As soon as I got word that I was having a cancer recurrence I immediately began playing the cancer card. I texted my best friend and asked her to assemble the deck furniture I’d just bought from one of those places where the furniture comes with 98 parts and 7842 screws and bolts. I then texted my other best friend and asked her to weed the garden beds––a chore I’d been putting off for weeks. Afterwards, I called another friend and asked him to fly here (from the other side of the world) and make me morning smoothies for a month. Then I got in bed and told Meg I could really use a very long massage. After the massage I called another bestie and asked her to pay my bills. Not with her money––my money––I just don’t enjoy paying bills. Yes, I’ve heard about this thing called “electronic billing” but I pay my bills via checks. (Gen-Z/Millennials, if you are reading this, “A personal check is a rectangular piece of paper that's connected to a checking account. On the check, I write the amount of money I intend to give and the name of who gets that money. The rectangular piece of paper also contains info about my account––routing number etc. The check assures that the money will be in my bank when the receiver cashes it. Which is usually the case, but when I was your age––not so much.)
I know playing the cancer card is not an honorable quality. But this is not the time for me to be honorable. It’s the time for my friends to honorably clean out my sock drawer, to call the plumber when the toilet water makes a detour for the kitchen sink, to take my car to the mechanic to have the fender replaced so I don’t have to pull over on the side of the highway to duct tape it back together every ten days. Sure, my friends have their own lives and their own problems. We’re living in a world pandemic afterall. I’m not the only one having a personal apocalypse. There are others who have been dealt a challenging hand. But in my close friend group, I’m currently the only one who has a cancer card and that means the fact that the deck furniture has 7842 screws and bolts is none of my business. Neither is the fact that half of my socks have run away to the other side of the world. What is my business is having a nice deck couch to snooze on, and socks with equal texture on both of my feet. It also means that the drum kit I bought to “express my feelings” will be celebrated by my housemates and neighbors alike. It also means when I want to play basketball in the driveway at 10pm I can always find a friend who is willing to lose to me. No, my friends don’t let me win. I’m just better on my bad days than they are on their best. If I’m too tired, too sick (or, let’s face it––too lazy) to take my dogs on a walk, my friends are there to hike all three of them through the trails even though one of them insists on being carried, one of them is now old enough to get away with pretending she doesn’t know what you mean when you scream “Do not roll in that fish carcass!” and one of them threatens to murder every human who looks her in the eye. (She wouldn’t murder any of you though, my newsletter wonders. She would know how much you mean to me, especially right now.)
Love, Andrea 🖤