Jennifer Spiegel - Cancer, Ill Give You One Year: A Non-Informative Guide to Breast Cancer: A Writers Memoir, in Almost Real Time

A Non-Informative Guide to Breast Cancer

A Writers Memoir,
in Almost Real Time

By
Jennifer Spiegel

An Introduction (Summer 2015 )

This is a book about writing.

Ive debated with myself over how much to tell, how much to hide. I dont want people to stare at my breasts, to contemplate their shape and size. I dont want pity. Most of all, I dont want the identity. I dont want it to take over. Who am I, after all? A woman? A wife? A mother? A creature? A person dying?

Im a writer, Im a writer, Im a writer, I keep insisting.

And insisting.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks?

Im just another writer / still trapped within my truth, sang Dan Hill in Sometimes When We Touch from 1977 A hesitant prize-fighter / still trapped within my youth.

At seven, when I first heard that, I knew: I was Just Another Writer Trapped Within My Truth.

This was my first assertion of personal identity.

Can you even imagine?

I Yam What I Yam, according to Popeye the Sailor Man.

But now: Am I too old for this shit? Should I just succumb to the newness, be like liquid that takes on the shape of its container, change color to suit my surroundings?

Is this, then, my new identity: cancerous, stricken, dying?

Rod Stewart once sang, You wear it well.

I wear stricken well, I guess. My friends have always given that little side-glance wink to each other when theyve seen me bubble over with enthusiasm at some zombie crap. Im attracted to stricken. Stricken flesh turned living dead. Im drawn to the zombie narrative. Stricken may be my secret second nature.

Timmy husband, my unlikely and tempestuous best friendinstantly balked at signs of my preoccupation with identity. In the beginning of our marriage, Ill bet he said, Who do you think you are?

That sounds like him, during those first few years.

He no longer asks it like this. It took us some time, but we finally settled into happy marriage. Now, he asksa tad playfullyAre you still on that thing?

Im contemplative now, under this disease paradigm, that thing : Is my identity with which Im so concerned something I choose, I construct, or I am given?

Sometimes, Im all defensive: Im a writer, no matter what you say.

Sometimes, Im in charge. I picked writer, and theres nothing you or anyone else can do about it.

Sometimes, others are in charge. Dont make me write about this disease. Dont make me do it, damn you.

Is identity so malleable? So dependent on circumstances and context? Must my identity be validated by other people to really be mine?

In other words, what determines who we are?

When I told Tim that my identity was at stake with this cancer thing, he dryly declared, As always, your identity crisis has to do with your writing.

Which is to say: How the fuck much longer are we going to go through this?

Until I drop dead, my love . Until Im fucking dead .

But now were adding my physicality (disease) to this identity equation, which has always been problematic for me (I mean, Sybil, the main character in my book Love Slave , has an eating disorder).

After all these years, I knew a few things about myself.

I knew, at least, I was a writer with boobs.

I HAD BOOBS.

My identity, for seemingly the billionth time, is in flux again.

Dont I get a choice here?

Must I embrace this cancer thing? Weave disease into my soul, turn it into prosemy own spun gold, a byproduct of a Rumpelstiltskin Affair? Extramarital, incidentally.

I dont want to be a cancer writer.

I want to write about other stuff.

Love, for instance.

I want to write about love.

I dont want to be the one who writes all about surviving cancer, or surviving cancer till I eventually die from cancer. I dont want to write about how I started eating healthy and I took control of my future and I stopped trusting doctors and went paleo or vegan or whatever-the-hell.

That is not the kind of writer I want to be.

So with this paranoia surrounding personal identity, am I acknowledging some weakness in me, some vulnerability to public opinion?

I think I am.

Yes, of course, cancer is now part of me, never to be ignored, butfluid, constructed, bestowed uponI see my own writerly palette, my own identity as writer, as larger than this crazy disease, which, like a kind of black smoke monster ( la Lost ), wants to take up the whole of me.

Maybe that is where a plea resides: Let my writerly palette be larger than this.

I want to write about humans doing human things.

Sadly, humans get cancer.

There is a plethora of books on my table, our new ad hoc disease control center: How to Tell Your Kids You May Die, What to Eat Now That You May Die, How to Love Your Spouse Now That He or She May Die, Five Million Things to Do Before Youll Probably Die . I havent picked up any of them.

I submit my body. I submit.

Not so my personal identity. Its still mine.

And here we go: I write.

Damn it, I write.

Appendix

Wendy

.Both girls were petting Jules, the cat. Wendy told Melody, One of us has to go away, and its you.

.When Wendy saw Bosco, our cat, shed call, Bosis! Bosis! Shed toddle after him and say, I wanna love him. Shed touch his back. I wanna be gentle. Shed ring her fingers around his tail. I wanna be quiet. I wanna be nice.

.Wendy heard me say to Bosco, Hes a good boy. Tim came into the room, and Wendy announced, Its Daddy. Hes a good boy.

.I asked Wendy, Whats your stuffed ostrichs name?
She answered, Duck.

.One day, something was floating in her lemonade. I asked, What is it?
She said, Maybe a booger.
I said, I doubt it.
Wendy responded, It must be a cucumber.

.She asked, Where does the poop go when you flush the toilet?
I told her about waste management facilities.
Wendy responded, Thats a busy adventure for the poop and pee.

.I gave Wendy a Popsicle, but Melody rejected hers.
Wendy scolded her. Its good, girl.

.Wendy explained to Melody, Girls dont snore. If you snore that means youre a daddy.

.Wendy asked me, Mommy, do you think Kermit likes The Muppet Show or Sesame Street better?

.I overheard Wendy saying, You know how were in the same house but in different neighborhoods?

.She said to me, You know what my favorite opposite is? The middle.

.Wendy asked her sister, Mooey, do you know what crowded means? It means very, very crowded.

.I overheard her say, Yesterday is another word for last night.

.She made up a song: Were always together when were with each other.

.Wendy said, When I look at food, I feel contagious.

.She put a piece of Kleenex on her head and said, Ahoy, matey!
Tim told me that once, in the car, she put a napkin on her head and said, Mercy me!

.I asked her, Whats that on your finger?
She answered, Nothing.
She paused. But its not a booger.

.Wendy asked, Mommy, why did you marry daddy? Was it because we needed a dad?

.Wendy called Cruella DeVille Cruella TeDilla .

.Wendy and Melody got sticks with horse heads to gallop around the house. When figuring out their names, Wendy said, Mine is Sweet Lover.

.She was pretending to talk on the phone. I heard her say, Thats all you got for me?