Jen Singer
Two summers ago, I had holed up in our living room, hiding from a house full of construction workers, trying to "rest" after my chemotherapy sessions, despite the hammering on the other side of the wall. We had started construction six weeks before I found out that I had a tumor the size of a softball in my lung, the result of stage 3 non Hodgkin's lymphoma that had gone undetected for an estimated eight months.
But we didn't want to stop the construction. Besides, it was such a great metaphor for what was going on with me.
Until then, our living room was the place where the kids practiced playing the piano, where my husband and I entertained friends and family and where I went to talk on the phone in peace. It was essentially a waste of good space, a relic of an era when houseguests didn't stand around the kitchen with wine glasses in hand, talking to the hosts while they prepped food.
But once my contractor lopped the sunroom off the back of our house, we had nowhere to hang out. So we took to the living room, where I laid on the couch, surrounded by bottles of medication, celebrity gossip magazines, snacks and cards from well wishers. It was where the "Welcome Home Mom" sign leaned against the fireplace when I returned from a few weeks in the hospital. It was where my son would play the piano to distract me from my nightly shots of a white blood cell booster. It was where he'd later check my bald head for signs of stubble signaling the return of my hair.
I couldn't wait to get out of there.
So when the contractors finished our new family room off the kitchen, I packed away my cards and my LiveStrong binder and left the living room. Since then, I've rarely set foot in it, except to grab the boys' piano books for their weekly lessons. The living room reminded me of what I preferred to forget.
When I agreed to host a piano recital at our house, I figured that we had the space and the piano, so why not? But as I filled the room with borrowed chairs on Saturday afternoon, I couldn't help but think back to two years ago, when I laid on the couch watching baseball games on TV with my boys and my husband. I wasn't even sure I'd still be here now, let alone hosting a piano recital as though nothing had ever happened. As though the room was just a living room with a piano and 26 chairs.
As the fifth grader finished up "Smoke on the Water," I looked over at the couch where I'd spent four months trying to beat cancer, and saw my kids, my mother and my sister-in-law applauding a job well done. I remembered what the living room had meant to me, and then I forgot it again, preferring instead to cherish the day we hosted the piano recital for five kids and a room full of people in borrowed chairs.
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