7 Months

Seven months ago, I was sitting in a room in England and I got some of the most unexpected news of my life: my mom had been diagnosed with colon cancer. Friday, December 3 and the next 11 days before I left to fly to Ohio to meet her were some of the most emotionally trying days of my life.

Seven months later, I'm sitting in my room in Lake Forest, in the house that my mom and I rent now. A lot has happened in the last seven months. The house that we lived in for almost 14 years sold. We moved. My dad doesn't live with us anymore. My parents' divorce is almost finalized. Nathan went through a whole semester of school, and is spending his summer in Ohio playing baseball. I've visited Texas and Ohio for a week each. I spent a weekend in San Diego. I made some trips to LA to visit my friend Ashley and see a friends' band play a few gigs. I booked a flight to visit San Francisco for the first time in over a year. Sparky stopped using his back legs, and then started using one again [he's like the comeback kid, really]. I've applied to over 70 jobs via Craigslist. I got three of them [and am GLADLY only working one now]. I watched two girls who are wild and drove me a little crazy, but are so much fun. I worked 3 photo gigs. I registered for two online classes through a community college that started the same week we moved and I started working a second job. I dropped them a week into them, coming to terms with the fact that I didn't need to do EVERYTHING at once. Mom and I went to a Ducks game [and they won!]. I stopped blogging. My mom and Nate both started. I reconnected with home and people from home. I reconnected with ranch dressing [clearly the most important part]. I've started to learn how to navigate through the world of divorcing parents. I realized that I still own way too much stuff. I bought a new car.

But most importantly, my mom went through six months of every other week chemotherapy treatments, sold a house, moved, and is working on finalizing a divorce. She has been so brave, positive, and calm [at least outwardly] throughout all of it. She amazes me all the time with her strength through everything that the universe has thrown at her in the last year and a half. Through my frequent job changes, "Nate being Nate," Sparky's last-minute miracle recovery, and getting a divorce she hasn't lost her mind completely. I probably would have. Several times over.

It hasn't exactly been 100% rainbows and butterflies though, either. The move was a hard transition. Mom lamented that she wasn't completely unpacked a few weeks after we moved. I told her "anyone who comes over and has a problem with the fact that we haven't finished unpacking can just leave and never come back. They don't need to be in our lives." And, what do you know, no one said a word. We're adjusting to small-neighborhood living, where we have an ice cream truck and a dozen or so kids play outside most afternoons. Chemo for colon cancer hasn't been as brutal as we've heard that it can be for breast cancer. Mom didn't lose all her hair [but it thinned out, and looks wonderful!]. She's lost a lot of her appetite, but has handled it well on non-chemo weeks. She's still working, still sees friends, and still gardens. She naps a lot, but family has always been full of excellent nappers. Napping is one of my many inherited traits that I'm very proud of.

My dad has done really well too. He's learning to do things for himself [*ahem* most of the time *ahem*] and is really putting in an effort to still see me...even when I'm not so open to it. Plus, I can be a little scatterbrained, so it helps when someone else tells me to do something! He has his own independent schedule going on and is working really hard and doing really well over all. I know moving isn't his favorite thing to do in the world, but he got it done. Now, to work on sorting through all this STUFF that we all have in storage! Also, if any of you know him, ask him to tell you about the episode of True Blood that he watched. His description is absolutely hilarious.

Nate is doing great too. He's had an awesome summer full of baseball in Ohio in our dad's hometown. A lot of our family still lives there, so he's been staying with them, and from what we can tell they're loving having him. He's played really well, and I'm incredibly proud to be his little-big sister. He'll be home again for a few weeks before his LAST school year starts. He's smart and good and nice, and he has a good head on his shoulders. I'm interested to see what he does after he graduates.

I guess, when it comes down to it, there are a few reasons why I'm writing this now. One is to say how incredibly proud I am of my momma, on the eve of her LAST CHEMO TREATMENT. Another is to record just how much things have changed since that day seven months ago. And finally, I'm writing this to officially finish posting on Amanda Abroad. Hopefully my mom and I will make a trip to Paris and maybe a few other places in the near future, and I'll maybe blog here then. But right now, home is where the heart is, and that's where I'm at.

Where in the world is Amanda Tom?

I'm currently, believe it or not, sitting in my bedroom at my parents' house. This is not somewhere I thought I'd be for a year when I left in August, but 4 and a half short months later, here I sit...And here's why:

The last time I posted, Penny and Kevin were out of town on a week long trip, and so it was me and the girls at home for a week. Like I had said, it was snowing, which was great. I loved it, I've never lived somewhere that it snowed before, only visited, so I thought it was really, really awesome. On Friday the 3rd, I Skyped with my mom and she dropped the biggest news on me that I've heard since she and my dad told me in April that they were getting a divorce...she had a colonoscopy a few days before, and they discovered a mass that looked bad. She had a doctor's appointment, and while she did that, Selena and Kiv were over and we did holiday arts and crafts with the girls and started a super long Star Wars Monopoly game. When I talked to my mom the second time that night, she told me that the doctors told her the mass was malignant...my mom has colon cancer. And I immediately hated that I wasn't close enough to give my mommy a hug right away and be there for her.

I had an emotionally tough week and a half between that time and when I was scheduled to fly to Ohio for Christmas. My mom's doctors thought that the had caught it early, and that she should be "cured" by just having one operation to take out the mass, and that she could wait until after Christmas, since my mom and I had plans to maybe go to Washington, DC or New York sometime after Christmas before I went back to England on January 4. We didn't really see much of a reason to change those plans, so on December 14th I flew to Ohio, and was there until December 29th. We decided to come back a little earlier than planned [January 4th], because there was worry that there might be something in my mom's liver too, but she had an ultrasound and the doctors said they're just cysts, nothing to worry about. Over the time we were in Ohio, someone made an [really, ridiculously low] offer on our house, which is for sale. They ended up not liking our counter offer, and moved on, but with that and cancer, my mom and I wanted to be home sooner than January 4th, since her surgery was scheduled for January 7th. We just relaxed and enjoyed being in our own house before the surgery.

I had a great time in Ohio for Christmas. We went to Chicago for a few days to visit some cousins, and got to see my grandma a lot, who is doing absolutely phenomenal. She has come really far from where she was when I saw her in August. She's walking with a walker, and has leg exercises that she does every day...she nearly gave my dad a heart attack I think when she started to do them one day while we visited! But, it is hilarious to see her standing next to my brother, who also sort of looks like a woolly mammoth right now. Also, I got to meet a new baby cousin, and see almost all of my other cousins, plus almost all my aunts and uncles from both sides of the family.



I'm only saying this because Grandma called herself a shrimp after she saw this...
"The Woolly Mammoth and the Shrimp"


Me, Grandma and Nate!


My mom had her surgery almost a week ago now. It was about 4 hours long, which was on the long side of their estimates of how long it would take, but the doctor said it went well. It was Nate's last weekend at home, and we visited mom the last days he was home. Monday came and we were expecting the pathology report, and Nate flew back to Texas that day, so I went to see mom alone and we waited...and waited...and waited...for the doctor to come in and tell us what the report said. We had been told that the report was there, but that "he who removed it has to tell you about it" and her doctor was in surgery. Patience is not our strong suit, but we waited 6 hours before finding out he was gone for the day, but he'd come Tuesday.

I'll be adding Tuesday to my list of "days I heard news I was not at all expecting." We were really hopeful that the surgical cure we were waiting for had happened. But, that's not the news we got. The mass had gone through the colon wall, and 2 of the 14 lymph nodes they took out were not clear. Since it went through the wall, that made the cancer Stage 3, which was scary to hear. The doctor didn't think the cancer had spread anywhere else, but, in "an abundance of caution," my mom will be getting chemo starting in about 4-6 weeks. She has to go back to the doctor next week to talk more about it, but it's looking like probably 4-6 months of treatment. This chemo is supposed to be very well tolerated, and he said she probably won't lose her hair, which is good. Although I did volunteer to donate some of mine if she did. ;)

So, what does this mean for my time abroad?
Well, in short, it means that for now, it's over. Very well tolerated or not, I don't think mom's going to be driving herself around while she's getting chemo. Of course, I also am just feeling that this is where I need to be right now, with my mom, while she goes through this. So, I'm home, for good. And I will say, it's great to be home with my mom again, there's nothing quite like your mom!

Change is hard: Things I'm adjusting to and what's going on in my life right now

While I do have a weekend-recap post to write at some point this week [I think], I've been really caught up lately thinking about just how much things have changed for me in the last six months. Because really, if I want to remember everything, I have to write about things other than weekend trips to London, right? Really, if you don't want to, you don't have to read all this.

The most obvious, based on this blog, is the fact that I'm living in a foreign country. Moving to a country where you only know about 3 people that you've met face-to-face [that aren't even the people you're going to live with] is tough, no joke. The only people I "knew" coming here were a few co-workers of my dad's. I was flying across an ocean to live with people I had never met...It was terrifying! Luckily, everything is going EXTREMELY well, I'm loving it here, the family is incredibly nice [hi guys! :)], I've met a load of other au pairs who are awesome, an old friend from home recently moved to London as well, and I've met some random people along the way also. Having the chance to learn about another culture and travel at this age is amazing, I'm so excited to be here. But with all good things come some bad...

The biggest change for me, though, is that my parents are in the process of getting a divorce after over 20 years of marriage. Learning about that was, quite frankly, the biggest shock of my life. They flew me home about a week after I found out about this job, and told me, since they wanted me to know before I made my final decision about coming here. That was one of the worst weekends of my life. I had just broken up with the boy I'd been dating for almost a year because of the fact that I wanted to come to England, and now my parents were telling me that they were getting divorced. Oh, and my mom wanted me to come home for part of the summer...to the house they were both still living in...At that point, ANYTHING sounded better than that. Especially running away to a country about 5,000 miles away from all that. Sounded good to me! I may be gone for now, but they both know I'm coming back...eventually. My current favorite phrase is "it is what it is" because there's nothing I can do but accept that it's happening. I'm not thrilled, but I'm less angry than I was when I first found out. I know I can't run from it forever, so going home and facing that again is going to be another major adjustment. I'll deal with that when I have to though.

Being done with school for good is a hard transition. When you've been in school at least 9 months out of the year for the last 16 or so years, every time you realize you're not going back again, it's a weird feeling. I never HAVE to read a book again. I never HAVE to shoot a photo assignment again. I never HAVE to write anything again. I never HAVE to be in the lab again. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it. School was fun, and I do miss it, but not enough to want to go back and do it all again, or any more.

Two weeks ago, I was the most homesick I've been the whole time I've been here [just over two months this week!]. I spent a good hour on Skype with my mom one night crying because I just was so upset. I didn't want to go home, but I was feeling very, very alone. Being around all new people is HARD. It's hard to tell someone your entire background story of your life in a few weeks, so I was feeling very much like I didn't have a lot of people around here that I could talk to candidly about a lot of things going on in my life..stuff with my parents and other random things from home. Don't get me wrong, the friends I'm making here are great, but you have to admit that nothing compares to the people that you know and that know you without having to dive in to a ton of background story for everything. Combine that with feeling like people from home were getting to the point of "out of sight, out of mind" with me, and I was really sad. I'm not mad at anyone, not at all. I know I've done it before, it's easy and I get that. I just was feeling very alone and missing a lot of people. Not to mention, I had been trying to nail down Christmas plans, and I wasn't feeling like I was getting a ton of response from my parents, which was hard for me to handle. It's all sorted now, but at the time, I was having a tough, tough week.

Time differences are so hard to get used to...especially 8 hours. Yeah, that's the time difference from here to California. All through college I called my mom almost every day at some point or another [and some days multiple times] just to talk and say hi. It was easy, because generally speaking, if I was up, so was she, because it was the same time where she was and where I was. But that doesn't work anymore, for a few obvious reasons. I'm 8 hours ahead of home, so the best time for me to talk to people from home is in the evening here, which is around noon there. Usually I talk to my dad a few days a week around lunch time, and my mom too. Right now my mom is traveling, visiting my brother and her brother, and my dad leaves on Monday for a big huge work trip, which unfortunately doesn't take him to England this year.

And those are just the "big" differences that are coming to mind right away. There are also a ton of little things that are different. Speaking the same language as everyone but still missing so much through accents and slight language differences. Right now I'd have to say the biggest one for me is the word "pants," which to me means anything that's not a skirt or shorts that I wear on my legs, but here means underwear. Yup, that's not embarrassing to say wrong. Not at all. Or the fact that I don't think I'll ever quite get used to the steering wheel being on the other side of the car, or that cars are driving on the other side of the road from what I'm used to. But, dealing with these things is nothing compared to the good times I'm having and the things I'm learning...like not to say pants. ;]

I have met a lot of really nice people here, especially the family I live with. I'm so, so glad I decided to do this, because I just know that if I hadn't, I would have spent the rest of my life thinking "what if?". Which would suck. I would have never had this opportunity again...to be able to experience so many new things at once is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

Oh, and to all my family members reading, we'll be in Ohio for Christmas this year. My mom and I will be there December 14-January 5, but I'm not sure when my dad and Nathan will be there. California people...I'm sorry to say I won't be "home" [unless things change] until summer time.

I think that's enough rambling for now. Hopefully I didn't lose EVERYONE...but thanks for making it to the end, you didn't really have to read that all. =]