Dear Dr. Duxin

The Imaging Center

65 Memorial Rd, Suite 510

West Hartford, CT   06107                       

Dear Dr. Duxin:

When I got called back for a repeat mammogram, I snorted with annoyance. What a hassle. Cancel meetings, drive to town, strip down, squish, squeeeeeze, hold your breath, okay breathe. Whatever.

Even when they showed me the spot on the what-the-heck-am-I-looking-at film, I thought little of it.  A little troubling, sure. But I have no risk factors that might lead to cancer. I am healthy and am an excellent steward of my consistently reliable body. Family members have lived to 105 in good health! This will be nothing.

Then the second mammogram quickly morphed into an ultrasound. Then a biopsy. Then cancer. 

I picture you, of unknown age, gender, background, and hue. Your desk is covered with gray and whitish pictures of flattened breast tissue. You are eating your lunch, perhaps. Maybe sipping some coffee. My films are next in the pile. There is a faintest of shadows on the right breast – hardly distinguishable from all the other splotches and spots and specks on the film. You take another bite of your sandwich, another sip of your coffee, and stare at the shadow. You circle it.

You saved my life. Thank you, from the heart of my heart.

I miss having breasts, and sometimes that is hard. Sometimes I am afraid. But the truth is: I feel like one of the luckiest people I know, because you noticed a shadow.

I hope this finds you well, and living a life populated by friends and family who love you and care deeply about your well-being. I hope you laugh often. That the coffee tastes rich and delicious, that your memories are happy. That you and those you love live long and well. 

paula chu

Farmington Fire Department

Dearest Members of the Farmington Volunteer Fire Department:

First and foremost, I am always grateful that you are there. I wholly admire your willingness to drop your forks and run to the aid of someone, anyone in need. Though I hope for your sake and ours that such a situation will never come to pass, we who live under the roof of 15 Main Street are humbled in knowing you would risk your lives to save ours.

A couple of Decembers ago, our family bundled up as we do every year and made the rounds of the neighborhood, caroling in the snow. We stopped in at the firehouse to sing to two young men who greeted us and stood grinning in the cold as we sang. As we walked back into the night, one of us shouted merrily, "If there's any way to wait to turn on your sirens until you get to the intersection when you go out in the middle of the night, that would be great!" One of the firemen said jovially, "We'll try to remember!"

It's true -- we have often been woken by sirens as you go about your noble work. We are two houses from the intersection of 4 and 10, and for years sirens announced your approach all the way from the firehouse. It's an awkward thing to mention: someone is in desperate need and we're grumbling about lying awake. But we thought we'd be bold and ask, merrily.

To our wonder you've been true to your word. Much more often than not, when there is an emergency in the middle of the night, your trucks head down Main Street with only the unavoidable growl of the engine announcing your passing by. It is not until the very last moment that you turn on the siren. When you're in an urgent hurry and you have both adrenaline and a siren at your disposal, it must take self-control to wait to turn on an electronic scream.

When this happens, when I notice that you've waited, I still lie awake for awhile, except now I am awake thinking that I should thank you. I  hope this letter will alleviate one source of my occasional sleeplessness.

Thanks so much for all you do, including tiptoeing as you drive down Main Street in the middle of the night. You are my heroes.

coming clean

Combination

1000·CA

"Constitution State" legend; "COMB" embossed vertically at right.

Previously CA·1234, C·12345, 12345, 123·CAB, 1C·2345, 12C·345 on past bases remade on the current base; 12345·C, 1CA·234, and 12C·A34 on the current base.

Ting is right. 1CU. Gee whiz. Now I feel like the Universe is kind of clumsy with its messages of reassurance, and death is just not witty at all.

1 or I

Dear followers: It has never, in my hundreds of sightings, occurred to me that the license plate referenced in the post below might be a 1, as Ting, who tends to be right, suggests. My sense of Connecticut license plates is that one set of figures are generally letters, and one tends to be 3 numbers. Please scout as you drive and report statistical findings as you develop them.

I C U and appreciate you.

Also, several people have said they are having trouble posting a comment. Me, too. Google Chrome says there's a problem they're working on. Posting this from another browser, where you may also have more luck.

p

Riverside Cemetery

Dear Matt:

You were so good to indulge me yesterday. I've been wanting to get a picture of your license plate for a long time. I see the truck there nearly every time I walk through the cemetery, but rarely see you, and even more rarely have my camera with me.

While I was undergoing treatment for cancer last year, I was determined to keep my 3-mile walking route intact, and that meant going through the cemetery. Lovely as Riverside Cemetery is, a walk through it still makes you think about life, death, disappearing from the earth as we all will. When you've got cancer, it doesn't take much to get the mind really working on that little knot.

Your license plate has on many occasions set into motion a train of thought -- sometimes it heads toward a dark tunnel, and sometimes it heads toward light. Sometimes I feel like death is just rubbing it in by having a cemetery truck bear this license number, and sometimes I feel like the Universe is saying something friendly, reassuring. I always notice the plate, and watch to see where my imagination will take me.

Thanks so much for dropping what you were doing and backing the truck up for one shot, then backing up again for another. I think our brief encounter qualifies as a random act, and your part in it certainly qualifies as one of kindness.

paula chu, alive and kicking (for now)

New Jersey Turnpike

Dear People of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority:

Maybe you haven't heard, and maybe you hear it all too often: no one likes driving through New Jersey on the New Jersey Turnpike. It's clogged with traffic and tolls. Some of the view is clogged, too, and so, alas, is some of the air.

On a recent trip to deliver offspring and belongings to a college outside Philadelphia, I geared myself up to Go the Distance on the New Jersey Turnpike. As I arrived at the first tollbooth, I handed my money to a member of your staff who greeted me with warmth and sent me off with a wave. That brief moment gave me a little boost. The next tollbooth experience was equally pleasant; this person seemed genuinely pleased to have my car finally reach his booth, as if he had been watching the horizon for our arrival.

Every single tollbooth stop -- all the way to Philly and all the way back home -- was the same: each tollbooth operator looked me in the eye, asked me how I was doing, added some friendly tidbit of commentary or news, and sent me off with good wishes and a wave. These periodic encounters punctuated my trip with sips of delight, and made the whole trip so much more pleasant than it might otherwise have been.

Please thank your tollbooth operators for these small acts of kindness. Let them know they made a difference in my day, and that each time they were so friendly they sent out a ripple of light.

paula chu

these letters

The first two letters I've posted are essentially the same letter. Both have virtually the same message to large companies: Hooray for your creativity and fearlessless! And then -- where did it go?

I imagine this repeated message says something about my own struggles with creativity, with going off script. It is easy to coach others in living large.

Having fun with letters to people I will never meet has something to do with how I resolve the tension between my need for connection and my need for boundaries. Even being a counselor is relationship-over-fence. My clients and I go as deep as we can in our time together -- but that time limit is clear. I walk them to the gate - sometimes literally - at the end of the session.

The letter to Walter Chronkite, well, I like to shrink the world like that, to wave across the fence with vim and affection. But the fence -- a lovely, inviting fence, with flowers around it -- is still there.