Month: December 2012

Having cancer is like serving a life sentence for a crime you didn’t commit.  You know you don’t deserve it.  It is all a mistake and you don’t want to be there, but you are.  You fight with the belief that one day you will be paroled and walk away freely.  At night you stare at the ceiling trying to keep your mind from opening doors that you pray will stay closed.  You wake up hoping it was a dream, and then you gear up to start slaying the dragon again.

I’ve ignored my cyberpyramid.  Partially because I physically couldn’t do it…mostly because I was depressed and simply didn’t want to do it.  I’ve discovered that holding a brave front, nonstop, is not the healthiest thing to do.  It takes a lot of energy to make everyone else around you feel better about what you are going through.  I was draining what little strength I had and couldn’t give away any more.  I was embarrassed that I was disappointing people.  I had always been the problem solver and the wall that they could lean against.  It was humiliating.

I was lucky that my cancer was small and a stage 0 and stage 1, with no node involvement and clear margins.  My test for risk of recurrence was 18…one point outside of the 1-17 low risk category.  Ain’t that a kick in the pants.  I had four doses of chemotherapy as a prophylactic treatment just to make sure none of the enemy set up camp anywhere else.

The first two doses were uneventful.  The third dose started to take a toll and there were a few days where I wished for the end of the day more than I looked forward to the beginning of one.  I thought about the children that go through years of it and felt embarrassed that I wasn’t doing better.

The chemo took a toll on my skin.  It turned brown like a coconut.  I had blisters down my backside the size of pancakes.  My palms looked sunburnt.

My hair, which was down to my waist, fell out and when my eyebrows did as well, I took on the appearance of Gollum from Lord of the Rings…minus the fangs and mouth foaming.

What they don’t tell you about chemotherapy is that it is designed to bring you to the brink of death.  It kills the fast growing cells in your body…the bad ones…and unfortunately the good ones too.  My fourth and final dose almost did me in.

I knew something had gone pear-shaped when I had to hang onto the walls to walk about three days after my treatment.  I figured I could tough it out, but my mouth and throat were filled with sores and I couldn’t swallow even a sip of water.  My daughter dragged me to my old nemesis, the scale, and made me stand on it.  I had lost ten pounds in a handful of days.

She literally picked me up and stuffed me into the car to rush me to my doctor.  Carly is a certified Crossfit trainer and an Olympic certified weight trainer, so there was no arguing with her.  If she was afraid, I never saw it.  When we got to the doctor the office was packed.  I could barely sit up in the chair.  To picture what happened next, you would need to visualize my daughter.  She looks like Gidget, with a quick wide smile and a friendly open personality.  Gidget calmly walked up to the counter and went postal.  She banged her hands and said, “My mother is really sick.  She needs help now.  NOW!”

They brought out a wheelchair immediately.  I remember catching a glimpse of myself in a window as they wheeled me by.  I looked like one of those Mexican Day of the Dead Dolls. I was in trouble.

We sat in one of those little rooms…you know the ones I mean…where they close the door and you wait for the doctor.  Up to this point, I was disgustingly healthy my entire life, but even so, I have always felt trapped in that little room.

I couldn’t sit up any longer and told my daughter I wanted to lay down on the floor.  She picked me up and put me on the examining table.

The doctor walked in and his jaw dropped.  They had all been used to me arriving like a tornado, joking and laughing.  I couldn’t even pick up my head.  He called over to the hospital and told them to get a bed ready for me immediately…no time for admitting…do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

They wheeled me across the skywalk and I looked out the windows at the gorgeous blue sky and I wondered for the first time since this all happened if that might be the last sky I would see.  I was glad it was blue.  My daughter was quiet.  Her face was white.

When we got to the admitting desk they already had a bracelet for me.  The nurse that wheeled me over had always been all business and wasn’t particularly friendly.  She leaned down and put her arms around me and hugged me tightly.  I could barely reach up to touch her hand.  It was shaking.  I will never forget her kindness, because I was close to losing it and I didn’t want to do that in front of my child.

And then something happened that made me reach inside and find some more strength.  Call it divine intervention, or just timing.  The day of my first surgery, my mastectomies, an aide named Tony walked me up.  For every procedure I had after that, he was the one that walked me up.  He is funny, bright and up up up.  He became my touchstone in that hospital.  Everyone knows Tony…walking up with him was like walking with the Mayor of Nashville.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up.  It was Tony, there to wheel me up to my room, like he had so many times before.   This is a huge hospital with hundreds coming and going.  Timing?  Maybe.  Luck?  Well then lucky me.  I saw his big grin and I started to cry…not tears of fear…tears of relief because I knew that somehow I was going to be okay.

We insulted each other along the way, just as we had before.  He brought me to my room and helped me to my bed.  “You got this.”  He smiled.  “Yep…piece of cake.”  And I knew that I did.

I settled into my hospital bed where I would remain for a week.  Across the street, outside my window like a dangling carrot, stood Krispi Kreme doughnuts.  The red light was on…the doughnuts were hot.  No food for me until they figured out what was going on.  You can taste the “iron” in irony when it is staring across the street at you and thumbing its nose.

My white blood cell count was below zero.  I had very little red blood cells.  In another day I would have had a heart attack.  They pumped me full of bags of stuff, but I wasn’t doing much better.  The two residents, whom I referred to as the Wondertwins…two Ken dolls who looked like they had just started to shave…came in and told me my oncologist had ordered a blood transfusion.

I was reluctant to get one.  While they take every precaution to make sure it is clean, they cannot totally guarantee it.  The protocol for dispersing blood is a little daunting…they need two nurses to confirm the serial numbers.  They sit with you to make sure you don’t have a reaction.  They assured me that I would notice the difference immediately.

The first pint didn’t do much and I asked them to make sure the next one was top shelf and not any of that I-40 road kill.  The second one came in the middle of the night.

It was like rocket fuel.  In a vampire state, I was up wandering the halls.  I was reborn.

I went home a couple of days later.  I was told I would feel better and the effects of the chemo would dissipate.  It didn’t.  I looked like I had radiation burns and my whole body began to peel.  My immune system had been so seriously compromised, that the delicate reconstruction my plastic surgeon held onto for me for over seven months began to fall apart.  My skin just wouldn’t heal.  The tissue expanders that were put in to stretch what skin was left after surgery had been compromised and needed to be removed.   Drains were put in again, leaving me like a walking science experiment.  It was disheartening, but I was so tired of not feeling well that it really didn’t matter that much.

I have always tried to take care of my body…never smoked, and drink very little.  The day that I found out my mammogram was bad, I had just finished a six mile trail run with my daughter.  My body was ticked off at me and it retaliated by attacking itself.

When they took the left expander out, they found an infection that had gone on undetected…blimey.  I was on IV antibiotics for two weeks and all kinds of bug fighting pills.

I woke up one morning and felt pretty good.  I laced up my running shoes and stepped outside.  I live on a large farm with a mile long road.  I walked a few steps and took off running.  It was glorious.  I was running away from seven months of uncertainty and pain and disappointment.  It was raggedy and not really pretty…but I was running.

My strength has returned.  On Friday I will have surgery to remove the port in my chest that they accessed for the chemotherapy.  Friday night I will have a glass of wine to toast myself.  I had cancer…I don’t have it anymore.  It is over and I am past it.

I’ve become an eating machine.  I hope I can turn it off.  My weight, which plummeted even more while I was in the hospital, has returned.  Gee thanks.

I can tell you that my full body exfoliation is done, and my skin looks fabulous.  In a quirky turn, any cellulite that I had on my legs is also gone, and not from losing weight.  Had to be the chemo, because any chick will tell you…losing weight does not destroy all cellulite.

A genetic hiccup made my hair turn white before I was 30, and I have colored it since then.  It has started to grow back…a steely grey with black strands…wonderful.  Ugh.  It has taken on the appearance of a chenille robe or one of those sculptured shag rugs from the 70’s…close to my head and sticking out every which way.  I have Frankenstein scars where my reconstruction used to be.  I will try to build me some boobs again in a few months.

For now, I am happy to be where I am.  I’ve read that a lot of people say cancer makes them appreciate their life more.  Though it was rough around the edges at times, I loved the life I had before my diagnosis, so for me, the experience is a little different.

I’ve decided not to be afraid of anything ever again.  I’ve chosen mind…over what doesn’t matter anymore.  Any dragons that step in my path will be slain.  No looking back…or down.  I am back out on the tightrope of my life…stepping ahead.

Two weeks ago I met my girlfriend Pat at the track.  If I asked her to jump off of a bridge with me,  she would already have one leg over the rail.  She is that kind of friend.  We ran and did a workout with weights.  Neither one of us talked much while we rounded the track.  She had as many tears on her face as I did.  We can run again, together.

Day 339…simple victories are the sweetest.

Cynthia Neilson…the great and powerful.

A Tale of Two Cities:  Sophia Rose and Gracie…and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

It was a little over a year ago when talk show host Ellen DeGeneres introduced two little English girls, Sophia Rose and Gracie.  They skipped out on stage, wearing little tutus and crowns, and proceeded to bring the house down with their charm, enthusiasm and good manners. Sophia Rose proved to be a little firecracker, belting out a Nicki Minaj tune like a tiny Ethel Merman.  Her sidekick, Gracie didn’t offer much in the way of singing, but she danced next to her friend, not in her shadow, but as support, a total team effort.

Ellen, knowing a good thing when she sees one, procured them to do red carpet interviews at music award shows.  They’ve delivered in a big way, garnering their own following in the performers themselves.  They are joyful and excited, asking questions only their adorable faces can get away with.  Watching Sophia Grace sing the songs that each performer made famous, back to them, is priceless.  That is called hutzpah and she brings it home.  These two little girls are contagious in their delight and enthusiasm.  Even the rudest performers acknowledge them on the red carpet and stop by to say hello.  I’m sure there are seasoned interviewers who stand there with their mouths open as their microphones are passed by to get to the pint sized reporters.

There is never a moment when you feel like these two little girls are being exploited.  They are so appreciative and well behaved, still believing in fairies and hoping one day to be ghost hunters, though Gracie doesn’t seem real enthusiastic about that.

Their collective parents stay on the sidelines.  Ellen always has little surprises for them, and each one is accepted with a squeal of delight.  They are little girls who are still amazed at their good fortune and notoriety.  I don’t have a crystal ball, but I feel pretty confident in predicting that they will stay that way.  They were raised well.  There is something to be said for good old fashioned English breeding.

And then we have The Learning Channel’s entry…”Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”…a reality show based on Georgia born beauty contestant Alana Thompson…a child and her family whose behavior was so over the top on “Toddlers and Tiaras” that it bred a spin-off that is now revolving out of control.  The LEARNING Channel?  What can these people possibly teach us?

I am going to tread carefully here.  Alana is a child and her life has been orchestrated for her.  She is simply performing to the tune they want her to dance to.  Not all dancers are talented.

Ellen doesn’t interview Sophia Rose and Gracie…she simply guides them in a direction and lets them talk.  It is worth YouTubing to watch their observations.  One of the best ones was Sophia Rose explaining to Ellen how she and Gracie were going to chase ghosts for a living once they were done with the tutus.

Cut to Honey Boo Boo…delivering one of her Boo Booisms at the end of the show.  She delivers her ism, some of which you would need an interpreter to understand.  Her finale on a recent show consisted of her turning on all fours, her rear end to the camera so she could deliver her exclamation point…a fart.

Who can forget her delightful turn with Billy Bush, when she began hitting him with a Barbie doll, or when she pretended to be asleep on Dr. Drew and complained about the “fans” who bother her, as mommanger June looked on beaming as her little bread basket earned another “dollah”.

Reality television has made rude entertaining.   It is cheap to produce and market and has become a cash cow for the companies that grind it out.

They’ve dumbed us down to soundbites, with no investment of our time or focus, we don’t even stop to think that we are being manipulated and exploited too.

Are we really that gullible, or are we just lazy and so bored with our own lives that we find fun in rudeness, meanness and false representation?

The creators of such programming are short-sighted.  How far will they go to keep our attention?  I can only hope that they underestimate their audience as they under-stimulate us with artificially created moments for ratings, brought on by greed and the almighty dollar, regardless of the consequences, preying on our universal Attention Deficit Disorder.

Honey Boo Boo’s mommanger, self-proclaimed Redneck June Thompson is the hillbilly answer to Kris Jenner.  The Thompsons are like a Kardashian X-ray.  The parallels between the two families cannot be denied.

While the Kardashians don’t live in a house fifty feet from a train track, they bring their own West Coast hillbilly to the screen, with their own brand of overindulged, obnoxious and reckless behavior. We are all invited to revel in their beauty and opulent lifestyle, often outside by the “cement pond”, fronted by Kris Jenner’s three oldest daughters, with a Marie Antoinette “Let them eat cake” attitude.

Their farts and burps don’t stink unless they are making them money.

West Coast hillbilly Bruce Jenner, a star once himself, wanders through the show like a deer caught in the headlights, constantly getting beaten up emotionally and mentally, like a feeble broken down old man…banished to the garage to play with his model airplanes…only after he asks Kris for the credit card.  Seriously?  Come on.

The East Coast hillbillies refer to Alana’s father Mike Thompson, as Sugar Bear.  His daughter is the spitting image of him, no pun intended, as he is mostly seen with a huge wad of chew in his cheek and always looks confused and teary eyed like he had sand kicked in his face.

June’s three daughters by other various suitors are also featured on the show.  Theirs is more a “Let US eat cake” attitude as all of them struggle with weight issues, including Honey Boo Boo herself.  All parents think their children are beautiful, and entering Honey Boo Boo in beauty pageants probably started out innocently enough.  Sadly, she is fighting a genetic map which will place her outside the boundary of what beauty pageants expect.  We all like the underdog, but it is hard to cheer for her when she displays such a bad attitude and is allowed to behave the way she does, the star chimp in her family circus.

The Kardashians have a chimp of their own…the undeniably beautiful Kim, whose sex tape catapulted her to infamy.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they all have a cash register ring for the ringtone on their phones.

Of course, they are all getting rich, and there is a part of me that won’t fault them for it.  If I told you that I had a lame horse that was worth a million dollars and you were stupid enough to pay me for it, then I would have sold a horse worth a million dollars and you would have a lame horse.

No doubt June and Kris love their children.  We’ve been privy to those moments when the kids tease their Moms…June with her neck crust and “fork-lift” toe…and Kris, stealing style from Kim and stalking Bruce while he is golfing with another woman, all the while emailing the man she left her first husband for.  June seems a little less intent on being a star herself.  Kris struggles with the fact that her last name is Jenner and not Kardashian, the brand name she has carefully cultivated.

I’ve heard the excuse that production companies can’t afford to make sitcoms or dramas anymore.  They are cost prohibitive and the actors demand salaries that are too high for them to meet.

Yet the reality shows seem to be making tremendous profits…and their break-out stars are getting rich as well.  Snooki, falling down drunk, showing her ass literally and figuratively, commanded $150,000 per show and gets $50,000 and up for personal appearances.

The Housewives franchise, a virus of Marie Antoinettes, has spread across the country making the rich and the nouveau riche stars household names.

If you believe there is any “reality” in reality television, then it would be prudent for you to get a life.  Living vicariously through ill behavior, sprinkled with moments of humanity to make it more palpable, is a hangover in the making.

Barbara Walters just named Honey Boo Boo one of the ten most fascinating people of 2012.  You’ve lost it Babs…time to retire.  That is an insult to the millions of other choices you could have made.  How about Sophia Rose and Gracie?  They would be delighted, most likely, overjoyed…and none of your viewership would feel like they were being fooled or manipulated or uneasy about seeing them on the screen truly enjoying their moment.

I’ve heard reality shows called guilty pleasures.  Somewhere while we gawked at and glorified these “guilty pleasures” we didn’t even notice that we’ve lost our innocence.

There is no innocence in ignorance.

And when did the fart become the new laugh track?

Day 341…send in the clowns…don’t bother they’re here.

Cynthia Neilson

Christmas shoppers in a northern Toronto IKEA were startled when they saw a monkey wandering down the aisles dressed in a stylish shearling lined suede coat.

There are pictures.  The monkey has a nicer winter coat than I do.  It was buttoned up to the neck, but it would not have surprised me to see a cashmere sweater set underneath, or some leather gloves in the pockets.

Personally I oppose exotic animals as pets, but the monkey was dressed for the weather, so I am hoping that it is an indication that it is well cared for.

Pet wardrobes are big business.  Pocket piglets and teacup poodles alike are blinged out  with dresses and coats and hats to rival fashion week.

The miniature well-dressed pet is the new arm candy.  In Beverly Hills and New York, some dogs and cats have formal attire to rival the red carpet regulars.  Bedazzled with real gemstones and faux fur coats, they wear their owners like their accessory as they strut down Rodeo Drive and 5th Avenue, more than willing to commit their fashion “faux paws”.

At home in their exclusive gated neighborhoods and doorman buildings, they sleep in tiny canopy beds and get their toenails painted and their teeth cleaned and brushed.  Their paws rarely touch pavement as they are carried to the limousine for their ride to day care.  They have birthday parties and play dates, even weddings.  It is not unusual to see them seated at elegant dinner tables and allowed to sip from fine crystal.

Cut to the four dogs that I have right now.  They could have posed for the famous picture of the poker playing dogs.  They live outside on my farm and sleep in the barn.  If they had a wardrobe, it would consist of flannel shirts and doggy tattoos.  Seating for dinner would be at a picnic table where they’d burp down beer and chew at ticks and fleas.

My dogs are rescues…animals no one wanted.  While I don’t dress them, they all have human names, an homage to their personalities.  Oden weighs in at 135 pounds.  He is a mastiff lab mix that someone abandoned at the dump.  His head is the size of a gorilla’s, and his shoulder stands at my hip.  I’m certain he was left because they couldn’t afford to feed him anymore.  He’s the size of a small pony.

The day we met, it was pouring rain.  He was sitting next to the dumpster, his paws crossed in front of him like a proper gentleman.  My son opened the pickup door and he  stood up, yawned, and climbed in like he had been waiting for us all along.  A gentle giant, he has been with us ever since and has never once wandered off.  If I were to dress him Hollywood style, it would be in a top hat, vest and monocle…like the guy from the Monopoly game.

Mabelline, a Great Pyranees mix, was found out by the dam.  They called to see if I would come and get her.  Seems she didn’t like men.  She forged a bond with my ex-husband, who didn’t like dogs.  Though neither acknowledged each other, they were inseparable.  If I dressed her, it would be in an old moth eaten fur coat, a lace collar, a string of pearls, and a tiny derringer tucked in her pocket.

My daughter “found” Jemimah on the side of the road as a puppy.  I found out years later that she was being given away out of a box in front of Walmart.  I always had my suspicions.  She is needy and whiney and always pushing to the front of the pack for attention.  She’d be dressed in bad jewelry, showing too much cleavage, with her skirt hiked up way too high.

Bella came to us as a puppy after her stray mother was hit by a car.  She was only a few weeks old when we got her and she insisted on running with the big dogs.  She is street wise and quick and would definitely rock some leather and motorcycle boots.  She probably wouldn’t make it through a metal detector.

Our dogs are just not fashion forward.  My mother did have a chihuahua who sported a sombrero trimmed with ball fringe that she wore when she went outside in the sun.  The little monster would turn herself inside out if you tried to put a collar or leash on her, but she stood perfectly still so her sombrero could be tied under her chin.

Though my dogs are living au natural, I did put a Santa Claus hat and beard on my daughter’s cat Buster last week for a holiday picture.  We had to stop him from contorting backwards out of the Christmas collection by wrapping his arms in a blanket.  He was less than thrilled.  I am guessing another pose with the elf hat and collar are out of the question.

Humanizing animals is nothing new.

The hieroglyphics of the great pyramids depicted animals adorned with precious metals and gems, given human and godlike stature.  They were an indication of the past and a foretelling of the future.

Or maybe that was just the desert version of Rodeo Drive and 5th Avenue…it gives “paws” to  wonder…pun totally intended.

Surely in the centuries to come, visitors to my cyberpyramid will understand that only certain dogs and cats and monkeys in the 21st century wore designer clothes, sunglasses and diamond necklaces…that it is simply a reflection of the silliness of privilege and in no way an indication of the state of our being or a prediction of our future.

Surely.

Day 346…big enough to admit that I’m totally jealous of the monkey in Canada with the shearling coat.

Cynthia Neilson

Friday morning, December 14th started the way most mornings do.  Some were slow to get out of bed, and others were already on their way to work before the sun came over the horizon.

I was too impatient to wait for the frost on my windshield to melt, so I drove down my road peering through a three inch hole in the ice that my wipers created.  The lid on my coffee cup was on crooked and it leaked all over my console.  Annoyed about nothing but little inconveniences, I remember thinking, “This day keeps getting better and better.”

And then I turned on my radio.

Today I am putting a stone in place on my cyberpyramid that no one will ever be able to make sense of…or rationalize…or understand…or forget.

On December 14, 2012, in Newtown Connecticut, a young man named Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and made decisions that took a piece of each of our souls.

Yesterday we all watched in disbelief, holding our breath, as the horrifying news trickled out, confirming the worst…that this young man had shot and killed twenty seven people, including his own mother, before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life.

Twenty of those lives lost were young children.

The sadness and ache across our nation for all the lives that were lost is palpable.  But the loss of all those children is unfathomable.

As a parent, the privilege of having a child to love is the greatest joy there is.  All of us pray to never know what it is like to have that joy ripped from us so unexpectedly.

This morning we will feel a little catch in our throats as we swallow the sorrow for the families who won’t be able to wrap their arms around their children and hug them a little tighter, like we can today.  Secretly we will all say a little prayer, thankful it wasn’t our child in that school Friday morning.

The children lost were still shiny and new.

They were not tarnished by the rust of life.  They had not had the time to learn real disappointment.  They trusted and believed.  Their minds were wide open…there really could be a Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.

For most of us, the hollowness that resounds with their loss will be filled in with time and life will move forward.  For a while we will think about how precious life is and this crime against humanity will force us to look inward at our own anger and blame.  For a brief time, we might even live a little better, kinder, quieter…maybe softer.

We will look for the heroes.  Like life preservers, they keep our chins above water so that sorrow doesn’t suck us under when our hearts are heavy enough to sink us.  Heroes give us hope that there can be some good from tragedy.  Goodness and hope are the fuel of our lives, for without it there is no will to survive.

The shooter took his own life, so the families will be spared a trial.  His was a personal hell to have committed to the choices he made.  We need not show empathy.  We need not understand or forgive his actions.   But we do need to reach within ourselves and show sympathy for his desperation…otherwise, his evil wins and destroys what innocence we have left.

Yesterday our hearts stopped and our breath came up short as we were so abruptly reminded of how fragile and brief life is.  There is no time for pettiness or regret or procrastination.

We need to pay attention and reach out to support each other and love each other.  Life does not come with the guarantee of a second chance.

Now, like an unfinished masterpiece, the world will forever be denied the wonder of what those twenty little lives would have brought.

Yesterday each and every one of us lost.

Day 350…We can all live better.

Cynthia Neilson

We don’t get to choose when or where we are born or who our parents are.  We are solely dependent on those who bring us into the world.

The balance of how we learn to live and love hinges on what we were taught.  Done well, it is a staircase…done carelessly, it is a slippery slope.

Life is random.  We can’t predict the twists and turns.  Most of what happens around us is out of our control.  The beauty of life is in its constant change and because of that we are never fully formed.

Where you start in life does not dictate where you will go.

I am the oldest of six children.  I was four, my brother was three and my sister was two when my mother had twins.  She didn’t know she was having twins and they came two and a half months early on April Fool’s Day.  When my father called everyone to say my mother had twins they all thought it was a joke.  (When I was fifteen my mother found out she was pregnant again.  She thought it was a joke that time.)

We lived in an apartment complex which I found out years later was really the projects.  It was full of young families just like ours with too many kids and too many bills.

I was a hard child to keep entertained.  I could read at a very early age and was what my mother would like to call a “progressive thinker”.  That was just her way of telling people to stay ten steps ahead of me…or else.

My mother recognized early on that I needed to be distracted.  She made sure there were  books around and my nose was always in one.  There was a lot of noise in our house and reading was a way for me to drown it out.  I loved the way the ink smelled on the pages and the feel of the paper.  I remember how excited I was when my mother started buying encyclopedias at the grocery store, one volume at a time for a dollar…with a twenty dollar purchase.  That set stopped with the letter “T”.  I always thought it was because u v w x y and z just weren’t that interesting.  It simply never dawned on me that my parents couldn’t afford to keep adding to it.   There were not a lot of days when they had the twenty dollars to spend and an extra buck to spring for the next letter.

We didn’t know we were poor.  It didn’t matter.

Early on, we didn’t travel much.  We didn’t even have a television.  I remember all of us piling into the station wagon and rushing to my Aunt’s house.  She had gotten a color television, which turned out to be a piece of cellophane stretched across the screen with a blue stripe on top, a yellow one in the middle and a green one across the bottom.  We all sat and watched Ed Sullivan.  It bothered me that the top of Topo Gigio’s head was blue and his face was yellow.  My first experience with color television was a big fizzle.

In my books I could travel page by page.  I wandered word by word and I taught myself about things that my parents could only dream about being able to give me.  Books opened my imagination and were my adventures before I could start making adventures of my own.

Right before I started kindergarten, we moved to a real house in the suburbs.  It was a single story three bedroom ranch with one bathroom.  A mansion.  My two brothers slept in one bedroom and my three sisters and I slept in another, two of us on bunk beds.  I had the top bunk.  My mother took down the ladder because it was too tempting for the twins to climb.  I used the end rails to get up to my bed.  To this day I can climb like a monkey. After my youngest sister was born, the single bed was replaced by another bunk and all four girls shared a room.

My mother was called in for a parent teacher conference a few months after I started kindergarten.  It was March and our class had colored pictures of St. Patrick.

I colored St. Patrick a deep chocolate brown and then made him three dimensional by gluing a tissue on his nose because he “had a cold”.  The teacher was not amused that I made St. Patrick black with a snotty nose…and so my parent teacher conference series began.

I wasn’t a difficult child.  I didn’t cause trouble…I just wanted to learn more and make things more exciting.  I liked my world big and struggled when I was presented with limitations.  I was funny and quirky and way way too smart.  I was always very respectful of adults, and had the vocabulary to match.  The grown ups referred to me as a fifty three year old midget.

I was different.  It wasn’t until third grade that I found my stride.  We started to do shows.  I had a song to perform in the Christmas show.   It was a duet.  The music started and my partner threw up backstage.  I marched to the front of the stage and belted out the song by myself.  The crowd clapped enthusiastically and I decided on my own to do an encore…twice.  The teacher had to come out and lead me off the stage…my arms thrown out, still singing.

A ham was born.

There was no money for dancing lessons or acting lessons.  My mother would drag out her sewing machine after we were asleep and make costumes for all of the plays and skits that I wrote.  I had a built in cast with all those brothers and sisters.

My creativity has never stopped because I was never told that my imagination had any limitations.  It is the most precious gift that my parents gave to me and is one that I hope I’ve passed down to my own children.

From that time on, I have done everything that I have ever really wanted to do.

While it has not always worked out the way I wished it would have, I learned to step in front of the scaredy cats and take chances.

I am still flying without a net.

My name is Cynthia.

I said I would be a famous actress and work in the movies.  While the actress thing hasn’t panned out fully…yet, I moved to New York City with $250 in my pocket.  I became a casting director and then a stuntwoman…falling down stairs, hit by cars and set on fire in many television shows and movies.

I always wanted to live on a farm and have a horse.  I live on 236 acres and have ten horses.  Or they have me…just depends on how you look at it.

Though I never pictured myself as married, I have two ex-husbands.  I still remain easily distracted.

And while I wasn’t planning on being a parent, I have two of the most amazing children who graced me with being their Mom.

I don’t waste time fretting about disappointments.  They make me appreciate the littler victories more.

Turns out I am a talented bad dancer.  Who knew that I’d be so bad that I am now a really good bad dancer.

I will find humor in most anything.  If I cry, I want it to be from laughing too hard.

I like to say that I am interested and interesting.  I have surrounded myself with people who have made my life richer for knowing them.   I have met some who have taken energy, but so many more who have added to my joy and enriched my spirit.   All of them have taught me something.

I continue to learn.

This is one of the last few stones in my cyberpyramid.  I hope that visitors in the years to come will enjoy brushing their fingers across the face of it…feeling the words in the stone.

I am…and so are you.

Day 354…Imagination has no limitations.  Take chances.

Cynthia Neilson