November 28, 2005

• I was sitting in a breast cancer support group three years ago and there was this Japanese woman who was pissed that her husband had written all about her mastectomy in their Christmas letter, without asking her first.  I remember, in broken English, her feeling of betrayal.  Today I found out the whole story. 

  
  

  S.K. had moved here from Tokyo when her husband decided he wanted to retire and come back home.  He was there working in Foreign Affairs.  She quit her job and moved here, barely knowing English.  When she found out six months later she had breast cancer, she was on her own.  He didn’t want any part of it.  I don’t know how long they had been married but today she said he was 75.  I think she is close to my age.

  
  

  The second time I saw her I had joined the Breast Cancer Outreach Program and was attending my first meeting.  There she was again, but in a suit and a perm.  Very odd hair but she spoke with a new command of the language and tackled intense genetic material with our guest speaker.  Again I was impressed. 

  
  

  The third time I saw her was at a party.  It was summer and we both offered to bring in the food when the mosquitos got bad.  I remember standing out in the grass talking about something, feeling familiar with each other.

  
  

  I still didn’t know her name until she wrote me an email.  I had written an article that moved her.  She identified and we moved from email to the phone over the next months.  Then last month she started volunteering at the hospital every other Wednesday and today I ended up going over to see her new house.  She is my neighbor.  If you knew where I lived you’d know how incredible this was. 

  
  

  We have been discovering the many ways our lives are parallel and as I listened to her talk about the work she’s had done, getting her new house ready to move into, I realized she was going to be an important part of my life.  Her contractor is someone I want to know.  And S.K. can get me flooring, wholesale. 

  
  

  I have been cleaning for two weeks in anticipation of her visit.  I went over there today to see where she was going to live.  She showed me around and I was not surprised to see she was listening to the same classical music I had been.  After the tour we sat down at a desk with two chairs.  That’s when she told me about her husband and how they’d been living in two houses but that this, being a split level, was going to be a way to live together.  It’s like all the big deals in my life, she has lived them too.  Only she’s going about her marriage differently.  She gave him two options:  a divorce with the price tag or separate dwellings.  He picked the separate dwellings but it was getting too expensive so she found this house.

  
  

  She went to Home Depot and took all the classes so that she would be able to communicate with the contractor about what she wanted. She wanted to make sure the job was done right. Because her English was lacking she would grab the book off the rack, find the page and point to the parts she needed.  But then she got hooked and started doing her own plumbing and tiling and whatever else she needed done.  That’s why she can get flooring for me, because she’s getting her contractor’s license.

  
  

  Then we came over here and Bridget was really into her.  Turns out she has three dogs.  I’m not sure what exactly her reaction was but I could tell she was having one.  I mean about the house.  She got excited about me painting my cabinets and she thinks I should go look at some new kind of flooring that she’s getting for her place.  I’m a little intimidated by her now.  Once she got over here she really came on strong.  She is one intense woman.  Lots of anger, lots of pride.  She’s a very strong woman.  When we were up in my bedroom she saw the picture of me dancing and she stared at it a really long time.  It’s the only picture I’ve ever taken where my power is visible, at least to my eye.  Anyway, she saw it.

  • 3:27 am
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