There are....

very few things that surprise me as I am passing this sixty mark with record speed. People around me are pretty much the same and do very few things within the realm of their personality to give me pause. As a matter of fact, most people, including my family, are (unlike me) very stable and when I am with them I can count on them to be similar to the way they were yesterday or the day before - kind of like Ground Hog Day. This is not a putdown. This is human nature. We develop a personality whether it be funny, negative, judgmental, quirky, unreliable, insensitive, religious, obtuse, punctual, boring or touchy. I mean the list of traits are as long as Santa's. So, although people can transform themselves, become enlightened, have change of heart, awaken the spiritual side within, get a new job, determine another sexual preference or become a hermit - in most cases they seem to stay within the confines of their said personality. I accept this.

So, when I am hit by a truck behind my own little personality wall, I am taken aback. This happened to me yesterday and (yes) this is (then again) another story of the weirdness of cancer. Two days ago I was invited to do a gift exchange with people I don't know very well. My friend, Catherine, who is a triathlete is on a Masters swim team of which she wants me to join. These were her friends who are also part of the team, and although I am an athlete in my own mind I keep telling her that even though I have the stamina of a bull elephant, I should probably admit that I am currently in cancer rehab and not so interested in being in public with my swollen tumor belly. Although the tumor is down, the inflammation remains. Doc said it should take the better part of next year but swimming next to triathletes might make me feel a bit (uh) like a troll, or perhaps a stork of some sort. The skinny legs don't help. I was invited anyway (as I have been before) to join the "team" for the night at a restaurant.

Having been sick this week, I contemplate bailing out, staying home watching Modern Family. I rarely watch TV but never miss this show. I am such a pleaser that I do have to ponder why I am going at all. Is it for her? Is it because I have no other social life? I do like them even though I don't know them very well. Most of them are divorced and forty-five-ish, sit at the bar looking hot, cute, and available and I sit at the end of the bar with my silver-chemo-hair and practical shoes. If I were single, I would rather get a root canal than be picked up by a man at a bar. It feels like a butcher shop to me. Okay, I'm rambling off topic. That is irrelevant.

It is a gift exchange and I had some Banana Republic cologne that I am re-gifting (I bought it for another person, if that is considered re-gifting) but also threw my book in there for good measure. I figured what the hell. I clean up, decide I will go and make a short evening of it, wrap the gifts and head out the door. It is raining as though an ark should be showing up on my street, and if it weren't for the makeup I had put on I would have turned around... yes, makeup takes time. Inside my head is like a turnstile because I can change my mind on a dime, switch subjects when someone is in the middle of another and generally get on my own nerves. This is my Ground Hog personality... it is okay. I'm used to me. I might decide five more times during my drive in the flood to turn around. This is normal. I am now talking aloud to myself, which my kids over the years had commented on... "mom, you're doing it again." These traits can be counted on and are all very Sally-ish.

Heading down the highway, I see the beltway of 465, which goes around Indianapolis coming up fast, but there is a huge amount of construction and the slick of rain on the street made all of it look like some kind of surreal Van Gogh painting-from-hell. Almost having an accident, I can't decide which lane to get in - because everything is turned around due to the construction. I have moments to decide - one lane is the turn-off to the restaurant and the other is getting ON 465 which would take me twenty-five minutes out of the way by the time I... well you get the drift.

Yes, I screwed up. I am now on 465 going slowly around the cloverleaf knowing that I will be stuck in the rain on the highway going in the complete opposite direction to where I want to be. I was struck by my blase calm - my entire body went MEH. MEH is my new mantra but this type of thing would make most people have the vein on their forehead pop out and at least give them a rise in blood pressure. I begin to analyze. I have no idea why this doesn't bother me at all. I will be late. I will surely be insanely provoked trying to find my way back on track, but no. My body does the ZEN-MEH. I have a eureka moment to myself.

I am a very laid back person but when it comes to punctuality I am an utter freak. This gives most people pause because I am so easygoing, but normally (because of the punctuality gene) this would have sent me into some kind of trucker road-rage. But no. This year, I found out that I could die at any time. I could have twenty more years to live or six months and I'm gone - I have that type of cancer... and so, I feel very differently about an extra twenty-five minutes. I smile. I turn on some music. I meditate as I drive, and I have a moment of clarity (one of many) of "what's the damn hurry about?" The radio is playing a song from the movie Weird Science which made me smile so much that I turned it up too loud. It reminded me of the boys when they were around eleven and twelve, and I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. I did a little of both.

Cancer is a weird ride. Most people take it on like a train wreck, but if you can stop and look at things differently, you can enjoy it as a kaleidoscope-type spiritual journey of joy that only gets better and better.

Cancer is some weird science all right.