Story Frame 16 – Chemotherapy, Alligators & Shrinking Kids

It ended up taking me nearly two years to use those Disney World passes the rep from Buena Vista had given me in return for an advance copy of the Thomas Jefferson film.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, which devastated South Florida in August 1992, my mother and sister closed down their smart little art gallery in Homestead, an area that had been particularly hard hit. Until Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Andrew was the costliest hurricane in the history of the US.

The storm surge peaked at nearly 17 feet just north of Homestead, causing significant damage and loss of homes. The fierce winds had picked up a tree trunk and chucked it like a spear to the other side of a field where it impaled itself in the front door of the old house my sister and her husband Lou had been living in while they renovated it. Karen took it as a sign. That – along with the general devastation of the visitor trade – encouraged my mother and sister to sell everything and relocate 250 miles northwest to the gulf side of the state.

Once settled in Sarasota, my sister thrived as a tile artist. She renovated a small house just off the Tamiami Trail near the Ringling Museum, painting it purple and hanging a small montage of her unique tiles on the outside the house set in gardens she designed and cultivated. Her tile tables were shown and sold by art galleries up and down Long Boat Key. She got private art commissionings for creating original tile kitchens and pools. She was written up in the local paper. She was happy.

Before living in Homestead, Karen had lived in Belize in a small town called Teakettle Village with her husband, Lou Thomas, an American palm tree farmer. They had met in Madrid, at an aviation industry conference years before when my sister tagged along with my father – not because she knew anything about the airline industry, but just so she could see the city. They didn’t marry until 1986, the same year Steve and I got married. During their travels in Central America, Lou fell in love with Belize. He retired early from his US government tech work, bought 400 acres along the Belize River just outside of the capital city of Belmopan where he began growing palm trees, his other passion in life. Eventually he would sell seeds from more than one hundred varieties to buyers all over the world.

Surprisingly, my sister went along with Lou’s tropical dream for nearly five years. Using her degree in design from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, she designed and helped build a roomy house with a long veranda and comfortable chairs along the backside overlooking the river below and jungles filled with howler monkeys beyond.

One year she sent me a birthday card she’d found. The cover of the card had a sketch of a grinning skinny legged guy standing next to a smiling woman with soft red hair and the words, “We looked all over to find a card that would represent the real us.” And on the inside, “But we couldn’t find any ‘From the Jungle Stud and his Amazon Temptress.’

This is the best card I ever found! – she had written on the inside.

It was signed from both of them. Knowing her, I could imagine her laughing to the point of tears when she saw that card. I keep it tucked into a framed photograph I have of the two of them, surrounded by a jungle of tall dark green palm trees, taken somewhere on Lou’s plantation. Lou’s white/grey beard is closely cropped. He’s wearing an unbuttoned shirt that matches his Paul Newman blue eyes, which are fixed upon whoever took the photograph. He’s smiling. In the photo, my sister, wearing a pair of colorful madras jungle pants and a t-shirt, her hair cut short for the heat, turns to look up at him. Together they are a portrait of love and exuberant happiness. In the jungle.

Although the palm tree seed business didn’t provide a highly lucrative income, Lou was content, often looking around with that happy, blue-eyed grin of his and remarking, “Just another day in paradise!”

But Karen eventually tired of jungle life in a third world country. She packed up and moved back to the US, settling first in Homestead, then in Sarasota. Even though they lived apart, Karen and Lou stayed close and saw one another regularly.

She and my mother saw one another almost every day, which thrilled my mother, my sister less so. As an artist, she craved more time to herself but had a difficult time expressing that. And then one day, she abruptly announced she was selling her house and moving further north yet again, this time up to a remote area near the panhandle. She bought what she called a little ‘cracker’ house and renovated it, transforming it with her design aesthetic.

My mother never understood the reason for her move. She was an art appreciator, but not an art creator. I understood Karen needed to be alone, so she could focus on her art. My sister had fled to that remote part of Florida by herself because she needed to be free from distractions.

That she was dealing with stage 4 breast cancer, however, I did not know until my mother called me in tears one afternoon a few months later to tell me. Like a pet retreating to an isolated corner of a garden in the face of pending death, Karen had known with an innate animal instinct that she was very sick.

I called her immediately. She’d found a lump, she said. Still thinking she could handle everything by herself without telling anyone, she’d had a biopsy done.

“I asked them what size the tumor was, thinking they’d say maybe a marble or, at worst, a ping pong ball, she told me. “But turns out it was about the size of an orange.”

“That can’t be good,” I said, having no idea what to say.

“No,” she said quietly.

My sister and mother had made plans to visit Denmark together that year so that Mom could introduce Karen to all the other Karens related to us, which is to say, most of the females in our extended Danish family. In addition to my sister, I have two cousins named Karen, at least one aunt, a great aunt, and several second cousins.

When my Danish grandmother was born in 1898, her father named her Karen Margrethe. But soon everyone was calling her Grethe. Frustrated and determined to have a daughter named Karen, my great grandfather also named his second daughter Karen. So that’s two more.

Having already had a trip with me to visit family all over Denmark back in the 80s, my mother wanted nothing more than to do the same thing with my sister who hadn’t been back to Denmark since her first visit one summer as a teenager. Mom knew she would especially love the Danish design scene, the simplicity and the quality of the life there.

But it wasn’t to be.

My sister needed to begin treatments immediately, which would leave her much too fragile to travel. For so many reasons, my mother was devastated.

In an effort to give her something positive, something to look forward to, I suggested she take Zoë in my sister’s place, and introduce her to all of her Danish family. I’ll come, too, I said. It will be our ‘three-generation trip’ back to Denmark.

Always the ideas person, always trying to make something positive out of bad situations, always helping people see things through story and imagery – my compulsive, knee-jerk response to bad situations. This time, though, it worked.

My mother was thrilled with the idea and distracted just enough from my sister’s bleak prognosis to impulsively change her vision of the trip. Zoë was also very pleased with the idea of this adventure. And my sister welcomed a temporary respite from the spotlight of our helpless fears and concerns.

Mom, Zoë and I spent a delightful ten days the following spring eating and drinking our way around Denmark, visiting family and introducing Zoë, weaving in the next generation’s tapestry threads of connection to the home country of my grandparents.

Upon our return, my mother helped my sister move to Tampa to be closer to the hospital where she was getting her treatments.

After the trip to Denmark, I wanted to do something for Leif to balance things out. When I asked him where he’d like to go, he suggested – for reasons still unclear to me – Baltimore. Less than an hour away from our house, this hardly seemed to even out the equality factor. I thought for a while before remembering the passes in my desk drawer at work.

“How about a trip to Disney World instead?” I asked. His face lit up instantly.

As Martin’s parents lived in Orlando, he decided to go, too. Technically, the Disney World passes really were his, as owner of the documentary workshop, even though I’d done the negotiating.

The three of us took Amtrak’s 855-mile auto train from Virginia to Sanford, Florida with my now almost 12-year-old Volvo safely strapped inside. Leif was seven or eight at the time and loved eating in the glass-enclosed upper lounge under the bright sky, watching how the trees changed from deciduous to tropical palms as we headed south, rolling through different states along the way.

Martin’s parents met us at the train station in Florida. After a quick lunch at their place, Leif and I drove one hundred miles southwest across the state to Tampa to stay with Karen at her little flat.

The reality of the situation was tough. When she opened the door, her head covered with a colorful BoHo bandana, it took a fierce amount of self-control for me not to burst into tears. All her lovely strawberry blonde hair was gone. I gave her a gentle hug, worried I might break her in some way.

After me, Karen hugged Leif, teased him about something, then gave us a brief tour of her place. We could help her out by walking her large dog, Cloudy Day, she told us. She showed us their favorite walking paths throughout the abundantly landscaped apartment building complex.

“Watch out for alligators,” she cautioned Leif, as we walked around the lake in her neighborhood. Leif turned to me in surprise. Was his aunt teasing him?

Seeing his thoughts, Karen assured him she was not. They were common in Florida. Someone in their complex had been chased by one not that long ago, she’d heard. She also promised to give Leif some art lessons.

Alligators, Disney World and art lessons. Leif’s face lit up. This had all the makings of an excellent holiday. He was too young to understand what was happening in the adult atmosphere.

From Karen’s little flat, Leif and I drove an hour and a half each day to Disney World, had a fabulous time, and then drove back again at night. But it was worth it. I wanted as much time with my sister as her illness would permit.

Appropriately, the days were filled with film-themed adventures: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Toy Story characters, punctuated by my seven-year old’s giggles of delight and yelps to come see whatever it was he’d discovered.

The guy from Buena Vista had given me a dozen passes. Martin joined us on our last day, but even then, we still had tickets left over. He found a family of five waiting outside the gate on our last day there and gave the rest to them. I can still recall the expressions of surprise and delight on their faces.

At the end of the day, Martin went back to his parents and Leif and I drove back to my sister’s flat for one last night together. She was ready for us and had materials laid out for the art lesson she designed for Leif painting small objects that could then be ‘fired’ in a regular oven. Leif was delighted and got to work immediately.

“He’s creative,” she said gently to me the next morning as we parted ways. “Encourage that.”

Coming up next: The Man in the Mask Returns (With Half a Million Dollars)