Incompatible with Life

I miss my right breast. There, I said it. It’s not often that I allow myself that luxury. It’s been nearly twelve years since I had it. My late breast was warm and soft, lovely really, even if it was a shave smaller than its mate, and parting with it saddened me deeply. I could say that I lost my breast, but that would imply that there was some remote possibility of getting it back. It’s more accurate to say that I removed it for medical reasons, and replaced it for cosmetic ones. If I had known how much the laborious process of reconstruction would hurt, I would have taken a pass on the effort. When the plastic surgeon explained the process of stretching that would precede placement of the actual implant, it did not occur to me that post-surgical skin might rebel against this strain on its capacity. However, once you’ve committed to the risk, you need to see it through to the reward, which is exactly what I did. I tolerated the pain for the eventual trophy—a cohesive sili...

Race for the Cure 2010, one month post-chemo. Yesterday marked six years from the day that I received the call telling me that the pathology report from my surgery four days earlier was in, and confirmed that I had cancer…for the second time. It was late in the day, as afternoon gave way to evening, its subtle waning light foreshadowing sunset. I remember marveling at the idea that my surgeon was still at work, reviewing reports and delivering verdicts, at such an hour.  It was spring break for me. I'd scheduled the surgery on the Monday after Easter so that I wouldn't have to take time off for it and, when the call came, I had just returned home from a run which, in hindsight, was either evidence of extremely poor judgment or the strength of my ability to ignore and deny the facts. I sat on the porch, cordless phone to my ear, furiously scribbling notes as I absorbed the news. It didn’t pack the same shock value as the first time I’d received this diagnosis, m...

Sammy and I make an annual trip to the floral shop down the street on the day before Easter to pick up something for Anna. We always decorate her grave for Easter, and have already placed a palm cross and added silk irises beside the headstone. However, the Easter Bunny doesn’t visit the cemetery and we hate for Anna to be left out, so we leave flowers on Easter to make sure Anna knows we miss her. And there’s something about fresh blooms that celebrates the promise of the resurrection. Sammy is a discerning and opinionated shopper who takes the lead on these missions. Perusing the selection of long stemmed roses in the cooler, she quickly dismissed the peach and red and fuchsia-rimmed yellow, and picked out the pale pink spray roses. “How many?” the clerk asked. “How many?” I repeated, nudging Sammy to make the decision. “I don’t know…seven?” “Seven?” It seemed like an unusual number. “Seven. I don’t know how many to get, but I like the number seven.” ...

A fundamental truth of pregnancy and infant loss is that a mother blames herself. It doesn’t matter what the doctors and nurses say to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault—that it was nobody’s fault—she believes at the deepest part of her being that she caused her baby’s death. All around her she sees other women who have delivered their perfectly healthy babies with ease. Her awareness of having been singled out for the agonizing fate of loss is compounded every time she realizes that she is the only mom in the room who didn’t get to keep her baby. The broken record of prenatal admonitions screeches in her head. If only she’d exercised more, or eaten better, or been able to keep those horse pill vitamins down, or prayed harder…She ponders what she could have done to deserve such disaster. She wonders if God hates her.   Her shame is a secret so dark and deep, so powerful, that it drives her sorrow underground. To publicly display her grief would expose the magnitud...

I have a confession to make, one that seemingly meets the criteria of a mundane mid-life crisis: I love what I do, but I hate my job. I’m a kindergarten teacher by trade. I adore children—always have, always will—and have a natural affinity for the littlest learners. I enjoy watching their growth across a school year, the way they come in green and fresh as newly planted seeds at the start, and leave my classroom as saplings stretching toward the infinite sky of knowledge and understanding. I hate the metrics that are used to define my students’ performance (and my own). I loathe the over-reliance on a narrow band of assessment measures that ignores the intangibles of student growth and extinguishes the joy of learning. I resent seeing children reduced to numbers on a grid in the name of data-based decision-making. I cherish the time I spend with my students in the Zone of Proximal Development. I thrive on the everyday teachable moments that enable me to coach into my stud...

It's Valentine's Day. My husband is working today, not that we would have had plans to do anything special. It is, for us, just another weekend, simple and ordinary. Both of us are more pragmatic than romantic in nature. The one time I sent Scott a bouquet, he sold it to a co-worker who'd just had a blow-out with his girlfriend and needed a make-up gift. He did take me out to dinner with the proceeds of the sale, but the writing was on the wall. We would not be a couple who showered each other with sentimental tokens of love. My career path into the kindergarten classroom has ensured a steady stream of gifts and goodies, so I haven't missed out. Every year I am inundated with boxes of chocolates and valentines filled with sweet expressions of the undying affection of my five- and six-year-old friends. I rather enjoy this innocent side of the holiday. Racy lingerie and dirty talk are not my forte. Hand-scrawled hearts and messages of unconditional love and accept...

Two years ago a postcard advertising a personal trainer certification program arrived in my mailbox. It wasn’t a particularly noteworthy event, except that instead of throwing it immediately into the recycling bin, I held onto it. And began to do a little research into exactly what the certification process would entail. I couldn’t imagine how I would use said credential, yet the idea of adding personal trainer to my resume nagged at me like an itchy bug bite. I mentioned it to my sister…who promptly agreed to enroll in the program with me. After several months of discomfiting study that filled us both with fears of inadequacy, we completed the coursework. All that remained was the certification exam. My sister went first, early in the morning, and I followed suit on the same day, albeit after lunch. We both passed with flying colors. A few months later we attended our first “Fit Fest,” a weekend of workshops meant to build our skills and knowledge. We were at a distinct d...

I’ve been nursing a lingering cough since before Christmas. At first I didn’t think too much of it. I’d caught the upper respiratory virus that circulated through my kindergarten classroom, but after suffering through a few feverish nights and a week of congestion, all that remained was a mild residual cough. It stayed with me through the holidays. By mid-January my patience was waning. Any attempt at physical exertion left me winded, which hampered my daily exercise habit, which increased my stress level, which made me reach for comfort food...you get the picture. I found myself shivering in the evenings, unable to get warm enough, which was unusual for my hot-flashy self. Yes it was colder than normal outside, but I was chilled to the bone. Until I went to bed, at which point I started sweating like Frosty in a greenhouse. My frustration came to a head last weekend. Tired of being tired and sick, I dragged myself to Urgent Care. The doctor thought my lungs sounded clear,...

I was introduced to the concept of choosing a focus word for the New Year by a dear friend who was participating in the One Little Word scrap-booking challenge. I did eventually sign up, but abandoned ship after the first month when I realized that my capacities and supplies for creating visual art of any form were limited. The idea of selecting a word to grow into over the course of the year stuck with me, though, and I’ve continued the practice. As the old year closes, I pick a word that speaks to me—a word that embodies a change I need to make or something I’d like to expand in my life. I always make a collage of magazine photos and text that exemplify that trait or concept. The collage isn’t exactly a vision board, just a cut-and-paste visual reminder of my word. I hang it in a place of honor in my bathroom—don’t laugh, that idea came from a licensed therapist—where I see it often enough to prod my mind into remembering it. The first year I tried it, my word was SHINE. I’d...

Silent night Holy night All is calm All is bright Hospital bed Middle of night Doctors and nurses Witness the plight Round yon virgin Mother and child Holy infant So tender and mild Tiny blue babe Fights for each breath Mother and father Await her death Sleep in heavenly peace Sleep in heavenly peace.

It was eight o’clock when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I called to Scott, who was otherwise occupied with carting in armful after armful of holiday loot from the car and dumping it under the artificial fir tree in our foyer.  This brief sojourn at home was the midpoint in our annual Christmas Eve tour of gorging and gifting. Having finished a traditional holiday dinner at my mom’s, we’d stopped at the house just long enough to unload the current batch of presents and let the dog out before hopping back into the car for the next round of merriment at my sister’s.  I opened the door and there, on our front porch, stood Santa Claus, flanked by a sullen pair of teenagers in green and red elf hats who were clearly mortified to be spending the night before Christmas trailing their dressed-up dad as he canvassed the neighborhood for young believers.  He must have been a neighbor, but I didn’t recognize the face under the beard and—I’ve got to admit—I felt a lit...

Our 2006 Christmas photo, two months after Anna's death. One of the hardest parts of losing a baby is the wondering. A stream of questions without discernible answers emerges in the wake of loss. Who would this child be? What would he or she be like? What parts of family temperaments would have merged to create his or hers? What would family life be like if this little member had lived? Which of this child’s interests and talents would we be supporting as parents? And, conversely, which of his or her quirks would be driving us berserk? These are the questions that creep up on me in the middle of ordinary days and haunt me in the dead of night. When I lost my youngest daughter, I lost any semblance of the future I’d planned. My sugar-candy former life dissolved into a murky puddle of grit, gratitude, and grief. What appears clear on the surface—even now, years later—is muddied and dark at its depths. One of the ways I cope with sadness is by imagining what life would be...

Loss takes many forms--the loss of a job, the loss of health, the loss of a loved one. Every year, we are reminded that the holidays magnify loss. Yet as we approach the holiday season, much as we’d like to provide support, many of us wrestle with how to reach out to a grieving friend or family member. We imagine that by acknowledging their pain, we'll somehow reopen the wound or destroy a mourner's fragile peace. We're afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, or worse yet, being rebuffed for our efforts. It's not as difficult as it seems to provide support to someone who is suffering. All it takes is the willingness to put ourselves in their shoes. Thoughtful consideration of how we would want to be treated if we were in their position enables us to plan a course of action. If I were living with chronic, life-altering illness or injury, would I feel up to steaming full speed ahead into the usual hustle and bustle of the holidays? How would I reconcile my...

I had a disappointment last week. I’d submitted my book to an indie writing contest and the winners were to be notified by Thursday. I didn’t get the notification. It’s not that I expected to win. Wait, scratch that. My disappointment indicates that indeed, on some level, I did expect some kind of recognition. Maybe I wasn’t expecting to take the grand prize, but I was hoping for at least an honorable mention. Acknowledging that was the first step in being able to let it go. Once I recognized my expectations as a cry for validation, I saw them clearly as a self-imposed burden of proof meant to silence the inner critic who keeps raising doubts about my writing talents. My disappointment wasn’t about the quality of my work—it was about my need to prove myself. What I am learning—slowly, painfully, and inevitably the hard way—is that disappointment is an inside job, rooted in my expectation of how the events in my life are supposed to turn out. I keep slapping my preconceived...

Now that the thirty-one days of Pinktober have passed, I feel safe enough to vent a bit of frustration with the whole breast cancer awareness movement.  Don’t get me wrong—I recognize that fund-raising is a necessary underpinning of medical research, and I appreciate societal commitments to eradicating disease. It’s just that I’m not sure there’s anyone in America who is unaware of breast cancer, and it seems that more and more companies are skipping the altruism part and going pink strictly for profit. Despite the tidal wave of pinktastic merchandise that floods October to amp up awareness, breast cancer continues to be diagnosed and, more disturbingly, to claim lives.  Current research suggests that the emphasis on early detection has backfired, leading many women through unnecessary treatments for cancers that were never going to become invasive. However, the body of medicine remains confounded on how to predict and prevent metastatic breast...

Why? For parents of pre-schoolers, it’s the most vexing of questions. For those in the throes of the mercurial challenges of life, it’s the most perplexing. There is no sufficient or reasonable rationale for why bad things happen to good people, or for why fate smiles upon those who seem to thrive on exploitation of others. There’s no rational explanation for why some moms and dads are blessed with copious numbers of healthy children, while other would-be parents are denied even one. Or why one person lives to be 100, outliving everyone they know by twenty years, while a young child dies in a tragic accident. Why does a tornado bear down on one block while leaving the next untouched? Why, for that matter, is one baby born into poverty and another into affluence? And why do the squeaky wheels always get the grease while the quiet ones—no less in need of lubrication—are totally ignored? It’s tempting to attribute another’s misfortune (or your own good fortune) to fat...