December 2020 – Still Life, Beyond Cancer

The Heart of the Holidays: Celebrating With Intention

December 26, 2020December 28, 2020Sandee McGlaun

A recent viral Twitter thread by Canadian Mohammad Hussain recounts his observations as a Muslim who’s celebrating his first “proper Christmas” with roommates as a result of pandemic lockdown. Hussain’s observations–which you can read here–highlight the laborious, expensive, and time-consuming nature of many Christmas “traditions,” as well as how attached many of us are to those traditions, and how upset we get when our often elaborate plans are thwarted.

This year, of course, is the year of thwarted everything. I’ve seen and heard others express disappointment–and felt my own–at not being able to gather safely with family or friends, missing community events that were cancelled, feeling less connected to religious rituals that have moved online. And yet in this year’s necessary simplification of holiday gatherings and rituals I’ve also seen, and felt, something I can only describe as a kind of…relief.

Steve and I didn’t really “do” Thanksgiving this year. I love Thanksgiving–I enjoy planning a menu, cooking for the people I love, running (or more recently, walking) in our town’s annual Drumstick Dash with our two grown boys, breaking out the pumpkin margaritas. This year, on top of the pandemic making it unsafe for travel and gathering–and turning the Drumstick Dash into a virtual, on-your-own-schedule 5K– the holiday fell on a chemo treatment week. The timing meant that Thanksgiving Day was one of my “quiet” days, a day when I’m disinclined to do anything other than sit on the couch and sip soup. Cooking and eating a big feast, much less walking a 5K in any form, were not on the agenda. And while it was disappointing not to see family or tuck into cran-apple pie, it was also relaxing. We didn’t have a schedule. Instead of setting an alarm and heading out into the cold first thing, we slept in. Read books. Watched some Netflix. I wrote a few notes of thanks, which was arguably more meaningful than making cranberry gelatin, as much as I enjoy the tradition, and as tasty as it is. We let go of any expectations about the day, and instead of making menus and grocery lists and calculating times and temperatures for multiple dishes to make sure everything was ready at the same time, we ate when we were hungry, rested when we were tired, and just accepted that things were different this year. It felt good.

When I saw Hussain’s observations on celebrating Christmas, I thought back to our un-Thanksgiving. Christmas is different this year, too. I’ve been struck by how many people I’ve seen post or heard say something along the lines of “This is the first year we’ve been able to have Christmas at our home,” or “It’s been kind of nice to have time to just sit and watch the fire,” or “I was actually glad not to have to….” While I’m sad not to have our boys and grand-dog here making merry, this strange holiday is giving me the chance to think about why we do all the things we do to celebrate each year, and which aspects of that celebration feel essential, and which, perhaps, are just habits born of cultural or ritual expectation that no longer serve us.

Our white Christmas–a fun difference this year!

I think a lot of us get ourselves into trouble by trying to overdo and do it all: handmake ornaments for everyone we work with AND bake six kinds of cookies and package them in cute tins AND choose photos for and stuff and mail 100 holiday cards AND wrap presents like Martha Stewart AND take the kids to see Santa and the community tree lighting and the holiday parade AND attend all nine gatherings we’re invited to (we do genuinely like all the people, after all, except cranky Aunt Mildred, but she’d be hurt if we skipped her punch and cookies)—even sometimes juggling several events in a single day. Hussain compared celebrating Christmas to having a part-time job, and he wasn’t wrong. So many of us stack event on event and expectation on expectation to the point it takes a spreadsheet (or several) to manage our holiday.

Though our calendar has felt a bit too empty this year, I haven’t missed the franticness that often characterizes December. What does a holiday look like if we let go of the “we’ve always done it this way”s and the “it’s what everyone expects, and they’ll be disappointed if we don’t”s? (And who is this “everyone,” anyway?) If you choose not to worry about others’ expectations, what sifts to the surface as most pleasurable, most meaningful? In this year when so many things are different, what do you really miss? Did anything disappear from your to-do list that left you secretly relieved? And what, perhaps, did you bring back in to play because you had time this year, time that’s usually devoted to something else that maybe you don’t enjoy as much (or at all)? When the should’s and the have-to’s and the we’ve-always-done-it-like-that’s drop out, what stays, and can we find a way to hold on to those lessons going forward?

Frankly, the belief and insistence that “it’s our tradition, so we have to do x or y or z” is a significant reason why some people are risking their own lives and the lives of others to hold large family gatherings, or attend indoor religious services, even though at present those things are dangerous. Hussain jokes about people stabbing anyone “in the neck” who suggests an alternative to accepted traditions, but many people are in fact so beholden to what they usually do that they are willing to endanger their own and others’ lives to keep doing it, global pandemic be damned.

And I get that traditions often evolve from what’s important–seeing family, for example. But maybe 2020 can remind us there, too, what the crux of the matter really is. I still remember shuddering at hearing some of my born-Southern friends describe their holiday routine: Christmas Eve cocktails at Grandma A’s, then Christmas Eve church with Grandma and Grandpa B, then a lickety-split early Christmas morning at home so they had time to drive 2 hours to open packages and have Christmas dinner at their married older sister’s, then back in time to visit their dad’s family for caroling Christmas night. It sounded exhausting. And how do you manage any in-depth individual interactions with anyone when there’s always a crowd and the day’s such a flurry? It’s also true that traveling at the holidays can be exorbitantly expensive (higher priced airline tickets and gas prices) and extremely unpleasant.

Prepping for one of several family Zoom calls

As much as I love having family near at Christmas, I wonder: would it make as much or more sense to see family at some other, less harried time of year? Isn’t it the family togetherness that’s most important, not the time of year it happens? And if there’s something you really love doing with family at the holidays, do you have to confine that activity to the holidays? I love to bake and decorate cookies with my family, but we’ve been foiled this year, first by Covid, then by the post office. I hope we’re still going to manage a Zoom cookie-decorating session. But we could also make and decorate cookies in July or September or whenever it works for us to be in the same space again, and I bet we’d have just as much fun then.

This year my penchant for dressing up in festive clothes for the holiday took a fun pandemic-friendly turn: Steve and I got matching Christmas pajamas, and spent a good part of the day in them. We missed our boys but reveled in our kittens’ antics. We decided to privilege Zoom calls with loved ones and our own relaxation over kitchen prep and bumped our “Christmas dinner” to the day after Christmas. Whatever day we have it, it will taste just as good.

Christmas morning tea in our matching pjs–cheers!

Maybe this Covid Christmas can teach us all something about celebrating with intention. Despite the year’s oddities, we’re having a marvelous holiday. We wish you many marvelous days in the year to come.

Have Yourself a Hairy Little Christmas

December 18, 2020December 19, 2020Sandee McGlaun

I’ve uttered several things in 2020 I never thought I’d say. “Wait, do you have your mask?” “What time do you want to Zoom?” The most surprising, though, is this: “I really miss my nose hair.”

I’ve written previously about how hair becomes a signifier of health (or lack thereof) for cancer patients, and during my first round of chemo-induced hair loss, I explained why I missed my pubic hair the most (something else I never thought I’d declare, much less publicly, but there you go). One of the main points of the latter piece was that, as much time, energy, and money as many of us spend trying to remove them, the hairs on our human bodies do indeed serve a purpose–beyond creating and supporting an entire hair-removal industry.

Most of the time, if you hear anyone mention nose hair, it’s in the context of getting rid of the excess by trimming it. You can even buy instruments dedicated expressly to that purpose. Before you get too zealous in said pursuit, however, you might want to read on.

One of many options to tame your nose hair

Remember the “sudden snot”? At a recent appointment, both my regular doctor and nurse practitioner were unavailable for my scheduled pre-treatment consult, so I saw another NP in the office. As I was filling her in on my history, I mentioned the “sudden snot” problem I’d developed, and told her that despite taking a regular antihistamine, it hadn’t abated.

She nodded. “Some of that is probably just your body’s normal production of mucous,” she said. “But you’ve likely lost all your nose hair, so there’s nothing there to hold it back or slow it down.”

My mouth gaped inside my mask. “Oh my god, of course!” I said. “Of course!” I’d never thought about the fact that we have hairs in our nose, that that hair is functional, and–given that my body has emptied every other known follicle since I’ve been on Sasquatch–that my alopecia would extend there as well. It was a revelation. If light-bulbs really did appear above your head when the light dawns, I would have had a full-on Rockefeller Christmas tree over mine.

As it stands, I have a full-on faucet on my face. So. I really miss my nose hair.

I really miss my eyelashes, too, and not just out of vanity. Eyelashes are also functional. You don’t realize how effective an early warning/blocking-foreign-object system they are until you don’t have them to signal, for example, that the edge of your mask is about to creep up and scrape your eyeball, or the edge of your headscarf about to droop into it. Then there’s the act of trying to put on eyeliner without an eyelash line to stop you from jabbing the pencil right in. If a particle of something does get into your eye, you have no lashes to grab and pull your lid out to try to help blink it away. Don’t think you do that very often? Betcha do it more often than you realize.

I also miss my eyebrows. Profoundly. That was true the first time I had chemo, too, and it’s related more to appearance than function. I’ve referred before to the research that shows eyebrows are a key feature in making us recognizable. Losing my eyebrows–far more than losing the hair on my head–makes me feel like I’ve lost something fundamental in what makes me look like me. It feels like losing my face.

No one manufactures replacement nose hairs, but in terms of brows and lashes, there are almost as many products on the market to replace them as there are to remove those hairs less desired. (We probably need to have a longer conversation with ourselves as a species about our strange pre-occupation with good hairs versus bad hairs….) Since my face is currently a blank canvas, well, why not test out a few?

First up: eyelashes. When I was modeling, I occasionally wore fake eyelashes, the basic kind that use eyelash glue. I never found them difficult to use, and I liked how they bulked up my natural lashes, especially in photographs. Now there are magnetic lashes with tiny magnets along the lash line; you swipe on a magnetized eyeliner to which the lashes stick. Even more recently, the company Moxielash has debuted lashes that use silicone as the sticking agent.

I tried both. The liner that came with the magnetic lashes is black, liquid liner. If you think drawing straight, even lines with liquid liner is tough when you have your own eyelashes to guide you, you can imagine how many times I drew on my eyeball. And it’s nigh impossible to draw the liner or place the lashes right up against the eye (your natural lash-line is usually the guide, and fills that space). So even if I manage not to poke myself, I end up with a thin skin-colored gap that’s further highlighted by the dark liner and lashes. The clear liner that comes with the silicone lashes tones down the contrast, but the gap remains and makes fake lashes, even styles labelled “natural,” look extreme. It’s a lot of drama for a visit to the doctor’s office.

I’ve had more luck, after considerable trial and error, with eyebrows, at least if I subscribe to (and I do) the adage that brows should look like sisters, not twins. Twins are not happening. I started with a “Tattbrow” pencil, which mimics the look of micro-blading, but it’s a bit too dark. I ordered some stencil stickers but found them unwieldy. For a while I used a reusable plastic stencil and brow powder in “dark blonde” by Senna. It doesn’t really give the look of individual hairs and wears off more easily than I’d like. But it’s easy to wipe off and try again on those days when my first attempt results not in sisters but in fourth-cousins thrice removed.

Most recently, and a bit by accident, I found and purchased the somewhat inauspiciously named “Eyebrow Tattoo Stickers.” Temporary tattoos that stay in place for a couple days, they’re going to take a little trimming and some practice, but they’re promising. I also got myself some sparkly bling to play with. Might as well put the canvas to good use.

I was reassured a couple weeks ago when Steve and I watched a live-stream concert of Scottish folk musicians, and one of the women, Inge Thomson, had a face and head like mine. I don’t know the cause of her alopecia, but she is bald and sans eyebrows and lashes, and she looks fine–not alien, not weird. Lovely, in fact. So I’m trying to find ways to stop with the before/after comparisons of my own face–which is what gets me into trouble–and embrace and enhance my new look with minimal prosthetic additions.

I AM kind of excited that I can make pearl “eyebrows” to match my shiny new boots if I want 🙂

Still, vanity is one thing, functionality another. I do miss my nose hair. This holiday season, be kind to your hairs. They are a gift, and they are doing more for you than you might imagine.

Now, please excuse me while I go find another box of tissues.

In the Only-a-Little Bleak Mid-December

December 16, 2020January 9, 2021Sandee McGlaun

There seem to be no limits to the ways 2020 can be strange. Coronavirus surge and ongoing chemotherapy notwithstanding, this is the first year since 2015 that mid-December hasn’t been marked, personally, by some kind of trauma or bad news.

Recent Decembers have been hard. In 2016 I had a bilateral mastectomy on December 12th. In 2017 I had nipple reconstruction surgery at Thanksgiving, and in mid-December the left nipple failed, which brought on cellulitis on the eve of Christmas Eve. That was the first time something in the long series of treatments and surgeries I’d had went “wrong,” and it hit me hard. In 2018 we got word on December 14th of the first recurrence; I had a surgical biopsy December 31st. Last year, in 2019, I was diagnosed again right before Thanksgiving, and we spent early and mid-December uncertain of the extent of the spread, shuttling to multiple scans and appointments, waiting for news. Treatment started the day after Christmas.

2017 weekend in DC
2016
2019
2018
2017

The year’s not over yet, and I don’t want to tempt fate. But I’m glad we’ve at least made it to December 15th this year without a sudden disruption to our lives. Certainly there is disruption, but as wearying as treatment and the pandemic are, neither are new adjustments. And chemo is going in the right direction, which is something to be glad of!

A lot of people find the winter holidays difficult, for a variety of reasons. I’ve been lucky; aside from my paternal grandmother’s death in early December 1994, and the loss of my beloved Tiko kitty just prior to Christmas in 1997, Christmas has almost always been a joyful time for me and my family. I love choosing presents for people, making ornaments, baking cookies. I’ve led a privileged life, and the holidays have been rich with tradition and abundance. Back when I was declared cancer-free after my mastectomy, the hope was that Steve and I would have just that one Christmas in 2016 impacted directly by cancer, and then things would return to normal–or rather, go forward, having been changed by cancer, but done with it.

Decorations ready for this year’s kitten-friendly tree

Though my mind occasionally travels toward “what if…?” it’s simply too tender, too painful to contemplate with any depth what that life could have been like, had it been granted to us. I comfort myself with the reminder that there’s no guarantee an alternative path would have been better. That’s the thing about counterfactuals. We oftentimes imagine the thing that didn’t happen, the path we didn’t travel, in its ideal form. In my case, the house would be fully painted and decorated, I’d have finished and published a book (and it would be a bestseller!), Steve and I would be traveling regularly, and I’d be fit, thin, and have beautiful hair. Okay, it is likely I’d have hair. But–life happens. It’s never going to be perfect, chronic illness or no. Fairy tales are classified as fiction for a reason, and they stop at “happily ever after” because that’s precisely the moment things get complicated, and besides, happiness is a dynamic, messy, multi-faceted enterprise.

I’m happy I’m still around to note all these mid-December anniversaries, even as it can be hard to find the festive some days. I’m happy I’ve learned to pay attention to and appreciate all the good and beauty that is present, even when times are tough and the world’s gone weird. I’m glad for silly kittens, and old-fashioned paper snowflakes, and twinkly lights on our tree. I’m glad for today’s calm and routine, whatever tomorrow may bring.

Peace to you, friends, this December and always.

Days that Count: Reflections on Advent

December 4, 2020December 4, 2020Sandee McGlaun

It’s the first week of December, which means I’ve broken out the red dining room tablecloth, I’m scolding the kittens to stop chewing the Christmas tree fourteen times a day, and each morning I clap my hands with delight to see what sweet scene is behind the numbered door on this year’s advent calendar.

I grew up with an advent calendar and an Advent wreath. Lighting the candles in the wreath was a family religious ritual, accompanied by biblical readings each Sunday that reflected on hope, peace, joy, and love. We began the cycle each year with the first Sunday in Advent, as designated by the liturgical calendar.

Our advent calendar, however, always began each year on December 1st. It consisted of a piece of plywood covered in gold foil wrapping paper, with 24 lidded boxes of all shapes and sizes–each wrapped in a different festive paper–affixed to the board. I thought it was beautiful. Each year my mother filled the boxes with small treats for my brother Todd and me, then hung the calendar on the wall in the den like a big colorful painting. The lid of each box was numbered with gold stick-on numerals, and each year we switched who opened odds and who opened evens.

There were a few boxes whose contents was predictable. A tall, flat box, number 11 as I recall, always had a funny black poodle card in it, as not much else would fit the box. Number 24 always contained a small nativity that we would set up on the box’s fold-down lid in honor of Christmas Eve. Some of the boxes would reveal trinkets we already owned, pulled from a cabinet or the Christmas box. But a few of them always held new items: a tiny Snoopy notepad with even tinier colored pencils, an action figure, a tube of lip gloss. Most times we opened the day’s box before we headed out to catch the bus for school, and even on the days when it was my brother’s turn, the anticipation and the surprise made for a pleasurable start to the day.

The pleasure of that daily ritual has stuck with me, and I have sought to recreate it for others and myself numerous times over the years. When I lived in Germany as an exchange student, the Christmas I’d just turned 17, my host sister Kristin and I made an advent calendar for my German host mama: I drew a snowy village scene, and we wrapped up tiny ornaments, sweets, and perfume samples and tied them onto the bottom of picture with ribbon. My host mama made us each a calendar, too, and my mother back home in Georgia created and sent an advent calendar for my entire German family. My host parents, sister, brother, and I–and even the family dog Lola–took turns opening those packages, which my host mama had affixed to our cellar door. My mother and I have often traded assembling or making advent calendars for one another in the past; my best effort was a series of tiny woolen ornaments that told the story of a little girl searching for the meaning of the season, which Mom still puts out each year.

Steve, sensing my fondness for the ritual, has gifted me a lovely 3D paper calendar–birds last year, and kitties this year–for each of my last two birthdays. But until this year, it had been quite a while since I’d made an advent calendar for anyone. This year I was inspired to create calendars for my three favorite guys. Our grown sons can’t be with us this holiday due to the pandemic and my high-risk status, so I wanted to do something special for them. I can’t say much about their calendars without spoiling surprises to come, but I will say I think had as much fun brainstorming with Steve, searching out items, and putting their calendars together as the boys will opening them! It’s also had the added benefit that as they open a treat each day, we exchange messages. I thought hubby Steve needed a calendar, too, so I spent a few days designing and painting a “happy memories” calendar for him, based in a snowy mountain scene. I got to think about all those memories as I made the calendar, and now I enjoy watching him open his calendar’s entry each day as much as I enjoy finding the cute critters in the calendar he gifted me.

So what is it about advent calendars that captivates me so? And why, this year of all years, did I feel especially compelled to share their joys with others?

It’s been a hard year. I mean, 2020, right? Global pandemic and the accompanying illness and economic woes, forest fires, hurricanes, fractious political climate and elections. Personally, I’ve been in some form of cancer treatment (or on pause, not knowing for six weeks if they were going to find something that worked) since December 26th of last year. Fighting cancer and being immune-compromised in the era of Covid feels like mortal threat on top of mortal threat, and it’s wearying to have part of your brain and body perpetually in survival mode. And so many holiday rituals and traditions that usually bring me joy–walking the neighborhood Parlour Tour of homes with Steve, baking cookies with my mom or the boys, spending an evening shopping and putting outfits together for a local underprivileged child, attending an ugly sweater party with friends–are unavailable, unsafe.

But advent calendars are still possible. And while some of my good feeling about them derives from nostalgia, no doubt, hearkening back to those childhood mornings of little delights, I think there’s more to it than that. Advent calendars–in secular as well as religious form–offer me, us, something that we need in this upside-down, topsy-turvy year. Advent calendars are a lesson in appreciating this moment and its (often literally) small beauties, even as they are also a lesson in waiting. They encourage a daily practice of being present, finding a moment of pleasure, taking a moment to pause and appreciate the now. But they’re also about anticipation, faith that the days will roll forward, that even as darkness falls earlier and stays longer, the light will eventually return. For me they are also about fostering relationships and showing love. When I assemble or create a calendar for someone, I think of them throughout the process, and I hope some small part of me and my affection for the recipient is present each day when they open that day’s box or envelope or card.

And, of course, there is the wonder of surprise, even in miniature: What is behind this little door? What will I discover today? Wonder, love, being present, and faith in the future: all held in a small numbered box, or found behind a tiny paper flap. That’s the kind of gift we can all use right now, the kind of gift I’m thrilled to receive and, given the chance, even happier to give.

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