, because it mattered to my mom who had taken me to a dentist regularly as a young girl. And through the years she would often ask, Are you flossing your teeth, Julie?
So I tried to do some basics, checking off self-care tasks, satisfied to have some control. Remember it is important to do such simple things when chaos comes for a visit.
Now these memories and others come back. When I'm at a stoplight, or looking out a window, lost in a day dream. But suddenly like an eager child Alice of Wonderland bursts in with her question: Do you remember the mirror, Julie?
Yes, I remember the mirror, Alice, and I will tell its story, our story.
Once upon a time, I got sicker and weaker, weaker and sicker. As Alice would explain, "For if one drinks much from a bottle marked 'poison', it's almost certain to disagree with one sooner or later." The chemo waged a mighty battle that paid no heed to a cell's character or intent. It slayed bad cells, good cells and lots of red cells. Too many, in fact, leaving me unable to climb stairs without wheezing, so I would stop halfway up. Nurses hooked me to bags of blood that made me feel better...for awhile. My husband thought me not a vampire, but a ghost who wandered room to room, taking tiny bites of food between gagging and staring into space.
Those were dark days in My Kingdom.
At night I would wake with pain shooting up and down my leg. Alice would exclaim, "Curiouser and curiouser!" Because it was a Strange Pain, the likes of which I had never felt before. My tumor spread its wily ways of destruction with a hot oil drip drip drip.
During these sleepless hours, I would crawl or limp to the bathroom, depending on my pain's hold. If I crawled, I would pull up onto the toilet, calling myself Job then and asking the question: Oh how did this happen to ME?
If I limped...I would stop in front of the mirror, with midnight light that softens our hard edges, opening us to something new perhaps. And Alice would stand next to me with these words, "A dream is not reality but who's to say which is which?"
Am I dreaming? I would wonder...
...until the Caterpillar asked, "Who. Are. You?"
Then I squinted to see A Very Odd Creature, me. And I replied: I. Don't. Know. Who. I. Am. Pale, no hair or eyebrows. My face dotted from chemo with brown spots, exotic tatoos. Confused and lost, a damsel in distress. For awhile, these questions with no answers went on, until Alice said one night...
...we must call in Magic. And I am just sure the moon shone extra brightly with her words.
So we did, we called in the angels and the archangels and all the company of heaven, and I began to say: Very interesting, indeed, very interesting indeed...
...as a doctor would exclaim about a specimen, no longer as a woman looking for assurance of her elusive beauty, with that ancient question: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? No, I had separated from my body, hovering above it. Not quite sure where I belonged as Here and Somewhere Else blurred. My body had needed my care, but not my gaze.
Yet Magic looked in the mirror with me now. For I had beckoned it. (And please remember that Magic comes, my friends, if invoked with the perfect amount of belief and need, desperation and conviction, hope and faith.)
These nights became different as my eyes would happily widen.
Joy joined then too...as I saw an exotic heroine rather than a sick patient. Flying through the galaxy on a ship, not limping back to bed. My body would never be the same. It would need pills and blood transfusions, as others' generosity carried me back to Life.
But those nights, ah those nights, I began to understand the answer to the Caterpillar's question, Who. Are. You?.
I am Beauty. Always and forever. I am Beauty. Always and forever. I am Beauty.
And I lived happily ever after. Okay no, there is more to this fairy tale, but for now, this was a Very Good Ending.
Now of all my adventures, The Mirror is a favorite one. For we are super heroes every single day, not just when woken in the night during chemo sweats. When we wake to an easy summer day or when we fall out of bed in the darkest of winter. My right leg swung a light saber and contained a tumor, and I will forever celebrate that leg's loyalty to me. That it knew just what it had to do and bravely did so, sacrificing itself in my intergalactic adventure of the grandest sort.
My wish upon a star is that we speak kindly when we look in those mirrors. For all our bodies are a beautiful testament to our lives. Changing and slipping and softening as our years pass through that hourglass (if we are lucky enough to be here, to live them). So we decide to call our bodies gorgeous, even when a magazine spread tries to make us think otherwise. Because our battle scars deserve our thanks, not our derision, nor certainly judgment from another.
So during the night, on a too busy day, when we're troubled or delighted, rushing past that mirror we wink, smile and say...
...we are Beauty. Always and forever. We are Beauty. Always and forever. We are Beauty.
