Clinging To All The Things

Lately I haven’t been waking up early for my sacred “me-time” before the demands of the day begin. I haven’t restarted my weekly five-mile runs on the downtown waterfront in Manteo. I haven’t been writing in my office sunroom with the view of the water sparkling in the corner of my eye. Truth be told, in a lot of ways I don’t feel like I am who I was before I had cancer. While I’m not sure I’m supposed to, I can’t help but feel like when I emerged from cancer treatment last year, when I crossed the finish line from hell, I was so eager to get back to normal that I became overly regimented in all the wrong forms of normal. Perhaps, I was just clinging to all the things that made me feel in control of my life…if only I could keep my kitchen clean and keep the fridge stocked and keep the laundry folded, then…

This was on my mind last week when I began reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl this week. Inspired by the fantastic new Wonka movie, I decided to reread this childhood favorite of mine with Beckett. As I read the exposition of Charlie Bucket and his life of extreme poverty, the torture that was living next to a chocolate factory when all you had to eat was cabbage, and his dilapidated little house full of his four elderly grandparents that all oddly slept in that one bed, I was so struck by Grandpa Joe. He was tired and bedridden and, can you blame him, downtrodden, but when “Charlie, his beloved grandson, was in the room, he seemed in some marvelous way to grow quite young again. All this tiredness fell away from him, and he became as eager and excited as a young boy.” Nightly, Grandpa Joe would brighten their dreariness through stories of magic and joy and hope.

And I realized in that moment, that Roald Dahl perhaps had it right (forgive me for compartmentalizing all the ways he otherwise had it so very wrong) in the development of Grandpa Joe. Because, every day he stopped to remember the magic. In fact, he made it a priority. Later on in the book, Willy Wonka said, “In your wildest dreams you could not imagine the things that could happen to you.” Grandpa Joe reminded me to let those things back in.

#charlieandthechocolatefactory