I realize what I’m feeling is fear, but for the last two or three weeks, it’s just felt like heaviness. My whole body, heavy. My mouth feels slow. I have to concentrate to get words out. I feel like I’m in a dream where I’m running but there’s no traction and when I wake up, I’m tangled in my sheets.
I’m afraid of losing the Water Quality Control Board hearing this Thursday, and I haven’t been this afraid in a long time. It’s still nothing compared to the two times my daughter Grace was diagnosed with cancer. That fear has no comparison.
This feels similar to Grace getting fevers when she was in cancer treatment. She was often neutropenic, meaning her immune system was too weak to fight off any infection because of the chemotherapy. If she ran a fever we had one hour to get her into an ER and start antibiotics to save her life. But it didn’t always look like an emergency right away. It started slow. Like the night my best friend was getting married and my mom had Grace and her brother Luke so my husband and I could go to the wedding. We hadn’t gone on a date, not since Grace was diagnosed. This was a huge deal for us.
My mom called me and casually noted that Grace hadn’t eaten a popsicle, even when her brother and cousin did. That worried me. I had my mom take Grace’s temperature. Normal. Fifteen minutes later, my mom called again and said Grace was sleeping on the couch. Grace doesn’t nap. Ever. I had my mom retake Grace’s temperature. Ninety-nine point nine degrees.
Time froze for a minute. Everything in me felt instantly heavy. My paradigm ripped open beneath my feet. The cliff I was on was “normal,” and the side across the chasm was “danger.” I wanted to stay normal. I wanted to celebrate with my best friend, dance, eat cake and drink champagne and have a night to forget that cancer existed.
I knew I had to cross the deep canyon so that Grace could get the medicine she desperately needed. Everything in me was so heavy that I felt like I would have to fling my body across the rocky chasm to get myself to the other side. And it would hurt when I landed.
Once I was able to cross over, everything went into hyperspeed. I immediately stopped dressing for the wedding and within fifteen minutes I had Grace back. Her temperature was over one hundred and one and rising. I took Grace straight to a local ER because her oncologist was worried we wouldn’t get to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in time with traffic. After we got her stabilized my husband rode with her in the ambulance to Children’s Hospital.
I was able to go to my best friend’s wedding for an hour that night. Fortunately, the wedding venue was close to the Children’s Hospital. I didn’t get to dance with Chad. I didn’t drink any champagne. But I did bring cake back to the hospital for Grace and me to share. She was able to go home four days later.
All that to say, I feel like I’m looking at another rocky chasm and I find myself not wanting to hurl myself across to the other side. I don’t want Thursday’s Water Quality Control Board meeting to come, not ever. I don’t want to have to fight for the Santa Susana Field Lab cleanup anymore. I’m tired. I feel heavy. I want to pretend that nothing ever happened at the site, that it had nothing to do with Grace’s cancer, and that this was all a bad dream. I want to wake up so badly and find myself on the “normal” side.
When I look across the chasm, I see kids like Grace who are in danger of the toxic contamination from the lab. I know the danger won’t go away if I hide from it, here in my pretend “normal.”
I know it’ll take all my energy to even show up on Thursday to try to persuade the Water Board Committee to do the right thing. And if other parents don’t come, we’ll lose the right to know what chemicals are polluting our local water. Its water used for drinking water in Ventura County, for crop irrigation, for recreation and it flows into the Pacific Ocean. Thousands of children will be at risk of being exposed to cancer-causing chemicals for centuries if Boeing wins.
On Thursday, I’ll have to look into the faces of people who don’t care about protecting children from cancer because it cuts into their priorities and bottom lines. Those people frighten me. Going to meetings like these makes me feel like my body has frozen. I go numb thinking about it. Heavy.
Maybe I need to admit that this side of the chasm, on the “normal” side, it feels more comfortable, but only for the moment. Soon it will be crowded with children, and adults, who became sick from the site’s contamination. The guilt of not having tried would be worse than the pain of throwing myself across and landing among the sharp rocks of Thursday’s hearing.
If I go, then at least I could say I tried. The pain from going and admitting I’m on the side of “danger” are wounds that will heal. If I don’t try and stay here in “normal,” the regret might end up killing me, though slowly and more quietly.
For Grace and Luke, and the other children in our community, I will keep trying.
Please join me.
Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board “MOU” hearing
(Join in-person or virtually)
When: Thursday, August 11, 2022
Time: 10:00 am
In-person: City Hall 23920 Valencia Blvd., #120, Valencia, CA 91355
Virtual attendance: Register in advance
Text Alerts: It can take 1-2 hours before the hearing will reach the comment period. We can text you 15 minutes prior to the comment period if you sign up for text alerts.
More information: www.parentsagainstSSFL.com/news
Sample Comment:
“My name is __________________ and in live in _________________ city. I don’t want dangerous contamination from the Santa Susana Field Lab to get into ______________________ (pick one or both: Ventura County’s groundwater or the Los Angeles River). I care because _______________________ (pick one or more: I drink Ventura County water, I bathe my kids in Ventura County water, I kayak in the Los Angeles River, I fish in the local creeks, I surf at the beach, I eat produce grown in Ventura County, wildlife needs clean water, I care about Indigenous values, etc). That’s why I’m asking the Water Quality Control Board members to vote NO on Boeing’s M-O-U proposal and keep Boeing’s N-P-D-E-S permit in place instead. Thank you.”
* Photo is from the first time Grace was diagnosed in 2014