{"id":2675,"date":"2020-06-01T07:35:31","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T11:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2675"},"modified":"2020-06-01T06:18:09","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T10:18:09","slug":"duetting-memoir-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/duetting-memoir-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Duetting: Memoir 18"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robin<\/a>Depression affects the immune system. To survive bad luck, boredom, painful procedures, endless blood transfusions, and long hospital confinements when it seemed everyone else was out dancing, I conjured up all sorts of distractions for my daughter. Part of my mission was to make something magical happen each day. So I pretended the hospital was our summer resort. The lobby was an esplanade, perfect for people-watching, with the prevailing aroma of roasted coffee, and a player-less piano trilling away. The information desk was our concierge, offering restaurant menus for takeout dinners. Complimentary prune juice cocktails and ice cream cups were always available from the unit kitchen, a few doors down from our somewhat-less-than elegantly appointed room.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you could makeover this room, what color would you paint it?\u201d I asked, wanting to draw Marika into my fantasy. She rolled her eyes at another of my stupid questions.<\/span>
\n\u201cOrange,\u201d she grunted.<\/span>
\n\u201cWhat about the floor? Orange too?\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cCarpet.\u201d Then she added, \u201cAnd I\u2019d make this a double bed with a real mattress.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cI\u2019d put a fridge in over there,\u201d I said, grateful to get her engaged.<\/span>
\n\u201cYeah, and a bar. I could use a martini.\u201d Speechless, I looked at my just-turned eighteen-year-old daughter and wondered how many martinis she\u2019d had.<\/span><\/p>\n

When allowed off the unit, we escaped to the meditation room with its cool blue-green lights and crocheted blankets that hugged two stuffed chairs. I wheeled her to an indoor courtyard near the far-off dentistry wing. We roamed the endless hallways, searching for the chapel in the depths of the massive Strong. We tiptoed to the newborn babies\u2019 window and peeked through the slats of drawn blinds to watch the tiny wrapped bundles wriggling or peacefully still.<\/span>
\n\u201cYou were the most beautiful baby, Mareek.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cI know,\u201d she said, engrossed in the newborns.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are they?\u201d She growled impatiently. We were stranded in the radiation department, waiting for the transport team to take us back to the room.<\/span>
\n\u201cOkay, it\u2019s been over ten minutes. I\u2019m kidnapping you. Hold onto your hat,\u201d I said, whirling her wheelchair around.<\/span>
\n\u201cMom! Whoa, what are you doing?\u201d she sputtered as we zigzagged wildly down the hall. \u201cDo you know where you\u2019re going?\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cNo, but I bet I can get us back by lunchtime,\u201d I said, surprising myself by my desperation to stave off negativity and the ensuing insults to Marika\u2019s meager immune system. On the way to the room, we meandered through the fourth floor pediatric hall where the walls were painted in bold colors and plastered with distorting mirrors and protruding animal sculptures that begged to be interacted with. Then we were at the door to the Ronald MacDonald rooftop playground. It was deserted so we sat outside in the middle of the chain-link fenced-in yard, four floors up. From my backpack, I removed two tiny containers I\u2019d carried around for days for just this opportunity. We blew filmy, fragile bubbles that flew off into the wind.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShould I fetch cooked sushi for dinner tonight?\u201d I asked in between bubbles.<\/span>
\n\u201cI want steak,\u201d she said, adding \u201cfor lunch.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cWell, if I get lunch take-outs we\u2019ll have to eat hospital food for dinner,\u201d I reminded her. That was our deal: eat hospital food for breakfast and lunch, eat well for dinner. \u201cBut,\u201d I offered, \u201cI might be talked into sharing a frozen latte from the lobby after a hospital lunch.\u201d She scrunched up her face and declared,<\/span>
\n\u201cDouble iced mocha with chocolate ice cream. I want my own.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cDeal. Do you think we\u2019re locked out?\u201d I asked, nodding toward the door that had closed behind us when we went outside, a last-ditch effort to throw in some further intrigue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Friends were the best diversion. They occasionally made the two-hour trip from Ithaca to Rochester. Cassie, Carla, Shoshana, Golda, Jeff, Julie, Lamarr, Rachel, and more. Cassie brought an enormous stuffed dog. Carla brought Silviana. Julie always climbed into bed with Marika. There was lots of pizza and Chinese food. And laughter. I left the room most of the time when her friends came. But not before I scanned them for signs of pinkeye or colds.<\/span><\/p>\n

As it got closer to college orientation, the visits died down. Except for Rachel.<\/span>
\n\u201cHow\u2019s she doin\u2019?\u201d Rachel asked from Ithaca, ninety miles away.<\/span>
\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s funny you should pick this moment to call. She\u2019s in radiation right now. She had a high fever last night and we\u2019re waiting to see\u2026\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cWell tell her to cool down,\u201d she said, \u201cand tell her I miss her.\u201d They called each other \u201cWifey.\u201d Rachel, a year older, had recently passed her Emergency Medical Technician training. When not in college, she worked for a local ambulance company. I felt totally comfortable sharing the details of Marika\u2019s condition with her. Especially since she always found us, whenever Marika\u2019s health crashed, wherever we landed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several times a day, I rubbed Marika\u2019s feet. She didn\u2019t like asking.<\/span>
\n\u201cMom.\u201d She would shamelessly wave a foot in my face and frown pathetically. Foot rub.<\/span>
\n\u201cHow do you do that with your mouth?\u201d I asked, trying to mimic her pout. \u201cIt has to be a short one. I have to write a paper for my class.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you pull the cancer card?\u201d she yawned.<\/span>
\n\u201cWhat cancer card? What\u2019s a cancer card?\u201d I asked. She smiled with closed eyes, and wiggled her toes in anticipation of the foot-rub.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cJust tell your teacher your daughter has cancer, Mom. Then you won\u2019t have to work so hard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Marika never had to do much to get me to rub her feet; it was the only time now, other than grasping hands when she got shots, I could touch her. So I rubbed her feet when I was nervous, when she was tired, after breakfast, before bedtime. It was a dance of my hands over her soles, a meditative prayer tracing around her ankle bracelet, holding her heels, pulling gently on each of her painted toes. My thumbs lightly pressed butterfly-indentations over the balls of her feet. And finally, I\u2019d slip-slide my palms along the curves of her arches, massaging those sweet feet over and over as though I could knead the cancer out. On hearing bad news, I\u2019d grab her feet. It was my way of hugging her.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Depression affects the immune system. To survive bad luck, boredom, painful procedures, endless blood transfusions, and long hospital confinements when it seemed everyone else was out dancing, I conjured up all sorts of distractions for my daughter. Part of my mission was to make something magical happen each day. So I pretended the hospital was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1998],"tags":[2071,1023,2074,10,2049,890,2059,2056],"class_list":["post-2675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1998","tag-cancer-companion","tag-caregiving","tag-duetting-memoir-18","tag-leukemia","tag-mother-daughter-relations","tag-motherhood","tag-teen-cancer","tag-young-cancer"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}