James and I spent the last week staying in a little bach[1] on
the northern shores of lake Taupo. “This is the life,” George says to us
honestly, as the three of us walked barefoot up the track that leads from the
sandy beach to the house, with dripping togs[2]
and once-bright 90’s patterned towels draped around our necks. “Get home, swim,
have a hot shower, cook dinner, read, sleep…this is my life,” the man who
introduced us back when the world was a different place said to us.
Kiwi George was working with a logging company in northern
Idaho called Northwest Management back in 2011. Alone in a new world, 27 and
free to roam, the adventurer decided that the hotel provided by the company was
too…dull for him. One evening he found himself telling this to a young man he
met at a party. Funnily enough, this young man was a traveler also, and had
been taken in by many a person in his gallivanting days. And so, he offered to
have George stay on his futon.
“James, do you remember when I was staying at your place and
the only groceries I contributed was a 24-pack of Budweiser[3]
cans, and a pack of rice crackers?” James laughed at Georges question as we were
heading down to the beach the next evening. I quickly figured that the single,
stale rice cracker that James kept in his cupboard and was going to keep it for
years for sentimentality was the last of George’s household contribution. He must have missed George when he took off to
Europe – took off to work in various odd jobs, blow his savings, live in tiny
apartments in France and eventually have to return. I chuckled, it was clear
that these two guys like something about each other, despite their nonchalant masculine
exteriors and being close to opposite in their mannerisms.
George is back in the land of the long white cloud,[4] now,
and each night when he arrived home from work, James and I would have dinner
all prepared and in the oven, and the three of us wandered down to the lake and
swam the 200 meters[5] to
the buoy as the sun set. Each night the sky was painted different colors; from
bruised, blue-grey skies as we ducked through choppy swell, to the perfect pink
skies that framed the halo of the sun on the other side of the distant hills in
flat, crystal clear waters. We felt cold, tired, hungry and exhilarated. Bare
feet up the path and we arrived to the smells of dinner oozing from the oven
walls, and we cracked open the wine and dug in.
I can’t express how
lucky I feel to have had these few weeks of normalcy between treatments. Even
in the few days after radiation finished, while the fatigue still plagued me
physically, I felt enthusiastic and like all this cancer stuff was just a
dream. A simple thing like not having to go into the hospital each day made me
feel like I was no longer a patient.
As the days wore on, the hospital grew more and more distant until it was
simply a half-bald head in the mirror.
I stand at the starting line of chemotherapy with swimmers
legs and a singing heart. I’ve never been so determined to over-perform in something
– and I’ve had my fair share of that pursuit in the past. The four-week gap was
supposed to be physical recovery time, but in a way it’s also been a time of
spiritual strengthening. I realize that things as they are at the moment aren't everything, only a
bump in the road, and I am infinitely lucky to be in the land of the long white
cloud and silent, saturated skies.
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