Sunday Notes

Just a few short Sunday notes for your information.

• My father, who was diagnosed with large B-cell Lymphoma, a very fast growing cancer, in December, is in REMISSION! We found out this past week, late in the week, and it's really good news. Remission doesn't mean the cancer is gone, but it does mean that it's disappearing. Your prayers and kind words over the past several months have meant so much to me. Todah rabah!
• The newest edition of Haveil Havalim is up over on Shiloh Musings. Seriously, give it a read. You'll find some of my favorite blogs, and there are some new blogs thrown up there in the list, too. If you want to reread my Monsey post, well, it's posted there, too. 

In completely unrelated "of note" notes, and on a pretty personal level, I experienced my recurring dream while napping today. I haven't had my adult recurring dream in months, but for some reason, while napping today, it made an appearance. I had a recurring dream as a child of a skeleton in my children's rocking chair chasing me around my house, but I haven't had that since I was maybe 12 or 13. In my adult years, ever since I was probably 17 or 18, I've had a horrible public bathroom recurring dream. I know the implications of the dream -- you feel exposed, naked, and like your entire personal life is at the whim and fancy of outsiders. My dreams tend to be me using a public bathroom, the stall door disappears, and there are people walking by, talking to me, chatting casually, as if I'm *not* sitting on a toilet attempting to use the facilities. Inevitably, the dream ends with the toilet clogging, a mess being made and everyone laughing or pointing or scolding me for having broken the toilet. This one was a horrible, long, agonizing version of this dream. I'd like to think that it's the result of a previous post this week, but who knows what made my subconscious choose to defragment my mind's thoughts in this way.

Do you have any disturbing or frustrating recurring dreams? 

School starts soon, and I am so unprepared.

I'm back, part two. (That's me in the Omaha airport on Thursday, nursing a 2-hour delay with $3.99 unlimited day's web access.)

After returning from Israel, I headed home to Nebraska to get some time in with my family -- specifically to see how my father was doing after his first round of chemo at the end of December. The trip out wasn't too bad, we flew out of Newark in the wee hours of the morning on Monday and got to Nebraska with time to do some outlet shopping at some sad, sad outlet malls between Omaha and Lincoln. Our first stop? Runza. The world's greatest fast-food joint. Tuvia loved the place so much, every time we talked about getting another bite to eat, he'd joke about going back to Runza. We spent the next few days driving around town, me showing Tuvia my old haunts (especially the Coffee House, where we went three of the four days we were there), my high school, my favorite places, and cheesy places like the mall to buy me a nice formal dress for an upcoming awards ceremony that was canceled due to the inclement weather last night (but it was beautiful -- well, the weather, that is; I guess the dress is okay, hah). We ate at all my favorite places -- Runza, Bison Witches, Lazlos -- and a few places that I wasn't so fond of. We went book shopping and I discovered that my favorite bookshop -- The Antiquarium -- that used to be down in the Old Market in Omaha is no longer there, trading space for someplace out of town. The old places are turning into new places with condos and lofts popping up all over downtown Omaha and in the Haymarket in Lincoln.

But the most important part of the trip was probably the time spent at home, just sitting with my family. Tuvia managed to spend a good hour stumping my mom, little brother, the little brother's girlfriend, and me with a game called "Petals Around the Rose." I could have killed him, that game is so ridiculous. I got to look at old photos of my mom and dad, and many of my mom when she was just a child. My grandmother, in an effort to clean out the house after my grandfather passed last year, has come up with some real gems. My favorites are probably the ones of the car my mother wrecked -- there are so many of that poor front bumper. But the photos of mom and dad opening gifts, dad in his plaid shirts and overalls (a style he managed well into the early 2000s) are some of the most prized I saw.

Last Tuesday, we took my dad to his doctor's appointments, eventually shuffling him to a hospital across the way for some extra looks into what was making him feel so crappy. We spent nearly four hours with my dad that day. I followed him into the doctor's office, helped ask questions, and took about four pages of notes to share with my mom on his medicines, how he was feeling, his shocking weight loss, and other notable things. He kept apologizing for taking up our time, and I kept reminding him "We're in Lincoln, Nebraska, there isn't that much for us to do, it's okay!" In some way, I have to believe that me being there helped calm him, in some way maybe.

It was more emotionally exhausting than I had planned for, and it didn't really hit me how drained I was until Tuvia and I got back to our little Motel 6 room each night. I just wanted to sleep it all off, prepare myself for another day, and go. Even now, as I sit comfortably in Connecticut staring out the window after a night's snow leftovers, I feel a little tired. I talk to my mom who tells me when dad is having his up days and down days. Some days he's down for some Subway, other days he just feels sick. It's the chemo.

So that was the past week for me. Trying to smile and stay lifted. Excited to see my little brother, who has managed to grow a nice little "emo" 'do on his head (men in my family are blessed with thick heads of hair), which his girlfriend seems to really like. He's a smart kid, a really smart kid, and he always makes me smile, no matter how crappy I feel. I miss him -- a lot. Luckily, having Tuvia there was a great lift. He's kind of a personified smile. He is always optimistic, uplifted, and manages to keep me afloat. I think it was a good thing for my parents to meet him when they did -- he allowed laughter, smiles, and fun to enter the house for a few days.

At any rate, a sobering post, I know. I have more Israel to talk about, of course, and I'll probably write next on my Bat Mitzvah ceremony, which was a major trip. I think, if anything, the photos will do the talking for me, though. The look on my face? Priceless and cheesy!

Chavi is BACK!

Brace yourselves, folks. Chavi is BACK in business. The first semester of my graduate career is officially over, and I'm praying for all As on my first, official, graduate school report card. But in truth, I'm done thinking about academics for the next month, I think. We all know this is a lie, as the moment I have a free second, I'm going to be starting in on "The Essential Talmud " by Adin Steinsaltz in preparation for my Talmud course next semester.

This week, though, has been one of highs and lows. Ups and downs. Emotional extremes.

The highs? The significant other (known henceforth as Tuvia) gave me some early Chanukah gifts -- a much-needed toaster oven, a much-needed HP printer/scanner/copier, and most beautifully, a glittering, shiny Star of David necklace. I started packing for my Birthright trip, with the knowledge that this time next week I'll be basking in the sun of Israel, davening in the land of my ancestors, exploring the land.

The lows? I realized that my knowledge of New Testament studies is nil. I found myself frustrated studying for my Bible exam because of my inability to comprehend the unresolved (academically and theologically) issue of Jesus as G-d (Jesus can suffer, G-d can't, but Jesus is still G-d -- note: not the SON of G-d, just G-d, a common misunderstanding of our Christian brethren).

The lowest of the lows? I found out, around 5 p.m. yesterday while stressing about my Bible exam, that my father has lymphoma. They don't know just yet whether it's Hodgkins or non-Hodgkins. They don't know what stage it's in. They, of course, being my parents. Until they meet with the oncologist, we don't really know anything.

My brain was frazzled this morning. I couldn't get my toaster to work. I spent 10 minutes trying to fix it. I realized later, after throwing my bagel frustratedly into the trash, that I'd unplugged the power strip with the toaster and microwave instead of the refrigerator plug, which had been my original intention. I got all the way to class and then realized I'd left my term paper (which I needed to hand in) back in my room and had to schlep back to get it before the test. This morning was a head explosion, can't focus, struggling to breathe kind of morning.

The best way for me to describe my current emotional state is stunned. Not upset or sad or depressed, just stunned. I don't know if that makes sense, but it makes me feel bad that I'm not bawling my eyes out every five seconds. Although, when I informed my professor of the news, I nearly started crying, which would have been a travesty, as it was moments before I started the exam. The thing is, when I was little, I freaked out about death. I spent some amount of time crying at night, unable to sleep, devastated at the idea of death and everything just stopping. And then I had a realization and I realized that it was so insignificant -- life was important, this life, this existence. Ever since then, I've been unable to get really depressed about death. I haven't been able to overwhelm myself with loss. My grandfather died in April, and I was stunned more than upset. My great uncle died maybe 12 years ago, and I wrote a poem about how happy his memory was for me (he used to always steal my nose). And now? I'm just stunned. Empty, stunned shock. Maybe I don't know what to think.

But the important thing is? I'm back. After Shabbos, I'll be writing about, well, Shabbos. I've been doing the Shomer Shabbos thing, and tonight Tuvia and I are heading to to a modern Orthodox shul. We'll see how it goes. But tonight, I'll be thinking of my father. And if it isn't too much to ask, I would hope y'all could donate some of your prayers tonight to my father. He has no Hebrew name, he's not Jewish, but he is my father.

I'm back, baby. I'm back!

We're Getting Personal.

There are those days, when no matter how hard you try, your eyes continuously turn toward the sky -- shamayim -- also known as the heavens in some circles. When you get a call from an insurance company informing you that you have a substantial outstanding medical bill to pay and that if you don't pay soon, they'll send you to a collection agency, even though you never got any statement, and eventually they back down and dish out "sorry about all this" when you say "I'm a poor graduate student." Then your hair lady leaves work early so you have to have a stranger trim your tresses and a class you love insists on moving at the speed of light for the sake of finality and not for the sake of education and your given tasks that are tedious and menial that others were supposed to do but suddenly grew far too busy to do. Oh, and then there are bank fees because the bank wrongly cashed a canceled check that they knew was canceled but deposited anyway. So you turn your eyes toward the sky and all you can do is pray. Of course, at this point you know this "you" is me, and I'm not usually one who turns to G-d only in the bad times. I prefer to look to G-d in the good and the bad, because I'm not a fair-weather Jew. But days like today -- where when it rains it pours -- I look to the sky, despite how illogical it is. Above us is the atmosphere and space and we have the pictures to prove there isn't immediately above us some fluffy white expanse of heaven with G-d hanging out in some cherubim-laced throne. But I look anyway because the celestial bodies of the sky are comforting and sing of the luminaries G-d placed so near (yet so far).

And? ... the doctors think my father has lymphoma.

I've been accused many times of being way, way too personal on my blog. People often ask me how I can possibly talk about as much as I do or divulge all of the details that I do. Don't I want anything to be sacred? Anything to be private? Isn't there a single thing that I want to be just for me, just for my own personal enjoyment? I guess it might be misleading since I do blog about so many personal things, but I don't write about everything in my life. I leave my love life out of it, I leave personal one-on-one friendships out of it. I write about me, myself, and I. And I think that's fascinating and I guess a lot of other people do, too.

The thing is, people love stories. At our most basic, we as individuals want to relate to everyone around us on some level. We cling to the tiniest bits and scraps of information that make us alike. And it's healthy, it's good, it's right. We're meant to figure out ways of living together with one another and we love to hear the stories of our peers because we can see ourselves in those stories. So, I tell stories. But the thing is, they're all real and they're all personal and they're all coming from the most deep trenches of my heart.

So this one. This story. I was sitting at Texas Roadhouse, enjoying some homemade chicken fingers and fries when the phone rang and my father, who I knew was getting a CAT scan and some tests today, informed me that he had news. He asked me where I was and if I wanted to talk. "I don't want to ruin your dinner," he said. That, of course, was a sign that something was very much not right, and I carried myself off to the ladies room, plugging a finger in one ear and pressing the phone tight up against the other to muffle the sounds of Toby Keith and Garth Brooks blaring over the loudspeaker (why is the music always louder in the bathroom than in the restaurant?). It turned out mom was on the phone, too. They both talked me through it: gall bladder needs to be removed, it doesn't work anymore, can live without it, must eat bland foods, swollen lymphnodes, caught it early, need a biopsy, will take when gall bladder is removed, chemo, therapy, oncologist, appointment on Monday, and the best part of it all? "If you have to get cancer, it's the best kind to get."

Currently, there are more than 400,000 people in the U.S. living with lymphoma. It's one of the most curable cancers, or so one website tells me. There are a lot of websites. I could read them all, but I won't, because I'm tired and my eyes are dusty and I'm just beat. And, of course, I can't see the sky anymore because I'm inside where it's warm.

I try not to be a fatalist, and I try to be an optimist. There is no better way to live life. And I'm not asking for pity or sympathy or regrets or "I'm sorrys." But sometimes, when everything is going so well, so perfectly, you wonder when life's big tragic nuggets of crap drop on you. I mean, in the long run all the money stuff seems stupid and piddly compared to the real news of the day. So chances are good I won't be extending my trip to Israel. Chances are good that I'll be using that money to pay off a doctor's bill and buying a ticket to fly back to Nebraska to spend some time with my family while they figure things out. Israel will still be there for the next however many years of my life, and I'll go back again and again because it calls to me. But so does my family, and this is pressing.

Until then, well, I'm going to sit around and bargain with G-d the best way a suffering soul knows how. Asking without intent to receive, but reminding G-d of all the ways my father has suffered in his life and how I think he's had about enough already. Losing both parents before the age of 11, bypass surgery, shitty CEOs who money-grubbed and drove his job into the ground, being emotionally battered. Unlike everything that I was able to fix before -- disputes, money troubles, car troubles, family troubles -- I can't fix this. This is something that the rock of the family just can't do. So, for now, I'll hope that maybe, just maybe, the biopsy comes back negative and we can all go back to living our lives the way that we know how.