Hey there New Year, how YOU doin?

542 run


A couple of nights ago, I decided to look at mastectomy images online.  I asked Emma if she wanted to look with me.  I'm feeling this stuff out as I go.  Would it be a comfort?  Would it ease a worry to see other women who have had this surgery and reconstruction?  (I can tell you now, the answer in her case is no and no).

My dear friend Dana battled breast cancer several years ago.  I helped her all that I could, though I know now that no matter how much anyone tells you "you are not alone" that essentially, it is your battle alone to fight.  Dana let me in though, in every way.  Her surgeries were extensive: double mastectomy, tram-flap reconstruction (where surgeons pull muscle and fat from your abdomen up to your chest wall and rebuild breasts from your own, relocated tissue), hysterectomy.  One day, she pulled her shirt up and I saw the hot, angry scars crossing and cutting her torso.  Soft, quiet cotton t- shirts covered such extensive battle wounds, it looked like a secret she was keeping and I was in awe.

To be sure, I have a facade.  I have been so inundated with information, options, statistics, possibilities and timetables that the adrenaline rush of keeping up with all new input has kept my voice and action relatively steady.  I am though, filled with fear and worry (I just erased 'doubt', there is no doubt that I will be great).  Can I stay in school?  How will I pay for insurance now?  What fear do my kids harbor that they will try and protect me from (they are all that kind of kid).  What will I look like?  Will I wake to a body that stuns me?  Will I want to look away?  Will others?  Will the people who check in and offer help suffer from Jenny exhaustion and fall slowly, politely away? 

I am here in bed now, Luke has curled up next to me.  I love my bed.  Several months ago, I went to a resale shop here in town, on the off chance that I might find a simple headboard for my bed.  I walked in and there in front of me was the bed of my dreams.  Made of heavy, dark wood, it has four sturdy posts that rise up from a solid base to support a heavy wooden gridwork canopy.  It is regal and strong and earthy and just looking at it, it felt like shelter, like refuge.  The store was asking next to nothing for the bed.  I begged them to put a "SOLD" sign on it while I ran home and raided my small cash stash to pay for it. 

I borrowed my neighbor's pickup the next day and my friend Ben and I went to dismantle and then bring the bed home.  Ben reinforced all the hardware when he put it together for me, remarked that it was solid as a rock, it wasn't going anywhere.  When he left that day, I looked at my bed.  It has clearly been used, moved.  The heavy base and beams are dinged and pocked, scraped and rubbed.  Who knows what love or babies or conflict or revelation, what sorrow or joy or fear or flat out, late night giggles this bed held? 

Yes, the marks are the evidence of life lived, but that metaphor is just too simple.  I'm scared of the scars and welts. I'm scared period.   People say "you are so strong..." and what I sometimes hear is "there's no damn way I could or would want to handle what you are handling."  I'd say the same thing, only I realize now, trial by fire, that when you have no choice, it only looks brave from the outside, it doesn't at all feel brave on the inside.  Is that what bravery is?  Just meeting the tasks of each day?

We were in Amsterdam a few years ago, and took a tour of the attic apartment where Anne Frank and her family hid.  There was deep silence, respect.  The line to enter the canalside home was long, and only very small groups at a time were allowed in, keeping the setting intimate, reverent, hushed.  The bookcase that hides the secret stairwell was pulled back from the wall, and we ducked our heads, then climbed steps into the admittedly cozy home that had been created in that time of terrifying, desperate need. 

I had Anne in mind, her words and thoughts, but was brought to a stop when I noticed something on a wall:  Anne and her sister, Margot's heights, marked with a dash, along with corresponding dates covering the time they lived in the attic.  Nearly every household with children I know has those very marks on some corner, some door.  I have searched online, there are many photos of the interior of the apartment, I can find none of those height markings.   Such an ordinary, extraordinary, unheralded effort.

It is also evidence of hope and reassurance.  Sunlight did stream in sharp, narrow slices through a window.  Edith and Otto Frank still caught sight of their beautiful girls; and in the context of possible loss we not only love but love with such aching intensity that the world where we have the option and opportunity to love like that cannot feel to be anything but a blessing.

You would think that Anne and Margot's mom would simply be too overwhelmed with the literal chance of life and death that she met every single day she woke in that attic to tend details like that.  But it doesn't work that way.  Courage can be tending to the tiniest details as best you can through the low constant thrum of worry, with a near constant drive to just figure your way through.

I don't feel brave though, and it doesn't feel like courage.  It just feels like Tuesday.