(From Part Two of the fantasy book, ‘Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates’)

After brunch, Grandpa Graybeard watched the girls go star-jumping in the sky, high above the garden in the backyard of Penny’s house.

Star-jumping takes place when fairy flyers race from star to star with their wings beating triple fast. The main purpose, actually, is to learn how to jump rapidly, but another goal is to see which fairy can touch the most stars.

Lily won, but only by the length of half a wing.

When they rested, they looked at the stars and smiled. Then Lily said, “Why don’t we create some fireworks to go with the stars and some music to go with the fireworks?”

So they did.

Penny cast a spell and fireworks exploded in the sky, rainbow colors spreading out in every direction…

Afterwards, the two girls decided to go to the Unicorn Racing Championships in the next community, a place called Tututown, named for a wizard who’d invented a ballet in which every lady dancer wore a short orange lace costume called a tutu.

The one-hour show featured well-trained fairies riding unicorns bareback.

Penny wasn’t trained at all, so she could only watch, but Lily became part of the show.

Again she won (at least in her division, Girl Beginners).

That made her grin from wing to wing.

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(From Part One of the fantasy book, ‘Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates’)

A clucking mama hen distracted Grandpa Graybeard as she strolled right past him.

Five baby chicks named Crystal, Sienna, Kyle, Mia and Henry followed her.

All six were skipping instead of waddling.

Each chick was singing jazz rather than cheeping.

They seemed so happy that the good feelings quickly spread to Grampy, Lily and Penny, and the three of them started singing along in harmony.

Only Melody, the mommy hen, wasn’t singing.

That was because she had a sore throat from clucking at her chicks all day to be less noisy and to stay in line.

Daddy Rooster hadn’t been able to help her because he’d been tied up teaching young roosters to crow better.

The chicks paid zero attention to Lily, Penny and Grampy, whom they thought of as a funny-looking trio, and just kept skipping toward the forest, where they lived in a hollow tree stump.

But one of them, Baby Henry, wandered off down the street.

The mother didn’t notice he was gone until the others had been tucked safely into their nests.

When she did discover the baby chick was missing, she started to freak out and right away went off to find him.

She left Daddy Rooster in charge.

While searching for Henry, she decided she could use all the support she could get. So she went back to the bench Lily and Penny were resting on again, this time with Grandpa Graybeard sitting right next to them, and pleaded for assistance.

“Sure,” said all three without thinking twice.

As soon as the search party stepped through a crack in the low, wooden fence by the sidewalk, they ran across a white and blue magic pony named Fifi.

“Did you see a baby chick pass by?” Penny inquired.

“I did see one that looked like a yellow puffball,” the pony replied. “It went toward Main Street and turned the corner onto Nut Boulevard. He kept on going until I couldn’t see him anymore.”

“We had better follow that trail,” Penny said to the others. “Okay,” everyone said at once.

But when they got to Nut Boulevard, they found it was empty. Lily started to cry because she was worried the chick was really lost and might never be found.

Her tears made Mama Melody weep too.

Just then, Henry, having heard his mom’s sobs, peeked out from behind a fat log where he had been hiding.

The mother hen stopped crying.

Lily stopped too.

Melody clutched her chick by the leg and whispered to him, “You really scared me. Don’t ever wander off alone again. Please.”

(From Part 2 of ‘Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer.’)

Nancy survived.

So did I, although I may have felt as delicate as an eggshell back then.

A full 20 years after Nance’s diagnosis, we now focus day-to-day on the hundreds of mundane pleasures that fill the life of a post-cancer patient. We probably cram into our calendars a few too many social, cultural and civic activities. But every a.m. we make sure to say to each other, “Good morning — I love you.”

And we love basking in the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

What a relief it is.

On the 10th anniversary of the final day of Nance’s surgical, chemotherapy and radiation endurance race, we clinked glasses of Diet Pepsi and drank to each other’s good health.

Ditto, the 15th.

The 20th? Why fix what wasn’t broken?

Our toasts were inspirational milestones, two, three or four times happier than the five-year benchmark oncologists and researchers delineate as the medical goal.

Now, since the odds of Nance dying in another 20 years or so from something other than breast cancer have increased exponentially, we’ve given ourselves permission to stop holding our collective breath. We savor our joie de vivre, a palpable difference from the times we bolted from anxiety to stress and back again. And we know a positive attitude can cause an immediate reversal of discontent.

I particularly remember the chilly December day I discovered a flat on the driver’s side rear.

I cursed and called AAA.

A short time later, a lumber-hauler slid off the narrow road to our home and blocked the tow truck. I seethed, certain I’d be late to work.

After the disabled vehicle was pulled from the ditch and my nail-spiked tire changed, I drove to the San Francisco lot where I usually parked. A power company van was having trouble making a 180-degree turn. It blocked my car.

I swore again.

Yet it took only minutes — until I paid the attendant, a middle-aged woman who’d told me several weeks earlier she’d been stricken with ovarian cancer — to change my grumpy outlook with two brief sentences.

“Merry Christmas,” she volunteered. “I’m happy to be alive.”

Since then, I’ve learned to use the disease itself to brighten my demeanor.

Case in point: When someone dented my car while it was parked, I employed my new mantra, “Hey, it’s not cancer.” 

‘Rollercoaster…’ excerpts

(From Part 14 of ‘Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer.’)

During our wedding ceremony, Nancy recited these words to me:

“Is that you, Woody, with your infinite eyes, deep and loving, just as they were then, in the snow?

“Is that you, Woody, with those self-same eyes peeking now over grandpa glasses, perched on the tip of your nose?

“Is that you, Woody, with your thunderous laughter, amazed by my six-year-old clown and my ‘cast of thousands’?

“Is that you, Woody, with your critical eye, inspiring my muses, encouraging my truth? 

“Is that you, Woody, right in the ring with me, making me the best me I can be?

“Is that you, Woody, being my mother and father, sister and brother, grandma and grandpa, cousins, lover, and friend?

“Is that you, Woody, changing, and changed, changer and changee?

“Yup, that’s you, Woody!

“And this is me, in middle-age-woman makeup, standing beside you today just to tell you I love you, and I’ll be your wife.

“There, I said the ‘w’ word.”

Nance’s humor and lightness, as always, camouflaged apprehensions and doubts. Just before the ceremony she’d told a friend she was nervous about jumping with me “into a merger-matic.”

It took years, and a sprinkling of therapy, for the “w” word to fit comfortably. Then, abruptly leaping from the shadows, the “c” word kidnapped us, turning my wife into a breast-cancer patient and me into a caregiver, stuffing us both into a single rollercoaster seat.

It’s been a long and often scary ride, significantly more protracted and difficult than anticipated. Even today…we’d trade in all the lessons we’ve learned, all the affection radiated in our direction, for a guarantee no cancer will recur.

We know, however, there can be no assurances, and that we are permanently changed.

We can now offer greater understanding and kindness to each other — and to virtually everyone who touches our lives. We can now recognize it’s not crucial what gender or age someone with a life-threatening disease is, and that both designated patient and anointed caregiver require nurturing.

We can more regularly keep our priorities in order, strive for balance, unblock our spirituality and divert the million potential intrusions on our lives each week.

The day we wed, I read these vows to my wife-to-be:

“I knew you, lifetimes ago, as Nancy Falk, a cute freckle-faced teenager, with bright jade eyes and an innocent freshness possible only in those from the unspoiled Midwest. 

“I know you, now, as Nancy Fox, a lovely freckle-faced child-woman of middle years, with bright jade eyes and a rainbowed mind possible only in those who have tasted the flavors of life’s pains and pleasures.

“I will know you, through multiple tomorrows, as Nance, my wife, an elegant freckle-faced woman of timeless beauty, with bright jade eyes and an evolved soul possible only in those whose hearts have opened as exquisitely as a matured rose.

“Through all the nows and yet-to-comes, I pledge only this: to love you without reservation, as fully as the human condition will allow; to nurture our creative talents, so our individual and collective light may brighten a few shadowy corners of this dimension; and to cherish and retain, always, my glorious vision of us as soulmates, a clairvoyant insight reflecting the majesty of our spirits, our highest selves in perfect union.”

Love, we’ve told each other again and again during this ordeal and recovery, is the key to all healing. No matter what else science has figured out, it still hasn’t determined how to put that into a test tube and measure it.

Although Nance’s breast-cancer treatments activated a torrent of disagreeable side effects, they simultaneously fortified our adoration for each other. As a result of the illness, and despite occasionally waking with formless terror, we’ve re-vowed to love and support each other the way we believe soulmates must. For decades to come.

For now, we’re consumed once again — not by breast cancer or a melanoma or prostate cancer, not by thoughts of physical or mental anguish, but by a bright horizon as seen from the crest of the rollercoaster.

Each day, each month, each year gets better and better. We get closer and closer. Our lives are wrapped in more and more colors, with more texture.

 Death eventually will snag us both. But instead of waiting, we’re re-experiencing our fairy tale. One day at a time.

Once again, we’re getting the hang of living happily ever after.