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Shaking

I went to sleep with the news of Ted Kennedy's death. And I found out this morning that one of my high school classmates has died of melanoma.

Another classmate/friend mentioned his death on her Facebook page. I left a question mark; she messaged me about him.

Later she messaged me again, because she thought I’d want to know more. He died of metastasis into his brain.

This is one of my most paralyzing fears. I’m trembling as I write this. I don’t remember him, except for his name. I don’t know if our paths ever crossed when we were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. I looked him up on Google, and discovered he was an artist. Here’s his homepage.

I remember his name, but nothing about him specifically. I couldn’t tell you what he looked like, what his interests were then. Nothing. And we would have been very different people, then and now.

Different, except for disease. Mine was caught before it could spread. I live with the fear of recurrence, at such a time when I don’t have health insurance. (I am still covered now. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to be.) But in the moment, I am healthy.

The artists I know are self-employed. They’re covered through state assistance, if they’re covered at all. I don’t know what his situation was.

People kept telling me I was young to get it. Pat was my age. He fought longer, and he died.

My doctor told me, melanoma breaks the rules. I had a growth for more than two years before it was diagnosed as cancerous. I had access to a dermatologist; I was worried about it, I went. I’d been playing with it in class, and having it bleed, for the previous year and a half. (I’d been told by a dermatology resident that it was some innocuous something, in January 2006. I was diagnosed with melanoma in April 2008.) And I still will never know how lucky I was to have listened to my own intuition, and to have this caught when we did. I don’t know what Pat’s first sign was, or how he dealt with it. I don’t know why he died, and I live. I certainly wasn’t vigilant, until I knew I had to be. And I had access to care all along.

It’s quite easy to have a skin lesion in a place you don’t see. How often do you look at your back? Would you even know what to look for? Mine was on the back of my ear. I couldn’t actually see it. If you don’t think you need a doctor, or you can’t afford it, you don’t go.

I was listening to an NPR interview with T.R. Reid this morning, from a few days ago. He said that we have parts of three major health care systems in the US already: the UK, Canadian, and Japanese. And he said that if you don’t have insurance, don’t qualify for assistance or can’t pay out of pocket, “you live in Malawi. You stay sick, or you die.”

This is the greatest fear I have. Not being sick, and not dying for its own sake. Knowing the care I could have had if I had access to it, and dying because I couldn’t get treatment, or I waited too long.

Pray for the soul of Patrick Federmeyer. And work for universal health care in this country.

I've been thinking about the owl all day.

I said I knew who it was. Obviously I didn’t. I couldn’t have. That was arrogance born of unknowing.

I only knew it was a sacred touch. I knew what I felt, when I saw it fly in front of me. I placed a context on it, which was not its own.

I know, as if I didn’t before, that there is power I don’t understand. I could have seen any animal, in the woods after sunset. I saw this one. While I was praying in a sacred place.

The owl will teach me how to see what it sees, and how to walk with this entire experience. But I don’t even know how to ask respectful questions.

I almost don’t want to talk about it now. But I need to be wise about this. I saw an owl in sacred time and space. I have been given something that I do not understand, and that I have no experience with. And the first thing is to confess that when I spoke so glibly, I had no idea what I was talking about. I do not know what I am doing.

The spirit world vibrates with life.

I need to tell this story

...however I can, well or not. I don’t know if I’m back from my blogging break. I may explain that later; don’t know that it matters. Come and listen.

I’m at the Bishop’s Ranch for a week. I hosted my own parish retreat, and I’m helping fill in for the reservations coordinator while she’s away. I got here last Wednesday, and I leave this Friday. I’ve been working, resting, spending time with friends. Healing parts of me that don’t get touched, anywhere else.

Tonight, I took a walk after dinner. I hadn’t moved my body all day, and was craving the exercise and the prayer-time. I threw my fleece on, because it’s already cool in the evenings. Packed water, camera, and flashlight in case I got back after dark. (There is ambient light, and my feet know the trails. There’s also poison oak.)

I set out toward the peace pole. If you don’t know the geography, it’s about a 20-25 minute walk for a healthy person. The last half or so is steep hill. At my sickest, I couldn’t walk it. It’s been a good distance as I’m recovering; strenuous but doable. I’ve always stopped when I’ve needed to. When I really can’t do it, I don’t push myself to get there.

I was walking along, thinking about cancer, treatment, healing. I got to the crossroads where you’d either go left to the treehouse or right to the peace pole. I paused... and I started singing the Troparion. And stomping to it. I did this, the entire hill climb.

Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling down death by death
And on those in the tombs bestowing life,
Bestowing life!

I sometimes sang full-voice, and sometimes whispered. There were times I had to pause and stomp in place. I ran out of breath, and my muscles got tired. But I did it.

I climbed, and stomped, and sang, and thought, “No, I’m going to the Cristo instead.” It’s a new piece of art, behind and above the peace pole. A huge, welded crucifix. The artist was dying of ALS when he created it. It’s the last thing he built, before he died.

I got there, breathless, triumphant, prayerful. I knew that my body was praying. I didn't realize I was on a pilgrimage, until I stopped walking. My head refused (and still refuses) to understand any of this. But my body knows what it knows. I stopped singing, stood still. Touched the feet of this Christ. Looked up, into his face. The sun had just set, behind him.

I stayed there for a few minutes, just being. When I felt ready to leave, I faced the cross again and said thank you. To the resurrected Christ. To my body, for healing and for bringing me there. To my feet, for making contact with the earth—and to the earth, for supporting me and all life. To this sacred place, for existing.

I turned. And I found myself singing a new song, the lorica that my advisor taught us on our class retreat. That weekend in April coincided with the anniversary of my diagnosis. I’d been sick with respiratory gunk, had laryngitis, and couldn’t sing a note. But tonight, the melody that I’d never quite learned came easily to me. I sang, and I danced all by myself down the hill.

May the spirit of Christ be our guide through the day,
Our guard through the night,
Our companion on the way.

Christ be ever before us,
Christ be ever behind us,
Christ be ever around us.

Over and over. Like a mantra, and a circle dance alone. I knew I didn’t really get what I was doing. And I knew that I did.

I got to a place where I needed to pause, catch my breath and my balance. Hills of oak trees rose on either side of me. The creek bed was to my left; dry this time of year. Still, quiet, and vibrating with life.

A flutter caught my attention. I watched it fly in front of me, and settle briefly on a branch. Owl. It paused for a few seconds, and flew back the way it had come.

I know that I’ll never understand this, with my head. There are meanings that words do not touch. But I know who that owl was. And I know why it flew just there, just then.

I said thank you to the owl, and to God. And I walked the rest of the way home.
***

I am not the storyteller that sickness taught me to be. I don’t have the patience to make this my art, in the way that writing always has been. I traded the gnats in my brain for the skittery being of a water bug. Slowness and deep attention are skills I’ll need to re-learn. But I can, if I work at it. And I need to. I love baking bread—but I miss this, too much. Both the sharing of stories, and the open space required of me to hear them.

Done.

Alleluia, the great storm is over.

More in a day or two. All I've really got right now, is an animal yell.

Three, two... one.

I just did it again. And for the first time in many months, the act became a prayer.

Not in words: in presence. Not “Yeah me!” or “Suck it, cancer!” Not even, “Almost there.”

Nothing I can translate. Just reverence, patience, breath.

Friday will be all celebration. I’ll wait for my best friend to get home. I’ll do the shot with her, at her dining room table. Bang! and out to dinner. That will be the time for shouting.

Right now, I just want to quietly hallow this time.

On the cusp

I just did my injection. Only two more.

I did the thing that has made me sick for a year. I long since stopped fearing it, or being creeped out by it—it’s become simply a chore. I don’t even dread the effects; I just know what they’ll be. I do this because I have to. Because my doctors told me to. Because, though it makes me sick, it may also be keeping me well.

I know I’ll feel like crap tomorrow. And injecting myself has become a habit. I can do it without thinking. It takes about two minutes, each time. Wipe the skin with alcohol, open the band-aid up, wipe the pen, twist the needle in, dial the dose. Pinch thigh with one hand. Inject with the other. Bandage. Drop the needle in the sharps box. Drink more water; take four ibuprofen. Go on with my evening.

Tonight is different. I’m so close to done. And I feel so powerful, right now.

Take that, cancer. I’m still here, and I know that I beat you.

You taught me how to fight you. You taught me how to look you in the eye. You taught me how to stand up and raise my head. You taught me how to love this life.

If you come back, I will fight you again. I know what that means, and I will do it if I have to.

Rrrraaaarrrrrr!

Lazarus, get up.

I never actually intended to take a month off from blogging. It just happened. I’m forcing myself to go back to it, now. This really isn’t the environment for me to do that, as easily as school was. Something about the fog, and the light. Maybe I’ll get more used to it, as I settle in.

But I really miss storytelling. So I’m here.

I had a conversation with a friend about a month ago, the week after graduation. I wrote this in an e-mail to another friend, because I didn’t want to forget the allegory. I’ve been thinking about it off and on, since:

[My friend] also asked me, where God was in the cancer. The first thing I thought of: A fish doesn't know it's in water. It just swims. The water is God. I surprised myself, with a perfect NW native analogy.

There's a creek just west of my hometown. Salmon spawn there. Which means, they're also born there. When they hatch, they dig themselves out of the gravel and start floating downstream. They're just doing what baby fish do. They have no control over where the current takes them.

Creeks meet rivers. When the fish get big enough to be seen, hawks and eagles fly above them. They get scared; they hide. And they keep making their way.

They don't see their bodies changing. They don't see themselves growing. It just happens.

Rivers meet the ocean. The fish has to change its metabolism, to breathe in brackish water. Without realizing it, it does. It hangs out there until it's ready. Then it swims for open ocean. It has long since forgotten, the rocks and roots and branches that it used to have to swim around, or jump over. The water is God. There are no boundaries. And the fish is that free.

I told my friend this story—and I wasn’t reaching for anything. This is, what is. I'm in the estuary now; I'll be in the ocean when I stop the shots, and start feeling better. And I know I'm headed there.
***

I’ve been in the estuary since, part ready and part waiting for opportunity and time. I’m settling in Monterey, in my instructor’s dead mother’s house. It’s a strange place to be. I never met my “host,” as it were, but I’m surrounded by her stuff. This morning, I’ll be attending her church. Her daughter has always been an ally and friend. Last year would have been very much more difficult without her. And now she’s giving me this.

It’s good. But it takes some getting used to. I’m used to fishbowl community. I really don’t know people here, yet. Today will be my first Sunday at church; that should help. I’ve also had a week of half-day Spanish classes, and met a possible friend. But I go home every day from that with a headache, so I haven’t tried to connect outside of class. I’m also in the middle of years of dental-care catch-up. I’ll feel more solid after next week.

I will REALLY feel better after next week, because I only have one more week of shots! I’m going up to A.’s house next weekend, to celebrate. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, done. I’ll get my body, brain, and energy back.

Part of me wants to sit with that for awhile. I’ve been so attentive to the cancer journey, over the past fourteen months I’ve been on it. But right now doesn’t feel like the time. I’m more like, “Yeah, yeah, yes this can teach you—but go be healthy, already.” So we’ll see what I do with that.

One more blood draw—which I probably don’t even really need. But I haven’t skimped on any piece of this, and I’m not starting now. Cancer has taught me all I know about dedication. Consenting to make yourself sick—and actively doing it, for a year—is commitment. I suppose I could say that I know I can follow through on anything now, but I don’t really. That still has to be tested, and applied, and learned from, when I’m doing things in the post-cancer real world that I’d rather not have to go through. Looking for jobs, for instance.

I’m in a gift-time right now, sort of a limbo but not really. I’m not expected to be even capable of looking for work yet—and in truth I’m not. So I’m in Monterey, finishing chemo, taking six weeks of intensive Spanish... and I have all the time around that, to immerse myself as much as I choose in Latino ministry. Which I know nothing about—but a question about it, five weeks ago in class, is how I landed here. It’s a summer thing—but I don’t have an end date. Whenever we feel like I’ve been here enough, I suppose, and what this is leading to becomes clearer. Also, when my instructor knows what she wants to do with the house.

I went to a meeting yesterday for Latino clergy. The canon I’ve been e-mailing with invited me. The meeting turned out to be in Spanish. I can read some, and understand some spoken. I don’t have the vocabulary to speak it myself yet. And I got more words than concepts yesterday; I really couldn’t tell you what was talked about. But being there was a good experience. I didn’t feel shut out; I felt, “Oh. This is what it’s like.” People were kind to me. They just conducted the business of their group, in the language most comfortable for most of them.

The host conducts services in that town—I think even at that church. He also does urban ministry in San Jose. I pounced on him to tell me about that—and I’m going up to check it out as soon as I can, probably after next weekend. They do education (child and adult) and what sounds like a huge food program.

Yes, church in the fields interests me. That’s how I landed here, and that’s where the diocese is responding to me. But it’s more idea than reality right now; meanwhile, urban ministry apparently has my heart. It took that kind of reaction in me, to show me how much I miss it. You know when God says, “Here.” I’m an hour and a half away from San Jose, by driving—essentially, it’s halfway home. Three hours, by bus and Caltrain. I’m going to drive, clearly. But I miss public transit. I miss the stories.

I’m going to get involved with COPA (community organizing) trainings, too. I’ve landed in an odd place; it’s weird for me right now to be in a small town and feel so strongly called to the city, though it is beautiful here. But I’m clearly meeting the people whom I need to get to know. And all I really have to do is stay organized, myself.
***

The obvious reason that I’m feeling rootless: I’m new here. I’ve been through something that is so significant to me—and not only am I a week from not having to talk about that (because it affects my limitations), but my story-keepers are scattered: in San Francisco, around the Bay Area, and all over the country for the summer. I went through this, in a student community that I’m not going back to. My parish knows, and loves me—but I’m also not sure when I’m going back there. Or how. I also miss the Night Ministry community, and I’m just far enough away, to make visiting impractical.

Which means, I’m just far enough from home, to have to plant myself where I am. And I get to decide how. Who I am is who I say I am, here. I’m feeling rudderless—but I will have a community context, as soon as I create one. And as soon as I participate in the community that’s been given to me.

When I was well, I was so fearful of everything. Traumatized and broken. Aching for safety. Now, at face value I’m just like you: capable, competent, and whole. My story makes me different. And how I tell that—or not—is completely my choice.

How I use it, internally, is also my choice. And I’m a week from it being story, not active present.

I’m on the cusp of I know not what. In every possible dimension.

Major milestone--and summer update.

I’m actually, truly, honest-to-God graduating from seminary tomorrow. Holy cow. By the grace of God, the love of some incredible people, and my own steel will, I've done it.

It hasn’t sunk in yet. It mostly feels weird, to be done. After everything that’s happened in this time... I don’t have a reason to be here anymore. I’m just, like that, done. And ready (truly) for the world.

My field ed professor, with whom I’d also done a reading course, e-mailed me Tuesday night. I’d been trying both to be responsible about my work, and give her space: her mother had been ill, and died on Sunday. We all knew it was coming. My oral work could wait. (She said I'd done enough, and that we could have these conversations over the rest of our lives anyway.)

My teacher and I are also good friends. We’re both driven by ministry to the marginalized. We get what makes each other tick. For her own reasons, she understands the post-cancer, post-nuclear life. She has walked solidly with me.

Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves of El Camino Real (CA central coast) visited our last field ed class, last Wednesday. I asked her about what's going on outside church buildings in ECR. She talked about a “church in the fields” idea that she wants to get going in Salinas. It’s similar to what I’ve been involved with in the Tenderloin, but with the migrant workers. My follow-up question: “Do you take interns?” (Her answer: “Yes, but you’d be working for free.”)

My teacher picked up on that interest. She wrote to me, you seemed really excited about +Mary's idea. What would you say to staying at my mom's house in Monterey this summer, taking care of the cats, and taking Spanish classes?

Um. Dear God. Yes. I knew I’d say yes before I even thoroughly read it. I made myself wait until the next morning to answer.

She's going through hell right now—and she’s thinking about me.

I've had times when I worked for something—I really wanted to go back and do my field ed in NOLA this year, for instance—and couldn't make it happen (even with the bishop of Louisiana’s invitation, God bless him). I did nothing to deserve this, would never have thought to ask for it, and didn't see it coming. It makes sense for both of us, when I think of it—but I would not have thought of it. This is grace.

People have been throwing grace at me by the handfuls for a year, because I’ve needed it. This is not accommodation. This is gift.

Ironically, my parish in SF says, now that I've been where cancer took me, and came back resurrected, I'm emotionally ready to do discernment work with them. They want to work with me, after I get past the transitions of health, job, housing. I'll have my diocese’s three-year residency requirement in August. And I’ll be two hours south, all summer. This feels very much like an open door, and I don’t know what it means. I’m trusting the Spirit for whatever's next.

The practical part of me says, stay in contact with the community you already love and are rooted in, and that knows and loves you. Wisdom says, go with God.

I’m going to do both, until the way becomes clear enough to blind me.

On the anniversary of my cancer surgery…

I finally, officially finished the 2007-08 school year.

The last thing I had to do was watch my Magic Hands video, which I made last week, with my advisor/Magic Hands professor, her current TA, and the three friends I’d grouped up with to film ourselves. It was actually quite fun, and very helpful.

I said to her afterward, “Do you know where I was, a year ago right now?”

The wheels turned, and she got it.

“Yes. And I know where you’re going to be next Friday, too.”

I know why she’s proud of me. And I know why she’s happy for me, for graduating. We all know the road I’ve been on. I’m proud of myself, for the person I’ve become.

I had to thank her, for one more thing. When we talked at the class retreat, she told me about trying to communicate “the meaning of meaning” to her students. I don’t think I can articulate it any better than that. But she said to me, “If I could put you into words, I would.”

So I’ve put together a “Words on Meaning” piece for her. It’s everything I’ve written that relates to the cancer journey, over the past thirteen months. And in doing that, I’ve had to do a lot of re-reading.

What saved my neck, and saved my soul, was one choice: to stay open. When I was apparently well, I got into a really toxic habit. When I felt inadequate (almost constantly, in seminary), I got scared, and shut down. I wouldn’t talk about what was wrong, even when I knew that people could help me—and would want to, if I’d let them.

For two and a half years, she told me to tell her what was up. I wouldn’t. Then I got cancer, and I had to.

She never had to tell me again, after that. She made herself available. She kept her door open. I don’t know how many times I dropped by, in those four weeks last spring. Her response was always the same: How are you feeling? How are you doing? Where is God in this? What do you need from me, and from us? I knew she’d give me what she could, at any moment: a conversation (in the midst of end-of-semester busyness); a quick hug. She never had to tell me that; she just did it. I never had to tell her I knew; I just kept coming by. (I did mention it, at the retreat. She said to me, “I’m glad you knew.”)

She was always open, always loving, always safe. I understood, that she always would have been. As would everyone else I’d been hiding from. They still would have demanded progress out of me. But it would have come from a place of clear-sighted relationship.

I’m graduating in one week. I’m very, very ambivalent about it. On the one hand, I’ve been here long enough. I know that I’m ready to be done. For institutional reasons, I’m glad to be getting out when I am. And I know that I have learned from these people, and this experience, what they have to teach me.

I’m also scared, to be let loose in the big wide world, with the debt I’ll carry and the economic needs I’ll have. I’m going directly to my best friend’s house, to finish chemo, recover, and look for work and housing back in the Bay Area. She’s fabulous—and generous. I’ll be as physically and emotionally safe, as anyone facing these transitions can be. And I don’t really know who I am under that kind of stress, anymore. I’m hoping I can be as calm as I’ve been, and that I won’t let job-hunting throw me into a depression. But I truly don’t know how I’ll be affected. I don’t know if I’ll be fragile and volatile when I have the energy to be—or whether fourteen months of taking the next thing as it came, will have given me true strength.

My friend and I have come up with really reasonable, and doable, expectations for me this summer. While I’m still in treatment, brushing the cats and weeding the garden. Cooking dinner sometimes. Baking bread. As I’m physically able, I’ll look for real jobs. While I’m doing that, volunteer two or three days a week doing something I want to do. Go to the Ranch when I can.

It’s going to be a healing time, if I let it. I’m worried, not only about being in her space too long, but about the healthcare ticking time-bomb in my head. I’m covered through 8/31. Sometime in late July or early August, I’ll get a letter from Kaiser telling me how much COBRA will be. I don’t feel right, asking for as much help as I know I’m going to need.

I do know this: The choice that saved me when I got cancer, will keep me (and those around me) sane now. Stay open. Stay honest, stay forthcoming. Don’t default to defensiveness. Don’t jump immediately to guilt and shame. Say what I need, and what I can give. Listen when others state their own needs to me.

Know that I have learned to be whole. And like riding a bike, my body won’t forget.

If I can stay in the space that I instinctively knew would heal me last spring, I’ll be okay. Pray with me, that I remember what my body, community, and God have taught me. And that I remember to breathe.

One year ago today

Story here. And here.

Countdown

One more med pick-up
Two blood draws
Seven weeks between me and freedom. :-)

A friend just gave me a book

…and a conversation.

The book is Becoming Bread, by Gunilla Norris. It’s poetry. She inherited it from her grandmother, and gave it to me because of my sermon last week. The sermon came from a place of needing to honor my body, how it has carried me through this year of illness, what it continues to teach me, what it loves, and what it can do. I barely mentioned my own sickness; I taught people how to bake bread. The incarnationality of that—getting everyone into their bodies—touched a lot of people.

The conversation was about who we become, when we are no longer sick. It began with more of my own wondering, what is genuine, and who will I be? Her own medical journey was not cancer—not an illness, per se—but it was about fifteen years ago, was very uncomfortable for her, and took her body five years to work through. So she knows something about where I’ve been, and where I am. And she knows what her own body gave her, back.

She gave me this: “I don’t think you lose your gains. But you do lose your losses.”

Wise friends, I have.

Fabulous feedback

Yesterday began and ended in closures. First, my field ed colleague group met for the last time. We’ve met weekly, all year. We are very close, and we’ve all come to rely on both the honesty and safety we give each other.

We took turns sharing gratitude for each of the others, and praying for us all. Much was reflected back to me, about truth-telling and courage. One looked across the table at me, was quiet for a minute, and said, “You are so incarnational.”

She followed that with a story about watching me preach, last week, and the way I taught people how to bake bread.

I’m only recently realizing, how much my body has taught me—and how much I’ve been able to learn. This is one more confirmation of what I can do now, that I had absolutely no reference for when I was well. I’ve never thought of myself as a teacher, ever. I’ve thought that I wasn’t called to it, couldn’t do it, had no idea of how to do it. She sat across the table from me, looked into my eyes, and told me that I can, and could, and did.

I wonder how I will remember? Not just about teaching, but being. I’ll start getting my health back at the end of June. I want to be the person that my illness has taught me to be. And when my limits fall away again, I don’t know what I’ll be aware of. Except for pure, boundless joy.

Last night, four of us got together and made our videos for what we call “Magic Hands.” (The proper name of the class is Liturgical Leadership. You learn how to preside at the Eucharist.) We’re going to watch them and have them critiqued, next week. Mine was a year late; I grouped up with this year’s class to finish it. I put together a healing Eucharist, because that’s what I really want to do on the street.

I don’t care how often you practice in your street clothes, using your bed for the altar. When you put that stole and chasuble on, you feel the weight of those vestments. Standing at the real altar, raising my hands for the first time, I wasn’t playing anymore. I was so tired I could barely see straight—and I also knew, I was grounded with my feet in the earth, and my energy was where I needed to be. I still had to look at my cheat sheet—but my body knew more than I thought it did. And things that I could never keep straight as a lay assistant—no matter how many times I’ve done it—finally made sense to me. I knew where I was, and what I needed next. It flowed.

I really, really want to do this for real. And I’m years from being allowed to.

Lizette will ask me what she asks everyone: “Did you pray?” The only answer I’ll have for her is, “Are you kidding? The weight of these clothes, and the gravity of these words, make you pray. I couldn’t possibly have done this with only a part of me.”

I did an anointing before the Eucharistic rite. My friend said afterward that she’d felt it, and needed it. And the one on the camera sort of stared at me for awhile, and said,

“Your illness has made you a healer.”

Thank you. That is what I want.

I had to be truly ill, to truly heal. And I had to heal, before I could heal others. I wonder what I will carry with me, into wellness?

I ask myself often, how much the groundedness that people see in me is genuine, and how much is simply being too tired to work up any anxiety. I think it’s both. And I won’t really know, until my body is well again.

But I’m thinking that I may be pleasantly surprised.

Perspective on panic

I was talking with my best friend, on the phone last night. She’s going to be supporting me this summer, until I get on my feet. I told her I’m worried about looking for jobs. I’m a great starter, but my follow-through needs work.

The following exchange ensued:

A: “When it has something to do with your calling, you follow through like a bulldog.”

Me: “So I’m not called to clean out your freezer, then?” (Which I did, two or three years ago—and have been promising to repeat, since.)

A: “Not unless there’s a homeless person sleeping in there.”

I cracked up, and felt a whole lot better.