Yesterday Tessa and I went on a spontaneous day trip to Vancouver to play tourist and have a good day together. We started on Granville Island (and I bought a delightfully witchy home made broom from an artisan shop there - I've been coveting it for years and finally splurged), walked up and down Robson Street, had dinner at a location overlooking the water at English Bay. It was lovely. Tessa and I wore sundresses, chatted, saw the city, ate good food, bought books. Tessa even had her first cocktail in a North American bar - the drinking age in Canada is lower, so we had pre-dinner Aperol Spritzes. It was lighthearted, relaxing, and fun. My heart felt joyful.
Tessa and I have reached a peaceful place in our relationship that I'm loving thoroughly. We've been enjoying each others' time this summer, and a day telling stories and listening to Taylor Swift in the car on the way up, with a stop at Starbucks to fill our commuter mugs (coffee for me, lemonade for her), was almost as fun as the actual trip. Looking at the artisan items at the market - prints, jewelry, pottery, glass, and so much more - and enjoying them together with no intention of buying them was just as wonderful. She bought ketchup potato chips and Smarties and Coffee Crisp at London Drugs: such small pleasures - but such deep pleasures.
While we were in the bookstore Indigo on Robson Street, we separated (me to look at literary fiction and witchy books; her to look at books about female spies in WWII and murder mysteries), each happily browsing and lost in our own thoughts, and the song "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter came on in the store.
"Bad Day" and I have a long history. It came out when I was newly diagnosed with breast cancer, and I'd sit in my chemo chair as the poison dripped into me, listening to it on repeat on my iPod shuffle. I'd play it over, and over, and over, reminding myself that this was just a bad day - not a life, just a bad day, and that it would pass. I don't even know why it gave me as much comfort as it did, but the idea that I could have a bad day to this degree (more frightened than I knew was possible, often lonely with an intensity that scared me) but still frame it as just a day that would pass, changed me and helped me to cope. I don't hear the song that often, and I don't choose to listen to it on my playlists anymore, but when I do hear it I'm instantly awash in those old feelings and memories.
So there I was, having a really, truly, deeply good day with my daughter, lingering in a bookstore in a beautiful city across the border on a hot sunny day, merely because I wanted to, my heart full and happy, and the song came on and hit me with an intense wave of remembering all of it.
I paused for a moment to take it in. The good days that I dreamed of back then, that seemed like a fantasy on Cinderella or lottery levels, had come to reality. My bad days were, miraculously, good.
It wasn't just the vacation day, it's everything that leads to that day being possible. It's having a job that gives me summers off, having a daughter who chooses to spend time with me, having work that not only pays the bills but is deeply enjoyable. It's about ending the relationships that made me feel lonely - because lonely and alone are NOT the same thing - so that I could pursue a life that made me feel joyful. It's about having a good therapist, and good health, and a million dreams. It's about having a calendar filled with lovely plans, and a phone buzzing with texts from my favorite people, and snapping selfies with Tessa. It's about feeling at home in bookstores, and about enjoying the fact that Tessa feels the same way (we aren't at all the same person, but having some overlaps to what we love is truly a gift).
I let the feelings wash over me, remembering the really truly bad days and reveling in this really truly good one... and then I went back to browsing. I felt peaceful.
Minutes after hearing the song and reflecting on it, my phone pinged, and I checked it, expecting a message from maybe Susan or Carolyn about our upcoming trip. It was my estranged brother, telling me that my mother (from whom I am also estranged) was just diagnosed with breast cancer.
For a moment, the world around me trembled, threatening to crumble. Time shimmered, this wonderful bookstore travel day warping into the old days of being in a family where boundaries are not understood or allowed, where yelling and name calling is commonplace, and where the hopes and dreams that make me who I am are mocked and disparaged. I felt the cool, teal plastic feeling of the chemo chair, the ache of my tender skin around the portacath. I felt the metallic nausea in the back of my teeth, where it always hit me first. I felt the pasted on smile of trying to be kind to the nurses while I longed to rip the tubes away and run to the forest. I felt the indescribable exhaustion of trying to parent a toddler through it all; I felt the brave terror of putting on a swimsuit over my mastectomy and taking my daughter to a pool, watching the whispers of "that poor woman" as the sun reflected off my bald head and I pretended not to care.
I felt the loneliness of my parents saying "you don't mind if we go on a road trip as you start treatment, do you?" and hearing my own voice say "of course not, you take care of yourselves" and realizing that I was entering a deeper loneliness than I knew possible.
And I felt that of course I love my mother, and long for reconciliation and wellness, and that I wish for a world in which she was deeply well in mind and body, and that I'd never wish this upon her, and that part of me wanted to show up with a lasagna and some distracting magazines and attend every doctor's appointment...
And all of those feelings collided together, the joy of today and the pain of yesterday and the wish for my mother and I to be well and the reality that brought us to estrangement and I felt dizzy, as if the world was blurring and shimmering like a mirage, and my legs weren't quite steady.
I found Tessa sitting at a table, engrossed in a book about a Parisian spy, her pink and black sundress a playful tribute to summer; her shiny long hair hanging down her back and draping around her face. I shared my phone with her, and saw her face as she absorbed the news, quickly looking up and examining my face for a response. She murmered, "I hope she's going to be okay..." and then she softly asked, "How are you?"
How am I? Do I know?
I do. I do know.
I am incredibly sad that my mother has to fight this stupid disease, but delighted that her single tumor is quite small, and that if I'm right, it looks like her prognosis is excellent, and that her treatment should be much less invasive than mine. I know for certain that I want her to be well, that I hope that her treatment goes smoothly, and that this will become a blip for her, not a life defining or ending moment. She's in her 70s, and I hope she still has decades to live.
I also know that I cannot change my boundaries because of this new information.
My boundary, at the most basic level, is "No yelling, no name calling, and no belittling." I've repeated that boundary in writing and verbally to my parents, and I'm clear about it. The estrangement started when my father yelled, "I'm ashamed to be your father! I'm ashamed you are my daughter!" and hung up the phone on me because he disagrees with my politics, and I realized in that moment, after many years of struggle and inability to hold boundaries, and his name calling and my placating and my mother excusing, that this was not okay, and that I could never change them, and that I couldn't be true to myself and in relationship with them at the same time.
A few years into estrangement, one of my best friends (who has known my parents since we were in high school), called my mother to try to set things right, believing that my mother could see reason. My mother responded with anger and tears, and told my friend "I gave her a perfect childhood!" and then my friend called me in tears and said, "It's worse than I imagined, and she's in denial, and she made it all about her..." and we agreed that NOBODY has a perfect childhood, but mine was remarkable in many ways that were so far from perfect that it's laughable. My friend said, "I realized in that call that it will never change, and I'm so sorry" and I actually felt relief that she saw what I saw.
My parents are products of their own upbringing. They had genuine struggles in their families of origin, then they married each other when they were just babies (19 and 21) because they were pregnant with me. They quite likely did the best they could, using the only tools they had. Unfortunately, though, they didn't have enough tools, and they doubled down and refused to look for more tools. Their relationship with one another is both loving and deeply dysfunctional and painful for me to watch: I knew from an early age that I didn't want what they had, and that my father's yelling and my mother's crying were both manipulative, scary, and unhealthy. Unsurprisingly, though I tried to find something different, my marriage was in too many ways a reflection of theirs.
But it's not what I want for myself, and it's not what I want for my daughter.
I don't want my mom to be sick, or lonely, or scared. I want her to be healthy, happy, and peaceful.
But that's what I want for myself too, and I do not know how to be healthy, happy, or peaceful with people who shame or belittle me, and it is not my job to try.
***
My life is - mostly - a series of really good days these days.
I'm single, but I'm not lonely.
I am proud of my relationship with my daughter, and of the way we talk to one another, and the structure of our relationship. She's not perfect, and I'm not perfect, but my love for her is immense and I feel her love in return. We enjoy each other's company - most of the time! I don't expect her to be like me, to like all the same things I do, and we certainly have our differences, but those differences make things interesting and I love the way we accept each other not despite the differences but often because of them.
I feel connected to my community. I have long term friends, and I make new friends, and I have work friends, and neighborhood friends, and I feel rooted in West Seattle.
I'm healthy. I walk, paddle board, do yoga, hike, and (rarely but I'm trying!) run. I eat pretty well. I do therapy, and I try to grow to be the best me that I can be. I often make changes, trying to find new exercise patterns or to change a way of thinking, and I challenge myself to be my best me. I often fail at this, but when I see a failure I try to make a correction (no blame, no shame, just growth).
I do work that is meaningful and important, and I love it, and I'm good at it. I think my work as a teacher makes the world a better place, and I'm always trying to learn more and to become a better teacher.
I am learning to be a traveler again, and whether it's Italy, Maine, or California, or just up the road to British Columbia, I love finding new ways to adventure.
I'm learning to be a writer, to follow that bliss, even when it's painful.
I'm learning to open my heart to romantic love.
I'm learning to love myself, and to accept that I'm imperfect with a lot of room to grow, but that doesn't stop me from being amazing and worthy of all of the goodness that life has to offer.
***
Yesterday was a very good day, with a memory of bad days, and the fear of more bad days. But while I can't control whether my own cancer returns, or whether I will find true love, or a million other things, I can control what I let into my life, and I can control my own boundary setting.
I hope my mom doesn't have deeply bad days. I wish her love, and health, and peace. I wish it could be different between us. But because I know what good days and bad days look like in my own life, I can't swoop in to help her. I can't make her bad days good again, and I won't unlearn all of my hard lessons about boundaries and their truths. I do not have the power to heal what is between us, and if I sacrifice my health and well being it will not actually make things better - it will only harm the years of growth I've worked so hard to achieve.
My days are mostly good days because I have boundaries. We teach people how to treat us, and we set boundaries over what we will and will not tolerate in our lives. We set boundaries about how we will live: about what time we will get up, about where we choose to work hard, and where we choose to celebrate, and about who joins us in the hard work and the celebrations. We set boundaries around the work we will or will not do. We set boundaries about how we will and will not live, what we will and will not tolerate, and about who gets to see our tender hearts and who doesn't.
***
The song "Bad Day" reminds me that some days really are rotten... but they're just a day. A day passes, and a new day comes to replace it. My life is filled with goodness - some of it gifted, and some of it hard earned. I have to work hard to keep the good days, and to fight off the bad ones. I'm never going back to a place in my life where I give anyone else power over me to dictate my good and bad days.
The boundaries stand, so that the good days can win.
I had a good day.
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