My friend Laura is on her way to some muggy Southern state to grade AP papers. For one week she reads essays submitted by eager high school students hoping to earn a few college credits without paying for them. She's stuck in a room with other teachers desperate for the extra money.
Last night and this morning she called me about birds she's seen. She saw two bald eagles cavorting in the air above the ocean and she was hoping that meant she shouldn't get on the plane. This morning she saw a raven flying, which she also thought might be a sign to not get on the plane. She calls me whenever she sees birds; pelicans (she lives on the coast) eagles, ravens, robins, bluebirds, crows and blackbirds. She thinks they mean SOMETHING and she also thinks that since I'm about one-one thousandth Hupa, I should know what they mean. (I'm actually more than one-one thousandth, but you get my point.) Basically Laura thinks birds mean something when she doesn't want to do something. Like read one thousand essays in a hotel conference room surrounded by women who wear pink cashmere sweaters accessorized by pearls and men who are drunk on cynicism.
Last week I went in to get my mammogram; not inspired by any birds I'd seen, but inspired by my friend Zena who called to remind me to get one. I'm usually pretty good about things like that; I keep up on the dentist and the well-women checkups and I get my car's oil changed every 5,000 miles. But I haven't had a mammogram in three years; don't ask me how the time slipped by, it just did. And of course I'm being punished by my laxness by the discovery of a mass.
The mammogram specialists calls me two days after my first one and the first words out of her mouth were, "Now, don't be nervous, we'd just like to get another mammogram. Today. As soon as possible." Hmm, it's hard not to be nervous with those opening words. Plus, my personality tends to be a little dramatic (my husband might says it's really, really dramatic,) so already I've placed myself in the hospital with various faceless surgeons cutting into me.
So I went over that morning and yes, there is an unknown presence in my breast which I'm having to go back again and have more tests before faceless surgeons cut into me. The ultrasound specialist says, "Aren't we lucky we live so close to Denver and some of the best hospitals in the world?" That was supposed to be reassuring, but it wasn't.
What's weird about the whole thing is that evening Mike and I were at a BBQ and the talk turns to breast cancer (I have no idea how the conversation veered that way) and out of the five women there, three were breast cancer survivors. One said she finally got the perky breasts she always wanted, one said she finally got rid of the breasts she always hated.
It's a scary, scary thought and since I prefer to live in Gina-Land, I'm trying to not think about it and let my imagination run wild but like Laura, I keep seeing signs. The women at the BBQ, my friend Zena calling me to remind me and then this morning my son Ian, who is spending the night at a friend's, called and left me a message that he wants me to pick him up as early as possible (this from a kid who never wants to come home) because he's worried about me. Ian knows nothing about this.
The day is gorgeous and so far no wind, so I'm heading out to go riding and I hope I don't see any birds.
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