Jean Trounstine on ALMOST HOME FREE

        In January of 2000, just after the Millennium celebrations died down, I found a lump in my right breast.  I was in Texas, at my mother-in-law's, miles away from my Boston home.  Like many who enter the dark tunnel of cancer, I feared for my life, fought back with treatment and depended on family and friends to help me with hope.  My particular nature also took me to the page where I found comfort in writing and a way to express my unique as well as my universal experiences. 

        Thus began a journey, a journey fostered by my innate understanding that art is always most important to the artist when it joins forces with survival.  Although I had thought of myself as a memoirist, the writing of Almost Home Free (Pecan Grove Press, 2003) first came in long freewrites, words pouring out over each other.  Then, over the course of the cancer treatment and healing process, the book found its form and words took shape in poems.  I think of these poems as a narrative:  they tell a year in the life of a breast cancer patient but the underlying story is of family, struggle and a way to live amidst uncertainty.   Poem after poem taught me that it is in the moment where the survivor lives most fully. 

        Art as a coping device had made itself perfectly clear to me during my ten years of teaching at Framingham Women's Prison in Massachusetts where I directed eight plays.  In fact, my book, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison (St. Martin's, 2001) was in its final stages during that dark winter.  In prison, I saw women who took to the stage as a way out and rose to the challenge.  They battled depression, poverty and embittered lives.  They had every reason to quit.  But I, married, with a close family, a community of friends and supportive colleagues, a professor teaching at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts, how could I not be brave?

        Almost Home Free (Pecan Grove Press, 2003) is the story of how none of us make it home, free.  It reveals the common experience of those who take this journey and it reveals what women actually go through rather than what the medical profession advertises as the breast cancer experience.  It is filled with surprising moments as in this poem:

                        Watering Plants

                   Plants sprawl across

                   the bay window ledge

                   looking out on barren trees.

                   I lean over the couch

                   to feed them, fancying myself

                   nurturer to the sick,

                   some Red Cross vet who�s called to duty.

                   I spritz the fern, pluck the spider plant, pull

                   dead stalks from the Wandering Jew.

                   In the bathroom, I douse the ficus tree

                   and put water in a saucer of violets.

                   Downstairs, I visit the plant hospice

                   where plants go to rest

                   before they brown

                   and drop their leaves.

                   Even there, a cactus is thriving --

                   green, wild, a hybrid

                   casting shoots toward the window

                   soaking up all available light..

        The book takes the reader into moments with family, those alive and dead, for who can go through a life-threatening illness without considering their own mortality?

                        After Chemotherapy

                        My sister asks, Do you take a bath every day?

                   That night I dream of bathing in a closet,

                   up to my neck in warm water, oiled, perfumed with rosemary,

                   the scent wafting around me like a blanket.

                   There are clothes. They'll get wet.

                   The skirts and shirts can stay but

                   someone's got to move those long dresses.

                   My mother bathed in the afternoon, sometimes in the morning,

                   her voluminous breasts bobbing on the water.

                   I loved to watch her sink into bubbles  --  the skin before it wrinkles,

                   a faint blush.  Even a shower cap

                   couldn�t stop those wisps around her ears.

                   Prickles of hair pebbled her legs.

                   Freckles across her chest rising just to the nape of her neck,

                   her chin jutted into the air as if to say

                   This is my place to go,

                   my closet, my safe spot away from it all.

                   Yes, I tell my sister, I take a bath every day. 

                   I just want to sit near my mother,

                   hand her soap after soap, bring her back.

                   If only I could have her near me now,

                   leaning over the tub, soap in her hand,

                   rubbing my arms, my back, my breast..

        The core of the book shines light on the difficult moments for anyone whose life has been threatened by catastrophic illness.  The beauty in darkness is the essence of Almost Home Free.

                             In the Mirror

                        Breast cradled in a bandage,

                   too soon to see the scar, the ravaged skin,

                   the underarm bruise.  I imagine Bob's hand

                   cupping my breast, gently, the length

                   of him pressed up against me to soften the blow.

                   There's still Magic Marker on my chest.

                   I take attendance:  hair on my head

                   and all my facial parts, intact.  Stomach, hips,

                   legs all seem smaller, thinner

                   from weeks of fear -- mangled good fortune.

                   They say A mirror has two faces.

                   We didn't have to take your nipple,

                   a mantra, echoing

                   in the quiet of my room,

                   the evening light casting warmth

                   on this pale body.

                   I stare at flesh that will heal,

                   quiet my ache with a cotton tee,

                   wrap myself in a robe.

          ______________________________________________________________________

For books, contact PECAN GROVE PRESS (210) 436-3442 or order online at http://library.stmarytx.edu/pgpress/jean_trounstine.html or at Amazon.com.  For speaking/reading engagements, contact Jean Trounstine at (978) 656-3121 or at jean@trounstine.com.