Sometimes I can feel the unwillingness inside me, just like a big lump in my stomach. In Finnish, it's "jaksaa"--officially described in the dictionary as "to have the intestinal fortitude to...." [pronounce it yahk-sah]

En jaksaa. I realized today that having children is helping me, in one specific way. Probably lots of ways, but one important way right now. They make me get out of bed and do things I don't want to do.

If I didn't have children, I would have stayed in bed all day today. Slept, or read escapist fiction sans people dying of cancer, or stared up at the ceiling and reminisced. I would not have had Reuben sit on my lap while eating breakfast, as he does daily, because I didn't jaksaa to actually eat anything. I would not have gotten dressed. I would most definitely not have gone to the school for the second grade Hawaiian fest and watched Joe clunking painted dowels on the floor and then on his partner's dowels while singing incomprehensible Hawaiian words and wearing Nathaniel's Hawaiian shirt, looking very much as though he belonged on a beach and a surfboard.

Is this depression? Feeling like everything is too hard, requires too much effort, is overwhelming, is not tasty, or interesting, or worth expending energy? I know that Dr. Clark and his nurse mentioned depression as normal during radiation, and I know other cancer survivors have said that it took six months, eight months, a year before they felt better. My body feels better, but my jaksaa doesn't.

Maybe my children are saving me from sinking deeper. I enjoy interacting with them, and with my husband and my mom and my friends. I know I sound cheerful when I talk to people, because that makes me feel cheerful. And I do manage to do things. Some things. So hurrah for children!

Choosing books from the library is now, apparently, somewhat less dangerously akin to picking my way through a minefield. Inside a specimen with a nice innocent title like "Candles on Bay Street" lurks plot themes such as dying from cancer. I don't like such plot themes just now, for some reason. I do not wish to cry and picture what might have been me.

To be fair, this is the first such theme to mar one of my selections for several weeks. I do remember a week in the not-so-hazy past when three or four of my selections were so unfortunately endowed, however, and I remember being quite frustrated. Perhaps that's why I've been sticking to old favorites lately. Now that I think of it, that particular plot theme has not ever been high on my list.

I think I'm justified in my aversion to this theme. I think that's why the Cancer Support Group that meets Tuesdays at 11 saw me only once. I would like to actively hate this theme for quite a long time to come.

Where are all the books with the had-it-fought-it-now-I'm-picking-up-the-pieces-and-moving-ahead plot? Perhaps authors think there's not enough dramatic scope, nothing literary or gripping about happy endings, not enough hook. Let me tell you -- I'm pretty hooked on that plot line!

Yesterday Reuben wanted me to cut his hair, so we took the piano stool out to the back patio, because the weather was nice. He said he didn't want the "buzzy thing" but I was supposed to use the "big scissors". I was amazed -- he actually sat still the whole time, and didn't even whine for the spray bottle.

When he was all snipped, we went upstairs to shower him and I put him up on the counter so we could see both of us in the mirror together, and he said, "Now we are hair twins!" Sure enough, even though the color difference remains, and his is cut more precisely around the ears. I think I am going to have a trim so that I can continue to be Reuben's hair twin for a while.

Elisabeth lives close enough to her church building to walk. It was still raining; Elisabeth and I went a little early because she's the ward librarian. We skipped Sunday School to talk about how to organize the library better. After church, we made our stew and ate it, and then we took the bus and a train over to Harlem to visit some of Lizzie's friends.

Being here with Lizzie is so peaceful. I am enjoying every minute. I do miss Steve and the kids, but I feel as though I am soaking up serenity, sitting in the calm, finding joy in just being. It's so nice to be alive. A week or so ago Jazon told us that Don, a man who used to live nearby and who was having treatment the same time as me, had died. I felt guilty, because I don't know why I get to stay and he had to go; or should I say why I have to stay and he got to go? Nevertheless, I am here, and I am happy about it!

Having this time by myself feels rejuvenating. Even though I'm still a mom and wife, it feels like I get to be Janice for a while, like I did when I was in graduate school and would go to the university for a week each semester. It gives me a second wind somehow.

Farmer's Market! By Inwood Park. Liz took me this morning and we bought Danishes, muffins, and scones for breakfast, and stuff for stew and a salad for tomorrow. Then we took a train into the city to Foley Square to do a recorded interview at a StoryCorps booth. We enjoyed ourselves and talked about all the things we remembered doing together. We had to fill in gaps for the poor redheaded facilitator. The Library of Congress keeps a copy of the recordings and gives one to the participants -- Liz has ours.

We wandered into Chinatown, which was horrendously crowded, and stopped in at a great 5-story art supply store, where I purchased origami paper for Joe and Nathaniel and beautiful handmade paper for Bethany. Then we went to Pearl River, an Oriental department store, where I found paper lanterns for Chris and a metal lunchbox for Steve, a bun-spearing stick for Nika and a "teenaged punk rock rhinoceros" for Paul. Liz went to an art thing at the Manhattan church building and I went across to Brooklyn Heights to meet Naomi!

We haven't seen each other for at least 10 years, probably more like 15. We had a great time walking around her neighborhood, where there are some amazing buildings and a great view of the Brooklyn Bridge. We talked and talked and talked and walked across the bridge with all the other tourists, and then she took me to a Spanish restaurant for delicious creamed spinach and chicken while she had octopus. Liz met us there, and when Naomi had to go, we took a picture. I miss her!

Liz discovered she no longer had her cell phone so we called her number, and when we heard no ringing from her person and bag, we retraced her steps to Central Park. No phone. We eventually called Dave, and within half an hour or so, we were able to contact the girl who had her phone. Liz had left it on the bench and the couple sitting next to her didn't speak English very well, so they took it with them to the restaurant where they were to meet their daughter, who did speak English. Whew!

Elisabeth had an appointment near Union Square this morning, so we took oranges and granola bars on the train and agreed to meet at a restaurant afterwards. The used bookstore I wanted to see was just a block or two off Union Square. They weren't open yet, so I continued along the street, looking for a drugstore, because even though I took allergy medicine, I still needed tissues. After a couple of blocks it started to rain a little. Some people, me included, pulled out umbrellas. Others hunched their shoulders, or held a newspaper over their heads. I stopped under a canopy and was looking at Elisabeth's NFT book, when a man came out of a shop nearby and asked if I was lost. When I explained, he pointed down the block and there was a pharmacy! He was so nice!

After visiting the pharmacy, I started back toward the Strand Bookstore (18 Miles Of Bookshelves) and there were still 5 minutes till opening time so I went into a shoe store and played my favorite trick of asking if they carry women's size 12. They did! They had a nice sandal and a kind of loafer. I tried them on and they were great, but *gulp* even with the buy-one-get-one-half-price sale, it would have been $180. Used bookstores are more comfortable for my wallet anyway.

By this time, I had decided to buy a gift for everyone at home because it made the browsing have a purpose, and it was so fun to find the perfect thing -- or at least something I knew they would enjoy. I found a Peanuts collection for Chris and a Jeff Shaara book for Steve just as Elisabeth called to say she was finished with her meeting and was heading to the rendezvous. Obviously, cell phones were invented for New York so that you can actually speak to people, because no one stays home to answer their phones.

Elisabeth was waiting inside Chocolate by a Bald Man. They have big vats of chocolate at the front, with pipes coming out, which carry chocolate across the ceiling to the side wall by the kitchen. The pipes are brown with "100% pure chocolate" stenciled in yellow. There is even a chocolate dispenser thing with dials and knobs. Very Willy Wonka.

I chose waffles with bananas and chocolate, strawberries, blueberries, and vanilla ice cream on the side. Liz had crepes. Our plates had little beakers of chocolate sauce on them! Very yummy. Liz left for work and I paid the check by giving it to the wrong person, who gave it to the right person, who brought it back to me in what looked like a metal cookie tin and the register slip had a place for the tip so that I had to put the money back I had just taken out. Comedy of errors. I then found a UPS store to mail the presents, because it is such fun to get packages in the mail and it is not fun to carry lots of packages on the airplane.

I then went to Filene's Basement to browse, and sat in one of their armchairs by the big windows overlooking Union Square, and delved into the NFT to see how to get to the BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) to buy tickets to see the Trisha Brown Dance Company with Elisabeth.

Took the R train and followed BAM signs to a corner with a parking lot, behind which was a wide white building which said Opera House. I decided to go in and ask, and ta da! It was the right place. After buying tickets, I asked for a restroom and was referred to the security guard, who asked for my ID and gave me a pass. Elevator to third floor, turn right, second door on the right. I forgot to give the pass back until the guard asked for it. Looked at the exhibits. There was one that said it was made of ink and resin, and when you looked at it from the front, the ink made a tree, but from the side you couldn't see anything. The ink was somehow suspended inside the resin block. Very intriguing.

I went back to browsing shops on 5th Avenue. In one kids' shop I found puddle stomping boots in the shape of alligators which I thought Reuben would love, but then I turned a corner and spied a ukelele hanging in a shop window across the street. The only ukes I've seen in ProvOrem are prohibitively priced. Lulu's even gift-wrapped it! Next I entered Beacon's Closet, a secondhand shop Matt and Judith liked when they were here. They had a row of boots, and knowing that no shop ever has my size in boots, I admired them and found a brown pair that said 12W. Tried them on. Great fit. $18. Amazing!

"Vintage" seems to either mean old stuff that had been cleaned/fixed up to look nearly new, or something that uses such things in making something new. Cog and Pearl, for example, offered spiderwebs dipped in silver and somehow attached to smooth, flat polished black stones. Also antique books made into journals by slicing off the binding and removing some pages and replacing them with new blank paper, and then rebinding them with plastic coils. They were charging $15, and I thought I might as well make my own.

Another shop had glassware and pottery and I thought of Sariah's bottle collection. I found a bottle with a narrow neck and a wide base, sealed with a cork, with tiny blank message rolls inside. I also found some earrings of glass blobs on top of bits of paper printed Japanese/Chinese characters, which were magnified by the blobs -- Haruka.

This is so fun! I ordinarily DON'T shop, for the simple reason that you spend less money that way. I promise to return to sanity next Tuesday.

I went into another shop because of its name -- Leaf and Bean -- and discovered what must have been an old bookshop or something. The shelves were built into the walls and had number plates above them. There was a metal rail along the top, with a ladder attached to it by rollers. At the back of the shop were antique scales and registers and things.

I finally found postcards at a paper store which also sold already sharpened pencils, and when I emerged it was raining hard. Little baskets or pails full of umbrellas for sale mysteriously appeared in nearly every shop. I already had one. Wandering rather quickly over toward 6th Avenue, I found a branch library to sit in and write postcard messages to the family. The nice librarian directed me to a nearby post office, because I had forgotten to buy enough postcard stamps. I had to stand in the 15-min-to-closing-time-rush but got them mailed before 5.

On our way to BAM for the performance, we stopped to eat dinner at a very narrow restaurant with a garden seating area at the back, which we didn't sit in because of the rain. We had paninis [fancy grilled sandwiches], strawberry lemonade, and Belgian fries [the true origin of French fries, apparently]. Go Jan!

Steve called to say the red van will cost $800 to fix, and that Joe placed 2nd in the 2nd grade division of the elementary school's 5K race -- 58th in the whole school. His energy has been well-focused today. As for the van, this seems to be the tax-return trend, so Huzzah for our tax return, which came last Tuesday.

We really enjoyed the dance performance. I didn't like the first piece, although the concept of having the dancers on a wall with holes in it and using the holes to move around was quite interesting. Unfortunately, it also featured a badly focused strange black-and-white movie with obnoxious sounds in it which was projected onto said wall containing dancers. Distracting. Annoying. Sleep-inducing. The other three pieces were much better. The second was accompanied by various strings overlaid by a woman's voice reading a long something in a European language [Polish?]; dancers in white, choreography crisp and precise. The third had only women, again in white, and four backdrops on which black and white still photos were projected, from left to right; no music; dancers stayed amazingly together, and stayed a specified distance from each other so that when one danced out of view, another entered from the opposite wing--it looked like you saw the dancers inside the curtains but there were others outside the curtains dancing along too. The fourth piece actually had color: gray, cream, rusty orange; opera music; a lot of interdependent dancing, lifts, balances, moving groups, pushing off each other. Fantastic.

Afterwards, Liz and I walked along Flatbush Avenue to have cheesecake at Junior's, and then we went home.