ghosts

so far this week, each evening has subsided into a beautiful, crisp, cool night. right now, the crickets are singing, there is a canada goose calling out to find friends, and my windows are letting the fresh air in. it smells like fall. the days are getting noticeably shorter and the sun is setting directly across from my windows now, not at summer's strong angle. we just passed the equinox. soon the shortest days will be on their way.

this time of year has always been a favorite of mine. i like the colors of the last flowers of summer, the lure of the farmers' market with its apples for pies and the squashes that i buy but i can't ever really convince myself to cook. i start thinking about making soups. the other night i made beef stew for jimnerd and i for the first night of fall. on the weekends there is an unending supply of college football to watch if being indoors is on the to-do list. i watch penn state and hope for a good aerial view of the stadium and mt. nittany and the changing leaves to the south. i cannot help it. there is something in the air. i even find myself wanting to do crazy things i've put off all summer, like going for a run or mountain biking. anything to stretch these days of perfect temperatures and, for now at least, sunny weather.

this time of year brings with it ghosts, though. it has been two years since the now-familiar onslaught of doctors and tests began. i cannot help but notice each passing anniversary. they say it will go away with time, but the wounds are still surprisingly fresh. it is as though i entered a kind of dream world that parallels the real world, only the dream world is shockingly, vividly, loudly, relentlessly real. right over there, on the other side, i can see the other tracks i used to follow, before i knew about this world of cancer. i never thought twice about this world, and here i am now, basically since october 2006 never having a day when i didn't think about cancer. my cancer. this time a year ago i think i was beginning to convince myself, really believe, that it had gone away and i had become one of the very rarest of winners. i had started out the journey with long odds and there was no reason an otherwise perfectly healthy person like me couldn't monopolize once again on the same chances.

but, i know i was wrong. i guess i don't mind fighting. it is all i know now. and i cannot really relent, even though it would be oh so nice to take a break and not have to deal with it for the time being. but now, even more than ever, that can't be the case. it is fall, and once again, i am fighting, learning, looking, listening, and moving along, parallel to that other world, the one without the cancer.

my nose runs and my eyes itch and i think about the good old days when it was probably just allergies. a dry cough returns, as it did last year, and the year before it, and i wonder whether it is just this time of year or something else. i look and listen around me. everyone is sniffling, little coughs here and there. i think it can wait two weeks until my scan. we'll know for sure then. i guess i don't want a real reason to go to the doctor in a week when i don't actually have to. allergies. that's what we can call it this week. it was fun to call it that before. maybe we're right. maybe we're wrong. but there it is, another one of the ghosts lingering around this time of year.

on the surface it is spectacular.

but on the inside i can't quite shake those feelings from before, the fears, the faces peering into mine, the conversations that just seemed to get worse and worse. all on sunny, warm, fall days.

the good news is i'm better off today than i was two years ago. i had a giant tumor in my chest then. now, as far as i know tonight, i don't. so i'll go to sleep with the sounds and cool air, thinking about all the fall days i've gotten to enjoy since then, and more to come, i hope.