Quaver

I woke up today without a quaver in my voice or in my chest. Yesterday and Monday I could feel the quaver, the tears, as a liquid entity, filling ligaments or pipelines, or something, across my chest. Like they were there, an unending supply, and it wouldn't do any good to cry them out because there would be more. Yesterday I could talk but if it was about anything remotely personal (how do I feel, what am I thinking) I was weepy weepy weepy, weeping. My friend S, who was visiting from San Francisco, said just to cry, but see above. We went to Thousand Waves yesterday to get massages. Mine was free as part of the spa's lovely Stress Management Program for women with cancer. She paid retail for hers, and she paid for my massage therapist's tip, as well. We were going to go to Gilda's Club next for a new member orientation, but I felt I couldn't deal with it. Meaning I couldn't imagine sitting around and talking to people. I called to cancel. When I'd called to enroll earlier in the day, the intake person asked why I was interested, and I said I was desperate. When I canceled I was still desperate, even more so.

We went to Dairy Queen then came home and watched Breakfast at Tiffany's, which was very different from the way both of us had remembered it. I'd remembered it as some sort of Barefoot in the Park, with Holly Golightly appealing to some stodgy guy to eat breakfast among the diamonds with her. I'd also been under the influence of the purity of the character she played in Roman Holiday, which we'd watched the night before. In Tiffany, she's a Southern girl who reinvented herself (with help) in Manhattan. She's less waif and more gold-digger. Mickey Rooney is cast, disturbingly, as a Gnashing Oriental neighbor. The role is stereotypical and crass.

When L came home we made a tray of whole grain bread, cheese, fruit, hummus and olive tapenade and watched But I'm a Cheerleader, a very light movie about a high school cheerleader who's not hetero enough for her Christian parents and her friends, so is sent away to rehab for straightening. Of course she emerges with a lover. Happily, parents accept her back. I was in the mood for light movies.

Still I was weepy. My sister called during one of the movies and I told her how weepy I was and she said I had been so strong before. Everyone has the impression that I've been Strong and Courageous. But I don't know what means. I just hadn't been weepy much before.

Audrey Hepburn was English-Dutch, born in Brussels. Her English father walked out on the family. Both parents were Nazi sympathizers, but after her mother moved the family (unclear if there were other children and I don't want to take the time to check) to the Netherlands, and saw her native land invaded, the mother soon supported the resistance. According to some accounts, Hepburn saw the execution of her uncle for his resistance work, and saw Jews executed in the street. She studied ballet and performed in concerts to raise money for the resistance, and was also a courier. During the famine toward the end of the war, she suffered with the rest of the population, subsisting on tulip bulbs and grasses. This may have affected her metabolism.

Except when she was pregnant, she kept herself down to 103 pounds. She was five-foot-seven. In 1987 she became the UNICEF goodwill ambassador, and died in 1993 at age 63 of colon cancer, by some accounts, but it may have been cancer of the appendix.

She was beginning her career when Colette spotted her in a hotel lobby and immediated cast her in the title role of Gigi in the Broadway production. (This is how such things are presented, as happening in a flash.) Hepburn was later, allegedly, offered the title role in the Diary of Anne Frank, but refused because she was afraid it would stir up too much internal trauma.