I don’t remember giving the plant a second thought.

Or a first one.

The window stayed slightly ajar until today, when a nor’easter came through New England. It rained all day, and wind gusts reached 50 mph where we live.

When I stood on my desk to shut the window properly, I couldn’t miss the aloe plant.

In what looks like an attempt to save itself, it has taken on the shape of an octopus. Its center is almost entirely out of the pot, with long arms reaching desperately toward the window.

It’s possible the poor thing just needs water.

Which reminds me.

…

I watered the plant.

It still looks like an octopus.

Not that I expected the oddly still-alive thing to change its entire structure after a few sips.

Or maybe I did.

I think that unrealistic expectation comes from the same place that keeps me checking email and texts and, gulp, LinkedIn, waiting for the next big opportunity to whisk me away to a less octopus-shaped part of my life.

But that’s not how it works.

The aloe didn’t get this way today, and neither did I.

The steady attention required to rebuild a schedule, savings, a career, and roots after a terminal cancer diagnosis that may not actually prove terminal for many years sounds, honestly, about as exciting as watering the houseplants.

I know what the aloe needs.

Water. Light. Regular attention.

Probably more than one small drink after months of neglect.

I know enough to recognize the metaphor. I’m simply not up to creating a daily watering schedule for either of us. Yet.

Maybe I could start by talking to it instead.

When that didn’t happen, I got hired as a server at Texas Roadhouse.

Being from New England, I had never heard of Texas Roadhouse. The casual-dining chain hadn’t reached my part of the country yet.

The Fort Myers location was rarely very busy, which probably made it an excellent place for a newbie like me to learn the POS system, memorize the menu, and understand the basic flow of service.

It was also the first time I’d ever seen a salamander, the high-heat broiler kind, not the reptile kind, and finally understood why cheese fries and nachos were always so much meltier when ordered at a restaurant.

That Texas Roadhouse was filled with characters, but the person who still stands out more than twenty-five years later is Bea (name changed to protect the guilty).

Bea was a manager with two front gold teeth and flexible values.

“Now, whenever you get a cash check, folks paying in cash, you come get me,” Bea instructed me sometime during my first week.

I nodded, always eager to please.

The first time a customer paid in cash, I did as I was told. I watched Bea void the entire check and split the money between her pocket and my apron.

“They got enough here, you know what I mean?”

I did. And I did not like it.

From then on, I spent my shifts dodging Bea and racing to close out cash checks before she noticed. I had no idea who owned the restaurant or how any of its bills got paid, but I knew the cash wasn’t ours to take.

Also, and more importantly, I am and have been a lot of things. A thief isn’t one of them.

Before the end of the summer, Bea was fired. A new manager arrived from “corporate,” whatever that was, to figure out why the location’s numbers were so far off.

No one ever asked me anything. I was relieved they didn’t.

Near the end of the summer, the corporate manager asked why I was leaving. I told him I attended college up north in Connecticut. He said Texas Roadhouse would be coming my way soon and suggested I work for the company again once it reached my neck of the woods.

I was quick to pass. I only worked in restaurants while earning my undergraduate degree. I was sure it would be a phase.

Twenty-six years later, I work in a restaurant again.

A lot happened between then and now. I graduated (twice). I built a career. I’m raising a son. I survived cancer. I lost the professional life I thought I understood and began trying to figure out what I could still do.

Apparently, one answer is restaurant work.

Only a few shifts a week. This time, I’m a host at a very busy independent brunch spot, and this go-round, no one is stealing anything.

During any given shift, I typically clock 14,000 steps. I always leave exhausted and slightly revived.

I know I’ve done something. I know I’ve helped. I know I don’t have very much left to give. I also know I don’t need to carry one bit of it home with me.

There is a joyful stress to the constrained strategy of it all. Sitting guests in the right spots so, hopefully, they don’t ask to move. Managing a waitlist. Gently selling seasonal items. Meeting server expectations for how often their sections are seated. Plus the variety of side work that needs to be done before, during, and after service.

Anyone who dismisses restaurant work as simple has clearly never done it.

It requires presence, grit, composure, and a kind of stealth finesse.

There is also something deeply satisfying about work that shows you exactly what you accomplished. People arrive hungry. I help them find a place to sit. I help clear tables. The restaurant fills and empties. I seat more guests and clear more tables. Then I go home.

I don’t need to build a brand around it. I know it mattered. The evidence was right in front of me.

Even though I initially left restaurants more than twenty years ago, I never let go of the belief that if I could work in a restaurant, I could do anything.

I still believe that.

Now I need more people willing to hire me to believe it, too.

At first, I don’t get it.

I mean, to be honest, it was just a kid sneezing.

I said, “Bless you.”

But then it was another boy, and another, and pretty soon it felt like seven to ten male classmates were allergic to me.

My thoughts went immediately to how I might have caused this.

New perfume? No, I don’t think I borrowed any from my sister.

Shampoo? Yes, it did smell like artificial apple; this was the ’90s, after all, but one’s nose had to be pretty close to my scalp to get a strong whiff, and much to my disappointment, no boy was getting that close to me.

I remember saying out loud, “I don’t get it.” And then, more and more laughing.

This was more than thirty years ago, so remembering exactly who clued me in is impossible, but I have a sense it was one of the girls the boys were more interested in talking to who finally caught me up.

That conversation went something like this:

“They think you stuff your bra.”

Me. Wide-eyed.

“I still don’t get it.”

“Apparently, yesterday you had your shirt tucked in, and it didn’t look like you had any boobs, and today your shirt is untucked, and you have boobs.”

Both days, I’d paid exactly no attention to how my shirt landed on my still-developing chest.

“I still don’t understand why they are sneezing?”

“They think you’re stuffing your bra with tissues. They are basically asking you for a tissue.”

At the time, this felt like more than enough evidence to give up my academic career and become a hermit.

My parents disagreed.

I think it was my mom who told me to put a tissue in my bra strap, and the next time they sneezed, turn around and ask if they needed one.

I remember my mom and my stepdad laughing out loud at the very thought of this coming to life. I was convinced I’d be proving exactly what the boys were teasing me about.

“That’s the point, Amanda,” I remember my mom telling me. “They think they are so smart and know something that obviously isn’t true, and it’s all so stupid, so play along. What do you think they’ll do after? What can they do?”

The next day, I went to school with a soft pack of tissues in my pocket.

Somewhere between the bus ride and taking my seat in homeroom, I found the courage to pull out a single tissue and tuck it into my bra strap, as my mom had instructed.

Then I anxiously waited for the sneezing to start.

I didn’t have to wait long.

At the second sneeze, I turned and faced the group of boys sitting behind me and, with as still a face as I could muster, reached inside my shirt and asked:

“Need a tissue?”

They gasped audibly.

One of them smacked his desk with an open palm out of surprise. Another kept looking back and forth between his buddies and me.

Our teacher took notice and asked, “What’s going on back there?”

I answered:

“They keep sneezing at me because they think I stuff my bra, so I asked if they needed a tissue.”

Another collective gasp.

Then a sharp and complete, “Knock it off,” from the teacher.

I don’t remember the rest of the day, as it must have been unremarkable.

I don’t think anyone ever got in trouble, and as middle school and high school rolled through, all those boys would apologize in their own way. And I kept looking for ways to turn what was hurting me into a story, a bit, or something I could use.

I think that’s what I’m still doing with Cancer Sharks.

Melanoma 100% has me actually stuffing my bra this go-round, with all the weight I’ve gained from lifelong steroid dependency due to treatment.

And while I am super struggling with self-image and confidence because of what cancer has taken and given, it brought me back to seventh grade, when I found a way, despite puberty and humiliation, to take it in stride and be a smartass.

I hope that smartass, despite cancer and perimenopause, is still in me somewhere.

Maybe this piece is proof she is.

In the before time, I would have waited on something like this. See how it looked after a couple of days. Maybe months. Subscribe to the mindset that it would probably take care of itself on its own.

But this is now.

Now, I am living with Stage IV melanoma in NED status, but that status is only ever as good as right now.

Two days ago, I did not have this spot near my thumb. Now I do, so tomorrow I will see my dermatologist and learn how troublesome this spot could be.

Tomorrow, it may be no trouble at all.

But now, right now, it’s a mystery.

Unknown.

And so it requires me to be brave, practical, willing, sensible, and alert all my ists: the oncologist, the dermatologist, and not quite yet, the psychologist.

Because for now, I’m going to write about how proud I am of myself for noticing the spot right away, reaching out, and seeking the help I need to make the next (best, hard, impossible, easy) decision.

The visual work of welcoming the Cancer Sharks to feast on the spot, this potential little piece of chum, is already at work.

Tonight, I will do a session of oncology yoga before bed to help me sleep.

Tomorrow, I will face a day pre-planned with meetings, dog training, and now a visit to the derm to get more information.

It’s not the day of my dreams, but it is the day I need.

And so in it, I’ll find a way to find gratitude. Maybe through story or observation. Maybe in an unlikely low-traffic trot to Boston, or a long one that will give me more time with Noah Kahan and my book about Goddesses.

I cannot change the outcome of this appointment.

Before cancer, I know I would have waited.

Procrastinated.

Now, cancer leaves me no room for procrastination.

And while there is still plenty of room for worry, I’m clear enough to catch that early too, and turn it into something a bit more productive.

Like this essay.

I turned to fix a piece of art on the front wall in the living room, and right at that moment, Kelsey, the kind and talented woman hired to help clean our home, reached for the vacuum, and Zara lunged.

She didn’t bite, but she lunged and growled, and while I was able to swoop in and usher her upstairs without an issue, it’s the second week in a row it’s happened.

Typically, I’m not home when Kelsey is here, and the dogs have zero issues with her and her team coming into the home and doing whatever the home calls for. But for the last two weeks, I have been here, and it’s been a serious issue.

Zara also growls whenever Julian, Todd’s 23-year-old son, comes home. Though he says it’s always significantly less when I’m not home.

Zara is a rescue who, like Briggs and me, has suffered many changes over the last two years. She also had to suffer the moves, long-ish periods without me, and my perpetually changing medical state.

All things considered, she’s been great. She has allowed me to be entirely consumed by my health and then Briggs’s for these past two catastrophic years.

But now, she’s clearly telling me she needs more from me.

It’s her turn.

And that’s more than fair.

Still, yesterday, confronting the fact that I’m back to needing to hire a trainer, put her on anxiety meds, and be far more consistent with her day-to-day schedule made me feel like a horrible dog mom.

On the way to the grocery store, I was overrun with fear about having to separate her from my family and falling so short of being the family she needs.

Before I let fear immobilize me, I called Todd. He’s away on a Jeep trip. I confessed how my thoughts were terrorizing me, and he brought me back to truth:

“That’s not where we are. We are taking next steps to make sure Zara gets everything she needs from our pack.”

We are a pack.

That’s what support sounds and feels like.

It’s telling the truth when my brain has moved into self-inflicted imaginary terror, while also telling the truth about the solid, actionable steps we can take to prevent the worst things from getting anywhere close to this life.

Our life.

I can still get scared and get ahead of myself.

And we can have a plan.

These aren’t two opposites being true at the same time.

These are simply two truths.

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