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 divorce. Loss of a kid. Getting fired. 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 particular tornado took me driving over 7000 miles with my husband before landing me in...let's say, Oz. I live in Mexico, but on a trip to California where my husband was having back surgery, I found out I had cancer. Driving to Texas to tell my kids, I got the news I had to move to Canada. For a year. Looking out the big picture windows of our basement "suite," it's as if I rode the tornado backwards and am looking out over a large corn field in Kansas. Our hosts are farmers.  There are white seagulls (ok those might not fit the Kansas scenario) diving into the dead corn field looking for something. I'm no farmer, but 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.