Danny Tanner Was Cuter Than Uncle Jesse

I said what I said, you heard me.

One of my favorite parts of having kids is when you can start introducing them to the books and movies you liked as a child. My six-year-old brought home a Babysitters Club book from the school library a few weeks ago and while my first reaction was “wait, you’re six, are you even going to understand this?” my heart also sang with excitement, because how thrilling it is to finally be able to discuss important topics in 80s pop culture—by which I mean Claudia Kishi keeping junk food under her bed—with my kid! (To be fair, the version she brought home was a graphic novel, so a) it’s a lot easier for a six-year-old to read and understand, and b) it’s therefore not THE REAL THING, which I shall probably not be introducing her to for a few years. But still!)

For a few months, we’ve been sitting down most evenings to watch one episode of Full House as a family, and my kids are obsessed with it. (My older child just turned ten; six and ten seem like the perfect ages for this.) I’m not talking about the Netflix reboot, I’m talking vintage, original Full House, which starts in 1987 and has the hairstyles and outfits to prove it. It has, for the most part, aged fairly unproblematically, which is a lot more than I can say for some of the movies from my childhood that we tried to re-watch and had to swiftly turn off, and it has been so delightful to re-experience this era alongside my kids. So wholesome! So many fun catchphrases! So many times we’ve had to pause and explain what a payphone or a VCR is!

I remember watching Full House the first time around in the late 80s and early 90s—we lived in Hong Kong, where we only got two channels in English, and it was always almost on one of them—but I have to say, the experience has been fairly different as an adult. (For one: I know Uncle Jesse was supposed to be the heart throb, but have you ever considered that maybe we were all just sleeping on Danny this whole time?! He’s tall, he’s funny, he wears plaid shirts, he’s a good dad, he likes a clean house—I mean, hubba-hubba! For another: I actually never realized how much of sitcom airtime is just someone walking in through a door and greeting the other people already in the room. Literally, every scene: someone walks in through a door!) It’s also been weird to re-watch with the intervening knowledge of where all the actors on the show ended up. Bob Saget: dead. Lori Loughlin: did two months in prison for a college bribery scandal. Candace Cameron: holds some fairly abhorrent conservative views. I could go on!

Yesterday, we all drove into San Francisco because I accidentally sent a package to my old house in the city—a house I have not lived in for more than five years—and I needed to go pick it up and thought we could do something fun with the kids while we were there. The package was being held on the porch of a very kind woman I do not know, who had offered to go to my old house and pick it up after I’d posted in a Facebook group of San Francisco moms that I am still (illegally?) in, asking if anyone in the neighborhood would mind doing me this massive favor. (So many people offered! People are so lovely!) The kids were not super interested in doing any of the fun things I had thought we might do, but the one thing they did want to do was drive past the Full House house, which I had never done before, and which we obviously then did.

The plaque on the gate basically says “lol, do not even think about getting any closer.” After this, we were on such a roll that we drove past the Mrs. Doubtfire house too.

Over the last couple of years, I have found it—and I hate to use this word because it’s so overused, but bear with me—kind of triggering to go into San Francisco, and particularly to go into the neighborhood in which I used to live. It just conjures so vividly for me so many memories of the last year we lived there, during which I was going through treatment for breast cancer. Yesterday, the minute we drove into our old neighborhood, I immediately started crying — even though I was literally fine a few minutes before. Even though I am coming up on six years since my cancer diagnosis. Even though I lived in this neighborhood for seven years before being diagnosed and had many, many happy memories there!

It just makes me sad, I guess, to go back to a place where a lot of sad things happened to me, where I felt more terrified than I ever have before, where I missed out on so many things with my kids—who were only five months and four when I was diagnosed—because I spent the year in chemo and radiation and recovering from surgery. The way things worked out, I finished treatment in the summer of 2018 and we moved out of San Francisco the following month—so while I started the “post-cancer” portion of my life in a fresh new town and a fresh new house, it means that my most recent memories of San Francisco are intrinsically tied to the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. And when I go back, I guess, all those memories immediately rush right back at me at once.

Whoa, this post really took a turn!

Do we maybe we need a little palate cleanser?

In the words of Jesse Katsopolis: Have mercy!

It is not lost on me, of course, that it is now October, which means it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and ever since my diagnosis, I have historically found this to be a really difficult month. And then October, of course, also leads to November, and November 1st was the day that I was diagnosed and so that, of course, is its own kettle of fish and means that November is full of its own weird milestones and anniversaries (happy….first day of chemo-aversary?!)

To combat this complicated bundle of feelings, I have tried for the last few years to focus my energy in October on things that are cathartic and beneficial, so that I don’t spend it spiraling. In 2021, for example, I pitched and wrote this piece for The New York Times about how hard Breast Cancer Awareness Month can be for people who have gone through breast cancer, or who have been touched by it in some way, and it remains one of my favorite things I have ever written. I cannot overstate how therapeutic and validating it was to talk to so many people who feel the same way, and to read in the comments that other people feel this way too. A little later, I was also invited to talk about the piece on NPR (I mean, it was a local Wisconsin public radio show, it wasn’t a tête à tête with Ira Glass or anything) which I unfortunately cannot listen to, due to the sound of my own voice being the cringiest thing in the world, but you can if you feel like it.

But still, there is kind of only so much you can do. One of the pieces of advice I received and put in the story, for example, was to unsubscribe from all marketing emails that are likely to mention Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And this I have dutifully done. But then yesterday, I got an email from one of the sports teams my son is on—which obviously I cannot unsubscribe to, how would I know when it’s my turn to bring the snacks?—that said they were going to hand out pink socks for all the players to wear at this weekend’s game, in order to “remind women over 40 to book their mammogram” and my head exploded and now I am dead and writing this from beyond the grave. (The cancer didn’t get me, but the pinkwashing did!)

To be fair, they did say they were also going to make a donation to two breast cancer charities, but a) they didn’t say how much, and b) I don’t think anyone needs a bunch of kids running around in pink socks that’ll likely end up in a landfill after being worn once to make them think “oh shoot, better book my mammogram!”, am I right? (I mean, maybe I’m wrong, maybe it will remind someone and it will help, who knows. I just think there are better ways to do that, I think the whole thing is a gimmick, and quite frankly, I hate that it is happening.)

Anyway! I guess I have a lot to say about life after cancer, and the many, many landmines that are literally just always waiting for you forever after, but that will have to wait for another day. If this is something you are also dealing with—this month or any other month—please know that I am thinking of you and wishing you peace and healing. It is not linear; none of this is.