02/22/2002
I will never forget this date. The fact that I’m born on the 22nd (of May) and so was my husband (of March) doesn’t escape me. Numerologists would have a field day with this. 22 has always been my lucky number. It is the number my husband and I always play when we play roulette or games of chance.
February 22, 2002 was the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer. That was 12 years ago.
Obviously I lived to tell the tale.
Each year on my anniversary, (which is Saturday, so I’m posting this a couple days early since we will be away visiting old friends) I think of the change from BC to AC, before cancer to after cancer, because that’s what happens with a diagnosis like this, everything forms in your mind of how you thought and did things before you had cancer and then about how you did after cancer. Each year on my anniversary I usually acknowledge it in some way in this blog, though I will say that over the years, the fact that I had breast cancer is more and more of a short chapter in my life’s book, and not anything that really defines me. But in a way it really does.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the year of my diagnosis, remembering the details as best I can, and thinking about how they have shaped who I have become, both personally and professionally. A couple of conversations have brought that year front and center, one because a fellow weaver is going through a similar diagnosis and is using me as a sounding board for choices that aren’t what most physicians would recommend. The other conversation happened via Facebook, with another weaver, who was reading some of my early articles for Handwoven Magazine.
I started writing for Handwoven Magazine December of 2000, after meeting Madelyn van der Hoogt, the editor at Convergence Cincinnati. Within the year, she asked me to be the features editor for the magazine. She loved the way I wrote, and my huge knowledge base, and we agreed up front that I wouldn’t write projects (we called them PaaG’s/ Project at a Glance) which to this day I still avoid, but rather I’d write general focus features depending on what the theme of the issue was, and so I wrote for 35 issues straight for the magazine. I think that works out to seven years. So if you have a back issue of Handwoven Magazine, from December 2000 – around 2007, you’ll see some form of article from me. Madelyn was the most fantastic person I’ve ever worked for, giving me a long leash and positive feedback and I did some of my best writing for them. It is why this blog started, because I needed to continue the creative outlet of writing after my relationship ended. (In case you were curious, the relationship ended when the magazine was sold to a new publishing house and my elimination was purely financial).
But that isn’t what this post is about. This is about being one of the lucky ones. Not because I had cancer, and not because I lived, but because through it all I had the gift of being able to create something with my hands and that’s what got me through all those dark days of treatment, and painful memories, it isn’t about what I experienced, it is what I did with those experiences.
There are so many positive things I remember about those months of treatment, the support from friends and family was huge, and the support from the weaving community at large was even more embracing. Madelyn gave me an amazing voice within the magazine of those months right after my diagnosis, as a matter of fact, the week I came home from my mastectomy, drain still in my chest wall, she asked for a photo shoot of me for an article they were writing in the magazine about all the key players/editors/writers. It was one of the best therapies imaginable, because I had to get up, put makeup on do something with my hair, and act like a human being with a mission, I could not, for that afternoon of that photo shoot, act like I felt.
I came across the photos from that shoot earlier this year. (The stack of cling peaches is an inside joke from an End Notes Column I wrote for the Handwoven Issue September/October 2001)
I remember coming home from one of my chemo treatments, and there were many, walking into my studio and looking at my stash and thinking, horrified, what if I were to die and not actually ever weave or sew any of this stuff I’ve spent a lifetime accumulating? The best gift of that afternoon of shock and horror of thinking I might not live to see my precious stash become something, was the complete lack of fear to be able to just dive into the stacks head first because really, what was the worst that could happen? I wouldn’t produce a prize winning piece? No, the worst that would happen is I wouldn’t ever get to enjoy my treasures beyond dusting them on the shelf. Each cone of yarn and each cut of fabric would be a journey I’d never get to take. And that would be sad.
I remember pulling yarn off the shelf and looking at it in a new way. I remember rearranging the yarn, and seeing the relationships that I never saw before. And so, because I could, because it is a calming and healing thing to do when you have a gift of being able to produce something with your hands, I came home from that chemotherapy treatment and warped a loom. I created a vest, a long vest, and then Madelyn wrote and asked for me to write a feature piece on design, for the now infamous Design Issue, September/October 2002. I was still going through chemo when I wrote that article, and I occasionally hear from weaver’s that it is still their favorite article I ever wrote and would I please autograph the issue.
The article is called Designing from the Stash. One day I will recreate the article and post it in the extra’s on my website, which I can do, I just can’t use images that are property of Handwoven. At the moment all my archives seem to be inaccessible, but I know I have back ups of back ups, and one day I’ll sit down and write out all my words of wisdom, but for now, know you can look it up on page 36-39 of Handwoven Magazine September/ October 2oo2, Issue 111 or click here.
The article centers around working from within the stash, challenging yourself to use what you have, giving you permission to buy when the time is right, adding to the stash, but figuring out what you already have and making good use of it. The end result of that article was this vest. Or more correctly, the end result of this vest was that article.
My weaving friend Ginnie and I were chatting about this vest not two weeks ago. I’ve been on a mission to move a lot of my early work out of the back of the closet/attic and into the hands of people who will appreciate it, through the guild sale, Peters Valley store, and other venues. I’ve been asked if this vest is for sale, and I’ve never once ever wanted to put a price tag on it because, though I don’t wear it anymore, this piece represents a time in my life and a place in my life I need to always remember. The lining came from yardage I silk screened in college; textile paint on polyester, the pencil registration lines are still there, and I had exactly enough to make it work for this vest. That lining fabric had been in my stash since 1977. And it was the first time I wove inkle loom trim for a garment. The fabric itself was woven from two cones of yarn I hadn’t really ever noticed on the shelf, mill ends, in an eight shaft shadow weave.
I can’t imagine how my year of treatment would have gone had I not been able to sew or weave or even knit through out the process. I brought an inkle loom with me for chemo, as well as a vest I’d been working on for a number of years, beaded, two beads at a time. I remember knocking the tray of beads off the arm rest of the chemo lounge chair and having them go all over the floor and getting down on my hands and knees, IV pole in tow, picking up all the little copper seed beads from the linoleum. I remember doing hand work on a garment while I sat in that lounge chair, every couple of weeks, as my blood cell count cooperated, and having a chemo nurse say to me, “I wish I could do something creative with my hands”. I thought about that for a long time afterward. This nurse saves people’s lives. Every day. Chemo nurses are up there with the saints. Yet this one was jealous of what I could do with my hands.
That year of treatment ended the following March (3/03/03) when I went back into surgery to remove the port implanted in my chest wall for easy access for the chemo drugs. (This allowed my hands to be free during treatment). I brought kumihimo on a disk to occupy myself while waiting for surgery. The interaction between me and the surgical nurse was hilarious and I wrote another End Notes Column for Handwoven Magazine, that you can read here. I used the kumihimo for a vest closure and took the beautiful Lillian Whipple woven image from one of the cards I received from weavers all over the country, of hands and feet and a heart, and placed it in the back neck of the vest. That’s another piece I won’t part with.
I am one of the lucky ones. I have the gift that no matter what happens to me, I can reorient myself in time and space by walking into my studio and diving into something that lets all the dark yucky stuff stay out in the hallway for however long I’m surrounded by color and yarns and cloth and tools and magazines/books/patterns full of ideas. Ginnie and I talked about how important that gift is, even during the darkest of days. Some of my best work has come from working through the tragedies of my life and having a visual voice in which to express who and what I’m about.
And so that chapter in my life was 12 years ago, but I continue to make stuff, to play with what life brings my way, both the good and the bad, and I know that there is little in life that gives me as such satisfaction as what comes out of my hands. Because unlike everything else in my life, my studio and the contents are about the only thing I’ve any control over, and the one thing in my life I can always count on.
Stay tuned…