Postcard from Southampton

Posted in Finding Home, Life, Love, Travel by

(This post was meant to be up about a week ago – but instead of adding it as a post, I added it as a page. Here you go – now in the correct blog location! P.S. We are in New York now, having speant a week abroad and I’m about to meet with AnneMarie from Chemobrain! Good times and good travels.)

Excitement Alert!

I should be working –that’s why I’m here at TRAGO (WOOOOHOOO!!!) this morning, but before diving into the job, I thought it’d be great to celebrate with you that I’m here in Southampton, Portswood, Trago Lounge (best cafe ever) enjoying my micro visit immensely.

It’s so funny. Six years ago I can still remember arriving in Southampton (my first time in England) and getting off the bus, looking at the industrial town and thinking, “damn it.” Ugly was the adjective on my mind. And yet here I am for a visit six years later, revelling in every bit of cafe, street sign, familiar litter, charity shop, tea house, that strikes my eye. Particularly this cafe. This is Trago, which if you’ve read earlier parts of my blog, you know is like a slice of paradise on earth.

After my mastectomy, my mother and I came here for a pot of dark tea. After nights out with friends, we came here to wind down the night. After a burst of inspiration, I came here to write it up and share. After making plans, my girlfriends and I would gather here for a long and quenching chat.

Plus, even though it’s not yet 10 am, I’m also enjoying a chocolate gluten-free muffin.

It can be hard to spread oneself all over the place – leave bits of your life here and there. (Saying good-bye to Zsolt’s parents was a little heart-wrenching. Honestly, where’s the teleportation devices? Shouldn’t someone have invited a method for instant long-distance travel already?) But on the bright side . . .it’s good to have places that bring so much joy, even if we can be there – or with the people who live there – all the time. They are maintained in our hearts, and it’s so very good to visit in person.

Tomorrow we take the boat from Southampton to New York. Zsolt is visiting the Titanic museum today – but I took a pass, despite it supposedly being totally awesome, since – you know . . . I don’t need those associations at this moment.

Anyhow. Hello From Southampton!

That was one long postcard note. But who cares :) It’s good to have good moments. I hope you are having one yourself today.

Catherine

P.S. Babies are everyone! We leave this city, and upon returning everyone has given birth! It’s quite amazing.

P.P.S. Going to meet a group of friends today – we had planned for a picnic, but this is England, so it may rain. Nevertheless, I could 100% mark this in my calender as a very fantastic day. I’m totally stoked to see everyone again. :)

A Home Blessing

Posted in Life, Love by

Yesterday afternoon we paid a visit to Zsolt’s grandmother. Her name is Anna, and she lives in a house all alone with a garden so large you could get lost amongst the apple trees, tomato bushes, strawberry plants, raspberries, grapes and climbing vines. Near the front of the garden (close to her many potted cactuses) are a few fruit trees – white peaches, yellow peaches, plums, and pears. My favourite are the peaches; they’re nearly as large as your head. (Well I exaggerate slightly, but they are huge.)

So yesterday afternoon we visited Anna, Zsolt’s grandmother, to eat some peaches and discuss the family tree. (Zsolt is hard at work on his family tree, and occasionally he and his grandmother get together and conspire over names, dates and locations.) The conversation rolled from one thing to another – all in Hungarian, so I kept myself busy eating a giant peach, peeling off the skin with a 70 year old paring knife Anna had saved, and dropping peach slices occasionally onto my dress, onto the floor, and onto the table cloth (probably also ancient – Anna keeps everything, and in perfect condition too. I do not have this talent, as we’ve already established.)

Well the conversation was rolling, and moved to the topic of needlework. Along with their paprika and lace, Hungarians are known for beautiful bright coloured needlework. Anna, back when her eyesight was better, was a master with the needle. She has numerous beautiful pillows that she made herself with the thread and needle. (And in fact, she’d just picked up a pillow case from the market for me which she gave to me while I was eating my giant peach. Woohoo!)

But even more special than the pillow case and flowers, has got to be the home blessing. This is a ‘poem’ or just a special thought that people keep in their home to bless it, and will pass along generation to generation. Zsolt mentioned to his grandmother how one day he’d like to put a home blessing in wherever we end up living – and guess what? Well, I am sure you can guess. She gave him a very special home blessing. This isn’t one she sewed herself, it’s from a generation prior –made  by the second wife of Zsolt’s Great Grandfather’s. Unlike the pillow cases, this doesn’t highlight any flowers. Instead it’s very simple.

White cloth with blue thread. There are two angles stitched into the cloth, and between them they hold a banner. It reads as follows:

Házi áldas  

Hol hit ott Szeretet

Hol szeretet ott béké

Hol Beke ott áldás

Hol áldás ott isten

Hol listen ott szükség nincsen.

Which translates into

Home Blessing

Where belief there is love,

Where love there is peace,

Where peace there is blessing,

Where blessing there is God,

Where God there is nothing else needed.

Is that wonderful, or what? I think so very much, and it’s made even more special to realize this blessing has been in several generations of the Mucsi family homes, now to be in ours. We’ll hang it in a place of honour for sure.

And I was thinking, now that we have a home blessing (good signs of soon finding a HOME), maybe I should write myself a health blessing as well. Something like,

Where Peace there is Health

Where Health there is Gratitude

Where Gratitude there is Love

Where Love there is God

Where God, nothing else is needed.

I’m not always 100% chatty about my feelings on God, but I do believe in the amazingness of life, of the remarkable miracle of our existence, of a big ‘something’ out there that holds us together (it gives me comfort when I remember that earth is not much more than a speck of dust floating through space),

And you know what else? I believe in staying healthy, happy and cancer-free. In fact, it’s my personal motto.

Do you have a home blessing? What about a health blessing? What would you write in yours, if you decided to go ahead and bless yourself with a few simple words?

Anyhow. That’s my story of Anna, the garden, her needle work and this beautiful home blessing.

(By the by, I do think there is love in a home even when health is missing, and even peace too – peace within yourself, peace with the world, with others, etc. I have nothing but the fondest of memories from my own grandmother’s final days – and look back at that time with thanks for being able to share those moments with her in the Tromblant forest. But nevertheless, I’m a great fan of Health and would very much like to stay healthy for a long life-time of peaceful, grateful, love-filled moments.)

An absentminded mess

Posted in After treatment, Bumpboobs, Fun, Life, Travel by

We are on the train now, headed toward Pecs and leaving Balaton. For the past four days Zsolt and I have been enjoying a little lakeside R&R. Before that it was sweating in Budapest and late-night dance parties. I’ll tell you what. If you want to take a break from the cancer world because sometimes it becomes too overwhelming, there’s little better than going out to dance. One – you are in a state to not feel embarrassed since you know life is precious, and Two- it’s just a freaking fabulous workout.

So that was Budapest. Hot-hot days and comfortable nights in outdoor clubs. And work, of course, which happily follows me wherever there’s an internet connection.

But following this time away in Budapest, I have three little confessions to make . . . actually four – the last being less of a confession and more of a statement.

Number one: I burned the crap out of Zsolt’s mother’s pot here in Balaton. For the past couple weeks I have been in the mood to make tomatoe sauce with meatballs, particularly following this TED talk I watched about foods that kill cancer and – once again – was reminded that tomatoes warmed up are really great for an anti-cancer diet. Therefore I bought some liquid tomato and a can of chopped tomato while in Budapest and brought them down to Balaton. (No one in Budapest seemed to really want my tomato sauce and meatballs.  That’s because it’s just not part of a traditional Hungarian diet. However, Zsolt and I had some ‘alone time’ scheduled for the Balaton part of our travelling, so I deferred the cooking of the sauce until we arrived in Fonyod Ligit, which is a little village along the Balaton coast. And thank goodness I did.) Anyhow, I had the sauce cooking for a nice long time, made the meatballs in the frying pan then later transferred those into the sauce, and cooked everything together with delicious results.

So we’re eating this amazing sauce & meatball meal – and we’re (Zsolt and I) are like, “This is awesome. What’s that flavour? I don’t know what that flavour is? What did you put in it? I only put onions and basil and the meatballs. Maybe it’s from the meatballs? I did sear them pretty good, maybe it’s from the meatballs?”

Wrong. That awesome flavour was from the blackened bottom of that sauce pot. It took me two days to discover the burn and by then it was so set into the freaking pot that I’ve been trying to scrub it clean for the past day and a night. Sugar scrubbed into the dark ring has helped (using a newspaper) but not totally cleared away the mess. We had to catch this train, so I’ve stashed the pot in a far corner beneath the sink hoping that when his mother does discover the burnt patch remaining – because she 100% will discover it, and then she will ask: ‘Why did Catherine burn the pot?’ as though I had plotted to do this (and with the real answer being that I burn essentially every pot that I encounter while cooking)  . . . hopefully, by this time this happens, I’ll be well out of the country.

Not that she would get angry, but being asked ‘why’ I did something that I really couldn’t help is a pet-peeve of mine, and tends to send me into a sarcastic fit of annoyance  – replying with things like, “I burnt the pot because it was looking at me funny.” Or “I burnt the pot to add to the flavour” (apparently true in this case ) Or “I burnt the damn pot because I purposely wanted to damage it.”

Truth is, I’m just absent minded. Which brings me to the second confession.

Number Two – I lost my glasses! Bah. Gone! Poof. Where are they? If I knew that, they wouldn’t be lost. But one thing is for sure, they aren’t in my luggage and that’s all I’m taking away from Balaton right now as we head toward Pecs. Glasses equal gone. We’re about to visit all these awesome places, and I’m stuck with my prescription shades. But at least I have those – even if it means walking around the house, mall, and movie theatre like a hung-over starlet with these dramatic black sunglasses.

Number Three – I broke my father-in-law’s air mattress! Again, by the time he discovers this I am hoping to be out of the country.

Some people report chemo brain after having gone through chemotherapy – it’s a very real problem that seems to creep up and then simply not go away; your ability to remember things is greatly affected. If you want to learn more about chemo brain you should check out AnneMarie’s blog – aptly titled, “chemobrain” and just google search the term in general. I think this is one of the side effects they don’t necessarily warn you about (in addition to the one about chemo possibly killing your sex life) before you sign that waver and agree to the treatment course.

However, in my case, I can only blame it on genetics. Absentmindedness has been my middle name (a really long middle name) since I can remember.

So if you ever want to ask me why I dropped that tissue and didn’t pick it up, or why I left the light on, or why the front door is open a tiny bit . . . don’t bother, because I won’t tell you the real answer. Instead I’ll say aliens forced me to discard the tissue as an experiment in entropy, or the light turned itself on and we may have a poltergeist problem, or the wind knocked at the door but no one answered and so it let itself in.

Number Four – I really did have a lovely time in Balaton. The allergies weren’t horrible. The water was warm. I napped with my husband. We watched the Olympics. I did a little work. And the sunsets were beautiful. These little worries and expense-causing mistakes seem to follow me around everywhere . . . but nevertheless, I was quite absentmindedly happy to be on a mini-vacation, and forget, just for a little while, about the bigger worries of life.

P.S. I’m sipping on a pear-flavoured beer while riding this Hungarian train. Take that Canada! I’m drinking in public! Wooohooo! Life is just so crazy sometimes.  🙂