The porch swing: a sad song in grey minor

As the weather has begun to turn towards the better for the springtime, my dad has taken the time to hang the porch swing at the end of our wraparound front porch. I love to sit in this swing and rock. The house blocks the majority of any chill wind and the heavy chains and worn oak boards generate their own sort of slow momentum: the thing never comes to a full stop. I could sit in the swing for hours, my hands folded in my lap as I stare out towards the road. From the swing I can see the mailbox and the driveway. I can see the left third of the front yard with the cherry and apple trees. I can see the side yards to the left on the other side of the porch rails with the flower beds and the rows of white lights that run above between the eaves of the roof and the peak of the garage roof across the way that sits beneath my mothers piano studio, a separate two story building.

Much of my life passed me by in those few thousand square feet that I purvey from the porch swing.

I learned to parallell park in-between the same black trash cans at the intersection with the road and rode by bike in endless loops around our two sided driveway. I shot my senior pictures on that wrap around porch. I was barefoot and baby faced with braces and an unfortunate hunch in my shoulders but the deck was freshly painted and shone white and proper against the blaze of the blooming dogwood tree and immaculate green boxwoods.

I sit and I swing and look at the peonies full of fresh buds and admire the first bush with its premature blooms, wilting and dying a premature death. In their haste to bloom they caught yesterday's untimely hail and their fragile bright pink lion's manes are melting like sugar down the dark green stems. Peonies are my favorite flowers and I await their arrival each year with great anticipation. Last year I missed the peonies as they began to bloom just as I was recovering from the worst of my eye surgery, my world was a dark one, far from the sunshine to keep alive the fragile blooms of a flower.

This has the strange effect of recalling older memories when I see the peonies this year, as if I missed them last year, indeed the entire springtime, due to an unplanned trip though a cancerous wormhole. I see the peonies and and am hit with a half hysterical half practical regret that they bloom so early. If only they bloomed in june to july instead of May! If the flowers bloomed through early July I could just stretch the end of the season to put peonies on the wedding tables instead of roses. I remember having thought this though a million times through the spring of 2013. The golden lights that stretch across the roofs from point to point are from the wedding as well. As i swing on the porch swing I can see the long tulle netting floating in the breeze between the lights. The hanging silver stars and the dance floor below. I can see the ghost of the white tents fluttering above the tables with their white linen and silver platters of food. I can smell the flowers and the champagne in the air, still hear the laughter and see the smiles.

 I thought it would be impossible to live at home and see winter turn to spring, thought it would break my heart to see spring turn to summer. Our relationship was a volatile one. We slipped early on into a love that was equal parts magnificent and doomed. We were entirely in love and fought epic battles holding us apart economic, cultural, and social lines with the passion of a pair of don quixotes blind to the fruitlessness of our labors. We worked our days and our nights too with dreams in our eyes. We chased our pleasures down roads with dim lights and bright smiles; strong drinks and stronger words as the nights got darker. As our world spun faster each moment of turbulence sent us a bit further off course. Late Summer, a hot day that burned sullenly off to sticky evening heat. One night, one last drink, one last word, a voice yelled "i can't do this anymore" and his hand hit me full across the face.

I left him immediately and autumn became winter as I tried to reconcile who I was, who I believed myself to be, and the vows that I had made to another person in front of all of the souls I most loved and respected. I had decided to pursue my commitment till death did us part in conjunction with marital counseling to help answer the questions that had burned through the beautiful life I believed i had created for myself. It was months later  when winter became spring that I learned of my first diagnosis and the problems of the past seemed to melt away. As my mind spun with the idea of losing my eye he stood behind me and held me up as my legs faltered beneath me. When I flew to philadelphia to have the tumor operated on he snuck my favorite chocolates into my luggage with a love note. He never bought gifts and he never wrote love letters. When I returned, having learned of the existence of an entirely new and terrible world of pain and suffering he cared for me, nursed me, held my hand and shook his head with me as I wondered when the pain would ever end, if I would ever recover.

 I forgave him. We could have moved on and lived on together. But I recovered. Spring became summer and the operation was a success. My underwhelming oncologist declared me officially in remission at 6 months and my opthamologists marveled at the success of the surgery and slow but steady deterioration of the tumor in my eye. My test results were clear in my major systems and my PET scan was clear. It appeared I had beat cancer. I returned to work and our lives returned to normal. All normal. The fighting began again. The resentments and arguments. Summer became autumn and the things he said when we fought became crueler, more unforgivable. He told me he had never loved me, had pretended through my sickness. I mourned a relationship I knew was dying. As autumn became winter the final flame red leaves blew from their branches and fell to the frozen ground. When he hit me the second time it was with relief that I left him for good.

I returned to my family's home having loved and lost; a hundred years older in less than 730 days. I thought it would be impossible to see those grounds blossom into spring again. I couldn't imagine the ache in my soul to see those flowers explode into summer again; to see the roses and hydrangeas flaunt their extravagant colors against the verdant decadent green of everything.

But now spring has sprung again and the peonies are blooming. The dragons I had imagined facing do not raze my fields with hot tongues of memory but rather set my world ablaze with pain and organ failure. Having experienced both, I can admit that heartbreak is infinitely preferable to chemotherapy. You see heartbreak may make you wish you had never been born but chemotherapy will accomplish the same thing and has the nasty added bonus of no guarantee that it will matter afterwards whether you were born in the first place. At the very least it has little to nothing to do with the outcome anyway.

So this year I look at the peonies bloom and think of how lovely they would've been on the wedding tables . And this does not bring me pain. I hear the ghost of a Frank Sinatra song on the breeze with the laughter of family and friends in the sun under those strings of golden lights. I remember how beautiful I was and how happy. I hope that this treatment is successful and i see the spring become summer. I am not afraid of those beautiful summer evenings anymore and I want to see those beautiful summer flowers. I am hoping for an autumn too. I want to come through all of this a million years wiser and impossible older and braver. I want to learn to look life in the eye without blinking and hold out my arms as it changes without flinching and missing something. When the leaves change this year I don't want to be afraid anymore.

*********************************************************************************
Thank you again to everyone who has taken the opportunity to donate to our gofundme campaign which can be found here http://www.gofundme.com/teamallison

Every little bit helps us in this ongoing fight and we cannot thank you all enough for your outpouring of support prayers and goodwill. Thank you from all of #teamallison