The Two Kinds of Decay

Hobbies

Six months after the diagnosis, I decided that if I had enough hobbies, it wouldn’t matter if I stayed sick.

She’s sick, I imagined people would say, but she has so many hobbies.

My father drove me to a nursery where I bought a bonsai tree, and I took all the books on bonsai out of the local library and filled a notebook full of notes.

I found the book of chess openings my famous chess-playing great-uncle had given me years before, and started memorizing. The Ruy Lopez opening. The English opening — my favorite one because it has only two moves.

The bonsai tree got uglier and barer and browner, and I let it die.

I remember thinking at some point that I’d already taken on hobbies beginning with A, B, and C, and how I’d eventually have one hobby for every letter of the alphabet, and then I would be busy.

I remember bonsai and chess, but I don’t remember what the hobby that started with A was.

Hobbies grow exhausting, it turns out, just like any other obligation.

I was at a restaurant years later with a famous writer just back from the airport. On the plane he’d sat next to a woman who’d asked him what his job was, and he’d said I’m a writer, and the woman had waited a few moments and then asked him what his hobbies were.

I don’t know what the famous writer said to the woman, but at the restaurant, he just said Hobbies, can you believe it? I’m a writer. I don’t have hobbies. My hobby is writing.

My mornings were occupied by bathing, eating, drinking a protein drink, having my central line dressed and flushed by the visiting nurse, and exercising pathetically little with the visiting physical therapist. After the fourth or fifth hospitalization, I remember just lying in bed for hours every afternoon. I had too much to think about to do anything else. It must have looked as if I weren’t doing anything, but I was very busy.

After I’d spent a few afternoons lying in bed looking as if I weren’t doing anything, my mother and father came into my room with a small box wrapped in plastic. It was a computer program. Chessmaster 3000. My parents didn’t buy me surprise gifts often. And so instead of gratitude I felt panic.

My parents must really think I’m going to die, I thought.