Lately, I’ve thought a lot about a conversation I had years
ago with a doctor where I worked. He was complaining about some change he didn’t
like, and I said something like, “Maybe it would help to think of this as one
of those opportunities to learn.”
He glanced at me sideways, and in his gentlemanly southern accent
drawled, “You know Carol, at this point in my life, I just don’t think I need
another opportunity to learn.”
As I learn to live with cancer, I can really relate.
A recent piece of advice I’m trying to follow is that you
can’t have cancer 24 hours a day. When I first heard that it didn’t make sense.
Slowly, it’s starting to sink in. I’m still the same happily married me, surrounded
by devoted family and supportive friends, a beach addict living in a shore town I
love, a writer, coach, and educator who is blessed to do work that fulfills me.
Cancer is just one part of me now—it only blots out the rest if I let it.
If you’ve read PEACE
BY PIECE, you know there’s a line where Maggie says, “I’ve never had a box
of 64 crayons.”
A reader recently told me that after reading that line, she
thinks Forrest Gump’s mother might have had it wrong. That instead of
chocolates, life is like a box of crayons—full of choices every day to pick the
color of our mood.
That feels a lot like another way of saying that I don’t
have to have cancer 24 hours a day—that cancer doesn’t have to tint my every
waking thought and attitude.
Years ago, after Jim read the line about 64 crayons in a very
early draft of PEACE BY PIECE, he bought
me a green and yellow box of 96 crayons—equipped with a built-in sharpener. For
over a dozen years, that box has sat on my desk reminding me of Jim’s unwavering
support. No one ever colors with my crayons, but browsing through the colors
often recharges my creative batteries.
And, now I have a new way of thinking about the 96 colors in
that box. As I learn to live with cancer—one day at a time, one color at a time—I
will try to focus on all the shades of gratitude that remind me I’m still me.
