Happiness in my life is measured against sitting on the cooling November sand of Longreach Bay, Wadjemup at sunset with a beer or a chardy in my hand. My kids and their friends are turning bronze and in their third pair of bathers for the day, the rest hung in soggy rainbows across the clothes lines of the entire street we’ve taken over.

Tim is a few frothies deep, revelling in his salty element. Our best friends are milling around, swimming, leading kids on expeditions up the rocks, kicking footies and diving for lost goggles. Occasionally a peal of raucous laughter bubbles up from the shallows where they gather.

There’s a packet of Cheezels on the loose, chat about how many serves of curry and lamb chops and noodle salad we have left and who’s going to do the painful task of uniting all the plates and cutlery in one house.  All my joy, contentment and love collected on one beach.

Longreach Bay 2024

When cancer chemo began to claim my hair I was stoic with the handfuls I ripped out. It wasn’t until I chopped the first major chunk with the good fabric scissors that I cried. Tim then joined me sniffling and gripping my fingers on one side while he buzzed the rest with the other hand. Z holding a curious B and both girls watching solemnly, an intimate act of family that was bizarrely comforting. I asked Z if she wanted to have a go. “No thanks, Mama. It’s not fun.”

Freshly bald, Z and I were junk shopping in Kmart for material things that would almost certainly make us feel better for three minutes. She said, “Oh, I just remembered I need a new shower cap. Do you need one?” I laughed, she was looking straight at me and still hadn’t registered. “Baby, I don’t have any hair.” Her eyes shot wide with guilt and bewilderment, but we quickly dissolved into ridiculous giggles. We got through it.

When Tim had a work function to attend and strode out in spring racing luncheon attire I blinked rapidly but the tears were already streaming out of my face. I was shivering in my trackies and a beanie, my cheeks sallow and puffy, my hair long gone to Henderson waste facility. How could I be so ugly? I don’t even like the races. I fixed his pocket square and patted his lapels. I got through it.

We lose things with cancer, looks, hair, so sad, too bad. Many are temporary, some might not return. The vast majority of things I’ll lose I can live without. But not Rotto. Don’t you dare take Rotto.

When I caught a virus this week I thought it was going to derail my meticulously planned calendar. I’d been deliberately massaging treatment dates to align with a long-as-possible duration of stay for our annual trip. I rallied my medical oncologist on board, and she assured me that all my pub-chip-stealing-seagulls were in a row to give me three full nights.

Amazing clients who supported me despite my risk of not turning up. Lol.

I shot a beautiful backyard wedding on Thursday afternoon at the height of my “good days”. The kind that makes you love love, with authentic connections, a hands-on bridal party and plenty of happy tears. I was elated. These darling people had given me the chance to be well enough for them and I’d managed it. When I got home I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. By the next morning I had a full-blown head cold. I became that meme of a woman calculating, the chalk-scribble floating about her. What would it take to still make Rotto?

Chemo was postponed, someone in the layers of the cancer centre web would be passed a decision and make a new date. I lay in bed unable to sleep and felt like I had all-the-fluenzas. Kirstin, my drug dealer (turkey tail mushroom extract, sound healing sessions and threatening some vile super food shot) sent over the Armaforce, but I developed a fever and therefore a mandatory trip to ED. I was bitter and disappointed to discover after a couple of IVs and tests it was just rhinovirus, a common cold that my pathetic new body can’t handle.

Maybe I shouldn’t have invited over 40 people for a “low-key” 2^nd birthday for B. The party was a demand I made when I thought I might die. I’d have excellent birthday parties for both my children in 2025 just in case I might never throw another. When it rolled around, I considered cancelling on the grounds that I no longer think I’m dying, but that would be even more morbid, so I booked the entertainer, made a fucking ridiculous cake and probably caught rhinovirus that incubated in me the way things do when they know you've got to make it somewhere. As soon as the wedding was over, I was sick. I maintain it was worth it. It’s harder to be a kid whose mum has cancer than to have cancer.

You know what I wouldn’t be good at? Watching my partner, child or parent suffer through this special hell. It would send me wild. I can shoulder the treatments and the side effects and the illnesses and the losses.

I do get extremely angry (hello medical menopause), lose my shit and cry, but at least it’s happening inside me and I know its strengths and limits, and mine. If this was the ordeal of someone I loved I would be converting to whatever religion is the most likely to have a God who could grant me a Kate Bush Running Up That Hill place swap. Take me instead.

I managed chemo yesterday, in an isolation room with my leftover cough, a beef and pickle sandwich, a lemon iced tea and an insanely funny book by Miranda July. This week I will go to sound healing with the drug dealer and lie in my little shivery ball of essential oils. Next week, we’ll see.

Maybe the Wadjemup dream is still alive.

 Taya. x

Taya Reid is a writer and photographer working and living in Walyup on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja

Email Taya: taya@tayareid.com

Instagram: @tayareidstories

www.tayareid.com