Overcoming

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Sometimes you slip inside a story that is a huge part of your life, and you didn’t even know it. You might have heard a snippet of it, maybe a dozen times, and not realized how it matters. Here is one I just rediscovered—in a new light. It helped make me who I am.

When I first met Steve Marinella in graduate school, I learned that he had a passion for flying, a passion obvious in the way his eyes lit up and his hands moved excitedly any time he talked about planes. Now it seems funny that after four decades of marriage, I could learn a new and meaningful story about my husband. But I did.

About a month ago he asked me to attend his Air Force Academy reunion. We had never been to one before, but two weeks later we were headed to Colorado Springs. There we were greeted by blue skies, clear views of Pikes Peak, and hundreds of alumni returning to this pristine place of chrome, glass, and fountains. It is here many cadets discovered who they were—or who they cannot become.

For three days we tromped their old school grounds, talked with new cadets, and shared meals with Steve’s friends from his 26th Snoopy Squadron.

This was Steve’s life before I knew him and with the help of his former roommate Rich and his friend Doug, I was able to slip inside an experience that helped define this man I love.

Saturday afternoon we sat outside at the home of one of Steve’s classmates chatting. Rich was explaining how he took prep school to get admitted to the academy. “It was the only way in for me.”  Doug and Steve nodded knowingly.

“It was tough to get in,” Steve said. “I was no high school sports star, so I assumed I didn’t have a chance.”

The training was rigorous, and the cadets were told that half of them would wash out in the coming four years. “Turns out that prediction was accurate,” Doug explained. “When we started, there were 36 new cadets in our squadron and seventeen actually graduated.”

“Remember how afraid we were that we would wash out with all the physical training!” added Rick. They reminisced about the first summer when they were hauled up to Sailors Park and left to “live off the land” for a week. Survival Camp.

“I think each of us had one K-ration to make last a week,” Steve explained.  “We learned to pick berries and find and eat the smallest animals. I lost twenty pounds that summer. I often felt lightheaded when we returned.”

“We were all starving and exhausted,” added Rich. “Then they made us face the Confidence Course.”
“That was hell! Looks like an oversized Jungle Jim now,” Doug said. Then he turned to me. “But it nearly killed a few of us–including Steve.”

After a week of wilderness training, the cadets faced the dreaded Confidence Course. They ran around the track and then spent the day struggling to climb towers and crawl through several structures. The largest, most dreaded obstacle was the Tilton Hilton.  They had to scale all five stories using the ropes on the side. When they reached the top, they had to pull themselves up to walk across logs that formed the roof and then scale down.

Rich managed it. Then as Steve scaled it, he began to feel lightheaded. He reached the top and as he attempted to grab the log, a spotter screamed at him, “Hustle!” But instead, Steve fainted and plunged thirty feet down. His friend Doug would tell me, “There was a deafening thud when he hit the ground. I was certain the fall had killed him. It didn’t, but it broke his back.”

The ambulance carried Steve to the hospital where for a couple of days, he remembered nothing but the excruciating pain and being pricked and prodded by physicians, fearful of paralysis. “When I awoke,” Steve explained, “I kept asking if I could still fly, but they would not answer me. I felt determined to keep going. To be able to fly.”

On the third day the doctors announced Steve would walk again, but not for several months. He had suffered a severe compression back fracture. He needed to lie flat for three months so it would heal. After three months in bed, they thought they could place a body cast on him. Then he could return to the academy.

But Steve surprised them. On the fourth day, he sat up in bed. “The nurses cheered me on,” he explained. “But the physicians told me I was not capable of sitting up—but I did. I just couldn’t lie in a bed for months!”

“You have always been so determined to make things work,” I noted.

“Maybe too determined?” Steve laughed. “I think I drove the doctors crazy.” He explained by the seventh day they had suited him in a complete body cast. “That evening I went to the bathroom on my own and the next day I started helping the nurses—emptying the trash cans. They still wouldn’t tell me if I could fly, but that just made me fight harder.”

Much to everyone’s surprise, on the eleventh day of his hospital stay, Steve was discharged and returned to the academy. Classes started the next week and Steve, in a full body cast, never missed a day. “The cast came off before Thanksgiving and by March I had all the waivers signed for Army Airborne Parachute Training. I felt that this would show my ability to train to become a pilot.” It did. Four years later Steve graduated and headed to Purdue to study aerodynamics and astronautics where I met him. After graduate school, he headed to Arizona to fulfill his dream of becoming a pilot.

I think we had been married a couple of years before I saw a notice from the Air Force to Steve addressing him as “a disabled veteran.”  When I asked him about it, he acknowledged that he had fallen and broken his back as if it were a small footnote in his life. But all these years later I can see now that it was much more. I can see now that this display of grit and determination helped to define Steve as a man. He had a dream, and he was going to hold onto it and do whatever it took. He was going to overcome his “disability.”  And he did.

As for me, living with Steve has taught me how to be a stronger, more resilient person. How to juggle my active inner critic and how to move forward through hardships.  For all of this, I am grateful. Today he is a man wrapped in his curiosity, his passion to fly, and his drive to create new and better machines, many that save lives. He may be a bit too driven, but I continue to learn from and marvel at all he overcomes day by day.

Beautiful Scars

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Our scars tell stories. Sometimes they’re stark tales of life-threatening catastrophes, but more often they’re just footnotes to the ordinary but bloody detours that befall us on the roadways of life. These beautiful words come from Dana Jennings, editor and prostate cancer survivor, from his column in the New York Times on July 21st, 2009. They have inspired this blog.

Think back. You have scars that tell stories. Some that are footnotes in life and others are profound. Can you tell one of those stories?

Since it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I want to share a story that changed me. It taught me how beautiful scars can be.

In 2012 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As any breast cancer patient knows this is a long and arduous journey.  I trekked from physician to physician. I experienced several scans, MRIs, and five biopsies. I was encouraged to get at the bare minimum a lumpectomy to save my left breast–but I was also told I would probably end up needing to lose both of my breasts. I was advised to think about a double mastectomy. There was a long line of cancer in my family—both aunts, my Grandma Rose, and my mom had lost one breast to cancer at age 60 and another to cancer at age 80.

My surgeon said my case was not clear, and she encouraged me to meet with a medical board who could advise me. I agreed. My breasts were analyzed intensely, but I left there more perplexed and uncertain about what to do.

The morning after I met with the medical board, I awoke early, meditated, wrote several pages in my journal, and closed it with resolve. I was done. Done with lists. Done with reading books by cancer experts. Done with talking to oncologists. Done with calling Billie, my dear friend with a good ear. Intellectually I had decided. I would opt for a lumpectomy and try to save my breasts. But my heart knew better. I felt a strange emptiness, like a balloon without air.

I called my mom. At ninety, she lived a few blocks from my home, and she was anxious to know my decision. This call started like all our conversations. The weather. The day. And then I said, “I have made my decision. I am going to try and save my breasts. I will have the lumpectomy . . .” Then I paused, for I was wavering over my choice. I intuited this was not going to work. I kept picturing the faces of friends who had made every effort to save their breasts with repeat lumpectomies, making every effort to get clear margins and keep their breasts. I wasn’t even sure about one lumpectomy. “If we miss margins — even once — I am going to have a double mastectomy,” I blurted.

Without pausing I began citing stats and sounding like the robot-like radiologist who had first informed me of my cancer, and suddenly, mid-sentence, in my mind’s eye I saw the image of my Grandma Rose. Then I choked on the word breasts and began to sob. Not cry—sob. This must have gone on for some time, for the next thing I remember, I was still blubbering when my mom appeared on the scene, took my cell phone from my hands, clicked it off, and did something she had not needed to do for a couple of decades. She held me in her arms. She rocked me gently. And for a few minutes, I felt safe.

As the tears receded, I pulled back and dried my eyes. Then I realized I had been sobbing into the soft pads that had served as Mom’s fake breasts for years. In that moment I understood that she had always been embarrassed by her fake breasts and the scars they hid. I doubted she had ever shown them to anyone. I reached out and touched the soft breast padding and asked, “May I see your scars?” She nodded and without speaking, she unbuttoned her cotton blouse and unhooked her bra. And there they were. Long, jagged, red scars. But to my surprise, my heart wrapped itself around them and allowed me to see their beauty. These scars were marks of transformation. Overcoming. These scars had allowed her to keep her life, and allowed me to keep my mom. I studied them. With my finger I traced the lines gently where her breasts had been. Slowly. Silently and with reverence. And then I hugged my mother with as much heart-gripping love as I had.

A week later I had a lumpectomy, and it failed to rid me of cancer, but I had already shed my tears and mourned the loss of my breasts. Immediately I scheduled my double mastectomy and moved forward with the next surgery, grateful I had a good surgeon who could skillfully remove cancer and knit my skin back together in the T-shaped scars I now have on both breasts.

Dana Jennings wrote, But for all the potential tales of woe that they suggest, scars are also signposts of optimism. I love that for it is true. My mom’s scars felt like heroic symbols of overcoming against difficult odds. Twice. Of surviving to live a long and beautiful life. My breast scars are my own talisman. My own tattoos that mark me with my story, a hard-won but life-affirming story of my own scars. Truly beautiful scars.

The Storyteller

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As a child I spent many hours in the sandbox that my dad built beneath two large maple trees in our backyard. On summer mornings, a small gang of us–my red-headed, younger brother Charley, his chubby friend Mikey, my frizzy-haired friend Jan, and my older brother, Les—would meet there. We all looked up to Les.

At eleven Les was already six feet tall and would have been the star of the elementary basketball team if my mom could talk him into wearing his eyeglasses. He was terribly blind until third grade when Mrs. Vawter figured out the only reason he could not read was because he could not see. Maybe that is why he was not a stellar student in his early years. Maybe that is why he became a storyteller instead. A good one. In truth he could have won an Emmy for his stories about the life-sized crawdads that haunted our neighborhood sewers.  By the time I arrived at Southport Elementary my brother’s stories had earned him an epic reputation.

One summer morning when our usual gang of five gathered around the sandbox, Mikey told us his well-loved cocker spaniel named Bounce was missing. Les shook his head like he knew exactly what had happened. “Probably that witch who lives across Banta Road again.”

“The green witch?” asked Mikey.

 Les had a string of stories about an evil witch and her black cat who lived about a mile down the hill across Banta Road in an old, gray Victorian house with funny little towers that pointed into the sky and seemed to pierce the dark clouds that always hung over it. Beside this dilapidated house was an orchard with apple trees that were black and all twisted like you see in Halloween movies. But the place was so creepy we never trick-or-treated there. Besides, we weren’t allowed to cross Banta Road.

In the past Les had said he believed the witch was a rare breed—a green witch, and Mikey confirmed it. We always drove past that house on the way to school, and one day Mikey got all bug-eyed and later explained he had seen the “green” witch on the porch with a black cat, casting spells. He talked about it for weeks.

But that summer morning, Les explained that on his way to buy bubble gum the day before, he had heard a dog barking in the witch’s orchard.  “Maybe Bounce,” he said.  “I hate to tell you, Mikey, but I am pretty certain that green witches are known for kidnapping dogs, feeding them poisonous apples from twisted, sick trees, and then cooking the poor critters for dinner.”

“No!” screamed Mikey. “No!!  What can we do?”

“We have to stop her!” cried Jan, her unruly hair bobbing in all directions.

The whole gang flittered about like a hive of angry bees. We wanted Bounce back. Now. Within minutes Les had corralled our motley gang of five and armed us with sticks that had fallen from the nearby maple trees. Following his lead, we marched down the hill, and crossed Banta Road.  Adrenalin drove us past the orchard, through the gate, into the yard, and up the creaky steps of the porch of the old house. Waving our sticks in the air, it was clear we had a mission.

“We want Bounce!” shouted Mikey and as he did a furry black cat napping in a sunken porch chair, jumped in surprise and scurried into the house through a small doggie door.  Emboldened, the whole gang of us tapped our sticks on the floor of the porch and cried out “Bounce!  Bounce!!”

Without hesitation Les banged on the large wooden door, and we could hear the intense barking of a little dog. “It’s Bounce!” I cried.

In a moment the lock snapped, and a door opened. Mikey gasped at the sight. Instead of his cocker spaniel, he beheld a ferocious little chihuahua barking like a lion at us from the arms of a tiny little grandma with her hair pulled back in a loose bun, wearing a baggy blue dress, and Birkenstocks. “Can I help you?” she asked, in a voice that sounded more wise than evil.

“Have you seen-seen- my-my-my dog?” stuttered Mikey.  And Les explained that we had lost a cocker spaniel and thought we might have heard Bounce in the orchard the day before.

“Hmm.  The only dog around here is Clarke,” explained the sweet little lady. By now Clarke had calmed down. Even with our sticks we must have looked harmless.

“I thought you were a green witch,” I blurted, surprising myself, “and that you kidnapped dogs and fed them poison apples from your orchard.” The lady in the blue dress pulled back surprised and stared at us for a minute. Then she laughed, and it was a soft little ripple of noise that was followed by a big smile that lit up her round face. “I am Ishy,” she said. “What are your names?”

Shyly we answered—one by one. Then she eyed our towering leader, my brother Les. “I imagine you are the storyteller,” Ishy chuckled as she said this. Les rarely looked guilty, but in that minute he shrugged and smiled down at Ishy. He never minded being busted. “We need to find a missing dog,” he explained with his usual charm, and Ishy laughed again.

Before we left, Ishy had fed us sugar cookies. Enough to make up for all the Halloweens we had skipped this house. Then she gave each of us a small bag of her pink apples that had come from the arms of the weirdly twisted trees. Almost instantly we all started eating them as we began the trek back up the hill.

Of course, we all arrived home to the unspeakable anger of our moms.  We had crossed Banta Road without a thought. While we tried sharing our apples as peace offerings, the moms weren’t buying any of it. Every one of us was grounded in our yards for a month. And Bounce found her way back to Mikey’s house later that same afternoon. But Les was legendary, and we all knew it. A genuine master of the story. We didn’t mind being grounded with him in the backyard sandbox.

Fifteen years ago, after seven painful surgeries for cancer and one devastating infection, I lost my storytelling brother. His death left a big hole in my heart—and the hearts of so many folks.

I have never been able to tell a story like my big brother, but it was his love of sharing stories and fully living in them that made me want to write them. I first tried to write about the green witch when I was nine. Pieces of that first story are captured here.

My brother taught me to share the stories that mattered in my heart. I remember holding Les’s hand when he was dying. I never wanted to let go. Often when I write a story I can feel him, and as I try to honor his love of the imagination, I visualize Les is still holding my hand and living in the story with me. It is a great comfort.