We’re all swimming in peculiarly separate oceans these days.

My husband’s world, though I can step off our deck, walk six feet and enter his studio, is one of anxiety and professional turmoil these days. He’s swimming in a changed seascape–the coral reef is dying and all the fishies are trying to find new homes. Plus we just our butts chewed off by the by the Tax Shark, who delivered a devastating blow to our financial solvency.

Meanwhile, my own sea is filled with writing and cancer, which are strange bedfellows. I’m either thinking about Dad’s cancer, driving him somewhere to talk about cancer with someone else, writing about cancer, or thinking about writing about something else, which is difficult when all I can think about is Dad’s cancer. Amidst all this cancer, I’m trying to spot the distant, fog-shrouded island of a broader audience, who I don’t know how to reach, nor how to navigate through the rough seas of publishing to get there.

My brother is swimming in dark waters as well. Obviously we share the concerns about Dad and his resident alien, and he’s had his breath taken away anew, just as he’s coming out of a professional workshop training him for a new career. And he wants the career, but wants to be near Dad, but he wants the career, but there’s no career for him near Dad. And so on. Plus, as always, he needs money to make money so there’s the issue of finding some under a rock he hasn’t turned over yet. So he’s stuck in a whirlpool spinning endlessly, trying to keep the dizzying sick at bay.

My father has at least got fewer things occupying his mind, though clearly one enormous concern which takes precedence. The lack of other pressing issues must be considered a blessing at this point. He was relieved upon going to his opthamologist this morning that he received the good news that he wasn’t going to need cataract surgery on top of everything else. Strange how news like this can be such a monumental weight lifted; under normal circumstances it would be mild relief, but within his current theater, cataract surgery would have been a perversely sadistic joke. So now on to the next two appointments this afternoon: CT scan first, MRI second. That will carry him through until Monday when he has his bone scan. Cancer, cancer, cancer.

But the painkillers have allowed him to rest, finally, after weeks of discomfort. And I pressed him into telling me next time if he’s feeling pain, ANY pain, no matter if he thinks it’s just a splinter or a stomach ache from laughing too hard: it’s too late for any more assumptions that whatever pain he’s experiencing is NOT cancer. Pushy, bossy, a complete pain in the ass; that’s Dad’s biggest concern right now, how to deal with his dictatorial daughter.

Dad is telling me right now as I write this piece, “that I LOVE my dictatorial daughter, and that he’s GRATEFUL for his dictatorial daughter. Put that in there, too!” Of course, he didn’t remove the adjective “dictatorial” from his superlatives, so we both agree that dictatorial is the leadership style by which our ship is run these days.

No chance for a mutiny though. Dad says he couldn’t even lift a cutlass at this point.

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