22

She was 36 years old when she felt a lump in her breast. She was a busy woman; her alcoholic husband was disabled, so she worked a 2nd shift factory job and took care of their two teenage daughters. She was beautiful, intelligent, and frazzled. She put off making an appointment, and when she finally did go, the doctor told her it was a cyst and tried to drain it. This was unsuccessful, but he told her to come back in a few months for a follow-up visit, that the cyst would probably go away on its own before then.

By the time she went back, the cancer had already metastasized to her brain. There were days the headache was so bad that she couldn't get out of bed, except to run to the bathroom to vomit. She was weak. This beautiful, healthy, athletic woman was wasting away.


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A couple of months ago, I sat in an exam room at a radiology imaging center, waiting for my mammogram. Thank goodness my sister works there, so I didn't have to wait for an appointment, nor did I have to spend any time in the waiting room. At 41 years old, this would be my 7th mammogram, and it is always nerve-wracking. I end up rescheduling several times, my palms are sweaty, my heart is racing, and I have nightmares for weeks. The mammogram itself is fairly anti-climactic; pick up the breast, place it on the piece of plastic, clamp it, squish it as flat as possible, reposition, repeat, and done. The hard part is waiting for the results. Waiting to find out if I've made it one more year.


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The doctors recommended a mastectomy, surgery to remove the brain tumor, radiation, and chemotherapy. Even with all that, her prognosis wasn't good. Her daughters were shocked and devastated. This was their mother. She wasn't even old. How could she have cancer? That didn't make any sense. Her husband responded the best way he knew how. He drank. Not that he wasn't supportive; he was. But he was crazy in love with her, and there wasn't anything he could do to make her better. So he drank. He took her to her radiation and chemo appointments, and sat with her, stroking her head as she sat on the floor next to the toilet, retching her insides out, sick, miserable and scared. And he drank. There were nights their oldest daughter had to go out looking for him, searching the local bars to bring him home.

She lost weight. Her hair fell out. She had always been beautiful, and not only was she sick, but now her vanity was suffering. Her husband tried, he really did, but all his jokes about how one-boobed bald women were his favorite didn't really help. Then she had to start taking steroids which made her swell, so she looked like she had gained weight. And deep down she knew how sick she was, though she fought it as hard as she could.


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A few days after my mammogram, my sister called to tell me that the radiologist wanted to get my previous films for comparison. Which meant that she saw something that she was unsure about, and needed to see if it was a new finding, or if it was stable.

Great. Another couple of weeks of waiting, dreading the word "biopsy", knowing that it's coming, knowing what the result will be. It's my turn now.


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The doctors told her she had 6 to 9 months to live. She and her husband decided to make the best of the time she had left and started spending more time together and with their families, when she wasn't too sick. They went on a couple of trips together. Their daughters struggled. They were known in school as the girls whose mother was dying. Their teachers cut them a lot of slack, too much, probably. They cried a lot, and acted out in different ways. The oldest daughter had a sexual relationship with a much older man, and started hanging out with a different crowd. She drank a lot and was promiscuous. The youngest daughter went through one "serious" boyfriend after another and started smoking pot. If their parents noticed, they just didn't have the strength to deal with it, and never said anything.

She managed to live two and a half years, long enough to see the oldest daughter graduate high school and celebrate their 20th anniversary with her husband, even though she was in the hospital at the time. Two weeks later, they were all at the hospital when she died. She had been in and out of consciousness for days, and her breathing was labored, her lungs rattling and wheezing. Her mouth was drawn in pain. They all took turns visiting her alone, holding her hand and talking to her, kissing her, saying what they needed to say, not knowing if she could even hear them, but praying that she did. It was midafternoon when she opened her eyes, smiled at them, took a breath, and was gone.

She was 39 years old.


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As it turned out, I didn't need a biopsy. Once the radiologist received my previous films, she decided that a six month follow-up would be enough. So I wait, relieved, but still waiting for the other shoe to drop. To be perfectly honest, I think there's been a part of me that never expected to live to see 40. Almost like I've been waiting to die. And that needs to stop. It's funny, until I started writing this, I didn't see that about myself, but it's true.

Tomorrow, the 22nd of August, marks 22 years since my mother died. And I still cry when I think of her. I still think I can hear her voice saying my name, or her hand on my back when I'm sick in bed. She was the most beautiful, wonderful woman I've ever known in real life, and I know this blog entry hasn't even begun to do justice to her memory.

This is my favorite picture of her, taken when I was about a month old. She was 20, only a few months older than I was when she died.

Mama, I love you. I miss you.

Yang Peiyi, you're beautiful.

This pisses me right the hell off. How dare anyone tell this adorable, talented little girl that she's not good enough, not pretty enough for the whole world to see her and appreciate her for who she is? It really sickens and infuriates me.

And people wonder why little girls all over the world grow up with low self-esteem and body image issues. Shit like this is why. No matter what other talents and wonderful qualities they may have, they're made to believe that if they don't fit into the narrow view of what is considered "beautiful", well, those other things don't really matter so much.

Assholes.

Olympic opening uses girl's voice, not face


This undated video frame grab image originally aired by China Central Television and taken from the Chinese website Sina.com, shows 7 year-old Yang Peiyi, the girl who actually sang during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Lin Miaoke lip-synched the song "Ode to the Motherland" in a performance during the opening ceremony, while Yang Peiyi's voice was actually heard. (AP Photo/CCTV)



By Cara Anna, Associated Press Writer
BEIJING — One little girl had the looks. The other had the voice.
So in a last-minute move demanded by one of China's highest officials, the two were put together for the Olympic opening ceremony, with one lip-synching "Ode to the Motherland" over the other's singing.

The real singer, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, with her chubby face and crooked baby teeth, wasn't good looking enough for the ceremony, its chief music director told state-owned Beijing Radio.

So the pigtailed Lin Miaoke, a veteran of television ads, mouthed the words with a pixie smile for a stadium of 91,000 and a worldwide TV audience. "I felt so beautiful in my red dress," the tiny 9-year-old told the China Daily newspaper.

Peiyi later told China Central Television that just having her voice used was an honor.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Olympics | China | Summer Games | Winter Games | Television News | Turin | China Daily | Bird | Beijing Olympic | China Central Television | Luciano Pavarotti | Peking University | Politburo | Zhang Yimou | Wang Wei | Motherland | Nest National Stadium | Primary School | Yang Peiyi | Leone Magiera | Lin Miaoke | Salt Lake Games
It was the latest example of the lengths the image-obsessed China is taking to create a perfect Summer Games.

In a brief phone interview with AP Television News on Tuesday night, the music director, Chen Qigang, said he spoke about the switch with Beijing Radio "to come out with the truth."

"The little girl is a magnificent singer," Chen said. "She doesn't deserve to be hidden." He said the ceremony's director, film director Zhang Yimou, knew of the change. He declined to speak further about it.

China has been eager to present a flawless Olympics face to the world, shooing thousands of migrant workers from the city and shutting down any sign of protest.

The country's quest for perfection apparently includes its children.

A member of China's Politburo asked for the last-minute change during a live rehearsal shortly before the ceremony, Chen said in the Beijing Radio interview, posted online Sunday night. He didn't name the official.

During the live rehearsal, the Politburo member said Miaoke's voice "must change," Chen said.

"We had to make that choice. It was fair both for Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi," Chen told Beijing Radio. "We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance."

"The audience will understand that it's in the national interest," Chen added.

He said he felt a responsibility to explain to the country what happened but on Tuesday the link to the video on the Beijing Radio Web site no longer worked.

Miaoke's performance Friday night, like the ceremony itself, was an immediate hit. "Nine-year-old Lin Miaoke becomes instant star with patriotic song," the China Daily newspaper headline said.

Zhang, China's most famous film director, was asked at a post-ceremony news conference about the little girl who swung on wires high above the Bird's Nest National Stadium during the performance.

"She is a lovely girl and she sings well," Zhang said, according to a transcript posted on the Beijing organizing committee's web site.

The switch became a hot topic among Chinese and raced across the country's blogosphere.

"The organizers really messed up on this one," Luo Shaoyang, 34, a retail worker in Beijing, said Tuesday. "This is like a voiceover for a cartoon character. Why couldn't they pick a kid who is both cute and a good singer? This damages the reputation of both kids for their future, especially the one lip-synching. Now everyone knows she's a fraud, who cares if she's cute?"

Others disagreed.

"They want the best-looking people to represent the face of China. I don't blame the organizers for picking a prettier-looking kid over the not-so-pretty one," said Xia Xiaotao, 30, an engineer.

"It's the unfortunate reality that these sort of things turn political," said marketing worker Zhang Xinyi, 22.

It was not the first time an Olympics opening ceremony involved lip-synching.

At the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Luciano Pavarotti's performance was prerecorded. The maestro who conducted the aria, Leone Magiera, said this year that the bitter cold made a live performance impossible for Pavarotti, who was in severe pain months before his cancer diagnosis. Pavarotti died in 2007 at age 71.

Also Tuesday, Beijing organizers confirmed that some of the opening ceremony's fireworks display -- 29 gigantic footprints shown "walking" toward the National Stadium -- featured prerecorded footage. The footage was provided to broadcasters "for convenience and theatrical effects," said Wang Wei, vice president of the Beijing Olympic organizing committee.

(NBC also has augmented its Olympic coverage in the past to set the right mood. That fire in the studio fireplace during the 2002 Salt Lake Games? It was just a video.)

Neither of the two little girls involved could be reached by The Associated Press on Tuesday, and it was not clear how the ceremony -- or the controversy -- might change their lives.

Peiyi is a first-grader at the Primary School affiliated to Peking University. Her tutor, Wang Liping, wrote in her blog that Peiyi is both cute and well-behaved, with a love for Peking opera.

"She doesn't like to show off. She's easygoing," Wang wrote. She and other school officials couldn't be reached Tuesday.

Miaoke, however, was a minor celebrity even before the opening ceremony. The third-grader appeared in a TV ad last year with China's biggest gold medal hope, hurdling champion Liu Xiang, and she was in an Olympics ad earlier this year, China Daily reported.

Her father, Lin Hui, told China Daily he learned Miaoke would be "singing" only 15 minutes before the opening ceremony began.

Lin "still cannot believe his daughter has become an international singing sensation," the report said.

Lin declined to answer when asked if Peiyi should be included in the closing ceremony, saying that he was not the director. He said he presumed his daughter was not involved in the closing ceremony, and that she was not doing any rehearsals.

"Yang Peiyi's looks are OK," Lin told The Associated Press by telephone on Wednesday. "In my opinion, she's not ugly. She looks cute."

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Classic Movie Test

This is kind of cool, and pretty close to true. Yes, I know, I'm a loser geek with nothing better to do than take online personality tests. So? ;)

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

My Real Name

My first name is the same as my mother's, and my paternal grandmother's. My mother went by a diminutive of it, and my grandmother by the formal name, which left me kind of screwed in the name department. Not only do I use my middle name, but I use a nickname for my middle name, so nobody really knows what the hell to call me or who the hell I am. It's odd, when someone says my name, I don't have that feeling of recognition, of knowing that name belongs to me. I feel like a fake, almost guilty, as though I've usurped someone's else's identity.

I've spent most of my life feeling like an outsider, awkward, unsettled, uncertain, displaced. Sure, I was popular in school, but I never felt like the other kids. I aIways felt like I was just pretending to be one of them, and that I would be found out at any moment. I never expected to have the things in life that "normal" people did. You know, the husband, 2.5 kids, white picket fence, the eventual happy retirement enjoying the grandchildren. Don't get me wrong, I wanted those things, but never thought I would ever really have them. There are times I feel ashamed of myself for feeling that way, as though I've created a self-fulfilling prophecy, but here's the thing. I really HAVE always felt that way.

And I wonder sometimes, do I feel this way because my name has never felt like me? Or have I just never felt like me? How closely tied to our identity is our name? Maybe everyone feels this way, and it's just that no one ever talks about it.

Or maybe I'm just full of shit, and have been screwed up from the get-go, and would have been no matter what my name was.

R.I.P. Skip Caray

I can't remember the Braves without him; it's going to be weird. I'm really sad.

Johnny Cash

He was all kinds of awesome.


'Nuff said.