Gifts and Presence
With some lagniappe for the season
According to comedian and noted curmudgeon Larry David, today is now too late to wish you a Happy New Year.
With all due respect to Larry’s opinions about the appropriate timing for seasonal greetings, it’s been so long since my last post that welcoming you and the new year feels like a good way to start. Happy New Year! Welcome back to The Incurable!
We have been in a season of gift-giving—Hanukkah and Saint Nicholas Day in early December, presents in stockings and under the tree for Christmas, the litany of gifts in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” song, and the gifts of the Magi celebrated at Epiphany on January 6.
Much of this gift-giving focus is on stuff. Black Friday and Cyber Monday urge us to buy, buy, buy. A long shopping list defines our December to-do list as we try to find the right gift to purchase, ship, wrap, make, deliver. Some parents post photos on social media of their children in front of towers of Christmas loot, perhaps preemptively answering that seasonal FAQ: “What did you get for Christmas?”
This year, I got away for Christmas. What a gift.
Now to be clear, I like stuff. I like choosing presents for loved ones and I like opening presents given to me. [Just no turtledoves or partridge or geese or French hens! Not a fan of live birds unless they are very, very far away.] I love a gift that says: I was thinking about you. I’ve paid attention to your delights and interests. I selected this as an expression of care or celebration. Sure, gift-giving can be transactional, perfunctory, a chore imposed by capitalism. But a present can also be an expression of love and relationship, a way to symbolize and magnify the joy of an occasion.
This year, the gift I’ve treasured has been presence.
I am still here, still present in this funny, frustrating body to experience this wonderful, wearying world.
I am still here with my dearly loved friends and family. I have a jewel box of memories from the past year that sparkle with many-splendored joys of time together: seeing a son’s musical performance and skydive, moving a son into his university hall, rejoicing in my mother’s milestone birthday, attending the weddings of friends, celebrating a friend’s graduation, enjoying long lunches with friends in Fife and Tennessee and North Carolina, walking on the coastal path with university students, watching rom-coms with teenager friends, gathering with friends to browse local markets and watch American football, hosting out-of-town friends, sharing Thanksgiving with my son and his friends in London, consuming countless coffees with charming companions, and traveling on a wonderful vacation with my husband. If I described each facet of these priceless gems, my writing would go on far longer than your interest in reading. These have been invaluable gifts of presence.
And for the Christmas season, I was present with my husband and sons in Australia. This would be an amazing experience under almost any circumstances, but it was especially meaningful this year. We had planned a trip for July 2020 in conjunction with Dave’s conference and lectures. A global pandemic put the kibosh on those plans. We rescheduled for 2021. Covid still had Australia in lockdown, and then my cancer diagnosis entered the chat. I remember a conversation sometime in late summer of 2021, as Dave tried to figure out which flights were issuing refunds or vouchers and whether we needed to reschedule or cancel:
“Do you have thoughts about when or if you might be interested in trying to get to Australia?”
“I can’t make it upstairs in our house—that’s like asking when or if I’m interested in going to the moon! My brain cannot imagine how or when my body could do that.”
We cancelled everything.
By summer 2023, my body was feeling stronger and better. My brain dared imagine making a trip like that. We decided to book Australia as a family Christmas trip—no work conference, no lectures, no meetings. Just time together in a beautiful warm place (with awesome animals).
The beaches were fantastic, the rainforest hikes were exhilarating, the Phillip Island Little Penguins were amazing, the New Year’s Eve fireworks in Sydney were magical, and my new wombat friend Basil was wonderful. But the best part of all was being able to be there—the gift of being present, the gift of presence with my family, the gift of presence with my family in a place that had once seemed impossible to visit.
The Christmas season is wrapped up now. Larry David thinks we should move on from Happy New Year at this point on the calendar. But I will continue to savor the gift of presence as long as I possibly can.
Treatment Update
The newsletter hiatus resulted in skipping several treatment updates from the past few months, but happily the update overview is largely good news.
My quarterly scans have returned reports of “stable.”
My spine surgery review went well. The hardware is intact, and bones and muscles are healing nicely.
I have negligible pain most of the time, and pain flares are usually mitigated quickly.
I have more energy after stopping the targeted therapy, and my white blood count is getting closer to the low end of normal.
Prayer requests:
Continued stable results from scans.
I need to continue building strength, in part because arthritis in my joints has accelerated as a side effect of my cancer treatment.
I have two severely damaged vertebra in my neck that we’re continuing to monitor. As long as they are asymptomatic (not causing pain or other problems) and are not eroding further, the surgeon prefers to leave them alone. They are checked on my usual scans, and we’ll take another close look at them this summer.
Lagniappe—a little something extra
With the passing of Epiphany, we are now in the liturgical season that some Christian traditions call Epiphanytide. Though Epiphanytide isn’t associated with the same feasts and traditions as Advent or Christmas, I like to think of it as a season to savor those gifts as you start the new year. And for many like my family from south Louisiana, it is the season of Carnival. [Note: sometimes this entire season is referred to as Mardi Gras, though Mardi Gras itself is Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday.] If your only association with Carnival or Mardi Gras is debauched partying in the French Quarter, then let me assure you it is so much more.
Family, neighborhood, and regional celebrations can vary quite a bit, much like everybody’s grandma’s jambalaya recipe. Whether it’s a high society krewe or a neighborhood parade, an essential ingredient is creating ways to enjoy time together. For example, after Epiphany, nearly every gathering will include a king cake, which is a similar to a coffee cake with different fruit or cream fillings and a little plastic figurine of a baby hidden inside. Whoever gets the piece with the baby has to bring the king cake to the next gathering or host the next party. When I was in grad school at LSU, some professors would bring king cake to the first seminar of the spring semester to kick off a steady stream of delicious baked goods until Mardi Gras. If you’re going to sit in a room for three hours with sleep-deprived people to discuss statistical analyses of South American judicial systems, you might as well have cake at the same time! (For a spirited debate with people in south Louisiana, ask which bakery makes the best king cakes.)
I rarely make king cakes now, but my friend Carmen brought me the right icing sprinkles in Mardi Gras colors and even a plastic baby figurine, so this Epiphanytide/Carnival might be the season to revive my dormant baking efforts. If you’d like to introduce king cake to sweeten your time with others this season, you can find several recipes online, including this one. Here is a gluten-free option. Or if you’re in the U.S., you could have one shipped to you from many south Louisiana bakeries.
God is ......
Hoping you are still enjoying the gift of presence wherever you are. I love reading your words. They are eloquent and simple. Thank you for bravely sharing your heart.