porch – Still Life, Beyond Cancer

In Praise of Sameness

March 26, 2021Sandee McGlaun

I’ve been sitting in the swing on our newly spruced up porch this afternoon, and…well, that’s pretty much it. I’ve been sitting in the swing on our porch. I could add that I’ve been gently rocking, basking in the sun and its warmth on my shoulders. Or closing my eyes every so often, lifting my chin to feel the whisper of a breeze on my face. Whatever the descriptive details, by most measures, I’ve been doing nothing, and today, like yesterday, and the day before, has been quiet and uneventful.

And what a gift that is.

In this pandemic year, when for so many of us the days have blurred one into the next, in seeming perpetuity, sameness is not a quality that’s been held in high regard. But it has its virtues. Monotony may be boring, but it also signals that no change has come along that’s ripped a hole in the fabric of your life. Novelty in many forms is welcome, but sometimes no news really is good news. A series of uninterrupted ordinary days is, I think, an underappreciated blessing.

Sameness can be a gift in other ways. I’ve been painting a lot recently, and I like to work in an illustration style, a combination of black ink and watercolors. My preferred subjects are fantastical flowers, funny birdies, and (surprise) cats. When my mother recently passed along a plate I’d drawn for her for Mother’s Day in 1977, I was amused to see that my subject matter, if not my style, was established by the time I was seven. There was something strangely reassuring about that sameness. And now, when I paint, I’m drawn to repetitive pattern-making. It’s an immersive, meditative practice for me. The repetition of line and shape is calming, and I like to think that calm translates to the viewer’s experience, too.

Cats, birds, flowers, & butterflies in 1977

There’s not much else to report on today. I’ve sipped vanilla almond tea and written a few lines in my journal. I’ve listened to happy woofs and barks from the nearby dog park, and watched frisbee golfers fling brightly colored discs toward a hilltop of oaks and maples, their branches still winterbare. Kitty Charlie Kate joined me for a few minutes, sniffing the fresh air, turning her long white whiskers to the wind.

It’s a quiet day here on the porch. New adventures await tomorrow. Today I’m content to watch the shadows inch across the floorboards with the sun’s long arc, one slow minute at a time.

The Good Enough

March 20, 2021Sandee McGlaun

The renovation work on our porches and gutters is almost done. All that remains is a little touch-up painting, re-screening the upper back porch, and a final walk-through. We’re so, so close: a tweak here and there, and it would be perfect.

That’s how I feel about my recent CT scan. First, some context: I am a recovering perfectionist. Though I was not fully aware of it at the time, I spent much of my life laboring under the false belief that in order for people to like me, I had to be perfect. I thought I needed to say and do and wear the “right” thing for people to admire me and want to be my friend.

I don’t really know where I got this idea, or why it rooted so deeply. But it shaped me profoundly, as it made me afraid to try new activities–what if I were bad at something and other people saw?–and loathe to persist in anything I wasn’t immediately good at. Coupled with the social anxiety I suffered from (before we knew to formally designate it “social anxiety”), I lived much of my young life, outside of interactions with my immediate family and a few trusted friends, behind what I now see was a nearly impenetrable wall.

Perfection, of course, is neither obtainable nor desirable. My fears and my perfectionist tendencies achieved precisely the opposite of what I wanted–they kept me at arm’s length from people. Though borne of fear and insecurity, I’m sure my reserve came across as uptight and chilly, maybe even snobbish. By my mid-twenties, I’d begun to become aware of its deleterious effects, and my internal monologue started to shift: “If people only knew the real me behind the reserve….” But I’d spent two decades building that wall, and it would take many more years and lots of practice for me to learn how to let down my guard, to be vulnerable, to embrace trying the thing and failing, laughing at myself and trying again.

So, it’s an ongoing challenge to accept that “good enough” really is–because, sometimes, dang it, I still long for perfection. To wit: last Friday’s CT scan. In my fantasy report, the doctor would have said, “The cancer’s all gone! There’s no evidence of disease!” I knew that wouldn’t be the case, given the fact I’d had a biopsy of a lesion under my left arm a couple of weeks before that had come up positive for breast cancer. We knew, then, prior to the scan, that I still had some active disease. Overall, however, the CT revealed good news: a pleural effusion had diminished, and involved lymph nodes have continued to shrink. I have some additional “stranding” in the soft tissue of my left upper chest, but they think it’s fibrosis and lymphedema-related, rather than cancer. The scan indicates that Sasquatch is continuing to work, holding back any significant progression of disease “in a really big way,” as my oncologist phrased it.

A new spring wreath and fresh white pickets

You’ve heard the saying, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” and I think it applies here. Good news is good news, even if it’s not the miraculously perfect report I wished for. It takes some getting used to, learning to be happy and satisfied with the concept of “living with cancer,” rather than defining successful treatment only as that which results in being declared cancer-free.

Perfection implies the achievement of an ultimate state, a finality that is counter to our constant human striving. I think the builders are supposed to finish up the last bits of our porch reno this coming week. Then it will be time to order a new doormat, replace a couple of cushions, re-hang the windchimes, bring out some plants…. “There is,” as Dharmavidya David Brazier writes, “always something to get on with.” For that, however imperfect the getting on may be, I am grateful.

On Porches and Peril

January 15, 2021January 16, 2021Sandee McGlaun

Our front porch is currently under construction. We started with the knowledge we had some gutter issues, which had led to some issues with runoff, which had rotted a few isolated spots in the roof and the floorboards along the front railings. I’d hoped we’d just need a little gutter work, a few replacement boards, and some fresh paint, but that’s not how home renovations work.

We signed on for gutter repair and an entire porch floor replacement. That morphed into replacing all the joists supporting the floor too, since they were too far apart to meet code, and adding footers when the builders discovered there weren’t any. The rot in the porch roof, it turned out, was more extensive than anticipated, partly because there were some places in the metal that were completely rusted through, places someone who lived here before us had disguised by simply painting over them. The porch roof will have to be replaced as well.

So now we have a big hole in the ground outside our front door where our porch used to be. The builders are working diligently, but it’s going to be a lengthy process. By the time all is said and done, the only original parts of our porch will be the columns and the railing and its pickets.

The porch is our favorite room in our home. It’s what sold us–Steve in particular–on buying it. When we were house-hunting, we stopped by the empty house one spring afternoon and sat in the chairs the realtor had staged on the porch. Looking at the rolling hills and towering trees of the park that faced two sides of the house, we were smitten.

It’s unsettling to see it torn apart, even in the interest, ultimately, of repair. That’s how I feel about our government this week, too, and as often as not, it’s also how I feel about my own body in the course of treatment. It’s difficult sometimes to imagine what’s on the other side of destruction, even when that destruction isn’t unexpected; even when, as with chemo, it’s deliberate. You hope the discomforts and sacrifices will be worth it. Time will tell.

I’ve been around this block enough times to know that it will never be the same. However necessary the work, however skilled the reconstruction, something will be lost. For that, I grieve.

Meanwhile our days are underscored by banging, drilling, and occasionally, the soft shwush of a paintbrush’s bristles whitewashing wood. As winter slowly winds its way toward spring, I dream of warmer days, when the sounds of hammers will be replaced by the gentle creak of a porch swing, when calmer voices and haler cells might prevail, when sun-dappled shadows will dance across the painted boards once more.

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