Into the Woods

I’ve been writing this post since New Year’s Day trying to get my head around what it means to move into another year and slowly begin to pick up the pieces. Remembering what I was up to before the news almost a year ago. Just before Christmas we went to see Sondheim’s Into the Woods and all the thinly veiled messages have stayed with me. Of growing up, parents and children, accepting responsibility, morality, and finally, wish fulfillment and its consequences. My new year’s attitude would probably be closest to the witch’s: “I’m not good; I’m not nice; I’m just right.”

We’ve been in the Alps a week and I’ve been remembering how it feels to breathe fresh mountain air, walk in the forests and have a sense of strength returning. By the end of the year I badly needed to elevate my mind out of the mire of worry and what next. And yet I can’t even bring myself to say it was a terrible year. Some terrible moments for sure. The type that you don’t think you’re coming back from and thankfully they are rare in most average suburban lives. With the benefit of recent hindsight I would say it was an extraordinary year, characterised by rounds of endless hospital appointments, yes, but also fear, awe and wonder. I mean did it really all happen? I have, at least, developed a clearsighted, deeply felt appreciation of all that is dear to me and the kindness of friends and strangers. What better place to reflect, take stock and find perspective than up a mountain.

The doctors have spent some time this year impressing upon me that cross country skiing, our family sport, is an unnecessary risk with all six holes healing slowly in my hip, my spine, my shoulder and my clavicle. Some damage to my lungs too perhaps where they found the original two tumours. I can’t really feel it. The eight places where cancer touched my body. The damaged spaces it has left behind. Dull aches, weird tingles and shooting pains perhaps. Joint pain from the drugs but not the tumours themselves. This week it has been hard to deny myself the pleasure of joining my family on their adventures but frankly they all ski off without me anyway as I am considerably less fit and sporty than them and the kids are all strapping teenagers who thankfully take after their father in this respect. More importantly, the consequence if I fracture anything is too great. As I asked the medical team for the fifth or sixth time it became clear that there would be no skiing. Not even a little bit. I like to ask a lot of advice from a lot of people when I am unsure and I take an average, or stop when I get the answer I want, but this never came. At my last appointment I had a good whinge and the senior oncology nurse explained that a fracture or break would mean the stopping of treatment, surgery, and metal implants because broken bones are unlikely to heal by themselves at this stage. It is particularly flat in the valley here in Kandersteg and several times I have come close to cracking on a sunny day and breaking my resolve to put my classic skis on and do a few gentle exercises. But I am particularly disposed towards falling over standing and tripping over my own feet. Last time I was here 16 years ago I was skiing four months pregnant with Lucas after IVF. Madness.

So instead I have walked and walked and walked. I’ve exhausted all the manageable routes out of the village and from the tops of the cable cars. I bought a good old fashioned walking map, the sort that is so big you have to spend time folding and refolding it to get the bit you want, and refreshed my orienteering skills. The solace I have found pacing slowly up hills through mossy pine forests and snowy woods and across icy plains has been surprising. Practicing a mindful walk and a kinder voice that says ‘let’s see what we can achieve going as slow as possible’. This voice is new and has become my constant companion. I’ve taken pride in remembering that my body works. That time put in doing strength training in the gym has value in the real world. I am fond of the leg press and I feel the strength in my muscular thunder thighs! I discovered before Christmas that my muscle mass reduces my fracture risk (whilst doing nothing) to 5% I have a sense here that I am…able. And not that dis-abled. In an urban environment I feel more disabled by queues and crowds and lack of seats. I’d become convinced that my mobility was limited at home and had resorted to a heated mat to ease my joints before Christmas. I’ve been referred (reluctantly) to a pain clinic – I don’t want more drugs- but perhaps all I need to do is keep moving. Breathe the air. Move my legs.

Here I have taken pleasure in observing the flora changing with altitude – lower levels of coppery beech leaves lining the path as it rises out of the town, changing to a carpet of thick green moss, then slate, surrounded by pine trees and ice. The odd purple alpine flower poking through. A type of cyclamen maybe. By the end of the week I was noticing different bird calls. Maybe other animals calling to each other across the rock faces. Today, an actual yodel! By the end of each day’s efforts I have returned to our ‘Belle Epoque’ hotel and fallen into a deep afternoon sleep, disturbed only by my kids wanting to go to the pool or the sauna. What a life.

Yesterday at one point my phone died as I was on my way back through the thickest part and I was a little bit lost in the woods having been tempted by a panoramic route along the mountain’s edge. As I stepped down a steep mossy incline my foot rolled on a pine cone. I slipped and gently fell a short distance. With no one knowing where I was and no means of telling anyone. Smart. All this occurred to me as I fell in slow motion on my wobbly cancerous hip and, comically, as I went down I cried out to no one in particular ‘Don’t worry it’s a slow motion fall!’ Some sort of odd attempt at self reassurance. A Very British rallying cry I thought. And I let myself tumble to the forest floor remembering that resisting a fall is sometimes worse. No harm done. A few sharp pine needles to the bottom and the rest in my hair. But it reminded me how easy it would be to fuck up my recovery. I had been marvelling at the ease of following footpaths, and working up poetic metaphors of trusting the way and following the light, just as I hit a fresh dusting of snow and the path ran out. As I stood in the forest looking rather wild I realised I was completely lost and wondered whether I needed to retrace my footsteps up the steep mossy hill I had fallen down. Far too lazy for this I pressed on. I stood and listened and heard a rare car some way off making its way to a remote cabin up a metalled road. I saw its bonnet flash in the sunlight from a distance and was able to hop across a few hundred metres of boulders covered in snow until I found the road back the village. I had ti throw my daughter’s borrowed puffer jacket over a barbed wire fence and do a little stunt roll under it to get back on track. It’s a funny thing getting lost as an adult. You feel a bit daft and you have to speak to your inner child and tell her you know the way. I was pleased with my little adventure and that no harm had come to me from my fall but all the while my kind nurse Carey’s face was in front of me with her last instruction not to do too much or go too far. I had mentally pooh-poohed it. Everyone has advice for me at the moment. Perhaps I should try not to ignore all of it.

In the course of this holiday, with plenty of quiet time for reflection, I have found myself thinking a lot about my younger self. In particular, I have thought about my first adventures in Switzerland. I feel a deep connection with the country still, in particular, the German speaking part. I worked a ski season on my year off at the age of 18 and in my twenties I was lucky enough to visit several times a year as my boyfriend at the time would take me in summer and winter to his beautiful chalet in Verbier. I realise now how spoilt I was and I feel grateful to his family for all their generosity. I had not grown up with holidays and skiing was something very exotic I definitely regarded as being for other people. It was and still is a bit of a class thing in England. Also I don’t know any black or Asian friends my age for whom skiing was a normal part of family life.

Not deterred by this I set off at the beginning of my year off in 1991, before going up to Cambridge, to a resort called Flims in the Grindelwald region to work for four months as a silver service waitress in a five star hotel. I was a hardworking but very innocent 18 year old. When I made the decision to go I had barely been away from home for a few weeks except for school trips and I had never even stayed in a hotel. I had never been skiing. I was green to say the least. But very optimistic.

Grindelwald is a place full of ancient folklore, fairy tales, trolls and stunning scenery. Flims/Laax where I worked had just a few expensive hotels and bars and a burgeoning snowboard scene at the time. I spoke decent German having poured myself into my recent A level and I had been to Germany to stay with family friends a few times. I was there to earn money to travel around Australia and Asia for the rest of the year. It was a decent plan and, although the English staff were treated like the migrant workers, I had a great time. I met my own monster in the maitre d’ of our restaurant Herr Fricke who had something of the dictator about him. I expected this was at least partly due to the fact that he’d collapsed in the dining room due to stress and high functioning alcoholism the season before. Now he was back and he was clean and mean. I tried my best to be charming and well liked and that worked with the guests, earning me enemies amongst the German and Italian waiting staff who had all been to service school for two years and saw me chatting away and stealing their tips. I was so sheltered I had barely even eaten in a posh restaurant by that point. So I didn’t know how a waiter’s corkscrew worked and I definitely didn’t know anything about serving wine and other esoteric practices such as putting the tablecloth fold away from the light to create a nice flow. Multiple cutlery confused me and I was still getting over being regarded as clumsy, something I am mindful never to say around my kids. Names stick and become beliefs that shape your behaviour. Anyway, I got sacked about two months in – apparently the worst waitress always got let go to save money as the season waned – but I probably deserved it. I was terrible but jolly! And being too ashamed to tell my parents I cheerfully informed the boss I would be seeing out the month’s notice in my contract and didn’t wish to go home. Not least because at that point I had a nice Italian boyfriend. Or was it the American or the Frenchman by then? I can’t remember. They put me on the bar in the afternoons to keep me away from dinner service (maybe to save the embarrassment of guests opening bottles for me) and this was just grand. I could chat all I liked and I met a fantastic group of 70 somethings who were there heliskiing and living their best lives. They’d be done by 3 and come and sit at the bar to tell me their life stories.

In my time off I would zip up the mountain and ski but I had no money for lessons and only a hand me down yellow ski suit from C&A which earned me nicknames such as ‘the crazy banana’ and ‘the yellow peril’ ( I now realise this was possibly a little bit racist but as it was an accurate description of the risk I presented to my fellow skiers I let it slide). I relied on a few patient friends to teach me but usually they were men I’d met in a bar drunk the night before who vowed to teach me. My rescuers! When they discovered just how bad I was they would generally give up after an hour or so and leave me to it. By a month or so in I could ski down most things but I was never elegant. I busked it for a few weeks after my notice period and ended sleeping on friends floors till it was time to go home. A good life experience in things not always going your way.

Now, nearly thirty-five years later, I am quite impressed with my younger self for having the balls to just show up for an adventure and see what would happen. There are a few young Portuguese staff at our hotel on their first season. You can spot them. A little wide eyed and slightly under confident. Putting on a good front. I’ve had a little chat with our young chambermaid who is on her third season. She tells me she misses home and is exhausted.

As I step into the New Year I think it must be the first time I have genuinely no idea what’s going to happen. By this I mean in terms of work and life. I realise there are people in far worse situations. I let the news bother me and feel the coming wave of instability but I’m not homeless, I’m safe, I live in a stable economy. I have my family, my children, my friends, a degree of good health and healthcare. I have enough. But nevertheless there is that feeling of stepping into the woods. Into the unknown. Can I find that 18 year old again, the one who rolled with the punches and stuck it out in style when the worst happened? I see her now flying down a mountain in yellow polyester, limbs flailing, whooping and screaming with fear and joy like an energised banshee who had no idea how to get down and also could not believe her luck. She’s still me. I shall carry her fearlessness with me into the new year as the mountain carries me where it pleases. No doubt a few more steep slopes, plateaus and icy patches still to go.