Island in the Sun

Picture yourself sitting on a soft sand beach in the late summer sun, cold beer in hand, kids playing in the sand, dog sleeping in the shade behind your beach chair. The water is clear and crisp, and the breeze is constant. On a clear day you can see Fall River from one side of the island, Martha's Vineyard from the other. Yet you are a world away from all of it. No hotels, no restaurants, no shopping, no nightlife. The preferred mode of transportation is your own two feet (or if you're lazy like my children, a golf cart). You spend your days at the beach reading and relaxing. At twilight you might dip your fishing pole in the surf. When the sun sets, you light spectacular bonfires on the beach and settle in to watch the moon rise and the stars twinkle. You are in Cuttyhunk.

The ferry ride from New Bedford takes all of an hour. If it is foggy, you can quickly lose your bearings but on a clear day you are able to watch the progression of the Elizabeth Islands as you travel south. Naushon, Pasque, and Nashawena are largely undeveloped, and privately owned. Sometimes you can see the herd of cows grazing on Nashawena. As you get closer to Cuttyhunk, there are gray seals splashing and sunning themselves on a rocky shoal. You see tiny Penikese Island, once a leper colony and now the site of a bad boys school. Entering the channel to Cuttyhunk Harbor, a few dozen houses are visible on the small hillside.

Disembarking from the ferry, you take a deep breath and count your blesssings to have access to such a rare, magical place. Unpacking a weeks worth of provisions goes much smoother since this is year #2, and within an hour or so of arriving, you are on the beach with a book and a cocktail and the promise of a full week of peace and solitude.

And then your two sister-in-laws arrive with six children in tow, and your kids make a friend on the ferry and before you know it there are 9 children under the age of 12 crammed into the golf cart, chugging along to the beach.

This is where the big shovel come in. If you ever find yourself trying to amuse a group of kids at the beach, I have three words of advice. Dig a hole. (By which, of course, I mean you watch as your husband digs a hole).

Cuttyhunk is a good place to be a kid, and a great place to be a kid with a bunch of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and rowdy cousins to play with. Favorite activities include...

Bunny chasing. (Note: pants optional).

Playing catch with random dogs on the beach.

Feasting on lobsters courtesy of the Cuttyhunk Shellfish Company. (Happy 65, Dad!!)

Like all good things, your stay on Cuttyhunk will eventually come to an end (unless you are one of the 20-odd people who live here year-round).

As the ferry pulls away, you experience the Cuttyhunk Farewell.

Then you start counting the days till next year's visit.

Got teeth?

The tooth fairy will be cashing in an IRA today to compensate Miss Emma Rae for 6 extractions. The bottom teeth were especially nasty, long roots. She is a trooper (and fully exploiting the unlimited ice cream policy).

What's in a Name?

If you are a Flight of the Conchords fan, then you are no doubt familiar with the genesis of my blog name.

My oncologist's name is Dr. Come. He did not treat me, I was transferred to his care when we moved up north two years ago. I did some research, and he is pretty much the shit in terms of breast cancer doctors in the Boston area who accept our ridiculous federal government lowest-bidder insurance, so I called to make the initial appointment. I asked his secretary whether Dr. Comb was accepting new patients and she cheerfully informed me that indeed, Dr. Come (just like the verb), he was.

Despite his unfortunate moniker, he's a peach. All of 5 foot 3, white hair, smart as a whip and completely literal, total funny-bone-ectomy. But that's OK, because I'm not paying him to make me laugh.

I visit Dr. Come every four months at the oncology clinic, where I sit in a room full of mostly old, mostly sick people. Sometimes the palliative care aid wanders by and offers me coffee or crackers, and I stifle the urge to defend my presence. I know I look all young and healthy, but I used to be bald, too. I watched it fall out in clumps. I vacuumed it up off the floor. I carefully tied it back in a skinny pony tail then sprayed the crap out of it, there is a football sized hole in the ozone layer but I was able to make it through Emma's dance recital dress rehearsal with my last few strands peeking out from the ballcap. Then I was shorn like a sheep on the back deck in the Maryland suburbs and I watched my 4-year old daughter play with the hair balls.

Follow-up cancer visits, mine at least, are alarmingly low-tech. They ask me a lot of questions, first the resident, then the nurse practitioner, then Doc Come himself, and then I get felt up like a teenager at prom. Very old school.

One of the things I appreciate about Dr. C is that he talks to me like an equal, he doesn't dumb it down. He is ridiculously thorough, which is a desirable trait in a cancer doc. So this latest visit he presented me with a potential additional treatment, involving a twice-a-year infusion of bisphosphonates, which are the osteoporosis drugs like the one Sally Fields pitches in that commercial where she looks like she's still Gidget. I have a lot of follow up questions, but the fact that my doctor is still actively considering additional treatment for me 3 years out...it takes me back to that uneasiness that sets in right about the time that your hair starts growing back, and your scars fade from red to pink, and the fruit baskets stop coming and your oncologist visits get further and further apart. You are on your own to try to puzzle it all back together, to figure out how to live a full color life in a world of gray.

Which gets me back to my modeling gig. Back in May I was invited to participate in a New Balance fashion show to benefit the Massachusetts Affiliate of Susan G. Komen. I walked through the New Balance store outfitted head to toe in the New Balance pink ribbon line while someone read my bio. The other models were also survivors, one story more compelling than the next. It was a giant step for me in terms of integrating the pink ribbon into my new world of gray. I left there invigorated, wearing my awesome new Lace Up For the Cure duds, and called everyone I knew. My brother's immediate response was "wow, you're a part time model." He may be the only doctor on the planet who survived medical school with his funny bone intact.

Teeny tiny tight black shorts

Last weekend, Pete rode his bike 111 miles to raise money for cancer research. They started in Sturbridge and ended in Bourne. There were 5,000 riders and nearly 3,000 volunteers, and all told raise a mind-blowing $34 million for Dana Farber.

Pete pulled the whole thing off in his typical style, with minimal fanfare. He was more stressed about the fundraising commitment (which he eaily met) than the ride itself. And of course he used the opportunity to purchase every piece of cycling gear imaginable.

When I first got to Bourne to watch Pete finish, he was still about an hour out, so I stood along the race route, about 1/2 mile out from the finish line, awkwardly clapping and shouting out the best words of encouragement I could muster..."Great job." "Good ride." "You did it." "Does your butt hurt?" "There's beer at the finish line."

I've complete enough road races to know how great it feels to hear encouraging words. And the more I stood there, the louder I clapped and cheered, and pretty soon there were tears streaming down my face because I was just overwhelmed that there could be so much positive energy and effort in the world and yet we still can't cure cancer. I saw people with goofy team costumes (team Kermit was my favorite), tongue-tangling mottos for cancers I'd never even heard of, pictures and names of loved ones lost, tributes to survivors. I felt proud and vulnerable, hopeful and scared.

When Pete rounded the corner on his bike in his teeny tiny black shorts I was jumping up & down, screaming like a lunatic, and bawling. I realized that just as I struggle to integrate cancer survivor into my day-to-day life and identity, he has similar, separate struggles. For one awful year of our lives, he watched and waited through surgery after surgery, chemo, hair loss, unfathomable fear and uncertainty. Now that we are back to "normal" life, the challenges are more subtle - hormone therapy side effects, recurrence scares, survival percentages, and the ever-present, nagging fear that our daughters will have to fight the same ugly disease.

So after three years of standing on his shoulders, it was just an amazing privelege to be the one on the sideline, cheering on my #1 fan.

Cable News is a gateway drug

Yesterday on the treadmill, I noticed on one of the TVs a big splashy headline: "Silent Epidemic!" I had my ipod blaring so I didn't have the audio, and now I'll never know which epidemic they're talking about. Childhood obesity? Corporate greed? Crappy customer service? Toe hair?

You know, if I were an epidemic, I would barrel into town in full body paint, sceraming obscenities, toe hair flying free. What's the point of an epidemic you can't hear?

He puts a chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly

Congratulations, Pete. So far I have come up with a lot of fun nicknames...

Captain Crunch (peanutty goodness)

Captain Courageous (boring!)

Captain Caveman (awsome!!)

Captain Kangaroo (does this make me Mr. Green Jeans?)

Captain & Tenille (if love can't keep us together, maybe the pay raise will)

I only wish you were in the Army so that we could spend the next 4 years speaking in a Mike Meyers Scottish brogue...Ah the Colonel, with his wee, beady eyes...

Semper Paratus

August 4 is a big deal in our house, because for the last 3 years, Pete's unit has celebrated Coast Guard Day at the greatest family amusement park in all of Southeastern New Hampshire.

Canobie Lake Park is over 100 years old, has a real wooden rollercoaster, a plethora of kiddie rides, and Harpoon IPA on tap.

This was our 3rd annual pilgrimage to Canobie (which means we've lived in the same place for 3 summers, a cause for celebration in its own right.) Every year the girls get just a LITTLE BIT braver and this year, it only took 2 hours for them to warm to the idea of the kiddie coaster. We had a big, rowdy group this year, Pete's 3 sisters and all but one of their kids, so there were nearly 20 of us, and plenty of older cousins to take the little ones on the pukey round-and-round rides.

The day was sunny & warm, perfect for the Boston Tea Party, which is the ultimate flume ride, if you like to be soaked to the bone. If you prefer to stay dry, there is a strategically placed pub just adjacent to the splash zone where you can watch your kid-at-heart husband ride it 47 times in a row while you enjoy dry panties and a nice cool IPA.

At some point during the Tea Party marathon (which Pete tried to convince Sofia to ride - she got all the way to the front of the line before she realized there were no teddy bears in tutus or ceramic tea kettles involved, and high tailed it out of there - smart girl!) the kids became engaged in some kind of fishing game where they kept winning these lame Garfield flower prizes but they all really wanted to win the dog prize (next one up), then Sofia DID win the dog but Emma just kept accumulating those stupid Garfield flowers.

Meanwhile their 3-year old cousin Joseph won the REALLY BIG prize (freaky stuffed garden gnome) but the girl running the game refused to give it to him because she contended that his mom (my sister in-law) had cheated & told him which fish to catch (you could see the S,M,L for small, medium, large prize in the fish if you were tall enough, which she is. ) So then ensued an all-out melee that required two levels of management before we finally settled on the compromise of giving Joe the medium prize, the dog, which we had easily paid for 15 times over since our kids had dumped about $200 already.

Emma by this time was sobbing, nearly hyperventilating, because she still didn't have a dog. So they gave her one more try, and of course she won a flower. I tried to use the opportunity to enforce the "can't win them all" lesson and the fact that nobody is entitled to win the big prize, no matter how bad you want it, in a game of chance it's all luck. That went over like a lead balloon until we walked by the gift shop where they happened to SELL stuffed dogs that were even cooler than the one Sofia had won, so another $10 later everyone was whole again.

We stayed at the park till 10pm, when it closed. Hit horrible traffic on the way home, and didn't walk into our kitchen till 12 Which provided me with the perfect opportunity to point out to Emma - who has been begging me to let her stay up till midnight - that she had made it, and was it really all that special? Yes, she said. And she was right.