In Your Face, Hobbes!

So here I sit, appetite sated in the company of friends old and new. Dinner tonight was Chinese which I ordered in French. Amazingly enough I got just about what I was expecting.   
Did I say old friends? Elise (Erny) and I have been besties for a couple years, bonded by our cancer experience. The old friends are from her childhood. Women she and her sister, Helene, used to play with in the streets of Luxembourg in the 50s. 

As the conversation swirls around me I pick up bits and pieces of the conversation- funny how English idioms sneak into their conversation. Throw in my grade school and college German with my high school French there are times I pick up on the conversation correctly (Luxembourgish is heavily influenced by German and French).

Helene Frisch-Helllenbrand.      Photo by DeniseCutlip

Many times this last month I find myself amazed that this is my life. When first diagnosed I expected my life would be like that which Hobbes talked about in the Leviathan. I would be without a social contract (friends) and my life would be nasty, brutish and short. Boy, was I wrong.  

No, I’m not going to blow smoke up your patootie, it’s not easy, and for some he was right on the money, but not for me. Do I count my blessings? You betcha! Do I sit at home waiting for life to happen? No way! More than ever lung cancer has taught me to take control of my life and run with it.  

Waiting for our plane.  Elise ‘Erny’ Smith on the right.                      Photo: Denise Cutlip

In a move, beyond generous, Elise’s sister bought tickets for the two of us to visit her in Luxembourg. She wanted to spend time with her sister and I being rewarded for being a friend who drives when she needs someone to stick around when she has medical treatment. We are spending the month of June at Helene’s home. With that as our home base we have made forays into Belgium, Germany and France.  

How did this amazing ride come to be my life? And so I find myself walking through wooded hills, high above th Moselle River picking and eating wild cherries. Greeting people in a language I barely understand. The paths I walk were not unknown to envoys of the Holy Roman Empire.  
In Bastogne Belgium I walked paths used by ghosts of soldiers lost in the Battle of the Bulge. Forever young, they gave their lives to defeat one of the most oppressive fascist rulers of the 20th century.  

Photo: Denise Cutlip

Photo by Denise Cutlip

In Germany we shop for chokolat to take home to family and friends in an Aldi’s that only slightly resembles the one near my home. Here I am enticed to by cuts of meat I do not know and fruits I have only eaten in dried or jellied form. Flowers, too, Edelweiss I know from the ‘Sound of Music’.  
It’s been an amazing time!

Photo by Renee Marbach