Living in the Future, Living in the Past

The picture is of a statue at Kohler Pavilion at OHSU. I thought it was such and odd, awkward and touching image, a rabbit/man comforting and greyhound. It's one of the images that I've recently retrieved from the camera in my phone.

What an odd world we live in, that we carry around little phones in our pockets all the time, phones that have little cameras in them. Sophie used to say that she felt like she was living in the future. Technologically, she made it to answering machine. That's as much technology as she was able to manage. I've made it to the cell phone with camera, but I don't know how much more I will be able to deal with. Once my capacity to deal with new technology has been met, I guess I'll be living in the future, just like Sophie did for so many years.

All of the photo albums from Sophie's house are now on our dining room table. There was a whole section of pictures from our wedding in 1981. That was 26 years ago. It was so amazing to see how many people at the wedding were no longer with us: my parents, Howard's parents, Howard's sister Jan, Rebo, my grandmother, my Uncle John. It made me want to live in the past, at least to go back for a day or so. Would it be too much to ask to attend my own wedding again and hang out with all those lovely people again? Why can't we time travel? Why can't I go back as who I am now and take care of my children as babies to give who I was then an much needed break? This seems like such a reasonable request.

Or how about going back to the day before my last surgery, just for a few minutes? I’ve lost my wallet and my camera (which is why I'm learning how to use the camera in my phone). I remember taking them out of my bag a week ago when I was packing for the hospital thinking that I certainly wouldn’t need them there. However, what I did with them after that is unknown. I can’t find them anywhere. It’s very unsettling. Perhaps I put them in a “safe” place. Fortunately, I don’t need to drive during my convalescence, but it would be nice at some point to have my driver’s license back, not to mention my library card, my bank card, and my credit card. It has been a week and they still haven’t shown up.

So I’m penniless, without identity, and I don’t have my camera. I’m baffled as to where they might be. I can get Howard to give me some money, I suppose. And I’ve suddenly had to learn to use the camera on my phone. It doesn’t take nearly as good pictures as my real camera, but since it is always with me, it’s more convenient, especially now that I have figured how to download its pictures onto my computer.I wore myself out yesterday getting home from a medical appointment and I’ve been paying for it all day. It’s easy to forget how fragile I am when I feel good and then to overdo it. It’s a lesson I have to keep learning over and over again. I’m pretty tired today and spent most of the day inside, except for a short excursion to Jim and Patty’s for a soy latte, my big indulgence for the week.

I talked to our friend Steve Bratman this afternoon. He and Howard were best friends when they were growing up. Steve is a doctor and a writer. He had moved, changed his phone number and his email address so I was unable to contact him when I learned that I had breast cancer. It’s too bad, because he would have been a good ally when I was fighting having chemo. He says that the evidence in favor of chemo is very good for some types of cancer, just not for breast cancer. And the studies are all longitudinal studies, not random assignment studies, which makes a huge difference in assessing the data. Anyway, I’m too tired to repeat the argument he made right now, but I could have used him in my court when I was resisting chemo. Or after I was hospitalized for neutropenia the first time.

It’s very cool today. The weather isn’t terribly summery right now. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow. How disappointing. I suppose it should get it out of its system now while I'm in convalescent mode. I was so tempted to ride my bicycle today and David forbade me to do so. It's not yet time, but I'm so ansty to get back on it again.