With a click, with a pop--phone'll jingle, door'll knock...

You know you're a basket case when you burst into tears on hearing a song you don't even like--and you can't quite figure out why. That was me today as I turned the home stretch on my route around the loop.

It was a gorgeous day for a walk but all morning long I kept making excuses to stay inside. First it was cold and then I had to catch up on all that ironing and then I had to clean up my chutney-making mess and then I couldn't walk out in the middle of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," but finally I couldn't put it off any more. I knew my friend Joy was out in San Diego walking 20 miles a day for three days to raise money for breast cancer research (read about it here), and I told myself, "If Joy can walk 60 miles, surely I can walk a mere six."

So I set out off down along the creek and up the big horrible hill, and I made it halfway up before I heard the first gunshots. Great: this weekend begins youth deer-hunting season, when the woods around my house are crawling with juveniles carrying guns. Most of the six-mile route wends its way through those woods, and the first shots came from pretty close by. A good excuse to turn around, especially when I was having trouble making it up the hill anyway...but I thought of Joy and kept going.

After each round of chemotherapy, it takes me about ten days to two weeks before I can even make it up that hill, and by the time I manage to walk the whole loop, I'm ready for another round of drugs. For months the story of my life has been three steps forward, two steps back, which makes it hard to feel as if I'm getting anywhere. Sure, I can walk the loop today, but Tuesday I'll have chemo again and then it'll be days before I can get all the way down my driveway. That doesn't feel much like progress.

But I kept moving forward nevertheless, and before long I came down the hill at the far end of the ridge to the sound of more gunshots, this time farther away. Then I walked the flats along the creek and soon reached a wide curve where the road goes slightly uphill while bending around a bluff. As I lumbered slowly toward the curve, Hopeful stopped in the middle of the road and looked back at me as if to say, "Come on, let's see what's around this corner!" I responded to her curious look with a bit of the song "Something's Coming" from West Side Story:

Around the corner
or whistling down the river--
come on, deliver
to me....

Now anyone who knows me well is wondering, "Singing? Out loud? In public? Who are you and what have you done with Bev?"

I don't sing in public, even if no one is listening except my dog.

I especially don't sing what may well be the most unsingable song ever written, with its odd syncopation and impossible range and silly lyrics.

But there I was, singing this unsingable song out loud in the middle of hunter-infested woods while my dog peered at me...and then I couldn't sing anymore because I was crying.

What happened to the Bev who could control her emotions, who didn't feel the need to burst into tears at the first hint of some sappy song? Drugged into paralysis, I suspect, while this emotional basket-case goes wandering around the countryside singing to her dog and bursting into tears just because a song expresses some hope for a surprising but wonderful future. Let's just not think about the gunshots that destroy that hope in West Side Story, okay? Let's just focus on the joy of endless opportunity the song celebrates.

The air is hummin' and something great is comin', but if I don't pull myself together, I'll never be able to see it with my eyes all misty.