On a recent Saturday...

“Okay, take these grapes and hold them,” I bent over trying to get a clear shot of Liz without laughing so hard the picture would be blurry. (Again.) 

“Lift them up a little higher..”

We were both giggling.  “Oh.  God.  Yes.  That’s it!” I took another picture.

               “Now look at me over your shoulder.”  Her gold wig glittered in the early afternoon sun, and I checked the shot to see if I’d caught the colors right.  “Oh.  That’s the one.”

            Liz said, “Trashy enough?”

            “Yes, the whore factor is very high.”  I clicked the viewer on so she could see the shot.  She leaned carefully out of the bushes to see and burst out laughing when the picture appeared.

            “Yikes!  Al will want to blow that one up to poster size.”

            She was Eve incarnate – in a soft porn sort of way.

            Like this:

Eve Does Eden

            Just a goofy afternoon in a Minnesota back yard.  Two middle-aged friends having fun with the digital camera. 

Almost.

This was a “Wig Shoot.”  Liz wanted to share the pictures with her niece who has cancer.  They had had an ongoing discussion about which wigs are best – style, quality, naturalness.  They started this dialog because Liz, too, has cancer.  Again.

            After a successful bout with breast cancer treatment a few years ago, she had a clean bill of health visit after visit – all scans were clear.  Then, a few months ago, a ski accident led to an x-ray and she was incredulous at what they found:  never mind the cracked rib – the cancer was back.

            Okay, now that’s the sort of news that would have me cowering in my bed. Or raiding the liquor cabinet.  Or screaming at some hapless sales clerk who would be wondering why I was ballistic over an unfinished hem on a Jones New York blazer.  I would find some way to cope, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

            Liz, on the other hand, faces things squarely – and without alcohol on her breath. At first, of course, the diagnosis rocked her to the core.  So she and her husband, Al, did what they always do – they talked about it.  What it meant; what it didn’t mean; what they would need to deal with it, and how could they love each other through it. 

Then they got to work. Which doctors?  What treatments?  How soon, and what, to tell the family.  They walked through one difficult decision after the next. 

Liz is a busy woman.  Retired from the World Health Organization, she spends her time grand-mothering six grandkids, tending a large, organic plot on her brother’s farm, and generally squeezing the last drop of joy out of every single minute.  Where would she find time for cancer? 

Then again, what choice?

            She's just finished her fourth round of chemo.  It makes her pretty sick.  You expect that.  What you don’t expect is the spirit with which she faces it, round after round.  After years in Thailand, she seems to have absorbed sanuk – an attitude of playfulness endemic to the Thai people.  A sort of “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing with laughter.”  Yes, that’s our Liz. 

            On the picture taking day we took pictures of her as Eve in the Garden of Eden.  And as Farrah Liz.  As short-haired woman, and as long haired woman.  We talked about how she could reinvent herself now as a redhead.  Or a blonde.  Or a siren.  How she can get a really long wig and wear a really short skirt and let Al pick her up in a bar.

            (“I could go for that!” Al interjected from the kitchen.)

            And how does she want to spend her next weeks and months?

“I want to label all my family heirlooms and gifts from people I met overseas, so the kids will know what each one means to me and who gave it to me.”

“I want to play with the grandkids. They’re such a kick.  And they grow so fast.” (She has a room upstairs devoted to all things grandchildren.  A costume box, beds, a small table for coloring and drawing.) 

“I’m going to go through all my journals.  Some of them I’ll burn, but some of them will be good for the kids to read.  They might be interested in my time in Indonesia and Thailand.” 

We decided she should create a couple of “faux” journals, with pages torn out just to make her children wonder about her wild ways. “Yes!” she said and imagined the entries…

I’ll never forget that weekend Al was out of town and I met –  several pages torn out, then a line, thank goodness no one will ever know about that night!   

Or:  If I never see another set of silk sheets again, it will be too soon for me.  They will always remind me of –  more pages torn out, with some sort of water stains on the page, and then I still have that precious iris pressed in my copy of Merriam-Webster. 

She could tuck an iris from her garden in her dictionary before she went to bed that night.  We laughed about where she would “hide” the faux journals so her kids will be sure to find them. 

            Liz is like that mythical Buddhist monk who is chased by a tiger over the edge of a cliff.  He hangs there by a small vine, with the tiger pawing the ground above him.  Beneath him is a two-hundred foot drop to a river full of boulders.  He looks up and notices a mouse beginning to chew through the vine.  He also notices one lovely, ripe berry still clinging to the vine.  The monk eats the berry and says, “Ah.  Delicious!” 

She hangs between her cancer and her future. Truly present.  Taking every moment of joy from a difficult situation.  Playing with her grandchildren.  Shopping for wigs.  Labeling her keepsakes. Laughing with a friend. 

She looks so much younger than sixty-one.  I do my best not to resent it, what with her illness and all.  Here she is on the day of our photo shoot:

                              Long Haired Woman                        Short Haired Woman

                                                Grandma Liz

Her youthful charm may be because sanuk flavors her life.  Or because she channels love and laughter.  Or because she understands how to make a Saturday "wig shoot" something you want to write about.  Or maybe it was what happened that weekend when Al was out of town…

Farrah Liz