The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,17

your own. Or the compassionate Dutchman who took the time to describe to me the details of a seascape he saw with his photographer’s eyes. Or the tortured Turkish American girl who dragged me to all the techno bars in Beijing as if the loud thumping music would drown out the things that haunted each of us. All of these people whose threads of life have touched mine taught me about different ways of living, thinking, and being, and in doing so enriched my consciousness and touched my soul.

I haven’t traveled alone since my trip to New Zealand. I convinced Josh to go to Egypt and Jordan for our honeymoon, and I even dragged him to China before Mia was born. We went to Puerto Rico when I was pregnant with Belle and stayed in a resort for a week. Now that I have children and am a little older, I’m not sure I would take the risks I once took to save a few bucks or have a crazy adventure I could laugh about years later. I’m out of practice when it comes to traveling alone. I’ve gotten used to Josh being my eyes. I’ve gotten used to him guiding us through airports while I deal with the children and follow him unquestioningly. I’ve gotten used to traveling with my little nucleus of a family and making our little trips about getting through flights without children melting down, making sure there are enough snacks to hold them over, finding child-friendly destinations where there can be no surprises and to which there can be no wrong turns. Life and priorities have changed since November 2006.

I’ve gotten weak and soft over the years and now I don’t feel entirely ready to tackle this new phase of my life, this newest journey upon which my life hinges, which requires more bravery, strength, resourcefulness, calm, and grit than I have ever had to summon. Unlike my journey to the seven continents, this cancer-fighting journey is not one that I chose as part of some self-selected test to prove my worth. This came at me and caught me off-guard. This time I don’t feel the invincibility and freedom of youth. This time I have the lives of a husband and two little girls to consider. This time the stakes are much, much higher.

Yet the bliss that can come from my cancer-fighting journey cannot be so different from the bliss I once knew traveling the world. There are extraordinary people whom I have met and whom I have yet to meet on my present course. There are lessons to be learned, resourcefulness and discipline to be cultivated, good to be done, and courage, strength, grace, resolve, and pride to be gained. I know this to be true. This is what I will remind myself when I go in alone for my first PET scan and as I listen to the doctor tell me the results. This is what I will tell myself during all the future CEA tests and chemo treatments to come. It really is okay for Josh to not be present for a chemo treatment, because his absence reminds me of the importance of being alone and honoring that solitude. All of it is part of my solitary journey, a journey that I embrace wholeheartedly and with as little fear as possible, for I know that through my wanderings I will once again find that same bliss.

9

The Secret

All families have secrets, and this was ours.

It might sound strange, but even though I wasn’t told about my grandmother’s order that I be killed as an infant until I was twenty-eight years old, it is something I’ve known from the time I was a baby. I knew it in that part of the soul that remembers all trauma even before memories can be retained by consciousness. The secret has hurt me in ways that few can imagine. Ever since my diagnosis, I’ve redoubled my efforts to find a lasting peace with the secret, feeling like doing so would yield hidden truths that would aid me in this fight for survival.

As my mother told me the truth about what had happened, she wept. But in her confession, I sensed the lifting of a burden long carried.

My mother had dressed me in dingy clothes that day because “it would be a waste for her to wear anything else,” my grandmother had told her, glowering.

My mother did not respond—no response was required or expected—as she tried