The interruption

Well, we’re missing this little show this weekend:

(I guess it won’t embed.) War Of The Worlds: The True Story

It will never be for general release in the cinemas, I don’t think. It’s just doing a tour of engagements, and the second city after Seattle was Portland.

I had been looking forward to it. And, after a series of spasms to the contrary, I had to realize that there was never any doubt, I really can’t go without Gwen; I don’t think Gwen would care if I did, but I can’t go seeing things I think Gwen would love that she won’t be able to see, especially if it does turn out to be that good.

Especially movies. I treasure those magical floating moments of being there together for something amazing in the dark.

Not the only plan gone afuggle, that. I had a plot going to finally get Gwen out camping. She’s never been! (All the TV and movies she’s seen that have involved camping have featured people being murdered in their sleeping bags. I’ve been trying to convince her that being dismembered is optional.) A little one-night drive out to a campsite along the Crooked River over in Oregon’s desert country to the east – a full tank of gas, random blankets thrown in the back of her car, eight dollars for the camping permit, maybe a fifteen-dollar-plus-shipping propane camp stove. Sleep under the stars. Or Mom says she might have a tent we can take.

We’d have gone at the next break between Gwen’s classes, maybe four weeks from now. Plenty of time to get ready. It now looks unlikely.

MBA classes taken online, those are. Gwen’s going for a MBA with a focus on nonprofit management. Idealist stuff.

She doesn’t even know if that’s going to be able to go forward with that, although, being as she takes these classes on her laptop and generally on her back, she doesn’t know if she’ll need to stop.

She didn’t go to the movie this weekend because her mom flew out here to be with her.

Gwen had been noticing a lump in her nether regions, and, when I looked, it wasn’t just a swollen gland in the sides or something as I had expected, it was a “what the hell is that?” It was very different; it looked like a new ambitious structure. When she went to the hospital to have it checked out (I went with her, though I waited out in the waiting room), the doctor thought the same thing that we did: that it looked kind of like her hymen was growing back but with armor plating. He said, “Huh. I’ve never seen anything quite like this.” And he went and brought in another doctor and they both pored over it, each coiled round a thigh like anacondas.

On Thursday Gwen got the phone call with the test results.

Cancer of the Bartholin gland.

It could be a bit of a thing.

I’ve been surfing a bit about it. That’s the rarest of the vulvar cancers – and, though we’re still waiting on the final test results, it’s the most likely of the vulvar cancers to be adenocarcinoma, which… yes, could be a bit of a thing. And, from the position of that gland as opposed to the other locations and depths, it has proximity access to the lymph system and – well – the store.

(She is unemployed and has no health insurance, by the way; her school doesn’t offer any either. Think of it.)

She and I are both dealing in all sorts of ways, moment to moment – from quiet terror – to calm balance – to my finding that my eyes will not stop watering without my being aware of it when I listen to the song “A Thousand Kisses Deep” – to a steady stream of absolutely awful, miraculously inspired jokes. (I suggested she report to Facebook, “Am making leaps and bounds in personal growth.”)

But: dammit –

We were gonna go camping! Actually! Finally!

And – War Of The Worlds: The True Story! Where we had only by pure accident stumbled over the fact that it would be coming through town!

Damnable, damnable interruptions!!

…I can deal with any that do not turn out to start with a capital I.

***

We are such stuff that dreams are made of. And so is Gwen. And I like this dream.