I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want. It's to never see, smell, or hear of pumpkin spice anything, ever again. The pumpkin spice trend should have been over two years ago, but it seems to emerge stronger than ever, every damn October. I was shopping at my beloved Aldi last week, and was horrified to see a shelf full of pumpkin chipotle salsa. This is nothing more than a hate crime against corn chips.
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So that was the beginning of my post for the week, which I started on Friday night as I was baking brownies for a party. I mentioned once, to one of my neighborhood friends, that I hate pumpkin spice everything with the sort of hatred that should probably be reserved for ISIS or white collar crime.
My friends, wise asses that they are, immediately launched a trolling campaign against me. For four years or so, starting right around Labor Day and continuing through Halloween, people have filled my social media feeds with pictures of pumpkin spice salsa, cream cheese, hand soap, and even toilet paper. People text me from Starbucks, asking if I want them to deliver a PSL. Someone once left a tiny pumpkin in my mailbox. People's kids are in on this. For four years, I have been left almost alone to defend decency and humanity against the forces of pumpkin evil.
My friends, wise asses that they are, immediately launched a trolling campaign against me. For four years or so, starting right around Labor Day and continuing through Halloween, people have filled my social media feeds with pictures of pumpkin spice salsa, cream cheese, hand soap, and even toilet paper. People text me from Starbucks, asking if I want them to deliver a PSL. Someone once left a tiny pumpkin in my mailbox. People's kids are in on this. For four years, I have been left almost alone to defend decency and humanity against the forces of pumpkin evil.
One of the ringleaders and instigators of this annual pumpkin spice gang warfare was a woman named Bernadette Bueno Minor. I first met Bern in 2010 or 2011 when she signed her kids up for our neighborhood swim team. The first thing I noticed about her was how beautiful she was, with shiny dark hair and a wide-open joyous smile that radiated fun and good humor. I liked her right away.
We were friends in the way that mothers become friends when their children are in sports or band or school together. We weren't really close but close enough that we cared about each other's kids and kept up with each other's family and personal news. And we just liked each other.
I didn't really have much in common with Bernadette. She was much younger and much more outgoing and social than I am. But she was also smart and good-natured and ridiculously funny, and so I was always happy to see her and hang out with her, even for a few minutes. One thing that we did have in common was that we really loved summer, and swim team, and the pool. Since I returned to work full time, I haven't hung out at the pool as much as I did when my kids were little and I worked part-time, but I usually go to swim and see my friends on Sunday afternoons. Bernadette, who also worked, was almost always there on Sundays, too, with her radio and her sunglasses and her shout-across-the-pool happy greeting every time a friend showed up.
I didn't really have much in common with Bernadette. She was much younger and much more outgoing and social than I am. But she was also smart and good-natured and ridiculously funny, and so I was always happy to see her and hang out with her, even for a few minutes. One thing that we did have in common was that we really loved summer, and swim team, and the pool. Since I returned to work full time, I haven't hung out at the pool as much as I did when my kids were little and I worked part-time, but I usually go to swim and see my friends on Sunday afternoons. Bernadette, who also worked, was almost always there on Sundays, too, with her radio and her sunglasses and her shout-across-the-pool happy greeting every time a friend showed up.
Bernadette's first bout with breast cancer was in 2014. It was summer and swim season was in full swing. She didn't make it to many meets that year, but when she was around, she was unfailingly cheerful and brave and full of good humor. I know how hard it must have been for her to lose her beautiful, long, thick hair, but she joked about it, and about all of the other things that she had to endure. We were all delighted to hear, a few months later, that she'd had her last treatment, and that she was expected to make a full recovery. Her hair grew back, and by the next summer, she looked a lot like herself.
This past summer, she and I were sitting together at a swim meet. It was a very hot morning; so hot that stroke and turn judges were rotating so that no one had to stand in the sun the whole time, and I had just finished my shift. "I feel guilty," she said to me. "I was supposed to time, but I was just too tired this morning, so I had to make someone else do it. If it's not cancer, it's MS, you know?"
Of course, I didn't know at all. I've never had any real health problems, and can't imagine that I'd have been as easygoing and lighthearted about an MS flare-up alone, let alone having to suffer MS and cancer in one lifetime.
By now, you might have guessed that this is a story that does not end happily. Sadly, Bern was wrong about her symptoms, as she told us a few weeks later. The exhaustion and malaise were not the result of an MS flare-up, but a recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive this time. And then just before Labor Day, right on schedule, she was trolling me about pumpkin spice Cheerios and spaghetti sauce (an actual thing, I give you my word).
She wasn't out much for the rest of the summer and early fall, but she'd post optimistic updates on Facebook, and her usual jokes and funny pictures. I saw her daughter (16 and just as beautiful as her mother) out in the neighborhood last Saturday, and she told me that Bern's radiation treatment had gone well, and that she was about to start chemo. She said that her mother was upbeat and optimistic, and that they were hopeful for a full recovery. So her death just a few days later came as a terrible shock.
Bernadette was a beautiful and spirited person, and I'm so sad to think that her children will have to grow up without her. I'm glad that I knew her. I'll think of her often, especially on hot summer Sundays, and pumpkin-spice filled fall days.
Of course, I didn't know at all. I've never had any real health problems, and can't imagine that I'd have been as easygoing and lighthearted about an MS flare-up alone, let alone having to suffer MS and cancer in one lifetime.
By now, you might have guessed that this is a story that does not end happily. Sadly, Bern was wrong about her symptoms, as she told us a few weeks later. The exhaustion and malaise were not the result of an MS flare-up, but a recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive this time. And then just before Labor Day, right on schedule, she was trolling me about pumpkin spice Cheerios and spaghetti sauce (an actual thing, I give you my word).
She wasn't out much for the rest of the summer and early fall, but she'd post optimistic updates on Facebook, and her usual jokes and funny pictures. I saw her daughter (16 and just as beautiful as her mother) out in the neighborhood last Saturday, and she told me that Bern's radiation treatment had gone well, and that she was about to start chemo. She said that her mother was upbeat and optimistic, and that they were hopeful for a full recovery. So her death just a few days later came as a terrible shock.
Bernadette was a beautiful and spirited person, and I'm so sad to think that her children will have to grow up without her. I'm glad that I knew her. I'll think of her often, especially on hot summer Sundays, and pumpkin-spice filled fall days.
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