The Kindred Spirits

Right now, on the other side of the country, in a little country house in North Carolina, my sweet redheaded sista-friend, Annie, is fighting like a champ. She has just completed aggressive rounds of chemotherapy and brain-surgery-while-awake to shrink/remove/obliterate the growing tumor in her head. The tumor is not backing down, but then, neither is Annie.

Is there some kind of firing squad line-up that has summoned all the good people to stand against the wall so that this dreaded blight can aim-fire-shoot deadly cancer rays at them? I am horrified at how many times I am hearing and seeing these precious and innocent people under attack. Most of the ones I know in my inner circle have not even touched a cigarette or taken illicit drugs. Most have lived quiet and wholesome lives, care taking others, and it just doesn't seem fair. As far as I know, right now, Osama Bin Laden is alive and doing well, and I seriously doubt he has cancer. So... it just isn't fair. I know I sound like a toddler right now, but it just isn't fair.

I grieve the prospect of a world without Annie's voice or incredible laugh. She has got to be one of the most interesting, full of life, imaginative and quirky-intelligent people I have ever known. She is the only friend in my circle who has bubbled over with glee about the revelations she uncovered while reading a book on quantum physics, of all things. I have no idea what she was talking about, but the passion for learning that has impressed me "evah so" as she would often slip and say when she let her inner Southern Belle loose.

A few weeks ago, I called her and caught her when she was waiting in the clinic for her first round of chemo/radiation. Her voice was full of light and optimism and from the chatter and constant interruptions to our conversation, I knew she had charismatically enchanted a room full of fearful patients and their families. She was cheering them on as they were being wheeled back to the room of monster-robot-cancer-killers. The tumor had caused her to be unable to "ambulate" (she loves that word) without the use of a walker. When her physical therapist wasn't looking, she told me, she did her very best "shuffle-ball-change" dance move, just to defy the rules. That's soooo Annie.

Annie is my walking tutor to all things good and Southern. She knows how to put a good scald on some fried chicken, how to serve "sweet tea" and she was there, my down-the-hall neighbor, to bail me out of my first cheesecake-gone-wrong disaster. She has drawers upon drawers of hand crafted linens, and dusty bookshelves that hold an eclectic variety of reading matter -- all of which I know for sure she has consumed. She knew of coffee houses in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia long before they became vogue niches for the yuppies to occupy. She sat still and listened in the midst of a room full of diverse conversations, able to extract brilliant sound bites from them all, which could be repeated at a moment's recall. I am convinced that somewhere deep in her closet is a hoop skirt and an invite to a cotillion. She would be ready and nothing, if not appropriate...

Annie was on the edge of 39 when she married her soul mate. She asked me to help her to hand pick her lingerie for the honeymoon. It was one of my first visits to Victoria Secret and she opened up the curtain, without a hint of self-consciousness whatsoever, to ask me if she should be seen in this: a fabulous thong-teddy. I don't think I had ever met anyone who I knew personally would be able to pull off that look, and here was Annie, not scared of being 40, not nervous or self-deprecating -- just ecstatic that she was getting to have this moment in her life after all the searching. I literally fell over laughing with her. All these years later, I still remind her to behave herself because I have seen her in a thong and might just have pictures to prove it.

Annie, Julie H. and I all met down in San Diego a few years ago, lunched at the Hotel Del Coronado. We called ourselves "The Pinky Sisters", making a commitment to not give up on expressing ourselves freely through our writing. "The Pinky Sisters" lunch was so inspirational, I began to write again, beginning this blog shortly afterwards. I did not see it coming... that I would write about this fight of Annie's. She will be upset if she thinks she made any of us feel sad or sorry for her. She just wants us all to fight beside her, cheer her on, help her cheer everyone else on, too ... so I will. I just won't let her see my tears while I do ...