One Year Later...

Anybody have a rabbit’s foot?

I know that everyone’s got troubles, but just hear me out on this.  In one month’s time, March of 2011 to be precise, I managed to find and slip on the only piece of ice left in New York City and broke a bone in my elbow, had two car accidents (in the first one, someone rear-ended my car while stopped at a light, and the other time happened three days later when someone plowed into the back of my car, which was parked in front of my apartment building), I lost my job, my then-landlord was ripping us off, and I was told that my son needed to have tubes put in his ears to help with his constant ear infections. 

And just as the month was ending, just in case we felt that as bad as things were, maybe they weren’t so bad, my wife found a large lump on her breast.  Shortly thereafter, we learned that she had breast cancer. 

WTF, right?  That’s what I thought.  Well, that and I thought that we must’ve really pissed somebody off in a previous life (if this “cosmic, spiritual recycling” thing actually happens).  So, off we went to see her primary care physician, oncologists, breast cancer surgeons, the lady that reads tea leaves, all that stuff.  We were told that chemo would be necessary and that we would need to take our kid out of daycare as kids have a tendency to get sick a lot in daycare (even if they aren’t displaying any symptoms), and we could not afford to take the risk of her getting sick, since the chemo would lower her ability to fight off colds and infections. 

First of all, to prepare for chemo, she had to have a port surgically implanted just below her collarbone (to make it that much more visible) so that they could just “pop” in the needle when she would go in for treatment.  The day she had this done coincided with a job interview that had taken me a good three weeks to secure.  I got to my car, drove the 45 minutes to the job site and politely waited.  The first interview went so well that the person decided that I should meet with a few others.  A good sign, I thought.  I met with her two assistants, lovely ladies who were very thorough in detailing what would be expected of me should I join their ranks.  After that, I met with the supervisor’s supervisor.  Then I met with that person’s assistant.  I’ll spare you the roster, but I wound up meeting literally every single person that I would ever interact with at the place.  The custodian was an especially nice fellow, as was the lady in the cafeteria.  Throughout all this, my wife was having surgery and I only had a brief window of time to check my cell phone in between interviews (ultimately, I didn’t get it; in the end even though they told me how much they liked me and how well they thought I would fit in their environment, they decided to go with someone that had some more experience – I took them off my Christmas card list).  So my son is at my in-laws place, my mom had taken my wife to get the surgery done and I was stuck on the BQE watching some guy in the car next to me belt out his rendition of “Mr. Brightside” like he was on American Idol .   

Thankfully the surgery turned out ok and my son managed not drive my in-laws crazy (I’ll get into more detail about him in another post).  Now all that we were waiting for was for chemo to begin.  Joy.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anyone go through chemotherapy, but it’s really a humbling experience, to say the least.  Once a week, we would arrange for someone to stay with our son while I drove her to the hospital in Manhattan (don’t get me started on parking; my butt still hurts) and sat with her while she had this stuff pumped into her system.  I gotta give her credit, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to tolerate what she did.  It’s kind of a stupid thing to say, but I’m not sure who chemo is hardest on – the one getting it or the ones that have to watch them go through it (it’s a stupid thing to say because the answer is obvious; it’s always hardest on the person getting it).  Here was this woman I had known for the better part of 5 years - dated, gotten married to, argued with, made up with, picked out furniture with (ok, she did that part), had a child with -  going through this incredibly horrible ordeal and there wasn’t a single damn thing I could do about it.  I got to watch, that’s it.  I got to sit there, flip through some stupid magazine while this vibrant, strong and beautiful woman turned a type of pale gray, lose her hair and get physically and emotionally drained and sick with every treatment that passed. I think the worst part for her was not being able to interact with our son a whole lot.  He obviously couldn’t understand why mommy wasn’t able to play with him as much as she used to and why he would sometimes have to spend a night or two at one of his grandparents’ homes.  Not that this was a cake walk for me either (God, I hate that expression), but I hated seeing them go through this.

Add to this, the dismal luck I had in securing a job.  Yes, the economy was bad and all that, but still, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat ineffectual at my inability to find employment.  I had plenty of interviews and they all seemed promising, but I got a lot more, “We’ll be in touch” responses than I cared to get.  I had never had a problem with this before but it seemed like times had changed since I had been out there.  Granted, my experience is somewhat varied.  I’ve worked in everything from construction, to customer service, to event planning, and even substitute teaching, but it seems that people were looking for more specific skills.  I was starting to feel like a kind of jack-off of all trades if you’ll pardon the expression. 

However, we kept going forward as you have to in these situations.  I mean, “if you’re going through hell, keep going”, right?  When I wasn’t sending out resumes, I was trying to keep the house in order and take care of the kid.  My wife would rest as much as possible and try to keep her spirits up.  Once we moved (as I mentioned earlier, our bitch of an ex-landlord was ripping us off and left us with no choice; I’ll get into that one in another post as well), things seemed to settle a bit.

I’m happy to report that towards the end of 2011, after her chemo was done, we were told that she was in remission.  I can’t even begin to describe what hearing that felt like, not even gonna try.  The doctors were all very happy with all her results and they quickly scheduled her surgery.  Of course, this was another nerve-wracking experience, but it was made all the more easier by our family members who waited with me while the doctors were working on her and our friends who called/texted to check in.  It’s true what they say, you know?  It’s during the worst phases of your life that you see who your friends really are, who really cares about you.  There were people who I considered friends who were nowhere to be found throughout all this.  People who knew what was going on, knew both of us and never bothered to ask about her progress.  I suppose I should be glad about their absence.  After all, it’s their absence that showed me who they really are.

In any event, it’s now a year later and she’s done with all her treatments (5 weeks of radiation followed surgery).  It’s been a life-changing experience for both of us.  Humbling, really.  Looking back, being out of work at the time that my wife was going through this was sort of a mixed blessing.  I was able to go to all of her appointments and take her to her treatments and make sure the baby and the house were taken care of.  It brought into focus all the things that are really important in our lives and helped me to put aside or even discard the things that aren’t. 

She’s still recuperating, I’m still looking for work, and the baby is…well, a toddler at this point and going to start nursery school soon. We’re not sure what’s next, but after the year we’ve had, we’re pretty sure we can take it.  Rabbit’s foot notwithstanding.

Choosing Che

The other day I was walking home and this young, Hispanic guy passed me on the sidewalk and immediately, I noticed that he was wearing a Che Guevara shirt.  And not just the typical, mass-produced beret-wearing image that most people see in all the trendy “hip” stores in the Village and Williamsburg (not to mention my own home borough of Queens), but this one had the slogan, “Que Viva La Revolución”. 

Que viva la revolución?  Really?

Those of you who know me, know how I feel about this.  As the son of Cuban immigrants, this phrase is almost as offensive as Che himself.  The phrase is supposed to be a rallying cry for those who “fight the man”, or “go against the grain” and other pop-culture sayings, referencing the Cuban revolution as an example of how Che and his ilk overthrew a corrupt government and finally brought justice to the small island country.  And what I find particularly galling is that I actually see a few Hispanics wearing this shirt.          

The (almost) laughable part about this, is that most people who wear Che shirts probably have absolutely no idea who this man really was.  He’s portrayed as a hero, the underdog who came out on top.  Even celebrities here in the U.S. talk about him as if he were some sort of role model.  The musician Carlos Santana is quoted as saying, "Che may be dead for you, but he lives in our hearts ... Che is all about love and compassion."

That’s not even remotely true. 

So who was he? “The Motorcycle Diaries” notwithstanding, he was an anti-democratic demagogue at best - and a murderous thug at worst.  After he and Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista's government in 1959, they set themselves up as the country's new (permanent) administration. As a result, Cuba continues to be the prison that it is today. It was Guevara, in fact, who devised the idea for the forced labor camps that people like my father were sentenced to for being "enemies of the state."

What crime labeled them “enemies of the state”?  They wanted to leave the country.  That’s it, plain and simple.  They weren’t planning a counter-revolution or plotting some terrorist act.  They disagreed with the way Fidel and Che were running the country and recognized that their children’s future would be bleak at best if they stayed, so they wanted to leave.  No small task back then.  In those days, if you wanted to leave Cuba, you were sent to these forced labor camps for an indeterminate amount of time. You worked from dawn till dusk in the sugarcane fields. My father did that for two years. Breakfast was a some watered down shit-tasting coffee and lunch and dinner was a serving of cornmeal and soggy rice.  That’s who Che was. 

That wasn’t enough, for “el Che”.  He also who created the "ration system" of food distribution that's still in place today. Basically, a household is allotted a small, set amount of rice (or cooking oil, or sugar) per person for the month. Mind you, there's no guarantee that any of those items will be available, but they can hope. As a result, people take great risks in getting arrested for buying food on the black market because, obviously, the ration isn't enough.  

Let me re-write that, they can get arrested for buying food.  That’s the impact Che had.

And what about the people Guevara had executed when he was commander of La Cabaña prison? Now not everyone there was a saint, but I’m not talking about those guys.  I'm talking about the average working man. The ones who were thrown in there, tortured and executed without ever getting a trial because they disagreed with the government he helped establish.  These were the same people he claimed he was fighting for when he and Castro initiated the revolution. Suddenly they were being told how they should think and live and work, and being punished for not complying. That’s Che’s legacy. 

But the shirt’s popularity is undeniable. The people who wear them, I think, fall into one of two categories: A) Those who don’t know who Che was and don’t know what he did, or B) Those who do know, but choose to wear it anyway.  People in the former category should take better care in deciding what message they want to convey by choosing this particular “brand” of clothing.  Those in the latter should be ashamed of themselves.

In either case, the bottom line is that the shirt isn’t cool, it doesn’t stand for rebellion, and it certainly isn’t a goddamn fashion statement.  Actually, I take that back, it does make a statement.  It tells people who know better just how ignorant the bearer really is.