Kelly Corrigan's
memoir of
growing up—
the first time,
and the second time.
[Click here]
....................................

by Kelly Corrigan, 36 years old, Stage III Breast Cancer Survivor
Kelly writes a bi-monthly column on everyday life. If you'd like us to email her columns to you, click -->

October. Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Reminders to do self exams. Posters about Mammograms. Registration forms for Race for the Cure. And those damn pink ribbons. It's enough to make me scream. It's inevitable: if ever there is a moment when I'm not thinking about having breast cancer, right then a healthy woman will sashay by, a ponytail of hair bouncing off her, wearing a pink rubber wristband, and my tiny bubble of peaceful distraction pops, like an ambulance at a picnic. The daydream about slow dancing with my old boyfriend at Camp Tockwogh vanishes to make way for the nagging - nagging myself to change that upcoming chemo appointment, pick up my Nupogen shots tomorrow, call the insurance company again. Oh, and send a thank you note to my mom's friend who sent me new slippers last week.

If it's not nagging, it's worse. Will my daughters inherit this? Will I exhaust my husband's good will? Will the surgeon find it all? Will it come back? I'd like to ring that pony-tailed woman's neck for supporting my cause like that. I'd like to cancel the Race for the Cure. I'd like to stick big yellow smiley faces over every pink ribbon in every store window.

That's what it's like when you're living it, when breast cancer crosses over from an awareness campaign to a spiky trap you can't wiggle out of. But that was last year. I was thirty-six, with a one year-old, a three year-old, nine orange bottles of medication on my nightstand and not a hair on my body.

This year, I don't have Breast Cancer. It's all over. Every last one of the seven centimeters of aggressive cancer I found lurking in my breast last August is gone. A week ago, I got my first haircut in a year. My daughter keeps asking me if it's going to fall out again. I keep promising her it won't. "So no more cancer?" she confirms. "That's right, sweetie. No more cancer." My other daughter, now two, climbs in my lap, pats my breast and confirms the rumor: "Mommy's booby all better?" I keep promising her it is. "All better," she parrots, and pats some more for good measure.
This year, the pink ribbons, the wristbands, the posters, they don't send me tumbling down long, bare staircases. They take me somewhere else.

Those pink ribbons warm me. They remind me of the long season of treatment when a circle of people formed around my family, piling meals, flowers, notes and prayers on our doorstep. I pick through the pile in my mind. A shipment of H & H Bagels direct from New York City to California, appetizing even under the worst circumstances. A copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover, to transport me, and Paddy Clark, Ha Ha Ha, because I'm Irish. A snapshot of my friends in San Diego at Race for the Cure, my name in all capital letters across their backs. A note from my old friend's mom in Baltimore, guaranteeing that my gutsy spirit will carry me now.

I find, sometimes, that I am almost pining for that astonishing stretch of time when everyone dropped everything and in the silence, we all looked right into each other for the first time. My mom found words that normally elude her, words like so proud and my angel. My new friends became close friends, as chit chat about ottomans and window treatments turned to broader conversation about anxieties and blessings. Best, old friends from the East Coast left their jobs and their kids for a few days to mother my children and pass me my pills while my husband kept his job. My whole family, all seven of them, came across the country to surprise me for Christmas. My husband and I had the occasion to love each other with a tenderness that the everyday hustle of life just doesn't afford. It was an opening, for all of us, an enriching, sometimes sublime space to step into.

I don't know why we can't find this space under ordinary circumstances, why it seems corny to make a toast to friendship at a dinner party or why it seems odd to hug your friend extra long and tell them that you love them or why people would think you were drunk if you got misty listening to good, live music. But I do know that that is the role of illness in the world. And I do know that those who dare to show up on the doorstep of disease and illness are the ones who get to fill their lungs with that sublime air.
So, this year, when I see the familiar pink Breast Cancer magnet on the car in front of me, a nice feeling comes over me. I know something I didn't know last year. I saw things I hadn't seen last year. I smile. Sometimes I choke up, in the good way. Sometimes I even imagine celebration, like some kind of graduation ceremony, with me as the dean, lovingly pinning a perfect pink ribbon on each person in my class, my mom first, my neighbor, my friend from college...

This year, the pink ribbon looks less like a little two-faced noose and more like a giant cashmere wrap.