New Family

Grandma was never the same after Mom died.  The light simply vanished from her eyes.

In 1982, three years after Mom's death, Deb and Brian were married, and Grandma, afflicted with heart trouble and diabetes, couldn't make the trip for the wedding.  I promised to bring my little brothers Tom and Jeff to visit the very next weekend.

"We'll bring pictures of the wedding," I assured her.

I was shocked when she answered the door.  Grandma lived in Beatrice, three hours away, and in the two months since we'd seen her, she'd grown thin and gaunt.  But she grabbed us close to her with the same old vigor.  Grandma was always the best hugger in the world.

"Dearies," she cupped the faces of of Tom and Jeff, who were 13 and 11 at the time, as they nestled against her.

"Grandma!" I couldn't believe my eyes. "Did you pierce your ears?"

She covered her ears self-consciously, then looked me straight in the eye.  "Why not?  I'm 75, and I'll pierce my ears if I want to."

I laughed and threw my arms around her.  "You look like a teenager!"

It was a glorious afternoon.  We went through every picture and told her all about Deb's wedding - how Dad's tux was too short in the arms and about how Uncle Carl, who decorated the church, had us all out at the river gathering greenery for the altar.  It wasn't until Deb and Brian were ready to exchange vows that an alert groomsman observed a problem with the green foliage Uncle Carl had so carefully placed on either side of the altar.

"It was marijuana," Tom informed our grandmother.

Grandma exploded with her deep rich laughter, wiping the tears from her eyes with the perennial tissue tucked in her sleeve.

When Tom and Jeff ran outdoors to play, Grandma and I settled down to talk around her low kitchen table.  We'd discussed to death all manner of things over that table - family events, soap operas and books.  She was pensive this particular afternoon, however.

"Do you believe old grieving people ever hallucinate?" she asked suddenly.

"Well," I said carefully, "I don't believe YOU'VE ever hallucinated, if that's what you're asking."

She stared down at her lap.  "Something happened the other day, and I don't want you to think I'm crazy."

I gripped her hand.  "You're not crazy.  What happened?"

She looked up at me.  "I saw Patti."

I sat very still.  The ticking of Grandma's cuckoo clock all at once seemed too loud.  "You saw Mom?"

She sighed and sat back.  "I was sitting in my recliner, and the birds were singing.  I was so low, and I thought, how can those damn birds sing when Patti's gone?"  Her eyes filled, and her lower lip trembled.  "Then a column of light came through the ceiling right down to the floor, and your mother stepped out from behind it."

I couldn't blink let alone breathe.  Grandma described perfectly the gown my mother wore with a rope belt around the waist.  Her beautiful hair was golden and swept over to one side. 

"Did she say anything?"

Grandma shook her head.  "She only held out her hands to me and smiled so radiantly.  Then she stepped behind the column of light, and it all went back up through the ceiling."

I sank back against the chair.  "I believe you.  I do.  Mom understood how much you needed her."

Grandma smiled through her tears, grateful, and we reached for each other.

"I love you so much, Grandma," I sobbed.

"I love you, too, Dearie."

That evening, both of us recovered, Grandma made our favorite macaroni and cheese from her own special recipe.  Jeff wolfed down the macaroni but skirted carefully around his vegetables.

"Eat your peas, Jeff," I nagged.

Sighing hugely, he picked up his fork and glared mutinously at the vegetables until Grandma pulled him over on her lap and whispered into his ear.

"Grandma," I was irritated.  "I know you just told him he didn't have to eat."

Two pairs of guilty eyes stared up at me, and I laughed helplessly.

It would be the last meal Grandma ever made for us. 

That very night, she died peacefully in her sleep.  When I checked on her the next morning, she was already gone, sleeping on her side with her hands tucked under her cheek and smiling sweetly.

I never shed a single tear for my grandma.  More than any thing in the world, she longed to be with my mother and my Grandpa Al who'd passed 18 years before.  I could only be happy for her.

But my brothers and sisters and I missed her so much. 

Grandma's remaining sister and brother eventually died, too, and it suddenly struck me that nobody from Mom's family was left to us.  I vaguely remembered meeting a couple of Mom's cousins when we were kids, but I could only recall their first names, Carol and Shirley.  Desperate to find them, I searched the internet and even paid for a membership to ancestors.com.  It was all a fruitless effort, and sadly, I gave up the search.

Then last month, the OMAHA WORLD HERALD published a story about the prophylactic mastectomies my sisters and I had elected to undergo.  On the afternoon of the day the story appeared, I received a phone call.

"Cathy?" a pleasant voice on the other end inquired.  "My sister saw the article today.  My name is Carol, and I'm your mother Patti's cousin."

After 30 years, it was a single newspaper article that brought our mother's family to us.  My siblings and I were over the moon with excitement.

Last Thursday, four of my big handsome brothers - Mick, Rick, Tom and Jeff- and my sisters and I arrived at Carol's house in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Her sister Shirley, a tall stately woman so like our grandmother, answered the door and enveloped us in a hug.  Carol, just behind Shirley, was shorter with striking blue eyes and a warm welcoming smile. 

"We're so glad you're here!" her wonderful voice greeted us.

It was an afternoon none of us would ever forget.  We couldn't stop staring at those two attractive ladies, both in their 70's.

"You have Grandma's hands!" I marveled.

"You even smell like Grandma," Deb said shyly to Shirley.

While they asked us about our families and set us at ease, we drank in the sight of them.

Reinder, Carol's husband, invited us into the kitchen for drinks, and soon, we were all huddled around the dining room table talking our heads off just as we used to around Grandma's table as if we'd known each other forever.  We found out all about their children, and miraculously, Terri and Shirley's son already knew each other.

"Before I saw your names in the article," Shirley was telling us, "I saw Terri's picture and thought, 'Why, she looks exactly like my cousin Patti!' "

We shook our heads in amazement.

"It was all meant to be," Carol beamed around the table at us.

All too soon, it was time to leave.  But rising from the table, we promised each other we'd gather again this summer for a pot luck family reunion to meet Carol and Shirley's families and Cousin Mabel, the 90-year-old keeper of the family records.

Our time around the table with our two beautiful cousins was a divine gift, pure and simple.  Mom and Grandma felt very close.  I could almost see them leaning in close to catch every word.

Grandma once told me about a beautiful morning around her own kitchen table many years ago.  Grandpa was still living, and Mom was in grammar school.  The three of them sat with the aroma of good coffee and sizzling bacon filling the morning air, and Mom was chattering a mile a minute about her exciting school day ahead.

Grandma remembered that Grandpa looked up at her with a kind of piercing joy.  "Heaven can't be better than this," he said.

I think of the three of them together again. 

Today is April 17th, the anniversary of Mom's death, and it seems no coincidence at all that this would be the week we found her family.

I hope the heavenly table Grandpa imagined all those years ago is every thing he hoped for.  And I hope someday we'll all be sitting around it together again, along with Dad and all the people we love most in this old world, to laugh and talk and love and remember to our hearts' content.

Happy anniversary, Mom.

Race for Grace

Deb's oldest daughter Nikki turned 27 last week.

"I hate that I'm 27," she moaned to Deb.

And I hate it for her.  This is the year she will schedule her first mammogram.

The mother of two young sons, Nikki is completely on her own and making her own decisions.  But Deb made this one for her.  She is insistent about Nikki's first mammogram.  And when Deb makes up her mind, there's no budging her.

"I'll go with you," she promised my frightened niece.  "But you have to do this, Nik.  We can't afford to take any more chances."

I have 18 nieces who can't afford to take any chances.  My great-grandmother died of breast cancer when she was 36 years old.  In our family, three generations have been ravaged by this disease, and my sisters are determined it won't wrap its insidious fingers around a fourth.

But it's tricky.  No apparent breast cancer gene has been identified in our family.  We only know that our susceptibility is great.  So how can we determine who's safe and who's not?  My 18 nieces are all uniquely beautiful, and it pains me to think of what's ahead.  Are we a family of women destined forever to remove our breasts to prevent this disease from killing us?

It's easy to get trapped in a pocket of despair when you're trying to predict the future.  Fortunately for me, today was the Race for Grace.

Co-founded by two special friends, Lisa Willman and Julie Pfeifer, GRACE (Grand Island Area Cancer Endowment) raises hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for those in our community who are stricken by cancer.  Lisa and Julie, both breast cancer survivors, are the backbone of the foundation. 

You'd never guess the steely resolve that hides behind the beautiful smiles of my two young friends.  In spite of their youth, Lisa and Julie have fought their own dragons and won - both have reached the all important five-year benchmark.  Now they're determined to help their community.

The first annual Race for Grace started early this morning in downtown Grand Island.  More than 600 runners and walkers registered for the event, all of them commemorating their loved ones lost to cancer or fighting cancer with thousands of pink butterflies lining the route.

Deb and I volunteered to help.

"We need people to direct traffic!" coordinator Laura Dexter, our tall, joyful friend, coaxed us.

Julie and Lisa greeted and thanked us with a hug, and Deb and I saw dozens of people we knew helping with the race.  Spearheading the event were the Wenzl siblings - Angie, Kim and Leonard, all of them veteran runners whom I taught.  Dorene Spies, a human dynamo if there ever was one, was helping Laura register the scores of volunteers while her husband Michael donned an orange vest to direct traffic and her good son Dillon offered himself up as a teenage gopher.  Our school secretary Pam Fruin was there, and even our parish pastor Father Todd Philipsen volunteered to help.  They were only a few of many.  And all because of two lovely women who have made it their mission to fight cancer.

Deb and I drove to our post on a busy Blaine Street to direct traffic and encourage racers.

"How's this?" Deb joked, waving imaginary traffic through with her best Deputy Barney Fife impersonation.

But when the hundreds of runners and walkers first turned the corner and filled the street making their way to our intersection, Deb and I stared in awe.

"Thanks for volunteering!" many of them called out to us, laboring hard after reaching the four mile mark.

"High Five, Mrs. Howard!" a former student ran by, raising his hand.

To the last walker, they were inspirational, and Deb and I were choked up.  All of them were racing for a cause, especially one determined runner - Kim Willman, Lisa's husband.

Biking behind the very last walker, Terry Pfeifer, Julie's husband, made sure every walker and runner made it safely to the finish line.  "Thank you, Ladies!" he smiled warmly.

It's impossible to give into despair when you witness 600 runners and almost as many volunteers uniting for a common cause.  They fill me with hope.  The Race for Grace helps me to believe any thing is possible. Even a cure.

Lisa Willman and Julie Pfeifer are fighting for a community.  But they're also fighting for their daughters.  Lisa's doing every thing in her power to protect Daryn, Kamryn and Lauryn, and Julie's fighting for Lyndie and Natalie.  Their courage speaks to all of us - husbands, children and friends.  If they can believe and battle so hard for an end to cancer, so can we.

This year, my niece Nikki will have her first mammogram.  Deb will be by her side.  Nikki doesn't yet realize what a blessing it is to have her strong mother accompanying her to her first mammogram. But my sisters and I know.  Mom couldn't be with us.

So we're making progress.  And one day, perhaps each of my 18 beautiful nieces will make a life-changing appointment to visit her doctor's office for a breast cancer vaccination that will protect her for the rest of her life.

This spring, there are a million little communities all over the world running their own races - for their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and kids.

Someday, we'll find the cure.  We'll find it because of people like my good friends Lisa Willman and Julie Pfeifer, two young women who inspire a small community to do great things.

Cleaning Houses

Thank God Deb has her new boobs.

Before Dr. Montag inserted the soft new implants into her chest last Monday, Deb frankly was developing a fixation.

"Feel how hard my expanders are," she’d grab my hand and put it over her chest. "Have I made you feel that before?"

I snatched my hand away. "Only about a million times," I snapped.

We’re all so relieved Deb’s expanders are out and the implants are in. Maybe now she’ll quit slapping people's hands on her boobs.

Two down, two to go. Terri’s healing well and delighted with her new chest. Deb’s a little sore and still resting at home. Nobody misses Deb right now more than Mary, who’s carrying on their joint housecleaning business alone while Deb recovers.

Years ago, when Deb and Mary were still working full time for my dad and brother at the family travel agency, Deb yearned to spend more time with her daughter Sydney, who was just a baby. When she discovered she could earn just as much money cleaning houses for half a day, she struck out on her own and slowly built a steady list of customers. Mary, who’s always been close to Deb, decided to get in on the act as well.

"We’ll clean for two years," Deb persuaded Mary. After all, housecleaning is hard work. But two years turned into 11 years, and they’re still at it. They never bargained for the attachments they’d develop with their clients.

Frank and Esther were a sweet couple in their 90's when my sisters worked for them. Occasionally, Esther would sneak Deb back to her bedroom, out of Frank’s hearing, and show her the creased old photo she’d hidden in her underwear drawer

"Oh, Frank would be livid if he knew how much this boy used to mean to me," Esther confided. "But I had to quit him," she shook her head sadly, gazing at the photo.

"Quit him?" Deb was puzzled.

"Oh yes, honey, he was no good. I had to quit him."

After Frank died, Esther, who’d never had any children, was moved to a nursing home where Deb and Mary visited her faithfully.

"Don’t leave me!" Esther would cry pathetically when visiting hours were over. It was almost more than my sisters could bear, but they visited her faithfully until the end.

Carl is their very favorite client. An 86-year-old joyful Bostonian, he’s tried valiantly to expose Deb and Mary to the finer things in life. Lonely after the loss of his invalid wife, Carl would invite my sisters to stay after they’d completed their housecleaning duties to enjoy a glass of beer and a plate of sharp imported cheese. Then he gave them dance lessons. Pulling out some ancient record albums, he attempted to teach Deb and Mary the two-step, the waltz, and the polka.

"For God’s sake, stop bouncing!" he’d scold Mary as he tried to awkwardly twirl her around his living room. "You gotta feel it! Smooth it out!"

When Mary was gone for a month recuperating from her double mastectomy, Carl decided it was time to give his undivided attention to Deb. "You look like you could sing," he eyed Deb doubtfully. " I’m giving you voice lessons!" he pronounced.

No amount of protesting on Deb’s part could sway Carl.

"Stand tall!" he ordered. "Now begin." Conducting with his finger, he guided a red-faced Deb painfully through the scales.

"Do, re, mi, fa..." she trilled flatly.

God bless Carl. I’ve listened to Deb sing with enthusiastic gusto in church, and a rabid goat has more musical ability. The girl can’t carry a tune to save her life. Apparently, Carl must have arrived at the same conclusion. After the first lesson, he never broached the subject of voice lessons again.

Mike and Bonna are Deb and Mary’s other long time clients. Mike, a pharmacist, always departs from his house with a friendly offering. "I’m leaving, Girls!" he calls out to my sisters. "Help yourself to a beer while I’m gone!" he jokes.

One morning, not long after he left, Deb and Mary heard the garage door a short time later signaling that Mike had returned. They quickly nabbed a couple of bottles from the wine rack.

"Girls!" Mike shouted, as he entered the front door. "I’m back!" Hearing no response, he walked into the living room to see Deb and Mary apparently passed out on his living room sofa, each with a bottle of wine cradled in her lap.

"Oh, that’s clever," he chuckled. "Very clever."

Even if nobody else enjoys their sick humor, my sisters enjoy it enough for everybody.

There isn’t much Deb and Mary wouldn’t do for their customers. Tom and Kim, their biggest clients, employ my sisters three times a week. Deb and Mary are familiar with every inch of their enormous home and are even friends with the pets - two huge dogs and a beautiful show cat named Willow.

The dogs are free to roam in and out, but Willow is strictly an indoor cat. One day, while Deb and Mary cleaned, their employer Kim, who was feeling under the weather, spent the day in her room. Deb and Mary were polishing the windows overlooking the courtyard in the front of the house when Deb gasped. "Oh no, Mary! Willow’s out."

My sisters stared in horror at the beautiful cat casually lounging on the hot driveway in the morning sun. Deb and Mary, neither of whom cares for cats, sneaked quietly out the front door.

"C’mere, Willow!" Deb called softly. "Come inside, Kitty!"

Willow was indifferent. However, when Deb and Mary crept nearer, her head shot up, alert and suspicious. Just before my sisters could grab her, she darted away. Deb and Mary spent the better part of an hour trying to lure Willow back into the house. But when the cat leapt into a tall tree in the backyard, they desperately enlisted the help of the gardener, who fortunately possessed a long extension ladder.

"I’ll get a can of tuna!" Deb called over her shoulder, as the sympathetic gardener tried in vain to reach for the agitated Willow.

The tuna did the trick. As soon as Willow inched close enough to the tantalizing aroma of fish, the gardener grabbed her and deposited her safely into Mary’s arms.

"I’d better go to Kim and explain," Mary headed nervously off to the door with Willow. "With any luck, maybe she’ll think we’re all heroes."

Deb, the big coward, elected to stay behind as Mary bravely carried Willow through their employer’s bedroom door.

"Kim," Mary knocked, " I hope you weren’t worried..."

She stopped in mid-sentence. Next to Kim on the big king-sized bed was another Willow meticulously grooming herself beside her doting mistress. Mary’s boss looked up, confused.

"What are you doing with the neighbor’s cat?"

Mary stared at the cat on the bed, then at the cat in her arms, and back to the cat on the bed. Then she maneuvered herself silently out the door.

She and Deb laughed so hard, they couldn’t stand up.

They’ve always had fun, my crazy sisters.

I thought about that not long ago after Mary’s surgery for her double mastectomy. Deb and I crept into her hospital room to visit her. She was sleeping peacefully under the effects of anesthesia. Deb gently nudged her awake, and the look on Mary’s face when she first recognized Deb said it all. Her smile was radiant, and she gazed at Deb with such love that I couldn’t swallow for a minute.

It occurred to me in that moment just how close Deb and Mary had become as they grew up with each other as teenagers and lost Mom. During those difficult years, they cared for our younger siblings, and their own carefree youth was lost forever.

The two of them, so close in age, mothered each other and cried with each other. But they laughed with each other, too. Through good times and bad, they’ve been boon companions.

I couldn’t ask for two more wonderful sisters, and I’m glad to know I’ll have them both around for a long time to come. They may not be able to sing or dance or even tell one feline from another.

But they’re the best sisters you could ever ask for.

The Cruelest Month

Only last Tuesday, John and I swayed on our porch swing yukking it up with our next door neighbor, Mike Sperry, in the warm evening twilight.

Today it's snowing.  And April is only days away.

"It's the cruelest month of all," John reminds me.

Spring is always bittersweet.  On a beautiful day when the birds are chirping madly and the tulips are poking through to the sunshine, my siblings and I think of our parents.  Mom died in April, and Dad in May.  For us, the beauty of spring will forever be associated with those very painful losses in our lives.  The cold falling snow seems more fitting somehow.

For the first time, I will not be scheduling my mammogram for April 1st.  No more mammograms.  Ever.  The relief is sweet, but the guilt is terrible. Mom would be the sacrificial lamb.  She would die, and my sisters and I would live.

Sitting in Arby's together, right after Terri made the monumental decision to undergo a double mastectomy last July, my little sister cried in anguish.  "I keep thinking of Mom," Terri wept.

If ever a family was in denial, it was our family.  While Mom lay in agonizing pain those last few weeks of her life, we refused to believe she wouldn't get better.  Even Dad and Grandma, who were old enough to know better, shut their eyes to the awful truth.  At 23, I was old enough to know better, too.

"Why can't I just die?" my mother moaned one day in helpless defeat.

"Don't say that, Mom!" I begged.  And she didn't - ever again.  Silent and miserable, she sadly acknowledged her family's denial.

Breast cancer wasn't talked about in the 70's, and if Hospice existed, we weren't aware of it.  So Mom writhed in her lonely bed day after day without a single family member or friend to confide to.  Instead, we rubbed her sore back, urged her to walk, and plied her with pain pills.

On Easter Sunday, two days before she died, she opened her eyes and asked us all as innocently as a little child, "Am I going to die?"  We couldn't speak. 

It was only when our good pastor, Father Harry Kurtenbach, leaned over Mom in her hospital bed to ask, "Are you afraid to die, Patti?" that the awful silence was broken at last.

"No," she sighed, her head sinking back to gaze at Father Harry in loving gratitude.

When we were older and facing the fear of breast cancer ourselves, my sisters and I began to intimately understand our mother's agony.  I was so frightened as I was wheeled into surgery for my first breast biopsy.  Just before the anesthesiologist put me under, I thought of Mom.  Only 20 years earlier, she'd been in my place.  But she would wake up from her biopsy without a breast.  That's the way it was done in 1976.  I never felt closer to my mother than I did in that single moment before surgery.

"I love you, Mom."  It was a piercing, silent prayer in the middle of the orchestration of the operating room..  Suddenly, a power surge sent every single light buzzing into high beam all around me.

"Whoa!" a masked nurse exclaimed, raising her eyes and arms in wonder.  "And let there be light!"

That Mom was beside me, I had no doubt.  Her nearness was the last comforting thought I was aware of before the nurse woke me an hour later to inform me that the lump was benign.

My sisters and I, several years ago, made two pacts with each other.  First, if any of us would end up lying in a coma, it would be the responsibililty of the others to sneak into our hospital room and remove any embarrassing facial hair.  Second, we promised each other that if we're ever dying of breast cancer, we'll talk.  No more denial.

"If I could go back to 1979," Deb said once, "I'd hug Mom until she was sick of me.  I'd sit by her bedside and talk to her and hold her hand and stroke her hair," she breathed, "and I would tell her how much she was loved."

Our greatest sorrow is that Mom never knew our spouses and her grandchildren.  I especially wish she could have known my mother-in-law, Ruth Howard.  She's the quintessential grandmother with her snowy white hair and rosy cheeks.  The mother of seven children herself, she would have gotten along like a ball of fire with Mom.  I can see them now, swapping stories about the hazards of raising a million kids.

Ruth would tell Mom about the time  her 12-year-old Tom secretly dug tunnels underneath the dirt in their Colorado farmyard.  One day, the tractor my father-in-law was driving was all but swallowed up in the ground when the weight of it sank through Tom's extensive tunnel system.

"Ruth!" my outraged father-in-law roared from the seat of his sunken tractor.  "Get Tom out here NOW!"

Mom would tell Ruth about the time my little brother Joe played with Dad's lighter and accidentally set the bed on fire while he was supposed to be taking a nap. 

And the two of them would laugh until they cried.

I'm lucky to have a mother-in-law like Ruth Howard.  In spite of the many troubles that plague her in her own life, she always views the world with fresh optimism.  After a stroke and a broken hip limited her busy world to her own modest home, she nevertheless found comfort from her countless books and her passionate love for her two favorite sports teams - the Denver Nuggets and the Denver Broncos.

"Sometimes I just have to walk away from the t.v.," she shudders to my husband, also a devoted member of the Bronco faithful.  "That Tim Tebow's trying to kill me."

The loss of John's father almost 15 years ago was a bitter pill to swallow.  Ruth soldiered on, however, and was determined to enjoy life and her children and grandchildren.  But when complications from diabetes threatened her independent life style, she reluctantly listened to her good children, who feared for her life, and moved into an assisted living facility.

She still watches the Broncos every Sunday afternoon in the fall.  And her 86-year-old zest for life is a good lesson for somebody like me who can sometimes let spring melancholia weigh her down. "Things always work out!" Ruth exclaims, as she eases back into her recliner to cheer on her beloved Broncos.  "But that John Fox better pull those players together, or we're all in big trouble. What is Tebow DOING?"

Ruth Howard teaches me that life is an extraordinary journey, whether in Heaven or on Earth, and that even during the cruelest month of the year, it's important to look forward to a few surprises. 

Who knows?  Her oldest grandson might just bring his beautiful girlfriend to dinner at the nursing home.  Or perhaps her gorgeous granddaughter Emily might swing by with her flock of laughing college friends.  And, what the heck.  Maybe the Broncos will even win a Super Bowl next year.

But even my mother-in-law isn't that optimistic.

Cats and Kids

It’s hard to feel feminine when you’ve got pecs like Conan the Barbarian.

I am now in the middle of what Deb calls the "Body Builder Phase" of breast reconstruction. And it’s not pretty. Inserted beneath the muscles of my chest, plastic expanders are hard as rock. I could run, jump or turn cartwheels, and these babies wouldn’t budge.

Every Friday, Dr. Montag, our plastic surgeon, and Erin, the perky P.A., stride into the examination room with handfuls of syringes the size of small bayonets and fill the expanders on either side of our chests. And every week, our chests swell out a little bigger. If only the swelling made us look like we had real breasts instead of like Arnold Schwarzenegger taking a deep breath.

Mary has finished her first three fills, and Deb’s expanders are completely full. She can hardly wait for her last surgery just a week from now. That’s when the expanders will come out and the soft, comfortable implants, which actually do resemble female breasts, will go in.

These last weeks of reconstruction are a little like being nine months pregnant. You’re swollen, uncomfortable and miserable, and you want the damn things out. But witnessing Terri’s transformation helps us to feel that the months of discomfort will surely be worth it. In the meantime, however, reconstruction is an uncomfortable process from beginning to end and results in aching muscles and sleepless nights.

The best way to get through it is to own a nocturnal animal - say a possum, a raccoon, or a ferret. A cat will also do. Willy has spent every night beside me on the bed, the couch, the recliner or the floor. He’s a mangy, dirty, old coon cat, and I couldn’t have survived these last few months without him.

I didn’t even know I liked cats until Willy and Blackie came into our lives. We adopted six-week-old Willy with his ears as big as spatulas from our next door neighbor, and we discovered a baby Blackie starving in the streets. I was strictly a dog person. When I took our two new kittens in for their first shots, I remember filling out a form in the vet’s office.

"In the event your pet suffers from a medical emergency, would you prefer this office did or did not employ life saving measures to save your pet?"

Snorting, I checked the "no" box. This was a cat, not my mother-in-law.

Five years later, Willy, who can’t tell the difference between a mouse and a crescent wrench, ate a bottle cap and nearly died.

"It’s lodged right here in his colon," the veterinarian showed me on the X-ray, as I struggled not to weep over my half dead cat lying listlessly on the exam table. My son Tommy stood beside me listening intently. "He’s not able to pass it on his own," the vet informed us, "and the only way to remove it is surgically."

I swallowed. "And how much would an operation like that cost?"

The vet cleared his throat. "Close to a thousand dollars."

I stared at him, speechless.

"Mom!" Tommy nudged me when I didn’t speak.

"Okay, okay," I coughed. "We’d better do it."

I’m so glad I did. Willy is 11-years-old now. He’s a moody, filthy, unfriendly feline - to everybody except me. His devotion is the only reason I love him. There are no other reasons. Willy, unlike Blackie who spends hours grooming herself, never even bothers to lick the Fancy Feast tuna blend off his whiskers. And other than the golf ball sized mats he occasionally rips out of his fur in frustration to spit out in the middle of the living room carpet, he’s never once made a single attempt to clean himself.

But he loves me.

Blackie, on the other hand, belongs completely to my husband. As soon as John sits down to read the paper, she leaps onto his lap and nuzzles the five o’clock shadow on his chin, adoringly claiming him as her own. John strokes her, croons to her and loves her like the daughter he never had. Then she drops on his chest lounging on her side like the Queen of Sheba to regard me cooly across the room. I am the "other woman." But she knows full well I’m no serious competition for the likes of her.

While Blackie slumbers all night by John, Willy follows me through the house during the wee hours of the morning as I wakefully struggle to accommodate my ever expanding chest muscles. I have no illusions about Willy’s loyalty, however. Our relationship is strictly about what’s in it for him. If an axe murderer broke into our house and threatened to hack me into a thousand pieces, Willy would scamper under the bed and hide until the whole sordid episode was over.

What he wants from me is attention, pure and simple.

It turns out the kids at school are no different. The first day I returned to school after my double mastectomy, my students were polite and concerned.

For about 15 minutes.

Stealing furtive glances at my boobless chest, they at last satisfied their curiosity. Then it was back to business as usual, much to my relief. Except for one little sixth grade boy who fixed his gaze on me with solemn, tear-filled eyes. He was still worried about me, I knew, and I resolved to speak to him away from prying eyes as soon as the bell rang.

I had just assigned the kids homework and had settled down to grade papers when I looked up to see the sad little boy standing silently by my desk.

"Well," he sighed tremulously, "I guess you forgot."

I blinked. "What?"

"My birthday," his lip quivered. "It was January 16^th, and you left and forgot about it."

So much for his deep concern for my health.

"I’m so sorry," I grasped his arm. "Why didn’t you tell me?"

"I did. I told you the first day of school, and you said you’d write it down so you wouldn’t forget."

I shuffled through my planner, and sure enough, there it was plain as day. "M’s b-day." I felt like a heel.

"You know what? Go get that hula skirt off the shelf," I said.

The smile that blazed across his small face was like a shaft of sunlight cutting through the storm clouds.

The hula dance is a time honored tradition in my English class. Every student dons a grass skirt and sways in front of the entire class to our own special brand of background singing.

"And maybe," he suggested hopefully, "we could play Heads Up, Seven Up the last five minutes?"

I pretended to be mad. "Don’t push your luck." We grinned at each other.

I watched him dance his hula with the practiced precision of a New York Rockette. It was clear he’d rehearsed many times in front of his own mirror at home.

And I’d forgotten his birthday.

Cats and kids. Their needs are simple. They require only that you regard them as the center of your universe. They want you to remember their birthdays, laugh at their jokes, and occasionally scratch them behind the ears. Most importantly, they crave the security of a routine with a hula dance thrown in for good measure.

It occurred to me that not once during my first day back at school had I been aware of the soreness in my chest. There wasn’t a single opportunity to think about it.

It should be sad, really, that after a grueling surgery that’s changed my life forever, the cats and the kids in my life utterly and completely take me for granted. But instead, it’s oddly flattering.

What my cat Willy and those 165 kids I teach every day are telling me is, "We know you’ll always be here."

And I’m happy I get to be here.

Then there’s our other cat Blackie.
If she could speak, she’d tell me, "I hope you get whacked by the axe murderer."

A Bolt from the Blue

You couldn't drag our son Tommy away from the NFL network with a tow truck.  Unless it's to go to the other room to watch ESPN.

Lordie, the boy loves football.  During Christmas break, he practically wore a hole in our sofa watching his favorite football channels.  Usually, I try to coax him away from the television with a little discreet nagging.

"Tommy, it's time for dinner," I'll say, or "Tommy, the couch is on fire."

He barely hears me.  "I just wanna watch this one part," he'll mutter absently, his gaze never leaving the screen.

I don't get it.  In the land of Nebraska, the "Football Capital of the World", I am an outcast.  I can't even work up an appetite for our beloved Huskers.  Those Saturday games take up a big chunk of my weekend.  And I have the complete fifth season of "The Gilmore Girls" to watch. 

But while I was recovering from my double mastectomy over Christmas, I wasn't in the mood to nag Tommy.  One morning, arranging my drainage tubes, I settled in the recliner and resigned myself to suffering through some boring biography about Vince Lombardi.  To his credit, Tommy had been working hard to help me around the house and be sensitive to my post-op fatigue.  "Mom, I can change the channel to something else," he offered.

"This is fine," I said.  And it was.  I was surprised to discover that tough guy Vince Lombardi was a devout Catholic and even used to be an altar boy.  "Did you know that, Tommy?"

"Mom," Tommy said patiently, "everybody knows that." 

When Vince died suddenly of cancer in 1969 at the height of his football season, I welled up with tears.

Tommy was uncomfortable.  "Look, Mom," he said, "let's watch something else."

 "I just wanna watch this one part," I muttered.

The next day, ESPN aired a documentary about the University of Miami during their days as the "Bad Boys" of the 80's.  I'd never seen a more swaggering, lawless group of players in my life.

"Those boys are criminals!" I sputtered.  "Look at them dancing in the end zone.  Please don't tell me they win a national championship."

Tommy rolled his eyes.  "They won five of them, Mom.  And the first one was against Nebraska."

I've never understood Tommy's passion for football.  He doesn't exactly possess a killer instinct, any more than his 6 ft. 10 in. older brother Kenny does.  The two of them can't leave our little cat Blackie alone for two seconds.

"Oh, my BABY!" Tommy croons in a high falsetto, cuddling her against his chest and rocking her like a baby.  He'll be horrified when he sees this.  Oh, well.  Let him write his own blog and tell embarrassing stories about me if it bothers him so much.

But because football is so important to Tommy, it's important to me.  He's spent two years preparing for an offensive tackle position at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.  Even though he hasn't seen a lick of playing time, he felt his chance was coming next year.

Then a bolt from the blue.

Two days ago, UNO dropped their football and wrestling programs.  With no warning, 120 football players, 30 wrestlers, and a group of stunned coaches learned that their programs were about to become extinct.

"I can't believe it," Tommy called us yesterday morning in disbelief.  "I'm not sure what to do."

I've tried to shield my boys all their lives from pain and sickness.  And I've done a damned lousy job.  Kenny, who managed to snare a Division 1 basketball scholarship at Denver University, had to give the game up.  He was born with Pectus Excavatum.  That's a nice way of saying "caved-in chest."  Although an operation when he was five helped to create a little more room for his heart, he's never had more than 75% lung capacity.  After his first two years of Division 1, he tried playing Division 2 basketball at Regis University, a small Catholic college in Denver.  But the rigors of college basketball at any level proved to be too much.

Tommy, on the other hand, has always been barrel chested and sturdy.  But when he was 14, his adrenal gland was assaulted by a benign tumor causing his blood pressure and heart rhythm to fluctuate wildly.  His entire adrenal gland was removed in a risky operation, and after a year of sitting out, he was finally able to play high school sports again.

Their trials in life have shaped Kenny and Tommy in ways that John and I never could.  I've learned a lot from my sons about courage and persistence and new perspective.  Our two boys can roll with the punches.  Kenny showed us that not long ago when he was diagnosed with epilepsy.

"You just need a new plan," my good husband has always taught our boys.

When Kenny couldn't play basketball, he applied for a little part time job at the college alumni department and for another position as an R.A. for the dormitory.  That little part time job at the alumni office developed into a full time position when he graduated.  And his R.A. job introduced him to a beautiful girl named Katie. 

Now my husband John reminds Tommy that good things can come from wrecked plans.  "It'll work out, Son," he reassures him in that rock steady voice that has soothed me through many a crisis.

And I know he's right.  A double mastectomy was never in the plans for my sisters and me.  We would have considered such an operation nothing less than a nightmare.  But it's all worked out for the best.

Tommy may never play football again.  Or he may discover he can't live without it and find success at a small college.  Whatever he decides, he'll begin with a new plan - one that never in his wildest dreams would he ever have imagined.

Our darling former pastor, Father Don Larmore, used to tell his parishioners, "There is a God.  And it's not you or me."

But sometimes, just for a fraction of a second, I wish it was me.

Trouble Times Three

Trouble comes in three’s, they say.  It’s been sniffing around our house for a couple of weeks now.

It’s my own fault.  I invited it right to my doorstep with my cocky attitude.  This double mastectomy at long last left me with a feeling that I had some measure of control over my destiny. 

Will I never learn?

On a Wednesday night two weeks ago, my husband, who insists on walking home in the dark every night from his part time job at the city library, was assaulted.  He had just purchased a couple of chicken sandwiches during his walk home when he noticed two young men following him.

“Can I do something for you boys?” he turned around to face them.

They wanted his wallet.  “I don’t have any money,” John told them, refusing to give up the wallet tucked inside the chest pocket of his jacket.

“Why couldn’t you just hand it over?” I demanded later in exasperation.

“And be forced to cancel my credit cards and get a new driver’s license?”  He was indignant.

The thugs followed him to our driveway – yes, to our own driveway  - kicked him to the ground and searched for his wallet.  John huddled close to the ground and grabbed the leg of the man in front who was kicking him in the head.

“Let’s go!” the other one finally yelled in frustration.  “He doesn’t have a wallet!”

They didn’t leave, however, before stealing our chicken sandwiches.  Consequently, the police log in the paper the next day reported John’s call.  “Food was stolen,” the report read. We looked at each other and burst out laughing.  But John was sheepish.

“I’m feeling pretty foolish,” he said.

Much more was stolen from us than a couple of chicken sandwiches.  While John has promised me that he will drive to and from his job at the library from now on, we both find ourselves looking behind our shoulders, checking to make sure we really locked the doors, and pondering a move to a safer neighborhood.  Maybe there is no safer neighborhood.  Besides, we’d really miss the good people living on our block.

It wasn’t two days later, still reeling from John’s assault, that I received a call from our next-door neighbor.

“Can you come over?” her voice shook.  “I’ve just been diagnosed with breast cancer.”

Something inside dropped clear to the pit of my stomach.  Anne is one of those women whose sweetness spills right out of her smile and eyes.  She and her husband Scott are the greatest neighbors in the world.  They trundle over a crockpot of potato soup when you’re feeling under the weather and carry over their adored baby granddaughter to let you hug as long as you want.

Now Anne was scared to death.  Although her cancer was early, she had scheduled a bilateral mastectomy due to a complicated pathology report and a significant family history.

“Dr. Goering’s performing my surgery,” she said.

I was filled with confidence.  Johnny Goering had graduated from Central Catholic High School and had been a student in my husband’s classroom and mine.  He was one of those earnest, true-blue boys.  I remember the time in my seventh grade English class when I unwittingly sat on a planted whoopee cushion.  Johnny Goering laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his desk.

Thirty years later, he performed my colonoscopy.

Go figure.

Had my sisters and I not sought out a breast cancer specialist for our particular situation, I would have gone straight to John Goering for my double mastectomy.  “Take ‘em off, Johnny,” I would have told him.  “And be quick about it.”  He would have, too.  He might be the best surgeon in town, but I’m still his English teacher.

“You’re in very good hands – the best,” I assured Anne.  We talked about all the particulars of double mastectomies, and she asked lots of questions, her voice quivering sometimes.

“This is the hardest part right now,” I told her.

“I know,” she said hoarsely.  “I wish I didn’t have to worry about my girls and my little granddaughter.”

Don’t we all?  Would there ever be a cure for this hideous disease?

Anne would be all right, I convinced myself.  Her cancer was early and very treatable thanks to her vigilant mammograms, and she had a wonderful surgeon. All would be well.

Then our son Tommy called.  “Mom?  I thought I’d better tell you about this before you read it in the paper.”

That sinking feeling of doom was becoming all too familiar. 

While working at his part-time job at HyVee in Omaha where he attends college, Tommy was stocking shelves when he heard the security officers screaming for customers to drop to the floor.  A man had just shot another young man in the parking lot.  The victim, who was shot in the head, lay dying as the shooter rushed into the store - the same store where my youngest son was stocking shelves.  The killer was apprehended by the security officers who managed to take away his gun, but every customer and employee in HyVee that night was shaken by the event.

For the third time in two weeks, the unthinkable occurred.  It seemed there was no way to protect my family and friends.

I needed a good visit with my little sister Terri. She’s always a breath of fresh air.

“Come see my new boobs!” she invited my sisters and me after her final surgery last week.

We couldn’t wait.  Sneaking up to her bedroom, away from all the Lewandowski kids, we waited in anticipation for Terri to disrobe and display her new breasts.

“Terri!” Deb, Mary and I squealed in unison.  They were beautiful – soft and round without any of those hard plastic expander bumps and edges rippling her skin.  The three of us, in our various stages of development, couldn’t stop staring.  Ter allowed us to poke, prod and examine with wondrous curiosity.  It was the emotional lift we all needed.

“You really think they look okay?” Terri looked at us anxiously.

“I want mine to look just like yours,” Mary breathed fervently.

Terri’s 8-month journey has come to an end.  I’m happy for her.  I’m happy about a lot of things.  I remind myself that my husband and my son are alive and well, unscathed by recent events. 

But I can’t help stewing over the what-if’s. What if Tommy had been carrying an elderly woman’s groceries out to the HyVee parking lot and had confronted the man with a gun?  And what if I had only come home a little sooner in time to help John the night he was assaulted?

“You’re kidding, right?” John laughs.  “What would you have done had you pulled in the driveway?”

I can see those two young men clear as day in the blaze of my car lights kicking and beating my husband, a gentle giant if there ever was one.

 “I would have run them over,” I say with low urgency.  Then I check myself, a little frightened.  Is this what those two young thugs feel?  This overpowering rage coiling up in your stomach like a snake ready to strike?

If I ever thought an operation to remove my breasts would offer me more control over my fate and the fate of my loved ones, I was wrong.  The world can be cruel.  My neighbor Anne knows all about that.

“It’s just as well you aren’t in control of the world,” John scolds me lovingly.  “It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea for you to mow over two guys in our driveway.”

Probably not.  After all, they only got away with a couple of chicken sandwiches.  It could have been so much worse.  I’m trying to be more charitable today.  I really hope those two young guys get help.  I hope they can straighten themselves out and lead good, decent, productive lives.

But most of all, I hope the chicken in the sandwiches they stole was grossly underdone.

And that they got severe diarrhea.