“You’re so Vain” by Carly Simon plays on the speaker in our kitchen while my mom and I prepare Thanksgiving dinner. Our knives and spatulas turn into microphones and the ingredients for stuffing and the squirrels in our backyard become our live studio audience. We erupt in song and dance and laughter as our smiles widen, as if we are the only two people in this world, in the kitchen together. Our voices drown out all of our worries. There’s no such thing as anxiety and neither of us knows what a chemotherapy treatment is. All we know is now.
Lauren Woodruff is a student at Elizabethtown College majoring in Journalism with a Creative Writing minor. Writing this piece was therapeutic, and she hopes to inspire others.