Adrift

Home is where the hearth is.

I’ve been in a bit of a funk over the past couple of months. Not depressed, mind you. (Although sometimes I feel like I’m on the edge of it.) Just…something.

I keep reminding myself that it makes sense. We just moved, which is a big adjustment. I love our new house (see exhibit A, fireplace, above), and I like our new town in theory, but don’t really feel firmly rooted in it yet — which, of course, also makes sense. I miss the sense of community we had in our old town, specifically among parents of other kids at the girls’ school — some of whom were close friends, and still are. But they live 15 minutes away now instead of 5. Funny what a psychological difference 10 minutes can make.

I also sometimes miss the more urban energy of where we lived before, as I suspected I would. We went into Cambridge recently to see the Honk! parade, which was fabulous and weird and lefty and fun (Honkfest is something we look forward to every year) and it made me miss being as close as we we used to be to the awesomeness of Somerville and Cambridge. That area was home to both Alastair and me, separately and together, for 18 years (!) minus two years in Iowa.

But the biggest change, of course, is Clio’s treatment being over. I touched on this in another post, but some part of me really does feel a strange sense of loss at the fact that we’re no longer in that world, in the mindset of treating her illness.

It was an awfully intense sense of purpose we had, saving our daughter’s life and all. It occupied a huge number of hours, and immense quantities of emotional energy. We cried about it, we sang about it, we wrote about it.

And we HATED it! God knows we hated it. If I could go back in time and use super-power cellular X-ray vision to find that asshole cancerous lymphocyte that just had to start reproducing out of control, because it thought it was so freaking great, and thought it was its God-given duty to make like-minded babies, and I could zap it with a cancer-killing laser beam (scientists are working on one of those, right?) I would.

I never want to be back in that world. If Clio relapsed, I would be devastated. Even going back to the clinic for her monthly check-ups brings back unpleasant memories and sensations — more so now because it’s so infrequent.

But it is a strange, strange feeling, having it all receding in the rearview mirror. It is strange to think: “time for meds!” every morning and evening, and then remember that there aren’t any, except for Bactrim three mornings a week, which we periodically forget, because it’s so infrequent.

It’s strange to be invited to a play date at a bouncy-house place and have the knee-jerk thought that Clio will need to be extra careful, because of her blood thinners and her port, and then remember that she doesn’t have to be.

It’s strange not to have to worry about Clio getting flu this year any more than I would worry about any of us getting the flu.(Public service digression: Please get your flu shot, dammit. No, it can’t give you the flu. And listlessness is not caused by a small dwarf living in your stomach. The chance of having a severe reaction to a flu shot is extremely small. The chance of the elderly, infants, and immunocompromised individuals — like kids getting chemo — becoming seriously ill or dying from the flu is much higher.)

Digression over.

So, I float along, feeling mostly fine, thrilled that Clio is doing so well, of course, but also feeling decidedly a bit unmoored at times, here in our new, post-cancer treatment existence. The lightness isn’t what I’d call unbearable (that’s a literary reference, yo.) but it can be oddly uncomfortable. Like getting your land-legs back after being at sea for weeks. (Jeez, the maritime metaphors just WON’T STOP COMING!! Also: I have never been at sea for weeks. But even after a few hours on a boat, my balance is a little wonky for a bit, so I can imagine.)

I am trying to be patient, and treat myself gently during this transition.