Finding my new normal - Part II

So why is there a Part II to this? It's because I want to share with you one of the things I learnt, through having cancer. There is no normal.

Of course there is, in one sense. As I said at the end of the previous post, I like being normal. "Normal life" is something we all take for granted... until it's wrenched away from us.. and then it seems like a golden blessing. As I write, I can see the buses going past my window, full of people going about their daily lives. Jobs, shopping, visiting. Who knows what they're up to? Most of it not very important, probably, but all of it part of a big whole. Each day, each element, is like a stitch in a tapestry, contributing to a picture.

Most people come through a major illness with a desire to appreciate the little things of life more, a determination to live every day to the full. I think that's wonderful. But it's also a bit exhausting. You can't do tapestry on speed. Tapestry is often a slow, plodding, meticulous task, and you can't fall down in admiration at every stitch. So yes, I do appreciate life and I do want to live to the full, but I do also have grumpy times (yes, really), and get fed up, and I don't remember to live each day as if it were my last.

The change I notice in myself, is the change of understanding of how life unfolds. Before cancer, I thought life was a line. I might deviate from the line, but then the task was to get back to it. For example, I battled with the idea of living abroad with the children for too long. I was happy for them to have an American experience, and I'd have talked about "broadening their horizons". But really, I looked on it as a deviation. Their real life was somehow hidden away in a cupboard in Britain, and I'd get it out and polish it up when we got back. But I now see how life exists in the deviations, because they're not deviations. They are the very stuff of life. And it's not just the visible. I think I'm able to accept change and disruption at my very core, in a way that I didn't used to. If I was a cake, having cancer wouldn't be a bit of the icing that's gone a bit wrong, that I can scrape off, and cover over with new icing. No. It's one of the ingredients, in the mix, in the baking, in every bite. It's in the flavour.

Unless I am alone in this (and I am perfectly happy to accept that I have a personal level of unique weirdness), I think it is an important truth, but also a difficult one to get hold of. I find it hard to explain. I see it in various aspects of life. Some of our deep insecurities come from a sense of not being who we ought to be. Even at a fairly superficial level, we are bombarded with the image of what our body should look like, what our face, our hair, should look like. When you move house, it's easy to feel permanently inadequate, because your house doesn't look like the ones in the catalogues, as they should. It's as if there is an imaginary straight line, that we are deviating from. But guess what? That imaginary line, where we're all slim, healthy, happy, fulfilled, with our scatter cushions perfectly arranged on our sofas, doesn't exist. When I had cancer, one of the overwhelming, yet hard to define, feelings, was that I shouldn't be having cancer. This shouldn't be happening to me. It was a deviation. But it did happen, and it still is happening, in that it is part of me now. I wouldn't be who I am, if I hadn't had cancer, and I am who I am. And that is it. To go back to my earlier example, I used to resent being in America, as it was somehow preventing the children from having the life they ought to be having the other side of the Atlantic. But I stopped seeing it like that. They are who they are, their lives are as they are, and that is enough. My house doesn't look like an IKEA catalogue, but that is.... hang on... I really would quite like my house to look like an IKEA catalogue. I guess I have some progress to make on that one.

I haven't described what I wanted to describe very well. I can feel words like "embracing change" and "acceptance" hovering around, ready to fall onto the page and sum this up for me.

And, if you've read this far, you'll be pleased to know that the results came back from the lab, and that everything they tested was benign. That was the word the doctor used: "benign". Maybe she had a sixth sense that if she said "everything was normal", it might have prompted a monologue on the word "normal". You can see I've been thinking about it... just a little.
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U2. Me too.

Yesterday morning, when we woke up, Husband and I rolled over to face each other. We bared our teeth, shrugged our shoulders up to our ears, and performed a joint version of “hee-hee, hee-hee, hee-hee” in true Mutley style. Yesterday was the day we were parking our kids with friends, and heading off to a U2 concert. They were performing in Norman, Oklahoma, which (in case you’re as ignorant as I was) is the home of the University of Oklahoma, and – importantly for U2 - has a big stadium.

We booked the tickets a few weeks ago, to give us something to look forward to, in the depths of chemotherapy. Yesterday it felt weird to be going, rather than looking forward to going. The mirage in the distance had become the reality of the present moment. We had had an anxious spell earlier in the week when 12-yo, who has the constitution of an ox (an unwritten one, as all the best ones are) and is almost never ill, got ill. For 24 hours, I thought “ah, this is just one of those 24 hour things”. For the next 24 hours, I thought “this child is never ill, how can he be ill with 2 days to go before the U2 concert?” For the third 24 hours, I stood him upright, and slapped him regularly to bring the colour back to his cheeks, and that seemed to do the trick.

My relationship with U2 got off to a bad start. The guy who had the room next to mine in my second year at university was a big fan, and played their music too loud and too often. And when I say ‘their music’, I mean ‘the one track he played of their music’. So I was subjected to In the Name of Love several times a day, and as the weeks wore on, my enthusiasm for U2 waned. Over a decade later, I was reintroduced to their music, when I married Husband who had been a faithful U2 fan.

I’ve never been a rock concert kind of a gal. I did go and hear B A Robertson perform in Borehamwood (oh yes) when I was about 17, but I don’t feel that qualifies me to critique U2’s show. If you want a description and reviews, I’m sure Google can supply them. And of the Black Eyed Peas, who were supporting. I’ll just give you my perspective.

It was fabulous. What more can I say? I loved the show: the drama, the excitement, the atmosphere of the big crowd, the enthusiasm of the college town audience. I loved the music: the familiarity of the old songs, the energy of the new. And Bono. What a hero. There’s a bit of a bloggers’ debate going on about his shades, but I have to say I like those shades.

The show was designed to be accessible 360 degrees. A rock concert in the round. (Novel idea, but hang on, didn’t Shakespeare come up with something similar all those centuries ago?). The band performed in the middle of the stadium, under a huge spaceship-like structure with a wrap-around video screen. Bono described it as enabling them to be more intimate with the audience. “Intimacy on a grand scale”, he said. With 50,000 people there, I didn’t think that ‘intimacy’ was quite the right word, but then our seats were right at the top of the stands. Certainly I did feel drawn in, connected, part of the show.

I saw Bono and The Edge interviewed by Jonathan Ross a few weeks ago, promoting the tour, and one thing stuck powerfully in my mind. Bono said that much of U2’s music was about joy, and he thought people didn’t know how to respond to that, because there isn’t generally a lot of joy in rock music. So last night, I listened for the joy in the music. And I heard it. There’s anger, aggression, edginess, sadness too. But I’m glad Bono had pointed out the joy, because for me, this was an evening of celebration.

Bono said that U2 last performed in Norman, Oklahoma, 26 years ago. That would have been one year before my repetitive exposure to In the Name of Love. During that time, I have graduated, had several different jobs, married, had three children, lived in ten different homes in six different towns, started a blog… And all they’ve been doing is singing, recording and touring. Poor old U2. What a very samey time they’ve had of it.

This is not doing the evening justice, but I am tired after the long journeys and the late night (still not quite back to my full energy levels), and Husband has plied me with a glass of red wine which he misguidedly thought would help the writing flow. I’m trying to think of a clever quote from U2 lyrics to finish the post off with, but I can’t. Oh, I know. You’ll enjoy this. When I got back, I looked at the U2 website, and noticed that Paris was on the list of venues. Full of excitement, I emailed my brother who lives in Paris (long-time readers of my blog will remember he used to comment as Charlesinparis).

“You have to go to U2” I gushed. “They’re going to be at the Stade de France on September 18th. You absolutely have to get tickets. Now.”

Don’t laugh at me too hard. An evening of intimacy with Bono - it can be a disorientating experience.

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