What’s Your YES? | Dec 17 2022

YES

To James Joyce, Irish writer and literary giant, yes was the most positive word in the English language.

In 1922, Joyce’s novel Ulysses changed the modern literary landscape. Ulysses recounts a single day, June 16, 1904, in the life of one ordinary Dubliner, Leopold Bloom. Joyce fashions Bloom’s travels across the city after Odysseus’ efforts to get home in Homer’s The Odyssey. The journeys of both men are neither easy nor pleasant (kind of like parts of any day, when you get right down to it.) 

In her blog, Sheila O’Malley tells us that after all the troubles in the book, Joyce said he wanted to end it with the most positive word. So he did, with the stream of conscious thoughts of Molly Bloom:  “…yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” (Yeah, not much punctuation in the book.)

A week or so ago, I was not feeling the yes. I hadn’t been for many days leading up to and after the last scan. I was feeling dread. Not about the scans, per se, but about All they represent.

(Even my positive-thinking fellow lung cancerites can get down and dirty in the dread department.) (And, in the department of Reality Can Suck. This past Monday and Tuesday, I participated in an advisory group, talking with a researcher about the design of a clinical trial. I allowed as how I expected, at some point, to be in a position of seeking a clinical trial because my options had run out. Another woman in the group very matter-of-factly said, “I expect to be in the same position Karen mentioned.” And that was that.)

Matter-of-factness is part of anyone’s life. In search of a couple of facts about the Big LC, I was skimming some research articles– look at that those doctoral skills in action– and one paragraph caught my eye. Yep, people with brain metastases have tended to have lousier LCL (Lung Cancer Luck.) I sighed and moved on. I mean, what’re you going to do?

But CancerShrink, bless that man’s optimism, created an analogy. “Yes,” he said, chopping the air with his hand, to indicate a dead end. “There are medical outcomes and they are mostly bad. But between now (another gesture) and then (the chopping motion) there’s a pocket. It’s where you feel good, you aren’t facing treatment or dealing with side effects. That’s where I think the joy lives, the possibilities.”

A pocket.

In a flash, the dread vanished. Well, it receded to a tiny point in the distance.

I have no idea how to deal with existential dread. (Which, in my mind, is not fear.) But a pocket? I can do a pocket.

It’s where the Yes lives. And mine can be anything I want.

Report from Frosting School

I’ve been playing with making buttercream transfers. My latest cake request came from a teen turning 15. Chocolate cake, fudge filling, caramel icing. Check, check, and check. Oh, and, Mr. Clean. How could I not snap up that assignment? But it was the delivery that put this cake experience over the top.

I walked up the steps to the agency, cake in arms. Rang the doorbell. Before the door even opened, I could hear the pitch of voices inside start to rise. The door opened to a smiling counselor holding clip board. “I have a cake for [Birthday Person],” I say.  Kid pushes by her. “Lemme see! Lemme see!” She grabs the box and squeals, “You did it! You did it! Thank you!” She looks past the counselor down the hallway, to a cluster of kids on a sofa. “My cake! With Mr. Clean on it!” Screaming ensues; another kid rushes up to see. They escort the cake to the room where the other kids are sitting. The counselor thanks me and closes the door. Even as I walk down the steps, I can still hear the kids screaming.

Thanks for reading. Hope Mr. Clean, Santa, or his reindeer pays you a surprise visit. Or maybe just some cake….