Cancer, Aging, Politics, and Doing What's Best for Me.

Soon or later we'll all face them. It's what we do about them that counts.

That time I wrapped a snake around my neck.

Hi friends. I had the fourth chemo treatment yesterday, and the best part is the steroids, so I’ll be hopped up on them for a few days before I crash, probably in around three or four days. If it goes as it has, I won’t feel any real nausea with this cocktail, which is great! But the next four treatments will shift to a new brew, with no guarantees on how I’ll react to them. I don’t know what to expect, but I’m hoping it’ll be on a par with the few side effects I’ve felt from the first four. I wouldn’t say easy-peasy but it’s been…okay.

My next will be on December 19, so I won’t be going downstate to join my family for Christmas. It’ll be the first time in all of my 88 years that I won’t be celebrating the holidays with most of my family. Yet, surprisingly, I’m okay with that.

Thankfully, they understand. They do. We’ll do it by Zoom this year. I’ll be staying here, along with my grandson who has now moved into an apartment in my complex so he is close enough to walk with his dog, Sammy, to my apartment, where we have coffee together almost every morning. We’re talking about having Chinese for Christmas, as he won’t be able to get away, either. So of course we both thought right away about this scene from Christmas Story:

I’m noticing lately how easy it has become for me to adapt to whatever goes on around me—or to me. Instead of dwelling on the downside of any of it, I’m working now to figure out ways to handle it. What will happen if I do this? What will happen if I don’t? What would work better in the long run? And so far it’s working for me. I’ve finally learned to do what works best for me. It’s really quite liberating, both for me and for my family.

My family is a treasure, each and every one of them. They’re all so good at checking in and keeping tabs on me. But in the end they can’t live my life. Only I can. At 88 only I can decide what I will do to fulfill the rest of my days. It’s finally becoming enough for them that I’m making my own choices. Not that we don’t discuss them. We do. And sometimes their reasoning makes sense. I’m not above listening and changing my mind. A little.

Not so much, as you can understand, when it comes to politics. I absolutely know where I want it to go, yet I have absolutely no control. Under the Trump regime our country is going in directions that are illegal, immoral, horrific, and beyond all reason. I speak out, mainly here at Substack and on Notes, and I usually feel good about everything I have to say. Yet I know it makes little difference. The truth is, I do it for me. I chronicle what I know and how I feel at any given time, on any given day, so that I have written proof I didn’t just not do anything. That would not be me. I’m a passionate do-gooder, even when it does no good.

It’s the same with being a woman, and now with aging. Both have their disadvantages, but the reality is, I am both a woman and I am old. Older now than most, and, if I’m lucky, growing older, but my status as a woman never changes. I was born a Midwestern white girl in 1937—a Michigander—while we were still in the late stages of the Great Depression. I was a young girl during World War II, when every American was asked to make sacrifices in order to help the war effort. We did remarkable things back then to save the world from the kind of fascism we’re now watching happen all over again. It’s all been recorded, even if Ken Burns has not yet made that documentary. We gave up daily comforts, we retooled factories, we grieved as news of the numbers of our casualties grew, our young men and women, our own townspeople. We honored their sacrifices by working to keep the rest alive.

We did it to stop a takeover that would have darkened our days forever. If we hadn’t worked so hard to stop the Nazis and Tojo’s armies, even as it looked to be impossible, we would be living far different lives. But we did it. The good people of the world did it.

And I was there, flattening cans, tying up newspapers, buying Liberty Stamps at school to fill a booklet that would later buy me Liberty Bonds, all to help save the world. Little me. And it stuck. This is how Americans operate. We work at honoring our Americanism by being better than we’ve been, by making good trouble, by working with each other for ourselves.

The goal, always, is to save the country I’ve loved for all of my years, even when it looks like it might not deserve it. It always deserves it. As long as there are good people still alive.

But I am old, as so many in my country like to remind me. We fight ageism every single day, and it hits us, from presidents on down. There are age limits for every job, in every capacity. Once we reach a certain age—not exactly defined, but usually in increments of 10—seventies, eighties, nineties—we’re no longer able or useful and we’re asked to move to that nice pasture out there where we’ll be cared for and fed but, please, we must not ask to be seen or heard or considered worthy of worth.

Arbitrary cut-off dates are designed to send us the message ahead of time. Quit while we still have ‘dignity’. Because apparently dignity supersedes ability. If we shuffle or stumble, we’re done. The outward signs of aging stop all notion of mental capacity.

(Note: I wrote this piece in 2023 so some of it might not have aged well, but the thoughts about my aging have.)

From the outside, you’ll admit that I seem to be okay for an 88-year-old—unless I’m using AI or a ghostwriter here. (I’m not.) But I couldn’t run for office, could I? Nobody would vote for me, no matter what I say or do. Not now. That bridge is crossed. And I’m sorry about that. Because I would if I could. I think every good person should.

It isn’t enough that I’m also a woman—a burden unto itself, thanks to so much ridiculous propaganda about who we are and how our minds operate. We can’t catch a break. We still make less than men. We’re still victims of abuse far more than men—and because of men.

We still don’t have rights over our own bodies. We can’t for the life of us become president or hold office in any meaningful capacity. Not many of us anyway. There are always the exceptions, the tokens, but notice how they have to fight. All of those good women in the headlines now are there because they’ve gone against the grain and are fighting for their rightful places. I don’t have to tell you who they are. You’ve seen them. If I listed names I would be leaving many of them out, and they deserve to be noticed.

So our work continues. We could outsmart them if there were enough working at it. We have the tools. We already outwork them. We already know our enemies. We already know what’s at stake if this campaign against us doesn’t end soon.

Why aren’t we better at this? How do we stop them from their continual efforts to take us down? Someone on Notes recently called the phrase “We’re all in this together” frothy and meaningless, and got a lot of attention. That someone was a man. What are we if not ‘together’? How can we possibly win if we’re not together? Both women and men? How can we win any of this if we don’t join together and make it a meaningful movement? And why shouldn’t we say so?

I think about all of these constant battles, even when I don’t want to. And I write about them as often as I’m able. I don’t see it as too often; I see it as just often enough. For me. The truth is, this is mainly for me. If it strikes true for you, if it resonates, welcome to our world! There can’t be enough of us.

I’m in it to verify my place in this world, wherever I might fit in. I’m in it to win. Good luck, good vibes, good trouble. If something stands in my way, I think I can push it aside. I’m stubborn that way.

I’ve learned to use that word ‘stubborn’, but it’s not my word alone. You’re welcome to use it, too. It’s all part of the package where we’re in this—together.

Constant Commoner revolves around my thoughts as a woman who has aged and grown and learned by a process that feels miraculous considering I have no formal education or unique abilities. We the people are all commoners. We believe based on our own past and our own feelings. We choose a path we can live with and if we’re lucky we get to share our lives with people who care, who understand.

That’s what I aim to do here. I want to build a community where anyone can come and sit on our porch and grow along with the rest of us.

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