Back in the body

reflections on tennis & Tom Mason, the Blue Buccaneer

Hello there - it has occurred to me that I’ve been on a little hiatus from my newsletter and though I have sat down a couple of times to write it, I felt distracted and unsure of what I wanted to write ‘about.’ Sometimes it’s so easy to sit down and write, and sometimes it is a struggle. I feel the push and pull of both probably daily.

As much as I’ve been on a break from sitting down and sharing my thoughts, I’ve replaced many of those thoughts with an obsession with tennis. Both playing and watching it. The US Open concluded this weekend, and it’s my favorite tennis event of the year. I went to it one year when I lived in NY and it was as exciting as you’d imagine. I wasn’t at any of the finals, but I saw some very good players up close. And when I get a chance to play (which means finding someone who will agree to it) I am happier than I am most of the time. I think I would play every day if I could. I find it to be as much of an escape as reading a fictional novel, maybe even more so. Even on the rattiest of courts, I feel a thrill of smacking and slicing the ball across the court, attempting to make a point on my opponent. I fantasize about playing in a league, or joining a tennis club, or getting a rank of the millioneth best player. I obsessively watch tennis reels and online tutorials to improve my game. What is this about?

Well, I think it’s about being back in my body.

When did I leave my body? It’s a good question. But over the last 8 years since I was diagnosed with BC and had to go through treatment not once, but twice, and the second time a quadruple amount of chemo followed by radiation, and then a reset of my hormonal system with 2 years of medications that wiped out my immune system and shut down and then extracted my ovaries - well, in hindsight I guess it makes sense.

Sitting here and reflecting on that… is really weird and hard for me because all through it, I really kept moving. I looked forward. Each day, week, month, or year that passed was one I got to keep going, and I was grateful for that. Even when I was feeling pretty out of sorts and frustrated with how my body wasn’t ‘behaving’ itself, I never wanted to give up. Whenever I get down about something there’s a part of me asking Will it always be like this? and the answer is no, this will pass. But I was starting to wonder if I would always be more tired and achy as I got older. And I am still tired and slower and sometimes achy too, but something about tennis is giving me life and letting my body move and work like how I want it to. I’m holding onto this feeling for now because it is grounding and I feel like it is healing me in a way that I wasn’t able to get to even as recently as a month ago.

There’s a lot in me that still needs to heal. I see that. Maybe healing is a life long process. Perhaps we are never finished with that work, until we are.

My good friend Tom Mason made his transition over Labor Day Weekend. He is a cherished friend, and a chemo buddy who got his mediport the same day I did in 2021. We both surreptitiously named our ports ‘Portia’ (the Shakespeare kind) and we walked together on the journey. We got close. I played in his pirate band when I could and we went to some amazing places and had a blast doing it. I also loved his songwriting - the serious side of it was deep and resonant. He was a fantastic guitar player who felt like family; the side of the family who is always up for a ‘jam.’ I was really hoping for more jams and gigs and laughs with him. But he trudged on with his treatment for 2 full years after mine completed (the chemo/radiation parts) and I can’t comprehend how he must have felt at times, considering my above paragraphs.

Tom Mason, the Blue Buccaneer and me after a gig, at the Parthenon, Nashville

He is so loved by the music community here. We are lost in his absence. More than once this past week I’ve thought to call or text him about something or see when he would be around. His spirit lives on and so do his songs and we will be playing them for a long long time. Nothing but love. Nothing but love.

So, I will keep playing tennis, and I will keep playing Tom’s music in my head, and my own songs too. And listening to the new Gillian Welch and David Rawlings record, Woodland, which is my soundtrack for this change in season; a season I felt coming on and am grateful for. I’m taking it one day, one moment at a time.

Much love, MP