Reader beware:  today's posting has nothing to do with cancer and everything to do with language.  It's going to be long, pedantic, and overly detailed.  Skipping or skimming is definitely permitted.  My justification is that one, the May 14th issue of the New Yorker published a review by Joan Acocella of a book on the descriptive v. prescriptive language disputes.  Ms. Acocella is the magazine's dance critic.  I know absolutely nothing about dance and have read her dance reviews with great pleasure and enlightenment.  But just as I wouldn't be assigned a book on dance to review, she shouldn't have been assigned one on language, as her review is badly misinformed and, hence, misinforming.  I was infuriated by the review and have been brooding about it for the last month (better than brooding about cancer), so finally I'm going to have my say.  Second, I'm afraid that my comments about language in this blog suggest that I'm a fussy prescriptivist, when, in fact, I'm firmly on the other side.

The review doesn't get off to an encouraging start when Acocella says "purists" complain about people saying 'distinterested' when they mean 'uninterested.'  It's the other way around.  Her opening history isn't any more accurate.  She says that the "language wars" broke out fully in the 1950s, which, considering only English, is 200 years off.   In academia, she writes that one cause was the "newly popular" theory of structuralism.  No, after several decades, structuralism peaked in the 1950s and then virtually disappeared with the arrival of Noam Chomsky's theories in 1957.  (Chomsky is nowhere mentioned, though surely his distinction between 'competence' and 'performance' is related, though in a new way, to prescriptivist and descriptivist ideas.)  Moreover, there are two logical fallacies in just her one sentence: because all structuralists are descriptivists does not imply that all descriptivists are/were structuralists.  And simply because an interest in language usage continued in the 1950s and later doesn't mean that the structuralists caused the interest.  I doubt that popular prescriptivists like William Safire and Edwin Newman even knew who Saussure and Bloomfield were. 

Acocella consistently blurs the definition of "rules," confusing the constitutive rules (i.e., those parameters that enable language) with normative rules (i.e., pre- and proscriptions) that a small minority are always trying to impose on the half billion speakers of English.  Here's a constitutive rule that Acocella seems to think is proscriptive: in English, we do not put a single word adverbial between a verb and its direct object.  We do not say, "I read carefully the article" or "I rejected vehemently its conclusions."  If a grammarian says that it is a rule, he is not proscribing what to say; he is describing how English works.  Acocella also ignores the phonological and morphological components of grammar, an omission that would be acceptable if her examples didn't require explanations based on phonology and morphology.  Here are three examples (all used in Acocella's review) of what a descriptive linguist does--one of phonology, one of morphology, and one of syntax.

Acocella mentions (and implies that descriptivists would be accepting of) the word "drownded."  No academic is going to suggest that a Harvard Law School interview is going well if the applicant says, "My father drownded."  What he is going to say is this: at the phonological level (as at all others) language changes.  And then he might describe five common phonological changes that have taken (and are taking) place in English.  One is metathesis: the transposition of sounds.  In Old English 'bird' was pronounced 'brid' and 'third' was 'thrid.'  Over the centuries, those sounds were transposed, and the metathesis stuck.  A look at the OED shows that for centuries, some English speakers have said 'aks' for 'ask'; that change did not stick and is, of course, today highly stigmatized.  A second change is assimilation, making sounds resemble those around them to facilitate pronunciation.  That explains why the plural morpheme [s] is sometimes pronounced /s/ and sometimes /z/ and describes the regular and predictable pattern of choice; it explains what we say 'impossible' and not 'inpossible' but 'inconceivable' and not 'imconceivable.'  A third change is dissimilation, which explains why we don't pronounce the entire consonant cluster in 'cupboard' and normally omit the /t/ in a word like 'postponed.'  A fourth change is epenthesis, the insertion of an extra sound in a word.  It explains why Paula Deen always says 'paparika' and why all of us insert a /p/ in 'comfort' but not in 'combat.'  It is why the names Thomson and Samson are often spelled Thompson and Sampson.  And the last patterned change (which finally gets us to 'drownded') is epithesis, the insertion of an extra sound at the end of the word.  Again, some of these changes "stick"; some do not.  In Old English, for example, there was no /d/ in the verbs 'lend' or "bound.'  The present tense of 'bound' was, hundreds of years ago, 'boun' and 'bouned' or 'bound' was the past tense.   But people heard a /d/ at the end of 'boun' and the past tense eventually became 'bounded.'  Had there been any language purists around in 1300, they would have been upset by "the stock market rebounded" last week--at least linguistically upset.  The same happens with 'drown,' where some people hear the present tense with an epitehtic /d/, thus making the past tense 'drownded'--not standard English, but easily described, which is where a descriptive linguist stops.

Acocella mentions the use of 'hisself,' but fails to understand (because she doesn't even mention morphology) how that form evolved.  We all learn language by generalizing rules from specific examples.  A native speaker unconsciously learns how compound personal pronouns (those that end with -self or -selves) are formed.  The rule seems to be that we add the suffix to the genitive form of the personal pronoun: myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves.  All that someone who says 'hisself' or 'theirselves' has done is overgeneralize the rule because, for no apparent reason, when we get to the third person, the suffix is added to the objective case form.  Again, the descriptivist isn't going to tell a native speaker that his law school application will be enhanced if he adds, "My father drownded hisself."  He's only interested in describing the rules that constitute our language as it's now spoken and describing the patterns that exist and have existed.

Finally (at last!), Acocella, of course, mentions the who/whom distinction.  But again, she totally ignores the history of how English has evolved and hence misunderstands what's happening.  English used to be a highly synthetic language, i.e., one that depends on inflectional endings rather than word order for meaning.  Nouns and pronouns were inflected (as in Latin, Russian, and Finnish, for example) to show their function.  But over the centuries, those inflections almost entirely disappeared, and English is now (almost) completely analytic, i.e., a language that depends on word order.  If I enter the class and say, "Me your teacher this semester," you might doubt my competence and consider changing to another section, but you understand what I'm saying.  No nouns retain a distinction between nominative and objective cases, and only five or six pronouns do (I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them, and, in a few cases who(ever)/whom(ever)).  And with these choices, many native speakers are confused (language is always changing, and although there aren't many changes going on right now in English, except lexically, this is one logical place where distinctions are blurring).  And although I may cringe when I hear, "Him and I went to the movies," there's a logical reason why I do hear it and why I understand perfectly well that the speaker is trying to say.

As native users of English, descriptivists have just as many pet peeves as anyone.  But as linguists (or the more out-date grammarians), descriptivists don't think it's nearly as interesting (or productive) to pre- and proscribe as it is to describe and, where possible, explain.

I'll give props to Acocella for one thing: she pans the book under review.  And if she's learned as little from reading it as her review indicates, she must be right that it's truly uninformative. 

There.  Now I feel much better and can return to brooding about more important matters.

Yesterday, I resumed the chemo therapy (Votrient) after a three-day interruption.  I have to admit I loved the break, and both the psychological and physiological effects seemed important, though sorting out the two isn't easy.  All three of the primary adverse reactions (at least the ones that most affect me) were mititgated: my appetite was better (though no meal tasted as good as that first steak once I had stopped); I still crashed, but the naps didn't seem as frequent or profound; and the diarrhea abated.  I felt almost like my old self.  Votrient also raises the blood pressure, so once on it, I had begun taking three anti-hypertenison meds; I continued with those, since I didn't monitor my blood pressure over the three days.  We go to the KU Cancer Center on Tuesday, and one of the oncologist's thoughts is that we might lower the dosage (from 600 mg. to 400, with 800 mg. being the standard starting dosage, one that drove my blood pressure up to intolerable levels so that I was on for only a month or so).  If we continue with the 600 mg. dosage, I need to know how often (if at all) I can take a hiatus.

The Internet is a mixed blessing.  One of my friends who was diagnosed with breast cancer said that her doctor at Johns Hopkins told her to stay off the Net: there was too much misinformation, and even the accurate information was only generalization.  But I think for most of us the doctor's advice is impossible to follow, and I went back a couple of times over the last few days to read about Votrient, the first time I'd done so in several months.  The GlaxoSmithKline site was the most complete, though between the medical terminology and the many abbreviations, much of it was impenetrable to a layperson (or at least to me).  The side effects it has with me are exactly the most common ones observed in the clinical trial, though luckily I've been spared nausea.  The median length of treatment was 7.4 months (I'm in month ten); the longest was just over two years, certainly an encouraging figure.  Interruptions or cessation of treatment was necessary in 42% of the subjects.  Many of the subjects required an immediate reduction of the dosage, which was normally from 800 mg. to 400 mg., so, given the overall statistics, if the oncologist decides to reduce my dosage from 600 mg. to 400, that wouldn't seem to be disheartening.  Now if I can just remember these statistics till next Tuesday, perhaps I'll be able to ask more intelligent questions.

There were links on all the sites to others on kidney cancer.  I ventured a few samples, but just as had happened a year ago, they were too discouraging to pursue very far. 

Language matters.  A lot of us academic types, I've noticed, have favorite words.  My friend Carol is bravely involved in an unpleasant, but necessary task, which she described yesterday as "fraught and imbricated."  I love the word "fraught"--what a solid, rich, one-syllable word.  I think that it almost disappeared from usage for a while, but now I hear it often.  I'm embarrassed (well, at least in front of Carol) to admit that it takes me a few minutes to drag 'imbricated' from my old critical vocabulary and remember what it means; I'm pretty sure I've never used it and can manage without it.  When I was writing books with Virginia, she had the uncanny and very useful knack of remembering, when on page 18 I used the verb 'suggests' ("This interpretation suggests..."), that I had used it on page two and thus we needed to find a synonym.  Sometimes I'd get lazy and say to myself, "Oh well, Virginia will fix this."  Virginia's favorite word was 'adumbrate'; there were rarely ten pages when one thing didn't adumbrate another.  And my own favorite jargon word was/is 'perspicuous.' ("Meaning is never perspicuous" was a sentence I wrote more often than I--or anyone--needs to.)

One of my current pet peeves is all the war reporters who think 'cache' is pronounced like 'cachet.'  During the first Gulf War, Connie Chung talked about the 'Calvary' so many times that the crawl at the bottom of the screen actually replaced 'cavalry' with 'calvary.'  I've also liked to think that my immediate and indignant e-mail helped get her fired as military commentator.  I also embarrass my friends in restaurants by (helpfully, in my opinion) telling servers that the final 's' in 'vichyssoise' is pronounced and that 'bruschetta' has a /k/ sound, not a 'sh.'  I don't like 'anyway' as a marker of a change of topic, but 'anyways' makes me cringe.

Chemo and lingo--today's subjects, one probably more important than the other.

Thursday and Friday were really tough days.  I crashed more often than had been the case before and slept longer once I had made it to bed.  I visited the bathroom so many times I lost count, even though I had no appetite and had barely eaten.  I managed a bowl of cereal Friday night, but nothing else seemed even remotely appealing.  I did manage to finish Roth's "American Pastoral," but even a new New Yorker and a New York Review of Books could hold my interest only briefly.  Mainly, I just stared into space and felt sorry for myself.

Yesterday morning, despite my earlier decision just to tough it out till my next doctor's appointment (a week from Tuesday), I decided to give myself a three-day vacation from the Votrient.  I had the oncologist's approval, and worries about possible negative consequences aside, I needed the break.  I don't think I can express how good it felt to look at the bottle of Votrient and think, "HA!  No thanks."  Whatever the physiological effects, psychologically it felt wonderful: three fewer pills.  Hopes that maybe my body would thank me too.  I don't really want nature to take its course, and there were still eight pills to swallow.  But instead of my feeling like a walking chemistry lab, for three days at least maybe some semblance of normality will reassert itself. 

Mornings are always my best time, and I felt energized.  At 11, I took a brief nap, but it was brief, and I felt good once I woke up.  We were a little slow getting organized, but by 2, we were ready to go out for a late lunch.  Usually, this involves ten minutes of wondering where to go, followed by resigning ourselves to one of the three or four places that are our regulars.  This time I knew exactly what I wanted: steak.  We usually go to an old roadhouse outside of Topka, but it's a long drive and probably wasn't open at that time, so we went to a chain restaurant.  There was fresh bread, a sweet potato not marred by sugary toppings, and what seemed to me at the time the best 8 ounce sirloin (medium rare) that I had seen recently.  (Yes, I know: by Kansas standards an 8 ounce steak barely qualifies as an amuse-bouche, but my mouth was amused, and I cleaned up my plate and thought wistfully about ordering another one.)  True, it had been 24 hours since I had eaten, so no wonder I was hungry.  But it was the first time in a long time that I actually had been hungry.  In my head, I chalked it up to the reduction of chemicals in my system.

I can't say that the rest of the day was marked by other confirmatory changes.  As soon as we got home, it was difficult to decide which was more important: finding the bathroom or curling up in bed.  (Actually, it wasn't a serious debate.  Bathroom trumps bed every time.)  By the time the day had ended, I had taken four Imodium and had gone up and down the stairs more times than I want to count.  And even though I was convinced that I hadn't really napped after lunch, when I looked at the clock, it was 90 minutes later than when I lay down.  The routine of the rest of the day wasn't all that different from that of the day before, even though I tried to convince myself that I was feeling peppier.   So today is day two of my break.  I'm hoping for a continued appetite, and after that, we'll see.  But I again had that moment of gloating this morning when I looked at the bottle of Votrient and left the cap firmly in place.

And now for something completely different: there was an article in the NYR about the well-documented influence of the Texas Board of Education on the way textbooks are written for the national market.  Most of what the article said wasn't new, but it did make one point that I found very interesting.  Mohamed has taken the two semester sequence of American history at Washburn for his general education requirements.  Browsing through the texts, I was amazed by the number of breaks in the narrative for boxes and sidebars, in addition to the expected maps and charts.  On some pages, it was almost impossible to follow the main text, and even if a student could, the experience was constantly interrupted by all the sidebars.  As an old-fashioned reader, I found it all extremely confusing.  I chalked it up, however, to my being just that: old-fashioned.  What Gail Collins points out in her article is that textbook publishers, in trying to satisfy the demands of Texas and yet include information that more "liberal" states might want, discovered that re-writing and re-formatting an unbroken narrative was extremely expensive.  Much easier and much cheaper was just adding all these sidebars and boxes, the content of which can be switched out with much less trouble and expense.  As she writes, "All around the country, teachers and students are left to make their way through murky generalities as they struggle through the swamps of boxes and lists."  Consolation that I'm not such an old fogey after all?  Or really discouraging?

A good news statistic: the blog has reached nearly 2400 pageviews, including 60 in Russia.  Thanks to all who have been following along and often sending very thoughtful and encouraging messages, and Privestsvija to my Russian reader(s). 

The last week, however, hasn't been a great one, marked by what seems like increasing fatigue, continuing struggles with intestinal problems (despite higher dosages of Imodium), and a loss of appetite.  Yesterday, for example, we went to school to pick up a paper that Mohamed needed and then spent a pleasant 30 minutes in the English office.  I had already taken an hour nap.  Our plans were to stop at Lowe's and then have lunch somewhere.  But a few blocks after we left Washburn, my mind and body shut down.  The trip to Lowe's was scratched, but we still thought we could have lunch.  By a couple of blocks later, there was no way I could stay awake through a lunch, so we stopped for take-out.  Once home, I forced myself to eat, though chewing each bite was a conscious decision, and as soon as I had finished, I headed to bed for over two hours of sleep, clutching Philip Roth's "American Pastoral," a book I love and am re-reading for the second or third time, and fell asleep without even opening it.  Later we did a grocery store run, picking out some chicken salad and croissants for dinner.  But by six o'clock I needed another hour's sleep, and after that I could barely make it through half the croissant. 

I also got some tanning lotion, despite Mohamed's assurances that I look fine the way I am.  But since my summer uniform (shorts and a t-shirt) reveal skinny white arms and legs ("they will say how his arms and legs are growing thin"), I look at myself and think I look sick. I don't want to look like a spray-tanned dancer from "Dancing with the Stars" (or like John Boehner--a "color not found in nature," as Pres. Obama said), just, for vanity's sake, to be not quite so pale.

All of this is tiring (I'm tired of being tired) and a little scary.  One possibility, suggested by the oncologist, is to stop the chemo for three days.  I think I'd like to try this.  Mohamed is adamantly against doing so: my body isn't going to suddenly recover in three days, and who knows what the cancer will do when there's nothing chemical fighting it.  And I certainly share those concerns.  Since the beginning I've taken 3/4 of the standard dose of Votrient (the full dosage drove my blood pressure to unacceptable levels despite taking three blood pressure meds), and Dr. Van also suggested that maybe we should go to 1/2 of the dose.  That, too, sounds scary, but we've known all along that there will be a point at which my body can't support the chemo.  We go back to the cancer center in about 10 days, so until then, I'll just keep the current schedule and hope that my appetite comes back and I can find some new sources of energy. 

One day at a time (to fall back on yet another cliche)...

Since today is Memorial Day, I'd like to take some time to remember my parents.  Like all memories, these are not completely trustworthy, and since I don't have any siblings, there's no one to check them; over the years they've hardened into their own stable form.  I think sometimes that I'm unfair to my father and feel bad about that.  My dad (Howard, Sr., so I was called Johnny till I was 12 or 13) died of lymphoma on my birthday 30 years ago this July at the age of 68.  My mom, Ruth, died on my friend and colleague Virginia's birthday 27 years ago at the age of 76.  She died of pancreatic cancer three weeks after the diagnosis.  It has been a long tradition to take Virginia out for dinner on her birthday.  My partner and I had taken a break from the hospital vigil to take Virginia to Steak and Ale (a lot of good memories at that defunct restaurant).  When we returned home, the hospital called to tell us to come immediately.  My mother hadn't been in a lot of pain until the last 24 hours, but I watched her lose a little more strength each day.  During those last hours, she had a morphine drip as the pain had dramatically increased.  Her poignant last words were "Kill me before I die."

My mother was seven years older than my father.  She didn't marry until she was 35 and had always worked in banks, first in Ames, then in Story City.  She loved fancy clothes, and I have many pictures of her and her best friend all gussied up, ready to take a trip to Chicago or Minneapolis.  My father drove a milk truck in Ames after spending two years in the Air Force.  He was always extremely nervous and impatient with others, so he had a hard time keeping a job.  For most of my childhood, he sold parts at automobile dealerships in Ames and Story City, moving from one to another in what seemed like an unending circle.  One year, much to my discomfort, he was a janitor at my school.  He wasn't great with kids, and that year was not a happy one for either him or me. 

For the first thirteen years of my life, we lived on the second floor of a big, old white frame house with my mother's parents living downstairs.  My grandparents doted on me, and my grandma would slip me milky coffee in the morning and quiz me from the World Almanac.  She got dressed up in heels and jewelry at least once a day to play bridge with other women her age.  We lived on a huge double lot with two gardens, three grape arbors, and tons of room to play.  I remember many evenings of playing Capture the Flag (I have no idea now how the game was played).  Story City had a movie house that showed two different movies a week (admission ten cents for children) and a public library where I spent hours.  In the summer, we rode our bicycles (without helmets, of course) a couple of miles out of town to a Lutheran camp where we could go swimming. 

Depression-era products, my parents never took vacations and rarely ate out.  They built a house of their own (cost $13,000) in 1958, just before I entered high school and only when they could pay for it in cash.  It was just a block away from where I'd lived before.  I remember how impatient I'd get with them when they talked about Depression hardships and prices, and it was only much later that I understood they were talking about history only twenty years earlier, as if now I reminisced about 1992.  My father didn't want my mother to work, and although she agreed, after her years having her own money, she chafed.  Finally, he allowed her to work at home, so once a week, she and a couple of other women, drove to Nevada, the county seat, and picked up 5,000 envelopes (ten boxes of 500 each), which she addressed using an old black manual typewriter.  There couldn't be more than a 1% spoilage rate and no errors.  Most of the time, they were for Father Flanigan's Boys Town--5,000 pale blue envelopes every week.  When it was time for her to cook, I'd take over.  I learned to insert one envelope while I rolled the other one out.  She typed from voter and motor registration rolls, and we compiled a long list of funny names.  My favorite has always been someone who was named Fartney Blast. 

Everyone loved my mother, a tiny and funny woman, who had mysterious ailments that prevented her from eating fresh fruits and vegetables, but not desserts.  There were always freshly baked cakes and pies and cookies at my house, which made it a popular place after school.  My father was somewhat more difficult but later in life found a secure job selling parts at the local Chevy dealership and discovered golf, which seemed to relax him.  I came out to my parents in 1967.  I had been called for the Vietnam war, and I had "checked the box," as we said then.  And then I had to explain to my parents why I had gone from 1-A to 4-F overnight.  Much to my surprise, my father was less upset than my mother (though I think they had suspected that I was gay).  But after a short time, everyone adjusted to the new reality.  I spent the 1970s with one man, whom my parents loved, as his parents did me. 

They were good people, and I remember the seventeen years in Story City with enormous affection.  We weren't a demonstrative family and we certainly didn't have much money, but I had everything I needed, everything I wanted.  It's hard to believe how long it's been since my parents died.  They would hardly recognize the America of 2012.  But I know that they would still love their son as much as they always did in their very different ways, and so it's fitting that I remember them and honor them on this day of commemoration and gratitude.

In the last blog entry, I talked about the "diminished thing," as Frost put it, which is my life these days.  It was, in part, a catalogue of some of my daily experiences.  But what the oven bird asks in all but words is what to make of this diminished thing, so perhaps the last entry leads to, suggests, entails (but not begs) the question of what I make of all this, of how I deal with it.  (My language gene is constantly irritated by people who use "begs the question" in this context.  To beg the question is a logical fallacy; it's to argue in a circle, assuming, somewhere in the line of argument, what you're supposed to be proving.  It's not appropriate in my sentence, though from the frequency with which I hear it used that way, I think the battle may already have been lost.)

I'm not sure, however, that I have anything very enlightening to say on the subject.  I don't think that we usually act on general (and generalizable) principles; we make our choices ad hoc and try to muddle through as best we can.  For a few years now, my Washburn e-mail tag is a quote from George Eliot: "We must be patient with the makeshift of human understanding."  And that's what we have: a makeshift understanding.  It's what we have and all that we can ask for.  And it's enough.

For forty years now, I've been a contented atheist, even now in the foxhole--or in my case, the hedgehog hole, since, using Isaiah Berlin's distinction, I'm definitely a hedgehog, not a fox.  The world existed for billions of years without me and will continue to exist once I'm gone.  Against all probabilities, I was born and existed.  That doesn't seem to me depressing at all.  When I'm gone, I'll leave behind some traces, some ripples that will slowly (I hope) dissipate.  No soul, no spirit, no lingering awareness.  I can't explain why I find that comforting (other than the fact that the concepts of heaven and hell make no sense to me and have no appeal), but I do.

I also live almost entirely in the present--no Proust's madeleine or even Zuckerman's rugelach to bring back an overwhelming flood of memories.  It's not that I don't love my past.  I do; at almost every stage of my life I've had wonderful, bright, lively, funny friends and experiences.  And when I'm with those friends, either in person or in e-mails, recalling specific moments is always fun and cheering.  I love telling stories about the past--as long as I have an audience, either someone who shared them or someone I think "needs" to learn about them.  But when I'm alone, I rarely relive those times for my own pleasure or amusement.  Again, I can't explain why this is so; it's just the way I live.

So, too, I don't think (and never have) very much about the future.  When I need to make a practical decision, even the most important ones, I just do it without thinking much about the consequences.  When, just as one example, one night I felt bored, I decided it was time for another year abroad.  I didn't weigh the consequences; I just went online to the Fulbright site, discovered the deadline had passed, but thought what the hell? it can't hurt to apply.  When they said there were possiblities in Syria, Oman, and Yemen and asked whether I would accept one of those, I replied yes without hesitation.  And when they offered me Morocco, I took the time to look at a map to see whether I'd prefer El Jadidah or Meknes and typed an immediate response.  I know that being more thoughtful about decisions might have spared me some unforutnate results, but to do so is just not my nature.  And now, not thinking about the future (except in the most practical and necessary terms) has certain advantages.  It's not really denial of the realities to come; it's just a continuation of the way I deal with things.  I know that there will be a point when the pleasures are so severely diminished that life won't seem worth living.  I certainly have no moral or ethical objections to suicide, and I would like to be in control of the end of my life.  But I'm pretty sure that I'll be too cowardly or too afraid of missing something good to choose that option until it's no longer my choice to make.

And so in the present, I muddle through.  I try to enjoy all that I have and try to limit my complaints (though I do wish I'd stop making those small groaning noises that are all too frequent, too indiscriminate, and, I'm sure, more irritating to Mohamed than he'd ever express).  Do I get discouraged?  Sure.  Frustrated?  Ditto.  But then something that I read or see makes me laugh or makes my blood pressure rise or gives me another sort of satisfaction.  And then I climb the stairs or put my sock on or savor my bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats (I'm a simple sort).  That's my "makeshift understanding," and that's what allows me to keep on keeping on, as we used to say in another place in another time.

After the last entry about the "Oven Bird," two long-time friends (I've known them both for over 40 years) wondered about the fact that after introducting the poem's idea of dealing with diminished expections, I spent the rest of the posting writing about poetry and criticism rather than with my own experiences of living during the last year (the surgery to replace my femur and part of the hip joint took place exactly one year ago today) with a diminished quality of my life.  One asked as well whether the cloud of depression "wafted" around my days.

I don't think (but who can trust our consciousness?) that I was purposefully avoiding the implications of Frost's poem.  What I wrote reflected what I had been thinking about over the previous few days, though, as I said, Frost's lines had been floating through my mind for a long time.  Partly, too, the blog showed my refusal to give up the teacherly side of my personality.  But perhaps a few more personal reflections are in order.  To answer the question about depression first, no, it's not something that plays a part in the way I think about things.  I certainly have as many neuroses as anyone, but depression has never been one of them.  (Now that I've ruled out depression, anger, guilt, and I can't remember what else as components of my emotional character, I'm beginning to think that my friend Jill may have been right in suggesting--years ago to be fair--that I have a low EQ.)  But I am aware, during all the waking hours, of the limitations and discomforts of life as I live it these days.

I'm aware of, and unhappy about, the fact that I will never go to France again.  And what is going to seem silly, every time I see a commercial for Worlds of Fun, I'm reminded that I'll never ride a roller coaster again.  I'll probably never travel very far, nor have the uninterrupted energy to cook a full meal.  I'll probably never sit through an opera again, or when one of my talented friends is in a musical in KC, never travel to KC, have a good dinner, and then watch him on stage.  I'll never again take my german shepherd, strong and badly trained on a leash, for a walk around the lake.

More important are the daily discomforts and assuming that they are going to become progressively more significant.  My shoulder has been feeling much better lately, but for over a year now, I can't reach across the table with my left arm or lift a bottle of milk from the refrigerator with my left hand.  I can't raise my left arm very high or far for a toast.  I can't stand up from a chair or couch without a moment's hesitation and bracing myself with my right arm.  Every time I go up and down stairs, my hip creaks and I half pull myself up using the railing.  Because, I assume, of the daily anti-coagulant shot, a small cut looks fine at first, and then a few hours later, it's turned into an ugly scar which takes several days to go away.  By the time I'm up in the morning and have had my best energy of the day, I shower, and then I sit on the edge of the bed, tired from all the effort, trying to summon the strength to put on my right sock.  I can't go to a restaurant without taking Imodium first, locating the restroom, and wondering what I should order that isn't going to provoke an immediate reaction.  When I first started the chemo, lots of food tasted "off."  Diet-Coke has never tasted the same, and much more seriously, I rarely enjoy wine any more.  Recently, however, food tastes fine, and it looks appealing, but after I eat about half of what's on the plate, I have no more appetite.  I can't even force myself to take another bite.  For the last couple of weeks, the need for naps seems to have become more frequent.  I always take a book or magazine to bed, but I no longer even make the pretense that I'm going to read.  The book is only a security blanket.  Instead of clutching a pillow, I like the feeling of holding the book as I drop off.  Scariest of all is that for the last couple of weeks, by the end of the evening, I've been having terrible cramps and can't sit or lie comfortably. 

So there's a partial catalogue of dimished hopes and possibilities.  Some I've become inured to (my right arm works just as well for lifting the half gallon of milk out of the refrigerator).  Some--like the small groans I make each time I stand up--I hope Mohamed has become inured to.  All are frustrating; each has changed my self-image from someone who was always energetic and adventurous to someone whose physical energy is indeed much diminished.  Most important, because most frightening, is not knowing just what these limitations mean, just where in the arc of living with cancer I am, what each new twist implies.  But there are still enormous pleasures left in life, much that's just as exciting and pleasurable as it's always been--friends, laughing, reading, becoming infuriated over politics and issues, discovering new authors and ideas, sex, and loving and being loved.

What I've really not expressed often enough in these postings is how much Mohamed does for me every hour of every day.  No one else really sees the downs or the fears, no one hears all the groans.  There is never a hint of complaint, never a request that he doesn't fulfill.  Without Mohamed, the last year would have been diminished in ways I can't even imagine--and don't want to.  If I'm not depressed, if the frustrations and fears are manageable, it's because of Mohamed's support and love.   It took me a lot of false starts to get it right, but at just the right time, I finally did.