When Tornadoes Come

                                                                                                                   

The segues you don't want to hear:
     "Would you like to know your results?"
      "Maybe we'd better sit down."
      "Do you want it straight?"

They deal you the Cancer hand and you find yourself moving to Oz. But it can be something else that makes the ground shift a world under your feet. It could be losing someone.  Moving away from home. When I got to Oz, I found out my friend Donna had just been diagnosed with Cancer. I thought we would be fellow-travelers on this journey along with my friend  Bob and my friend Caroline and my friend Rebecca. But within days Donna was gone. Her family has gone to Oz.

In the chemo suite today (love that term) a lady was explaining how ever since her grandson got cancer, she just doesn't feel the same old irritation when the little things go wrong; I mean, who cares about getting cut off on the highway when your grandson has cancer. This family has moved to Oz.

My Cancer tornado moved me all over the continent before dropping me where I least expected to be right now. The scenery outside the window kept changing and changing as I went from home in Mexico to Bakersfield, Ca, for my husband's back surgery, and then drove to Texas to tell my kids the news face to face so we could process it together, then drove back to Bakersfield for more tests, and then found out unexpectedly, just checking email, that  I had one last rushed drive to make. When I looked out the window after that, I was on the ground in rural Canada.

 Looking out the big picture windows of our basement suite, it's as if I had ridden the tornado backwards and am looking out over a large corn field in Kansas. Our hosts are farmers.  There are white seagulls  diving into the dead corn field looking for food. My guess is that I get to watch that corn field grow up into something over the next 6 months while I'm here. And I like the white seagulls out there wheeling and squawling their signs of life. Come to find out, Oz can be anywhere.