Fun little reunions

                Lately, I have been enjoying little reunions with people I haven’t seen for a while, who have been visibly happy to see me doing better. It’s so much more fun than it was a year ago, when I was really sick, and I would run into people I hadn’t seen for a while, and they would visibly flinch at my appearance. Now, everywhere I go among friends there is quiet rejoicing, and not always where you would expect to find it.

                For example, our favorite Chinese restaurant is New Fortune, on Rt. 355 in Gaithersburg. We have been going there for many years. It is one of the few restaurants that every single member of our family loves, so when we have a reason to eat out, we often end up there. We take my mother-in-law there when she comes to visit. We took a carload of Russian Methodist choir singers there once, and we took a carload of Quaker soccer players from Pennsylvania there another time. We go there for my birthday. Our regular waitress knows that John wants a beer, and I probably want a chardonnay.

Then last year, I got sick. Our visits there became less frequent. I was too tired, and then I was too sick to enjoy the food, and frankly, there was just too much going on.  When we did eventually make it back there, I was my chemo self, bald and red-faced and bloated. I was on literally twelve different meds, and I was fairly stoned. I wasn’t drinking any wine, and I wasn’t eating much, because I couldn’t taste anything.

I watched our regular waitress as she tried to figure out what was going on with me. She looked worried, in a motherly way, and I felt like I should say something, but it was awkward. I didn’t know her well enough to just come right out with it.  How would that go, anyway? “You’ve probably noticed I look like death warmed over? Well, I’ve got stage three breast cancer. May we please have some hot tea?” Nope, I didn’t say anything, though I probably should have, and she didn’t say anything, but she spoke quietly in Chinese with the other waitress who has been there forever, both of them looking concerned.

Well, we went back there the other day, and it was delightful. My hair still looks decidedly strange, but overall, I look better. My face isn’t red and bloated, and I have eyelashes again, which makes a huge difference. You can tell the hair is trying to grow back.

Our regular waitress, who had been so worried about me, rushed over with a big grin on her face.

“How is mama?” she asked.

“Lots better,” I said.  “Lots and lots.”

“I am very happy,” she said, and she actually put her hand on my shoulder.

“How long has this restaurant been here?” I asked. “We have been trying to figure out how long we’ve been coming here.”

“Fifteen years,” she said. “This one,” she said, pointing at Sean, who is seventeen now, “was a little boy, little boy.”

“That makes sense,” I said.  “He was two or three years old, and this one,” I said, pointing at Julia, “were in the baby carrier when we first came here. Wow.”

“Baby,” the waitress said, pointing at Matthew, who is nine now, “was not born yet.”

She was smiling from ear to ear, and we don’t even know each others’ names.

“I could bring you menus,” she said, “but I know what you want. Mister wants a Tsingtao. You want a chardonnay. Salt-and-pepper squid, Szechuan string beans. Half roast duck. Barbeque pork. Fried dumplings,” she said, triumphantly. “Two orders.”

“It is good to see you,” she said.

It was a great meal. It felt like they were welcoming me back from far away, which they sort of were.

One of these moments happened again, a few days ago. We went to a casual drinks party for a colleague of John’s who works for the World Bank. His name is also John, and his wife is Donny. They were in town for the World Bank’s spring meetings. These were friends we’d known for many years, who have been working in Africa, so I had not seen them since I’d gotten sick. They had been reading my blog in Nairobi. Being research types, when I first got sick they had quietly done some of their own research, and they had located the same disturbing statistics I’d found regarding survival rates for people with my illness. They were among the first people who would speak frankly with me about the fact that the numbers were not very encouraging, and that I might actually die from this. It was nice to have someone to talk with who wasn’t trying to tell me everything was going to turn out peachy keen. But all our conversations had been by phone, or via the magic of the Internet and Facebook.

So, on Sunday, I snuck up behind Donny while she was talking with her colleagues about a film project. There was squealing and hugging.

“It’s so good to see you, like this,” she said, gesturing up and down the length of my body.

“Like, only semi-bald?” I asked.

We both knew what she was thinking. Like, alive. And in pretty good shape.

             And the best one of these little reunions happened on Saturday, at our school auction. A friend, who is about three years ahead of me in the breast cancer process, was in town from New York. We had never been close before all this cancer nonsense; we just didn’t cross paths very much. Our sons had briefly been on the same soccer team, and we had been to some of the same school meetings, that’s all. Then they had moved away. The last time I had seen her, was at the same school auction a year ago. For me, that had been on the day after chemo, and I was feeling and looking awful, and I was utterly stoned.

                What a difference a year makes! This Saturday, I was feeling great. And she was looking absolutely radiant. She spotted me from across the room, in the middle of the live auction, and immediately sailed over, while I was actively bidding on something, and wrapped me in a great big hug.

                No small talk.

                “I couldn’t tell you how much chemo sucks,” she said. “You have to go through it to understand it.”

                I’m talking into her shoulder, now. I’m almost crying. “I knew it was going to suck,” I’m saying. “I just didn’t have any idea how long it was going to suck for!”

                We now have dinner plans. It really is something else, to talk about this “journey” with someone who has been there. I guess that’s why old war veterans like to sit around VFW halls. But to get to talk with someone who not only has been there, but also has come out so beautifully well at the other end, and who, in addition, knows your kids and your husband and your local gossip, that’s golden.

                I don’t have a great moral to draw from all this. It’s sure a whole lot more fun going around making people smile than it was a year ago, when I went around making people freak out and, occasionally, making them actually cry. And I have will say that, as you go through life, there are people out there pulling for you in places you might not expect.