Category Archives: cancer

Fabulous Fred

Some people are more memorable than others. They pop up in your mind. You visualize their wicked grin, beguiling smile, or musical voice as you recall old travels or past meetings. Recently, when I toured France with Insight Tours, I met such a man, and his name was Fred.

My fist exposure to Fred was an email he sent me before the trip started. The note contained clear details about where to meet in the hotel and what I had to do to label my luggage as part of the tour. Fred’s words were business-like and direct. He signed his name Frederique, but suggested that we call him Fred.

Fred dressed in a well-ironed red-and-purple-checked button-down shirt over a gray pair of casual trousers. His head was bald and he had a salt and pepper mustache and closely-cropped beard. It didn’t take long for this trim, conservative and snappy dresser to impress me. These are the qualities that he possessed to make him the best tour director I’ve ever had.

Clear with Directions

I came to appreciate Fred’s detailed directions, especially when he let us wander in the middle of ancient French villages and described how we could find the bus at the assigned time. He made use of landmarks such as the gothic church or the town hall. He used his arms to indicate left and right and repeated the directions as many times as we asked him. He seemed to understand that many people didn’t listen well until they realized they had to rely on themselves to find their way.

Timely

Whenever it was time to meet, Fred arrived first. He finished breakfast before us and waited for us in the lobby. He was at the bus at all the designated times, and he made sure that our luggage was picked up from our rooms and loaded into the bus timely.  How? He helped the hotel bellhops gather it and transfer it outside so as not to delay our departure.

Personable

Fred turned out to be a friendly and approachable human being. Every morning, when the bus started moving toward the next destination, Fred wished us Bonjour. After we responded, he continued with Avez-vous bien dormi? Did you sleep well? When we responded negatively, as many travelers might, he taught us a more positive way to answer that question. Say oui first, and then indicate how you might sleep better next time, coached friendly Fred.

He joked about his baldness and described how he once had a mop of hair in his twenties. On Day 2, he sprained one of his fingers moving our luggage and, most unfortunately, a pigeon defecated on his head in the middle of a town square. Neither of these incidents ruined his sunny demeanor. He allowed two tour members to clean the pigeon poop off his head and shirt and continued the tour with humor. 

Later in the tour, he was comfortable enough to describe his recent bout with cancer, showing that he was just another human being with human problems. Since many of the travelers were seniors, I’m sure they felt more at ease with him since many of them had suffered from medical problems themselves.

Caring and Attentive

Fred demonstrated sensitivity to all of us in many ways. He stood at the bottom of the bus steps and helped us climb safely to the ground. He also instructed the bus driver to stand at the other door and do the same.  When we stepped down, he smiled at each one of us as if we were the most important person on the bus.

One of the single tour members appeared to have a memory problem and Fred always made sure she was back on the bus and physically safe. He never complained that she was forgetful or not walking as fast as the rest of us. He simply took care of her kindly.

Interesting and Informative

The tour covered the country roads of France, which means, sometimes, our bus driver would drive us over remote mountain passes, into narrow tunnels, or over roads that circled country vineyards and farmland.

We were never bored while touring these far-flung French trails since Fred provided us with detailed and stimulating lectures that described what we were seeing and what the history of the area was. For example, when we were approaching Arles, where Vincent Van Gogh lived for many years, Fred revealed that the artist painted over 300 painting in Arles, but sold only two. While we drove through the walnut groves of the Dordogne Region, Fred explained that every part of the walnut tree was valuable to the French farmer. The nuts are sold for food, the shells are used as fertilizer, and the wood is used to make furniture. After listening to Fred’s lectures, I felt a little smarter and a little more French-savvy.

Resourceful

Several times throughout our trip, Fred informed us that he and our bus driver had poured over the map and found new country roads to explore that day. He assured us that the driver was an expert driver so we were sure to enjoy the new adventure.

Another way that Fred proved his resourcefulness was when we stopped in various places and he went out of his way to improve his understanding of the area. For example, when we visited Pont du Gard, a three-storied Roman aqueduct in the Languedoc Roussillon Province, Fred climbed up the trail beside the structure to view the third level, something he had never done before.

Helpful to French Travelers

In my past visits to France, I have had negative experiences with French people. Waiters ignored me. People on the street merely walked away when I asked them a question.

Fantastic Fred provided us with a remedy for situations like this. He explained that French people learn English in school, but when tourists come up to them and ask them a question in English, they freeze, once again experiencing those dreaded English classes.

Fred recommended that we approach French people with a polite Bonjour and allow them a moment to warm up to us before launching into our English question.

I put this method into action. Whenever I entered a shop, I said Bonjour to the shop clerk. Each time, I was rewarded with warm eyes and a smile. If I wanted to use a restroom in a restaurant where I wasn’t eating, I said Bonjour to a waiter, then asked to use the restroom, and the waiter never turned me away. Fred’s method seemed to be foolproof.

Funny

Who doesn’t like a comic? On the first day of the bus tour, Fred demonstrated that he had a repertoire of jokes in his tour director cache. The first joke he told us was a parody of the French people according to the Germans.

The joke went like this. When God made France, he created the dazzling Alps to the East, the stunning and bountiful Atlantic Ocean to the West, the beautiful Mediterranean to the South, fertile farmland, prolific vineyards, and bountiful orchards, ample rain, and plentiful sunny days. No other country had been blessed with such advantages.

The Germans were upset, and they asked God why he gave France so many wonderful characteristics. They insisted that it just wasn’t fair.

Upon hearing the Germans, God became contemplative. He thought and thought and thought. Finally, to balance everything out, God made the French people.

When we heard the punchline, the bus erupted in raucous laughter. You would think that we were laughing at the French people, but Fred was quintessentially French, so his joke helped us appreciate their humanness instead of thinking poorly of them.

Here’s another joke by Fred that had to be told in English to be funny. What do you call someone who jumps into the Seine River?

Answer. In Seine.

It takes a certain personality to tell a joke well. Fred could do it because he wasn’t afraid to be self-deprecating and he was naturally good-natured.

I will remember Fred every time I travel on a tour. I’ll unconsciously look for his snappy ensemble in every hotel lobby and wistfully hope that he comes walking through the door to lead us on another well-organized, comfortable, informative, and fun adventure.

Chemotherapy Christmas

The room was large, windowless, and sterile. Blinding florescent lights. Beige linoleum floors. Twelve green reclining chairs placed with their backs against the walls around the room. Each chair accompanied by a metal stand hung with bags of fluid and tubes.

The woman sitting in one of the chairs wore a scarf around her head. I looked for wisps of hair, but couldn’t see any. Her body filled up the chair like of sack of potatoes, lumps everywhere. She wasn’t smiling like the nurse who stood next to her, hooking up a tube to a port embedded in her upper chest.

A man whose body disappeared within his baggy shirt and trousers sat in a recliner in a corner. His scrawny hands hung over the chair’s arms like shriveled leaves caught on the edge of a forgotten lawn chair in the fall. His bald head shone in the florescent lights like a bare bulb. His face was gaunt, lined, and dry, and his eyes were closed. A young woman sat in a chair in front of him reading the Bible.

I watched the room’s activity with a lump in my throat as I stood behind my mother and brother by the door. A woman with a cane was led to another recliner in the room. The male nurse helped her sit into the chair, gently pushed her back, and lifted the foot rest. The nurse lifted a matching green blanket from a small chair nearby and laid it over the woman’s body, tucking the edges around her snugly. Then he efficiently began hanging the bags of chemicals on a metal stand and hooking up the bags with the tubes.

This was my mother’s chemotherapy room. Mom’s last chemotherapy session was scheduled for December 24, Christmas Eve. She had asked my brother Zach and me to accompany her to the appointment. My brother had flown home from college in Southern California for Christmas, and I was home from college too. The only thing my mother wanted for Christmas was to finish chemotherapy with her children around her.

A female nurse wearing an ugly, plain, blue smock and pants led my mother to a chair on the emptier side of the room. Zach helped Mom take off her coat and climb into the chair. She looked small, dressed in her pink cotton beanie, pink V-neck sweater, and jeans. How pale her pretty face was. Mom nodded when the nurse asked if she wanted a blanket, and Zach took it from the nurse and covered her gently like he was placing a precious jewel into a new setting.

This was not how I wanted to spend my Christmas. Wasn’t college supposed to be one of the happiest times of my life? I was too young to worry about my mother dying or even being too sick to visit me at school.

The nurse pulled two straight-back chairs close to my mother’s recliner, and invited us to sit down. I took the chair farther away and leaned back as if my mother was contagious. My brother pulled his chair closer to Mom and took hold of her left hand. When she smiled at him, her eyes watered like green pearls.

Before long, Mom was hooked up to the tubes that would feed chemicals into her body. I could tell that she was putting on a brave face because, underneath her smile, she looked tired and weak.

I didn’t want to think about her being that way. Instead, I wanted her to jump out of her chair, hug me tight around the waist, and ask me about college. I wanted to tell her about Jasmine’s new boyfriend, Sara’s job offers, and David’s article in the college newspaper.

Her smile withered away as the chemicals dripped into her veins. She gave up trying to hold a conversation with my brother, who was bent towards her in his chair, his chocolate eyes full of concern. She looked at me several times, but I retreated away from her with a grimace on my face.  I didn’t want to be here.

Once in a while, Mom opened her eyes and looked up at the bag hanging beside her as if gaging how long she had to endure the procedure, but, for the most part, she kept her eyes closed, and we sat in front of her fidgeting in our chairs, biting our lips, and staring at each other with worried eyes.

Three hours later, the nurse in the blue smock and pants pulled the catheter out of my mother’s port, gathered up the tubes, and rolled away the metal stand with the empty bags.

A young woman with brunette hair and rosy cheeks pushed a wheel chair up to our station.  She asked my brother to move his chair, then maneuvered the wheel chair as close to my mother’s chair as she could.

“I’ll help you,” she said kindly. She took ahold of my mother’s upper arm and guided her from the recliner into the wheel chair.

My mother let out a whimper as she moved. Zach helped her put on her coat as she sat in the wheel chair, wrapped her pink scarf around her neck, and gave her a wool cap to pull over her pink beanie. Still, she shivered when the nurse wheeled her outside to the car.

Zach drove us home, and the next day was Christmas.