Chapter Twenty-Seven: Drumsticks and Brain Tumors
Until one summer vacation when we made an ill-fated short cut across the National Mall in Washington to get from the Air and Space Museum to Natural History, Courtney and Taylor were carnivores. Unfortunately, Courtney was accosted by the PETA guilt-Gestapo. The PETA people showed her a number of ghastly images that were foul as well as fowl, and from that day on Courtney has not eaten a piece of chicken. She still eats seafood, but if it lives on land, she doesn’t eat it. Thanks a lot, PETA.
Taylor, however, was made of sterner stuff or was, perhaps, indifferent to a drumstick’s background or its family members, and during her treatment for brain cancer and her resultant use of steroids, Taylor developed a healthy appetite, especially for Colonel Sander’s Kentucky Fried Chicken. And since the local KFC had an all-you-can-eat buffet I was able to keep Taylor in both cholesterol and calories without breaking the “Bank of Dad.”
Ah, the smell of the plastic chairs and the gloss of the cheesy Formica tables which was the ambiance of the Colonel’s grease pit, but Taylor and I didn’t go for the atmosphere, we went for the feed, the mouthfuls of mashed potatoes smothered in the to-die-for chicken gravy, the coleslaw with the pleasing aftertaste and, of course, the secret recipe.
But we also talked.
“It’s good to see you and Mom talking, Dad,” Taylor said during one visit to the Colonel’s restaurant. “Of course it took a brain tumor to do it.”
I nearly swallowed a chicken bone when she made that comment, but it was an honest statement. I think, had Taylor not developed a brain tumor, I might have gone the rest of my natural life without ever speaking to my ex-wife. I envisioned myself as a Cal Ripkin of ex-husbands with over 2500 consecutive days without speaking to my ex-wife, but Taylor’s illness had forced me to talk with Pam and work with her for the sake of Taylor; and my streak of silence was snapped and I failed to make it into the ex-husband’s Hall of Fame. What neither Pam nor I truly appreciated was how painful it was for Taylor to be caught in the middle between two people she loved, who no longer loved but rather, loathed one another. Both Pam and I had forgotten the fact that there was once love, a love that was represented in the child before me, woofing down a spoonful of mashed potatoes. Many divorced parents, I believe, made that same mistake we did: forgetting they were once madly in love with an ex-spouse. I was sorry for that now, but of course it was too late. Yet that day I recovered from nearly choking on the chicken bone and replied to my daughter, “That’s true, Taylor.”
“I’m glad you are communicating. I need you both,” she said. “I really do, Dad,” she repeated for emphasis.
I looked at her and smiled, but didn’t speak. She sensed I was uncomfortable talking about my relationship or, lack thereof, with her mother and conveniently changed the subject, “pulled a Nana,” a tactic I had used so often when she was little, one that we had all learned from my mother.
“The steroids make me so hungry, Dad,” she smiled. “You know, most people don’t ever have anyone ever touch their brain during their lifetime and I have had people touching my brain in two different operations.”
By that time Taylor had had the first brain operation at Martin Memorial Hospital North and, when the tumor returned, she had a second brain surgery at Duke University, performed by Alan Friedman.
“Sometimes I will step on something and feel it in my left foot and my right arm as well. It’s like the wiring is off from people playing around in there,” she said. “It’s really weird sometimes, Dad. I don’t think the brain is supposed to be played with like mine has.”
I agreed with her. It didn’t seem to me that God intended for people to mess around with brains as it was His territory, the seat of the soul. It should have been off limits. Taylor thought it all through very systematically, and came to the conclusion that the brain wasn’t intended to be a toy, it wasn’t something to be played around with, but then she really had no choice.
Taylor was overly fond of drumsticks and although I have eaten some KFC chicken in the years since, I have purposely avoided drumsticks. For several years I didn’t eat a baked potato either. I guess I associated those foods with Taylor, but I had a baked potato not too long ago. However, I still haven’t managed the courage to eat a KFC drumstick. Our favorite KFC franchise closed about two years ago and I like to think that without our business it went belly up. The booth we sat in so often to “pig out” during her steroid days may be long gone, but it was still fresh in my mind and I can see Taylor across the Formica tabletop, gnawing on a drumstick and talking about her brain tumor, a bit of the secret recipe juice squirting from the dead chicken’s limb as she smiled at me. And she was with me once again.
My brain never was the same, Pops. It was if I had a short circuit or something, as if all the nerves had been crossed somehow.
You never let it bother you that much.
What was I supposed to do? There was nothing I could do, Pops. My brain was different.
So were you, Taylor. So were you.
* * *
To say that Taylor, a teenage daughter, had issues with her mother was akin to saying the Pope is Catholic, but still Taylor, ever the sentimentalist, never forgot a birthday or a Mother’s Day. Grudgingly, she even appreciated her.
Having cancer and going to college? Yes, in the spring of 2001 there was optimism for Taylor’s condition. It seemed as if the radiation had worked and Taylor was put on a lighter chemo that didn’t cause her as much nausea. Maybe, we thought, she could live a normal life after all.