When a banana Popsicle is so much more
Confined to her hospital bed, all Manjusha Pawagi craved was the taste of summer days
Manjusha Pawagi’s memoir, Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy, details the Toronto-based family court judge and former journalist’s experience with cancer. The following is an excerpt.
In the face of the horror I cannot control, I become fixated on one goal, something concrete I can achieve with careful planning. I want a banana Popsicle. I ask the nurse for one the minute she takes out my breathing tube.
“No,” she says, “the feeding tube has to come out first, and it can’t come out until you show you can eat on your own without choking.” “Eat what?” I ask. “Like applesauce,” she suggests. “Okay,” I say immediately. She leaves and returns with a small plastic container of applesauce with a foil cover you peel off, like one you would put in a child’s lunchbox. She has to spoon it into my mouth because I still can’t use my arms very well. I immediately gulp down several mouthfuls to prove I can do it and so they take the feeding tube out of my nose.
I ask for the catheter to come out as well because it is really painful, but that ends up meaning they have to put me in diapers, since I can’t walk to the toilet, so it is not an improvement. I never think these things through.
Once the feeding tube is out, the hospital nutritionist comes by to offer me a variety of disgusting protein drinks, which I refuse. I am breaking my promise about eating. But that’s just too bad, I think. I feel no shame at all even though I never eat another mouthful of applesauce again after those first demonstrative gulps.
“You have to eat,” Simon tells me. “No matter what it tastes like.”
“You should eat only what’s delicious,” I intone. I am quoting actress and lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow from one of the magazines a volun- teer brought me. Simon is not impressed.
I ask again, during morning rounds, “Now can I have a banana Popsicle?” My hematology team says it is up to the surgical team. The surgical team says ask the hematology team. It’s like having divorced parents and not knowing yet who is the soft touch.
June visits and I beg her to find me a Popsicle. She hops up ready to oblige and the next thing I hear is her in the hall asking a nurse brightly, “Excuse me, where do you keep the Popsicles?”
“Noooo,” I think, “ix-nay on the opsicle-pay!” I had meant for her to sneak a Popsicle. Finally I nail down someone from the hematology team to say yes, it’s okay with them if it’s okay with the surgical team. I ask a surgical resident who starts again with “So long as it’s okay with hematology,” but I stop her mid-sentence. Oh no you don’t, don’t start this again, and confirm for her that, yes, yes, yes, it is okay with hematology. She hesitates and then says, fine. The next day I eagerly await Simon’s visit, thrumming with anticipation. But what he brings me are some fancy purple frozen tropical fruit bars because our grocery store does not carry banana Popsicles. I eat one so as not to hurt his feelings, but I’m crushed. Another day he brings what are advertised on the box to be banana Popsicles, but they are creamy, more milk-like, than juicelike. I don’t even bother to eat one. I’m disappointed. Simon is unsympathetic. He refuses to search the city for a banana Popsicle.
Then my friend Lisa arrives with one from a convenience store near her Riverdale home — it’s exactly what I wanted. It’s a neon chemical yellow, it’s frosted with white, it’s perfect. It’s Proust’s madeleine, the fleeting taste of which he says calls to life the world of his childhood.
I probably should mention at this point that I don’t particularly like Popsicles, or even bananas for that matter. But like that famous madeleine, which apparently is a kind of ordinary cake, not especially delicious at all, a banana Popsicle exceeds the sum of its artificial parts. It tastes of the peaceful boredom of long, hot, sticky summer afternoons when a sweaty bike ride to the tuck shop to get a banana Popsicle was the highlight of the day.
Soon other friends are finding sources for banana Popsicles (typically those grimy stand-alone freezers that sit at the front of convenience stores) and just about every visitor I have hands me a few with great pride and pleasure. I think I may still have them in my basement freezer at home.
I only wanted the one. Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy.