Lately my brothers, both biking fanatics, have been spending mass quantities of time watching the Tour de France over the Internet. Even my lackadaisical husband has jumped on the bandwagon of watching tall muscled men in spandex pedal at furious speeds across various landscapes, although he could be convinced to watch almost any sport (exemption: figure skating) for the entertainment value. I admit to enjoying some of the race myself, but more for the passing scenery and the occasional possessed fan than for the actual race, the technicalities of which are largely lost on me (drafting? peloton? Who knew that bike racing had its own vocabulary?)
While I haven’t invested much time in the Tour de France, or any kind of biking lately, I have been on my own little tour since school let out: the Tour de Health. Between days of organizing our house, canning jams, swimming with my nieces and nephews, and other things domestic, I have ventured out on trips to visit my friends and to touch base with loved ones. I see this as part of my calling to “do while it is yet day” – to spend as much time as possible with those that I love. As much as I try to maintain contact via Caring Bridge or Facebook or Cellphone or Skype – nothing beats face time with my favorite peeps.
Here’s a summary of some of my recent escapades:
Early July – I visited Pittsburgh where I spent a day at the Menno Convention and had the opportunity to see my friends Bryce Miller and Jodi Beyeler. I was also privileged to stay with my friend Jessica Spieser Landes and her husband David at their home in Swissvale, where I enjoyed debriefing with them and sharing fresh meals.
Mid-July – While Joe was in Atlanta for 2 trade shows, I drove out to Baltimore, MD, where I spent some time with my friend Liz. On the way home I stopped for some quality time with the Bentzes, my host family in Scottdale, PA, when I interned at the Mennonite Publishing House.
Late-Mid-July – My sister Mary arrived back in Ohio from her year of service in Peru! She’s going to be living on the farm with us for a few months and hopefully go back to Peru in September to finish some of her projects. It’s so good to have her back for now.
And that brings us to present – late July. This past week has been spent preparing for Joe’s and my trip to his Scandinavian homeland – Norway. Planning for this trip has consumed most of my free time; I’ve been scouring the Lonely Planet Norway guide for ideas and advice, talking to my friend Martha Hancock, who just returned from Norway, and of course, e-mailing April & Eivind, our friends and hosts in Norway, for suggestions. It has been exciting and overwhelming to pull together the details for this trip, and I’ve had to do most of it since Joe's been so busy at work. Joe and I will actually be flying separately due to the fact that we used credit miles to purchase my ticket, and purchasing the same ticket for Joe would have resulted in an extremely expensive price. So, he found a flight that leaves within an hour of mine, goes to Norway by a completely different route, and arrives within a half-hour of mine. I realized today that a) I’ve never traveled internationally by myself before (it’s always been in a group or with other people) and b) I’ve never planned an international trip before (it’s always been coordinated by someone else). So now my Tour de Health is taking me somewhere I’ve never been before, and somewhere that I’m a little afraid to go – a different culture that is 3 flights away and 6 hours ahead of us. Yikes!
Doing all this traveling has me reflecting on a favorite quote of mine by Susan Sontag, a brilliant writer who also had breast cancer: “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” Until I had cancer, I had no idea what it was like to travel to “that other place.” Now that I have been a resident there, and am, temporarily, back in the realm of the healthy, I have to think about what it means to hold dual citizenship to both of these places. Especially as someone whose cancer is in remission, I don’t particularly belong to one place or the other: I don’t fully “belong” with other physically healthy people who have never suffered from a serious illness; I also don’t fully “belong” with other people who are ill or suffering, since right now, my body is pain-free and I am physically able to do the activities I enjoy doing. I praise God for that, but I also know that, eventually, I will need to revisit the land of the ill. What does it mean to belong to that “other” category? Where is my place, and how should people respond to me?
I have been reading a book, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, by Arthur Frank, to help me think about these questions. He uses the term “remission society” to describe people who are well but aren’t considered cured such as people who have had cancer, diabetics, those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, the chronically ill, the disabled, those recovering from abuse and addictions, etc. I love the term “remission society” because it gives a name to the group of people, often invisible and all around us, which I am a member of. We are not the sick, and we are not the healthy. We are the in-between.
Tonight I will be pulling out my U.S. passport as I pack and prepare for my trip to Norway. Tomorrow, Joe and I will be boarding separate flights, having layovers in separate cities and countries, as we head to the same destination: Trondheim, Norway. Lord willing, we will meet up again at the Trondheim airport, as our flights are scheduled to arrive within a half-hour of each other. Dying must be a little like our trip to this unknown foreign land: we will say good-bye to each other in Cleveland, but our passages to our final destination will be separate. I trust that we will see each other again on the other side.
Please think of us and pray for our safe travels while we are gone.
