
When my youngest daughter was ten years old, she would ask me to paint her nails with nail polish. This was quite an occasion as she was very much the tomboy for many years. Having three older brothers will do that to you, I guess. It always made her want to keep up with them, if not outdo them completely.
So when she came to me with the request, I would immediately put down what I was doing, whether it be folding laundry or talking on the phone, making dinner or paying bills. I would delight in doing this motherly activity with her, her tiny little nailbeds shiny with color when we were done. It was something we could do together, a moment in time where she would let me fuss over her and wallow in being feminine.
The colors were invariably blue or violet, although I always tried to get her to opt for the traditional pink or light tan, silvery white or sparkely clear.
Silly me. I should have accepted way back then that my daughter was not cut from any traditional cloth, and would beg for bright red. The dark bla
ck polish of her "Goth" phase would not arrive until several years later. We would compromise and settle on a dark, creamy magenta, or the blue and violet.

As she got older, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" was one of her favorite movies. She got me to go with her to a performance one Halloween when she was 18, dressed up as a character and participate in the show within the show in the theatre. It was great fun and we laughed ourselves silly, a great memory we pull out now and then, painting our nails dark and wearing dark lipstick.
Chemotherapy has a way of making time stand still. When she was halfway through her treatment phase, the tell tale signs of the illness were evident when she looked in the mirror. Not one to feel sorry for herself, her sadness only showed itself sporadically in bursts of frustration or impatience.
Most of the time she would slap on a wig, pencil in eyebrows, and paste on some eyelashes. She has no shortage of dates, the phone ringing off the hook after dancing with friends over the weekend. She knows they are only window dressing to the gift she is inside, the real reason they call her. They call her because she is fun, she is sweet and she is confident. This damn cancer is just a pain in the neck, and lets get over it, okay?
I was, and continue to be to this day, awed by her strength and determination. But there were days when she was fearful, as one so young would normally feel. She laid in a lounge chair, the tubes inserted into the implant surgically inserted in her chest shortly after the diagnosis.
First blood is drawn to check her white cell count.
“Pray to the Vein Goddess, Venus Arteriolosis” she laughed, to make sure everything is going according to schedule. It is. Saline injected to clean the vein and pave the way, then the drugs to continue the war against this evil that has invaded her body.
I sat beside her the five hours it take for her to receive it all, my emotions doing battle in my own mind.
“I hate this Chemo”, she said abruptly one morning after they had just drawn blood.
“I hate the smell, I hate how it tastes, I hate it all. I can see why people just say screw it and let themselves die.”
I looked at my brave tough one, the one voted "Most Outspoken" in high school. I grabbed her hand and kissed it, the brown nail polish she had applied the day before glistening in the sterile white room. A room in the hospital where she was hooked up once a month for the cocktail, a combination of four drugs that was killing the cancer that had disturbed her otherwise perfect body. The drugs were working, the tumors eventually killed off. They are now just a bad memory of a battle won, the conquering hero of the villain known as Hodgkins. She and I both know she has dodged a very big bullet. Things could have been so much worse.
But it didn't make things any easier. I held her hand that day and said to her matter of factly, “Look at it this way. Think of this chemo as nail polish remover and the nail polish the cancer. Little by little, layer by layer, the polish will be wiped away, until the clean nail beds are visible once again.”
Rolling her eyes, she mocked me. “You and your stupid analogies” she smirked at me.
“Why do you do that?” she laughed, knowing full well the answer. She was beginning to get sleepy, her pupils widening from the dose of Marinol, a derivative of marijuana that helped with nausea. I would grow acres of it just for her if I could.
“I do it so you have an visual to work with, to make you feel better and to help you cope” I answered nonchalantly.
“And I do it to make me feel better too” I added sheepishly.
She smiled again and rolled on her side in the chair, the toxins flowing through her bloodstream beginning to take its effect.
“You are such a sap” she laughed softly, drifting off to sleep.
“The sappiest” I giggled, turning my head so she won't see the tears.
I just returned from a weekend in New York city where she now lives and works. Now 25 years old, she has met a nice guy and will most likely begin a new adventure with him. She is happy and healthy and knows time is never to be wasted.
My Thanksgiving prayers have become and always will be a simple one to the Almighty.
Thank you.
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