Breast cancer.

These are the words I did NOT want to hear today.

I had a good day at work, and was only overcome by nerves at the thought of my upcoming appointment one time. These intrusive thoughts were quickly squashed by the hugs and support of my fellow nurses, and I left for my appointment at 1430, my mind a blank slate.

My appointment was at 1500, but I was taken back at 1530. I was placed in a small room with a door, and immediately I was apprehensive.

I know what they do with these small rooms.

I focused on my surroundings, specifically the two disturbing abstract paintings hanging above our heads. Square and white, with some faded blue green in the background, they were overlaid with cuts and smears of red.

They did not spark joy.

In short order, the beautiful young radiologist who had done my needle biopsy came in. She was as kind and as friendly as she was to me 48 hours ago, introducing herself to my husband, who was beside me with his arm around me.

Then she got down to business.

“I’m sorry…you have cancer”.

I made a concentrated effort to hear the rest.

She was so glad I got regular mammograms. This was a very tiny spot. More positive calming words.

Another woman had a folder, full of information for me to read.

In one pocket , the copy of my diagnostic imaging.

In the other, loads of information about my status as a breast cancer patient, and the potential paths ahead of me.

I had my information. Now I wanted to leave.

I walked quickly out, and my husband grabbed my hand in an attempt to stop and embrace me. I said no let’s go – I was shaking and feared I would completely fall apart.

I got outside into the bright sunny day and pulled my cell phone out. Between tears and shakes and nerves, I had a hard time dialing the number of the surgeon I wanted to do my next surgery on my breast.

Her office was kind and sympathetic, hearing the tears in my voice, and the fear that hovered over and around my words. They scheduled me for an appointment, even before any data had been transmitted, and I was strangely comforted. I was doing SOMETHING about this damn diagnosis.

We walked to our separate cars, and I doubted my ability to drive. After a few minutes of sitting in his car, I got into mine, and began following him home.

I don’t remember the drive.

I made the calls to my mom. My children. My best friends.

I was reassured. I reassured. I cried.

I cried some more.

Then I came home and decorated the Christmas tree with my husband and son.

Last week I had a series of medical tests.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll get a definitive answer.

In the mean time, I’ve been in the in between.

In between hope and fear.

In between past and future.

It’s uncomfortable.

As I drove to work today, my biopsy site throbbing with pain, I counted my blessings.

I also fought off doubts.

I realized that we are all in the in between.

We start when we are born, and when we die, we go to our permanent rest.

As a born again believer, I know I’m going on to eternal life in heaven. No more pain, tears, or illness.

In this great in between that is life, this is just a footnote.

When I expand my microscope to a telescope, I take my eyes off a biopsy, and look to the heavens instead.

It’s where my help comes from – my help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.

Until tomorrow, I remain in the dark.

It’s been a rough week.

I’m still waiting for a needle biopsy after a suspicious mammogram.

Work has been…well, let’s just say dynamic.

My asthma is flaring.

It’s been torrentially raining all day, and it’s a weekend day.

Etc.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a Bible study about joy.

Before my mammogram, the study was a challenge that I have read with interest and insight.

Now I’m trying not to read too much into it.

The author was a recent breast cancer survivor as she was writing the book.

I was putting up my Christmas mantle ornaments tonight, and the “joy” decoration fell down and broke in two.

Yes, my joy is broken.

I’m struggling.

It’s amazing how quickly everything could change.

I’m still praying that it won’t. That it’s nothing.

In the mean time, I’ll keep decorating my house for Christmas and listening to classic songs of the season.

As to joy…well, we shall see.

I’m here again.

In the waiting room at the breast center, called back for a suspicious finding.

It’s been three years since my last call back – but it isn’t any easier.

Tinned 70’s music is playing out of the ceiling. The clay colored decor is broken up only by magenta half gowns on a table, and a five foot tall Christmas tree, decorated in sparkly pink and gold ornaments, and topped with a bow to match.

I’ve had my screening mammogram, and I’m back to repeat.

I know the next words coming will bring exceeding relief, or fear. Maybe even terror.

Working as an RN, I know so many stories. I’ve seen them, from the best case scenarios to the worst.

I just want to have an “everything is okay, thanks for coming back”.

I wait. Play sudoku. My phone is on “do not disturb”.

I’m disturbed.

I’m escorted back for a more intense mammogram. I hope this will be the test that reveals I’m fine.

It’s not.

The tech comes out and tells me in a hushed voice that the radiologist “wants to see an ultrasound”.

My heart is racing.

I update my people.

I’m called back for the ultrasound.

I’m trying not to read too much into the sonographer’s mannerisms. She’s nice – but not too nice. Kind, but is it in a pitying way?

I lay on the sheet draped table, my feet and ankles awkwardly hanging over the end. I bend my knees and draw them in.

I close my eyes and sing a hymn in my mind. I don’t dare look, because I know too much…and I don’t know enough.

I’m asked to put my arm over my head, and I’m a ballerina again, reminded of my childhood, and 14 years of ballet lessons. I imagine myself at the barre instead of here.

Anywhere but here.

She spends a lot more time taking pictures.

She’s scanning my sentinel node area.

Lord, let this please just be her bring thorough.

All the types of the C word I know are running through my mind.

Please, God, no.

She tells me to sit and cover myself back up.

This is the ultimate in agonizing waiting.

She’s at the computer, typing in data. I know my images are probably on the screen, and I refuse to look. I’m thinking of my favorite surgeon, and hoping I don’t have to call her soon.

The tech answers a call from the radiologist, who’s high, disembodied voice goes on and on, directing her.

I keep my eyes closed.

I tell her that it’s moments like this that I wish I wasn’t a nurse. We make small talk about my job, and then she lets it slip that “it’s 3mm so it’s hard to find just the right spot to image”.

Now I know.

Now I want it absolutely identified – so it can be eradicated

Another ultrasound. More pictures. I imagine myself floating.

Then the next call confirms what I already know – I’ve “bought myself a biopsy”.

We schedule it. She explains the outpatient needle biopsy procedure.

My husband is on his feet before I hit the waiting room. We embrace for a long time, then walk out, hand in hand

And now we wait.

My Mama is a very good cook.

She has no classical training.

She was born in the South, raised in the South, and cooks Southern.

She’s cooked everything from scratch my whole life…with the exception of when my dad was on temporary duty in the military. Then it was pizza, hotdogs, and rarely, fast food!

Her crowning glory is Thanksgiving dinner! Her side dishes steal the show. Cornbread dressing made from scratch from dried bread and fresh corn bread,, white gravy with egg, fresh cranberry relish,snapped green beans cooked with fat back, and pumpkin pie. Alternately, we’d also have pecan pie, too.

For many years, she made very good sweet potatoes.

As soon as I could reach the stove, my mother started teaching me how to cook. Inevitably, I learned how to make the Southern treasured recipes that she passed down to me.

I’ve held fast and true to the methods and recipes that are ingrained in my soul, but not written down anywhere else.

A couple of decades ago, I decided to change the way I made the sweet potatoes.

Instead of cooking the sweet potatoes in a sauce, I started drizzling a sauce over the top of the sweet potatoes.

The sauce itself has changed and morphed into something really quite spectacular. So much so, my mother has stopped making sweet potatoes and I have taken over.

Every year I think I could do it a little bit better. This year, I browned the butter first.

I finally may have reached the pinnacle.

We shall see tomorrow!

I came home from a busy day working as an RN, and was turning on the oven to preheat even as I was putting away my nursing bag and taking off my shoes.

I grabbed the first thing a saw – a bunch of quickly deteriorating bananas. I methodically made 2 loaves of banana bread.

My husbands said we’ve got to eat dinner, why are you doing this now?

At the moment, I honestly didn’t have an answer that made sense. I said the bananas were overripe.

They’d be that way for hours. Another day, even.

I needed to comfort myself, though. Even though I knew I wasn’t going to eat but a small test slice, I was preparing this gift of sweet breads for my family and coworkers.

As I took a breath when the loaves went into the oven, I began to tell my husband about the call I had been on right before I got home.

Barb had a heart attack that morning.

In a panic, I had called her son – one of my oldest best friends – as soon as I got the word.

When I as 14, I met Barb – and she was an extra mother in my life for decades now.

Hysterically funny, she and I laughed and laughed over the years with her son.

As I grew into adulthood, she became even more important to me – she became a mentor, someone who gave me advice, and eventually someone to commiserate with about being a grandmother. She has quite literally walked with me from being a teenager to being a grandmother.

My frantic rush to bake yesterday was a coping mechanism.

I needed to make something and share it.

I didn’t realize how badly I was affected by the news until the loaves hit the oven.

As soon as they did, I was sobbing like a baby.

It never crossed my mind that I could lose her. We live on separate coasts and don’t talk as frequently, but I love her fiercely. She’s knit into the fabric of my life like very few people are.

As I smeared the tears over my face and sobbed out the story to my husband, it hit me that I was stress baking.

Banning the ability to go to her, I was baking for others.

As I write this, the report so far has been good.

In the mean time, I added a browned sugar glaze to the top of the loaves at 10pm last night.

I’m still unsettled.

I was on the beach, on one of the most beautiful islands in the Caribbean.

We were there to relax under an umbrella, rising to snorkel, swimming lazily, gliding over rocks, coral, and the occasional sea turtle.

The tide proved to be strong this day. Despite wearing flippers on my feet, my arms and legs could not keep up with the force of the ocean.

Exhausted, I fought my way back to the shore, and flopped back down on my chair.

Not for long. It was hot, and I was restless.

Rising, I walked along the shoreline. Many people were looking for shells, but I spotted a cool green shadow among the pebbles that rolled with the tide.

Sea glass.

I picked it up, amazed to have found it for the first time in the wild.

As I ran my fingers over and over the surface, I was amazed at how smooth it was.

It had started whole.

Formerly trash, it had been smashed into countless small pieces, tumbled and formed by the sea, sand, and rocks.

It had been battered.

It had been cast aside.

Now, in the palm of my hand, it felt warm, soft, and comforting.

The clear, colored shards were now opaque and smooth, hiding the story that got them there.

There were many more outcasts littering the beach that day, and I took a few to remind me of this tropical beach.

The rough tide.

Most of all, to remind me of what happens when we let go and let what happens…happen.

Beauty from glasses.

I’m working on a new book – it’s called “Hand to Dog”, is a humorous, non-fiction account of our relationship to our dogs over the years.

I’ll have sneak preview once I’ve gotten further in – I’m just putting my title out there!

Paul Reubens, known as Pee Wee Herman, died today.

This news came with a rush of sadness for me.

“Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” was his big cinematic hit, and it debuted in 1985. I never saw it in theaters.

I was a young mother of one, and by 1988, my first love was dead, and I was a struggling single mom.

A VHS copy of this movie was in my home, and my young son wore that movie out.

Every day, day after day, my toddler son watched this movie over and over, until both of us had most of the dialogue memorized.

He would act out his favorite scenes, with the timing in sync with the screen.

Every time the “Large Marge” scene came on, he would run and hide, terrified of the truck cab scene he knew was coming.

Over the years we would still answer each other with lines from the movie, or with the signature Pee Wee laugh. Even my dad would get involved in the shenanigans. It is woven in our family memories – happy, silly times.

I can see my son standing in front of the TV, acting, laughing, full of joy.

Today is a bittersweet day.

I think I’m going to see if I can find the movie on a streaming service and watch it today.

I know you are, but what am I. Infinity.

Every summer is hot, but this summer is one for the books.

It’s late afternoon and I let the dogs out – as I open the back porch door, I smell the Weber grill. Grease, propane, and the scent of memories of grilled food flood my nose. The grill is red, and it’s hot in the afternoon sun.

The heat index is triple digits.

The air is like a heavy blanket on my asthmatic lungs, smothering me. The tropical plants are drawn in or wilting, fresh from this morning’s watering. I’ll have to soak them down again if rain doesn’t come.

Big, luscious hibiscus blooms have turned into crisp, papery discs, ready to be pressed in books. “Ode To Summer.”

The dogs skirt the concrete, keeping their pads off a surface you can fry an egg on. No lingering to smell or sniffing around for squirrels.

They rush back into the house, and the a/c, and I thank God for its coolness. The slow, sultry breeze outside does nothing to comfort. It only carries the suffering in air form.

I peer out the window and see the high clouds in the blurry summer sky.

I hate thunderstorms, but we need relief.

Let it rain!