Think to Thank

Have you ever had one of those moments where you absolutely believe you will never feel anything but grateful? A moment where you resolve you will always be positive and keep perspective? A moment that makes you entirely forget all the adversity leading up to it? I have had several. I have witnessed miracles. I have been frequently blessed to be the recipient of unbelievable marvels. Any one of these miracles could and should generate enough gratitude to sustain me for the rest of my life. Regardless of what I have witnessed and experienced I still find myself growing complacent. As a child I remember reading stories in the Bible and marveling at how quickly people would forget the blessing/miracle/deliverance they had just experienced. I always found it unbelievable that the children of Israel could walk through the Red Sea to their deliverance and start complaining about the manna (which was a miracle in and of itself) only a few days later. I am not going to lie, I can see this pattern in myself. I too complain about manna. The moment I was called and told the tumor had mysteriously disappeared from my scans, and every doctors appointment since when my remission has been confirmed have been poignant moments where I have promised myself to cherish my life. I have thought to myself in those moments that I will be kinder, more generous, faithful, charitable, passionate, a better sibling, a more concerned friend, a gracious daughter etc. etc. I promise myself I will remember the miracle of my life is bigger than the challenge. I think all of these things, recommit myself to them and then find myself griping a week later about the normal vicissitudes of life. I am swearing at strangers in traffic, I am always in a hurry to nowhere in particular, I am living for the future, I am cursing my body for not looking the way it did when I was 17, I am not as helpful or as patient as I should be with my family members, I think I should make more money, I want to be more appreciated, and all the sudden everyday somehow seems monotonous and routine.

How does this happen?

While I sincerely believe it is imperative we remember the remarkable, life altering, miraculous events of our lives, I think most importantly we (I) need to make a concerted effort to take a daily inventory of the small things that occur every minute of every day if we were only to pay attention. I need to take the time to be grateful for the man who chased 15 rolling diet coke cans through a busy supermarket parking lot after the cardboard carrying case failed and chaos ensued. I need to be grateful for my amazing eye doctor who only charged me a 20 dollar copay at my last appointment because he knows I am currently self employed and have no insurance. I need to be grateful for the random Facebook message sent by an inspired friend at an exact moment of stress and frustration. I need to take the time to write down the small and simple things that beautifully transpire each and every single day.

I have a magical life. I have been blessed well beyond what I could ever deserve. I am grateful to belong to the most amazing family, who are the only people truly bizarre enough to understand and love me unconditionally. I am grateful for brilliant, crazy, eccentric friends who support me and challenge me on a daily basis. I am grateful for all the extraordinary educational opportunities I have received, and when I start to panic about my student debt, I remind myself only 1% of the world's population is given the opportunity to go to college. I am grateful to be a woman. I am grateful to have found a true passion in my life. I am grateful for the ways the arts have transformed my life. I am grateful for my faith. I am grateful for Christ. I am grateful to be alive. I am grateful for all the ways the Red Sea parts in big and small ways in my own personal circumstance. I am grateful for the manna of everyday life. 

Videogames: Ms. Havisham and Lana meet at last…

This weekend I saw Ms. Havisham go up in flames. To preface this, let me be completely forthcoming and admit I have never read Great Expectations. For never having actually read the book, I spend a lot of time thinking about it… In fact Ms. Havisham has become one of my favorite daily metaphors and anecdotes. If I am having a particularly bad hair day encumbered with frizz I call it a Havisham day. If I am feeling belittled, slighted or patronized by a man, I am quick to inform him I am not Ms. Havisham… though usually the men who make me feel this way don’t have the foggiest clue who she is anyway… The other reason I believe I became so enamored with a book I hadn’t read was due to its remarkable title. I love book titles. My ambition has never been to write a New York Times bestselling novel but merely to author the titles for several of them. I used to keep a list of ideas for book titles and would add to it constantly. Call me blasphemous, but in some ways I quite enjoy books that can be understood and even explicated solely from their titles…It is much easier to place all your assumptions and narrative onto a cover page.

As a general rule, I am wary of dating a man who hasn’t read Great Expectations (or at least the 10 books listed above and below it on a recommended reading list) I know this is a hypocritical and strangely arbitrary expectation seeing as I have never read the book myself and have likely read more Cliffs notes than actual classics. Regardless of its absurdity, it is a deal breaker. In my mind the desire for a significant other to have read a book is far more attainable than other “expectations” that often prevail in relationships. I am not sure how many of the men I have loved have actually read Great Expectations. I can assuredly tell you I have never loved a man who wasn’t brilliant, intense, or passionate, or even sometimes the terrifying mix of all three. I am intense. I like intense. The idea of being with someone who can fall asleep within five minutes of their head hitting the pillow terrifies me. For better or worse I find myself constantly drawn to the ones who analyze and analyze and then analyze again…

After completing cancer treatment and returning home from Texas, I was tired of myself. I didn’t want to analyze. I didn’t want to be intense. I didn’t want to dwell on or make sense of the past six months of my experience. I was too tired to think about the person I was actually in love with. I had exhausted myself thinking about him and our future and what my future would look like. Being in love when you’re 20 and battling cancer is akin to living in a rom-com on steroids during the most tenuous scenes. Though I was declared in remission by the time I returned home, I was emotionally spent. I wanted froth! I wanted my life to be a guilty pleasure. I wanted my days to play out as though they were US magazine in live and living color. The day after I got back from Texas I did something to even surprise myself. I had a lot of odds and ends to catch up on including taking my car to the shop for a tuneup. That day, I chose to call the most peculiar of choices to pick me up from the autoshop. I called a boy I barely knew. We had mutual friends but shared nothing beyond them. In high school I considered him to be one of the rudest, most obnoxious and immature fellows I had ever encountered. The feeling was mutual. He was far from fond of me. I can’t explain what prompted me to call him on this particular afternoon but I was surprised by how easily I could talk to him. We spent hours in my driveway just talking. Initially we expressed our assumptions of and even disdain for the other but gradually moved into an intrigue and curiosity. We both knew from the first afternoon we spent together there were lessons to learn from the other. We spent every single day of this particular summer together. We drove aimlessly in his red truck, listened to an inordinate amount of Counting Crows, and did absurd childlike things. We played miniature golf, ate at questionable Chinese buffets, staged swordfights and saw ridiculous animated movies. In some respects I got to be the easiest version of myself with him. It wasn’t intense, I wasn’t intense (even though he would often tell me I was) I didn’t spend every minute thinking about life and death and purpose. I didn’t overthink the future. I didn’t place all my hopes or vision for a future on him. He was insightful in the fact that he pointed out the moments and ways I took myself too seriously. It was nice not to be serious.

Around mid summer he informed me he wanted to go on a break. I was floored. He explained I had become like a brand new videogame played too intensely, for too long, for too many days. I had never played videogames. Sans my brother, my house had been a complete estrogen fest. We owned one Nintendo game console from 95-96 that was seldom played. I couldn’t make sense of how our relationship was comparable to videogames. I have never been keen on playing games or existing “virtually.” As much as I had wanted to move past the previous few months of facing my mortality and constantly reflecting on the sanctity of life, I couldn’t in this moment. Being alive and breathing, engaging and sharing, listening and pondering were beyond what could ever be “virtually” understood. I was nobody’s videogame.

Despite what may go down as one of the most surreal and bizarre conversations I have ever had with a man, we moved beyond it and became great friends for years to come. He continued to serve as my escape valve and I became his depth. We argued constantly. Our visions for the world were never congruent. He could never understand why I was such a “feminist” and would expend all my energy on getting into graduate school rather than trying to land myself a fella. I could never understand why he expended all his energy on nineteen-year-old girls and gun rights.

Somehow we still respected and learned from each other.

Over time I recognized, as much as I sometimes wanted to, I could never be the “easiest” version of myself. I also came to realize he had no desire to be the “hardest” version of himself. I couldn’t do simple and he couldn’t do complicated. The friendship unraveled rapidly and painfully. The discussion that initiated the unraveling had to do with Great Expectations. I tried to explain to him I was not Ms. Havisham. Unfortunately, he understood Ms. Havisham about as well as I understood videogames. He continued to refer to the book as “Big Hopes.” I knew in that very conversation my vacation from “Lindsay-dom intensity” was over.

Though it was often times dysfunctional and quirky, I still miss him and the friendship. It taught me a lot of things, especially about Ms. Havisham. I have no desire to be swindled from a fortune, sitting in the dark in a wedding dress. I believe in fighting for light, for living in illuminated painful intensity. I know my life was not preserved to live “virtually.” My presence has been requested and it will be granted. I watched Ms. Havisham go up in flames this weekend, but I won’t.

Grandma got ran over by a House Vote: This is not a story about Obamacare…

My remarkable grandmother Afton Bradford Bradshaw
I spent a good bulk of my childhood campaigning for my grandmother. Every two years a new campaign brochure would have to be produced, including a family photo capturing my awkward years. These precious memories were not only saved in a family photo album that could be hid at any given moment, they were also broadly distributed among thousands of constituents. By five years old, I was required to canvas for my grandmother and take brochures door to door. On the one occasion I practiced my civil liberties and refused my grandmother for a previously scheduled and much preferred play date she immediately taught me how politics worked… When I arrived at my friend’s house for our play date they were nowhere to be found. I sat on the front porch entirely befuddled for almost a half hour (which is essentially the equivalent of a month in the mind of a five year old) just as I was about to leave in defeat… my grandmother’s car pulled up… I immediately feared she had come to find me and scold me for not canvassing. Instead I watched as all three of my friends emerged from the car with arms full of soda pop and candy. I went from feeling ashamed to irate in 2.3 seconds! Not only had my grandmother bogarted my play dates, she has given them a bounty of sugar! In all my life I was lucky to sneak a Snackwell cookie from her kitchen drawer on rare occasion. Never had I received genuine sugar through my grandmother’s own volition! I demanded to know why my grandmother had done such a thing! My friends explained that she had come to their house earlier and asked them to help distribute brochures and had then rewarded them for so doing by taking them to the corner gas station to pick out whatever treat they like! I was flabbergasted!
Though my grandmother was and is heralded as one of the most ethical and level headed politicians Utah had ever seen, she was nothing short of a strategist when it came to her own family. She was always yammering on and on about the value of education, she would often compare it to a “jewel in your pocket” which seemed an obscure and useless metaphor to me at the time. I thought it was a waste to keep jewels in your pocket when they were meant for adorning crowns. A princess trajectory seemed a far easier and more glamorous path. Plus, at the time, I was almost positive being a princess wouldn’t require my successful completion of the second grade. I hated school and refused to go. When my grandmother’s impassioned speeches were not enough to effectuate change she resorted to the next best political tool… bribery. She resorted to promising me a Nintendo game console in exchange for my attendance for the remainder of the school year. I obliged.
Though she continued to bribe me as I grew older, I was much more able to resist. Right before I was to begin my junior year of high school I went to visit her wearing one of my back to school outfits. She looked me up and down and calmly inquired how much I had spent on the outfit. I told her the amount I had spent to purchase the outfit to which she quickly offered to buy the outfit off of me. At first I was puzzled. Though my grandmother and I shared many things, including being wildly opinionated, we had never shared clothes? Why would my grandmother want my outfit? Seeing I was perplexed, she expounded. “Lindsay, I will buy your outfit off of you and give you an additional fifty dollars as long as you promise never to wear it again!”She was blunt. Sometimes too blunt. However, as I continued to get older my respect and admiration for her only continued to increase. The same year as the notorious outfit bailout, she also helped me sludge through my readings for AP history. She even went as far as to read Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy with me. Every night I would call her and we would discuss my assigned reading for the day. I don’t think there are very many people in this world that can say they called their grandmothers in order to understand dense and complex political texts… It was pretty badass to have a grandma who could take on Kissinger!

My sister Emily and I at the Harvard Gates.
I started to appreciate how hard she had fought for both her own education and indirectly mine. She was one of 9 children during the Depression. Her father died when she was young. Her mother worked tirelessly and her family was lucky to barely scape by. She worked every summer and every minute she wasn’t in school or taking care of her younger siblings in order to earn the 25 dollars that was her tuition for her first semester of college. After her children were raised in the era of the “problem with no name” she went back to school in order to earn her masters. She ran for local office and was elected to the Utah House of Representatives. She served for 18 years. She advocated for increased funding to all state schools, especially her alma mater the University of Utah. To this day she is heralded as a “champion for higher education.” The University of Utah received the most funding from the state during her 9 terms. In a fiercely conservative state she was able to work across the aisle and effectuate positive changes. She was seen as fair and reasonable, Republicans and Democrats alike respected her.As my grandmother grew older she developed pulmonary fibrosis. The disease essentially slowly paralyzes your lungs over time. She eventually had to make the decision not to run for reelection and grow accustom to a much slower pace of life. As the disease progressed it became requisite for her to continually be on oxygen. It was a challenging transition to watch.At 78, my grandmother was chosen to receive an honorary doctorate degree from the very same university she had not only fought so hard to attend but had tirelessly advocated for. The evening before commencement she was asked to say some words at an awards banquet. She stood and gave a poetic, poignant speech about the moments in life that take your breath away. The next day I watched her walk across the stage in regalia with oxygen strapped to her back to receive her doctorate degree. I count watching her cross the stage that day as one of the most lovely and transcendent moments of my life. I wept and realized I finally understood what the jewel had meant.

My graduation from Harvard.

Emily's Graduation from NYU.
I think about my grandmother a lot in November. She was born in November and loved Thanksgiving. My grandmother took much pride in the fact that she was the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter of William Bradford and of Mayflower lineage. She passed away before she was able to read my personal statement for Harvard. She didn’t get to see that both my statement and passion for education started with her. She didn’t get to hear me complain about Cambridge’s subzero temperatures or my massive amounts of reading. She didn’t get to hear me tell her that some days the only thing that got me through grad school was knowing how much she would have loved it, knowing how much she would have relished every moment sitting in a Harvard classroom, and knowing how firmly she would have grasped that jewel. Though she wasn’t here to see it or hear about it, I know she knows. I know she knows I thought about her every day as I walked those treacherous red brick paths. I know she knows I thought about her family who walked those same paths hundreds of years before me. I know she knows I appreciate their every footstep. I know she knows, above all, I appreciate hers.

Raindrops, Whiskers, Copper, Mittens : A few of my faves...

Ms. Yvonne, Marilyn Monroe, One Tree Hill, the smell of wet concrete, torrential downpour, mountains, ponies, perfume, stilettos, Rilo Kiley, Troop Beverly Hills, Lauren Graham, Isabel Allende, Cindy Sherman, Pilates, Gwen Stefani, Ani Difranco, made for television Christmas films, costumes, skirts, black dresses, liquid eyeliner, diet coke (any way shape or form sans the nasty orange flavor at CR), Cafe Rio Salads, talking incessantly, problem solving, analyzing, Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Chick Lit, museums, teaching, collaborative art, creative genius, HGSE, AIE, Tom Welling, young artists, sculpture, dumpster diving, found object creations, artificial tears, nicknames, being your own thesaurus, tennis, Texas, Dr. Anita Mahajan, MANO, yellow bugs, messy cars, air conditioning, quotable quotes, alliteration, Concord MA, Walden, Choice Based Art Education, chocolate, reading, perspective (but not drawing it), Margaret Atwood poetry, art therapy, Primary Children’s Medical Center, my mother, ambien insights, productive insomnia, aimless driving, sitting cross legged, service, making others feel illuminated, “the shopping cart”, costume makeup, dressing up, The Children’s Art Project, DIY, Tom Sawyer, TRUTH.

Deep in the Heart: The Miracle Road to Texas

 On occasion my family very lovingly refers to me as Tom Sawyer, though I hate to admit it, sometimes I am guilty as charged. I have certainly persuaded them to paint various fences throughout my life. Ironically, when I was faced with the biggest fence of all, cancer, I knew it had to be my own paint job. I didn’t have to ask or persuade a single soul to bring their brushes and buckets, everyone lined up ready to help me tackle the fence. There was a beautiful outpouring of love and concern, prayers offered to heaven and bending of the locked legged knees. I did not and do not doubt for a second that these faith filled petitions on my behalf are the reason I am still alive. Nonetheless, amongst all the concern, opinions, and treatment suggestions, ultimately I knew it had to be my choice. I believed the choice was between me and God and no one else.

Most surgeons who specialize in tumors in or around the eye are also plastic surgeons. Though there is a needed cosmetic precision for surgeries involving the face, most of these surgeons also opt to do plastics because eye tumors are rare enough that they are not a viable source of sustained and lucrative income. At the ripe age of 20 my cancer surgeries had officially given me two free eye lifts. I remember sitting in the waiting room with overzealous and excited women with visions of eye lifts and botox injections dancing in their heads. I marveled at the women at their post op appointments who were as bruised and swollen as I was with the one distinction of choosing to be so.

Because of my physician’s focus and the seeming vanity that permeated through every wall I was somewhat surprised when he told me the best and only option for treating my cancer was to remove my entire eye and the muscles and bones surrounding it. When I learned of his vision for my treatment I was overcome with a sick feeling and general unease. I told him I didn’t feel good about it. And he, the man who made his entire living altering the faces of forty somethings insisted that I, the 20 year old was being vain by not wanting to give up mine.

I wrestled with this. Was my vanity obscuring my ability to make the best decision? Was I choosing my face over my life?  I had a pretty face, I was often told what a pretty face I had, in fact I was one of the oh so lucky girls who was frequently cited for having a “beautiful face” but never told that “I” was beautiful. I didn’t think the loss of my pretty face was what made me sick about the surgery. Us “pretty facers” quickly learned to develop humor and brains (which ironically I also temporarily lost to cancer) and not to rely too heavily on our looks. My face was not my identity. I attempted to explore my reluctance further. I prayed earnestly for guidance. My reluctance did not go away. After hours of prayer and soul searching, I received the same answer, “wait.” I quickly learned that it would not be my brain, or humor, or pretty face that would identify me at this juncture, it would be my faith.

I sought out a second opinion. The second opinion soon led me to seek a third, then fourth, then fifth… I had 17 consultations with different physicians before my answer came. Each doctor told me the same thing. They all implored me to have the surgery. It was hard to explain my hesitation. How could I explain my “feeling” when there was “science?” One doctor told me I would only have a month to live if I didn’t have the surgery. Another doctor, who was of my faith, told me that he had become jaded. He told me that sometimes God came through but most of the time he didn’t. Not one of these learned male doctors believed the feelings of a 20 year old girl. Though at moments I was terrified, I continued to wait. I knew another answer was coming. We sent my case to other major hospitals throughout the United States hoping there would be other treatment options such as chemo or radiation. Though there was significant interest in my case because of its rarity, every hospital declined me, except for one. I received a call from MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas. Dr. Anita Mahajan decided to take my case.

We flew to Texas in order to meet with Dr. Mahajan. She listened to me. She ordered MRI scans and began to devise a plan of how to administer a specialized radiation treatment to my eye without disrupting my brain or other healthy cells. We returned to Utah in order to prepare to move to Texas for 7 weeks  in order for me to receive treatment. The first Texas miracle happened before we even arrived. The week before leaving for Texas, Dr. Mahajan called me and informed me that the MRI showed no visible signs of tumor. The tumor had disappeared! Had I undergone the recommended surgery I would have lost my eye and a good portion of my face in vain. We decided to move forward with the radiation in order to ensure there would never be a recurrence.

Undergoing treatment in Texas posed other logistical challenges. How would we afford a hotel for 7 weeks? How would insurance transfer? The second Texas miracle occurred when we learned that my mother’s insurance transferred completely between states. This happened to be an insurance provider that she had almost terminated coverage with a few months prior but felt the distinct impression to keep the last minute. Soon after the third miracle came, one morning I woke up to a voicemail. A gentleman, whom I had never met, left me a message informing me that he had a place for me to stay in Houston. His friends, the Elmers had offered up a room in their home for the duration of my treatment. When we arrived at the Elmers’ beautiful home, we were not only met with beautiful accommodations but also by the most gracious, selfless couple one could imagine. Their children had all grown and left. They had recently purchased the home that had been Gail’s (the wife) dream for a number of years. Gail informed us the evening we arrived that she had made a deal with God that if she were ever to be blessed with her dream house, she would open her doors to anyone who may need a place to stay. On my first day of treatment, the fourth miracle came. In the lobby I met a young man and his mother. It was also his first day of treatment. He was 14 years old at the time and the most stoic, brave person I had ever met. He endured treatment with a grace and dignity I could barely muster. As the youngsters of the radiation clinic we became fast friends with him and his mother. They were the epitome of Texan hospitality, and the kindest, most generous people I had ever met. The boy and I completed treatment the same day and our families have remained friends throughout the years. This young man taught me more about faith and endurance than just about anyone.

The fifth miracle set the stage for my passion and purpose in life. It was at MD Anderson that I became introduced to Art Therapy. The hospital offered an amazing art program to their pediatric cancer patients, and I vowed to commit myself to bringing this important work back to my home state when I returned and was in remission. Having this direction, I chose to transfer universities when I returned home and enrolled in a community art class that changed my life. My professor for this course became my mentor and idol. She encouraged me to apply to graduate school at Harvard, her alma mater. She wrote my letter of recommendation and changed the course of my professional life. While at Harvard, I was met with even more miracles in both people and experiences. I marvel everyday at what my experiences in Texas brought me and where it has led. Deep in the heart of this hot, humid, sticky place, I gained much more than the preservation of my temporal life. My fence now extends from here to Houston.