We have just passed the summer solstice, which means, although school only let out a week ago, the world is moving toward fall, but it takes a calendar to convince me of that because light slips from our days so incrementally, we are unaware of its passing.
Then there’s this. I’ve noticed lately that when a friend brings up a mutual acquaintance neither of us has heard from in a while, our first response to the mystery of how that friend might be doing is a pause… and then a cautious, “Do you think he’s dead?” Followed by a bit of squeamish laughter at how ridiculous that is, and an immediate disclaimer, “I meant, ‘Retired! Do you think he’s retired?’” even as one of us is googling, “Fred Smith Obit.”
So many significant lines we cross are incremental or invisible. Summer to fall, story to backstory. So many changes within our own bodies are invisible until they aren’t, like conception, like the moment healthy cells go rogue.
You get your first mammogram, for instance, when you are 36 so we all remember what normal looks like. That is the first time the warm hands of a stranger position your body against a tilted metal plate jabbing a mean corner into your ribs while a vise is lowered, and just like in labor, discomfort breezes right on by your acceptable-pain threshold. You cling there, until the tech says, “Don’t breathe!” and a machine whirls over your head like a satellite scanning a planet for life.
Breathe.
Then, years later, the test becomes annual, and that’s cool until you come home from work one Friday afternoon and discover six messages have been left urging you to call your doctor immediately because the radiologist has seen something that needs a closer look.
Only it’s Friday afternoon in Margaritaville, and you’re just gonna have to sit with that little challenge to your sanity through the entire weekend.
Back at the radiologist’s office the following week, after 48 hours of bargaining with God, you wear your gold earrings with the little angels embossed on them because your dead mother gave them to you, so maybe they are a direct line to miracles, and you are feeling like you could really use one right about now.
You slip into the cotton gown again and are led to the sonogram room, passing the imaging cameras where this all began, and the cubicle-like changing closets where other women await their fate.
The tech tells you to climb up on the table and lie down, and you do your very best climbing and your very best lying down as if by being the most precise and polite patient in the world, the tech will like you, the spirits-that-be will like you, and this will affect the outcome of your exam.
Raise your right arm over your head. The tech brushes your hair off your shoulder. She runs a smooth knob over your breast, not looking at you but at the screen. Like automatic writing with her eyes closed. What will the message be?
Don’t breathe.
Was I breathing?
She leaves the room then, and you stare up at the ceiling where an interior designer, a woman, no doubt, has replaced one of the fiberglass ceiling panels with a back-lit image of a sunny blue sky and white cottony clouds. You know it is fake; that it’s not really the sky, but you love that picture. It’s quite beautiful; it’s a spring day in that panel, and you love the kind soul who knew you would need it, and your thoughts rise like doves, like hope, to fly up into those clouds, and you thank the artist who gave you the sky and the doctor who budgeted for it.
There is a three-word psychological technique called affect labeling—the three words wedge space between you and your current emotions. You are not your feelings; this reminds you. For instance, you don’t say, “I’m angry”; you say, “This is anger.” You don’t say “I’m sad”; you say, “This is grief.”
The tech returns with the radiologist in tow.
“This is fear,” you tell yourself. Only there is no distance.
This is fear, and I’m afraid.
The doctor smiles at you, says hello, and tells you it’s okay to put your arm down. It was still raised because fear is infantilizing, and no one gave you permission to lower it. You have been lying there like a good student waiting to be called upon, not because you have an answer but because you have a question. You are, in fact, only a question. No other part of you exists.
“This is anxiety.”
I am worried.
The doctor is so pretty. You have seen her before. She is leaving for the beach today after work. She takes a look at the screen and says, “Oh, that’s nothing. See these shadows here? She points at the screen for the tech’s benefit. ”That’s normal, just a benign cyst. Could even go away.”
This is grace.
It feels like love.
And you thank your mother, your angel earrings, the designer of the sky, and your good fortune to live in a world where your health is supported by a 15-minute appointment, five minutes from your house.
Summer is far from over, but like everything, it will end. You remind yourself that these diminishing days remain the longest days of the year.
This is mercy.
I am grateful.
Breathe.
