A young man battles Hodgkin''s disease and survives--with more
than a little help from his Mom--in this wry and uplifting memoir
about life, love, and beating the odds.
When Dan Shapiro''s decidely anti-drug mom put aside her
convictions and grew marijuana in her backyard garden behind a
discrete screen of sunflowers, he learned that in the face of a
crisis we all have the opportunity to decide what is most important
to us. In this hilarious, high-spirited, sometimes harrowing
memoir, Shapiro invites us into his battle with cancer, his romance
with an oncology nurse, his journey through graduate school, and
his most important life lessons. He tells his story with wit and
grace and indomitable spirit, showing us that only when the rhythm
of life is stirred violently are able to discover its full
beauty.
關於作者：
Dr. Shapiro is a regular commentator on NPR''s All Things
Considered . He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
內容試閱：
My parents always kept a small plot of land in the backyard as
a garden. It was roughly the size of an average bedroom. Pretty
small. But they hovered around that garden all spring and summer.
They plowed, fertilized, hoed, mulched, and sampled the soil. They
watered. They pinched leaves. At night they pointed to pictures in
books and seed magazines, which eventually accumulated and took
over the dining room.
And then, a few months later, there was a crop of something.
Usually a crop of mutant something. One year it was zucchini.
Thousands of zucchini crawled out of the garden as if cast in a
late-night horror film. Neighbors came home to anonymous zucchini
breads, pies, and cakes delicately balanced inside of screen doors
or stuffed into mailboxes. Dad kept a huge zucchini next to his bed
in case there were intruders.
I was diagnosed with Hodgkin''s disease in April, the planting
month. Dr. Brodsky talked with his arms crossed in front of him,
listing the chemotherapy agents I would be taking and their side
effects. Prednisone. Procarbazine. Nitrogen mustard. Vincristine.
The latter two would cause nausea and vomiting. It sounded
unpleasant.
A few nights before I was scheduled to start treatment, I called
a friend, the only person my age I knew who''d had cancer. He
muttered five gruff words into the phone: "Chemo''s grim, man, get
weed."
I trotted into the living room and nonchalantly announced to the
family that I was going to buy marijuana to help with the nausea
and vomiting.
There was an oppressive silence, punctuated only by the rapid
tapping of my mother''s finger on an armchair. Then she began, her
voice carrying that staccato edge she generally reserved for my
father. She told me in no uncertain terms that there would be no
drugs in the house. She berated me about the dangers of illicit
substances, the horrors that visit lives filled with addiction, and
swore to me that her roof would never shelter a drug user. She
ended her diatribe with an outstretched finger.
With the vigor of an adolescent with a cause, I argued back that
for me, marijuana would be medicine, the only medicine that could
temper the violent treatment I faced. That it wasn''t addictive, and
that my body would soon process toxins far more dangerous than
marijuana. At the end of our conversation we were where we began. I
knew my mother. Once she was entrenched in a position, argument was
futile. I retreated.
I still wonder what happened to her during the night. Maybe she
studied the pamphlets the doctors provided, maybe she woke up in a
sweat, the remnants of noxious dreams about her son and
chemotherapy still etched in her mind''s eye. I don''t know. But I do
know this. The next morning my mother ran her finger down the
"Smoke Shop" listings in the phone book. She called a number of
establishments, asking detailed questions and jotting down words
like bong, carb, and water pipe. Then she gathered her keys and
purse, and thirty minutes later was walking down the aisles of a
head shop called Stairway to Heaven, taking notes and carefully
checking the merchandise for shoddy workmanship. My mother is a
Consumer Reports shopper.
I was sitting on the ground in the backyard when my mother''s car
pulled into the driveway. A few moments later she appeared on the
back porch waving a three-foot bong over her head. She proclaimed
her find with the same robust voice she''d used for years to call my
brother and me to dinner: "Is this one okay? They didn''t have blue.
. . ."
When I entered the house she delicately handed me the bong and
some money. She brushed dust from my shoulder and softly told me to
do whatever I needed to get the marijuana. After a quick phone call
I left to make my purchase. When I returned with the small Baggie
my mother asked to see it. I felt a sharp adolescent fear,
conditioned from years of living under my mother''s vigilant eyes. I
handed it over. She looked into the small bag. Incredulous.
"Where''s the rest of it?" she asked.
"That''s it, Ma," I said. She squinted at me. "I swear, Ma. That''s
it."
She murmured quietly, "Honey, give me the seeds."
I thought of huge zucchinis.
When my father learned of my mother''s plan he clipped two
articles out of the paper with the titles "Police Raid Yields
Results" and "Drug House Seized." He put them under a magnet on the
refrigerator and underlined the worst parts. That night, as we
prepared for dinner, Mom read them, nodded soberly, and said,
"Bring them on."
That summer my parents plowed, fertilized, hoed, mulched, and
sampled the soil. They watered. They pinched leaves. And that
August the mutant crop arrived. Ten bushy plants grew over eleven
feet tall in our backyard, eclipsing the sunflowers in front of
them. Far more weed than I could have smoked in a lifetime.
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