Ordinarily, I carry the novel I’m working on in my head everywhere I go. Now, it seems lost somewhere in a dark corner of my cranial cavity. I can’t find it. And damn it, it’s a time in my life when I really need it! I need a distraction from my reality. At least a break, now and then…something to cool off my feelings, my sadness, my fear.
There’s only a few days left before my wife’s surgery, bilateral mastectomy. Why do I feel like stealing her away on a round-the-world trip, instead of being grateful we live in a place where she can get good medical care. I didn’t put a question mark on that last sentence because the question is rhetorical. The fact is, I hold both thoughts in my head with equal conviction, equal weight, equal distress.
We both got our mammograms on the same day. When we were leaving the medical facility, I remember thinking that if one of us had to have a malignancy, I hoped it would be me. I didn’t want my wife to have to go through yet another cancer. Not only that, if a mastectomy was in store, I could handle it better than she. It wouldn’t bother me as much, probably wouldn’t bother me at all—other than the fact that I had cancer.
When I was a kid, starting to develop, I was upset; not only were my breast developing, they were getting too big; something most girls wished for; something I did not.
So, I bound my breasts.
I didn’t want boys to see me as a girl, instead of a good athlete, one of the first to be picked for any team. Not only that, my boobs just didn’t seem relevant. Still don’t…
But, I love my wife’s breasts.
And I hate how bad she feels losing them. I hate how bad I’m feeling that they’ll be gone.
(To read about where you find yourself on the way to somewhere else, scroll down to: “Something Moved My Cheese.”)