The Shower at Home

(Or, Never Going Back)

I’m tired, wet, and weirdly proud. I’ve just taken my first shower unassisted since my brain surgery five days ago.

My mom is staying with me. Because this house is mine.

The house I bought on my own, with my own money, after the divorce.

I’m prouder of this shower than I am of the whole house, which is saying a lot, because the house usually has me beaming. It isn’t big or grand, just a simple New England cape in a fantastic neighborhood. The kind where my kid made friends just by going outside.

The plan was to stay here until Briggs graduated high school. He’s in eighth grade. I’m 43 and, because of treatment for Stage IV melanoma, which began with brain surgery, I’m nearly unemployed, very, very tired, and deeply stressed. I came home from surgery to a busted water heater and a cracked oil tank. I’m not so certain the house will survive this season.

Whether from pain or worry, I wake up between two and three in the morning and make one or two grilled cheeses before going back to bed until the afternoon. I can’t even keep my dog home with me right now because she wants our usual two-mile walks, and at this point that feels like summiting Everest.

So yes, the shower is a big fucking deal.

I even managed to comb my hair without disturbing any of the 47 staples in my head.

Treatment starts in days, and while I’m grateful it isn’t chemo, immunotherapy still terrifies me. I understand how it works in theory. I still don’t really know what it will do to me, practically.

So I leave the internet mostly for friends, family, and former colleagues.

For feeling loved.

Every time I’m on my phone or computer, my mother gets concerned. I asked my neurosurgeon whether I could use both, and he assured me I could, but my mother believed I was misremembering. I later confirmed that I was not.

My mom and I haven’t been under the same roof for this many consecutive nights since I was a kid. I moved out at eighteen for college three hours away and never moved back home.

Everyone is out of sorts. Everyone is worried. Everyone is in their own part of grief for the living.

I love her, and she loves me. Being the oldest of four girls was always a lot for me, and I think having me first was a lot for her, too. When I was a kid, she’d call me Amanda Never Enough. She wasn’t entirely wrong.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be working on something. Dreaming up a play. Writing a book. Trying a new food. I have spent most of my life hungry, ambitious, and independent.

Now, at 43, I am suddenly somewhat incapacitated and undeniably dependent on other people to keep an eye on me.

I am the kind of person who, until it became true, never imagined feeling this grateful and proud to have taken a shower by herself.

But I had. And I was.

And when I made it back to the nest built for me on the couch by visiting neighbors, friends, and family, all clean and fresh, I let out a deep sigh of relief.

From the guest room, which was actually my office, my mother called out, “Feel good?”

“Oh my god, yes. Fucking unreal,” I said.

Then she went into the bathroom and came right back out.

“Amanda, you don’t have to make more chores for me by leaving your dirty clothes and towel on the floor.”

I managed to squeak out, “That’s not what I was doing,” and then got up off the couch to pick up the clothes and towel.

Recognizing, the entire way, both my gratitude that she was exactly where I needed her and my complete understanding of why I had never moved back home.