My Great Breast Cancer Adventure

Mrs. Somers's Realization

Mrs. Somers's Realization
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Today a small masterpiece, a sinuous path among the poppies, drew Mrs. Somers along. (She lived for the heat of the sun, although she didn't know it.).

Some people will travel to the farthest ends of the earth in search of miracles and mystery, but Mrs. Somers dressed herself each morning and, after her toast, when the little teapot clock over her oven said nine a.m., was more than content to steal away no farther than a block (or two or three) around the neighborhood.

Her morning walks were but a tiny bite taken out of the day, yet they kept her going. She felt pulled along by the stalwart presence of city flowers that persevered without fail, all year long, despite the toxic fumes and inhospitable slabs of asphalt and cement. It was interesting.

This morning she passed by the hard stone wall that abutted the yard of her elderly Asian neighbor whose multi-voweled name she could never seem to remember. Then she followed the poppy-edged path that wound around the hill at the end of her street and reminded her, with surprisingly great force, that life went along its meandering way even when you could no longer please your husband in bed and, come to think of it, probably never had.

Margaret's Torrent

Margaret's Torrent
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Margaret lived in a one-room studio apartment. Every day after work she came home and did predictable things. Hung up her red jacket. Turned the thermostat to sixty-eight degrees. Opened the refrigerator and stared at the bag of eczema'd baby carrots.

When the weekends arrived she allowed herself to see every step forward as a step into the unknown. She pondered her most secret eggs while lying in hot patches of sunlight, or went for long walks in search of tree trunks that curved back toward the ground. Or, better yet, she searched for nothing.

During her walks she clung to a small new camera that was rapidly becoming her antidote to life's wide array of disappointments, ugly run-ins with her own perfectionism, and the steadily ongoing demise of her most precious illusions.

One day, surrounded by a few really beautiful hours and an unexpected burst of rain, she stood on a revelatory street corner as a monsoon of euphoric intuition swept through her forehead chakra. All thoughts and words rushed out the soles of her feet and into the gutter.


 

Enough

"Enough," she said. "Stop thinking so much. A dash of nutmeg, a pinch of cinnamon. It doesn't have to be perfect." She put the cigarette back between her lips and took a drag.

His memory of barbed wire receded. Whatever happened would happen with the banana bread. Cynni was right. Cynni the tatooed, banana-bread baking biker chick was right on. Nothing had to be perfect.

His cheeks were sunken and his hair was in need of a trim, but even so, he felt as if the kitchen was glowing, and him right along with it.

The Test

The stone wall of the church scraped hard against her back. Her knees bent, her bones too near the surface, she bit down on her lower lip, wanting to be sick to her stomach as he pressed up against her.

"Stop that," she said.

The nasty scar that was nestled into the right side of his face widened with his grin. Her courage fell down into the white satin hem around her feet.

"Stop what? What is that you want me to stop, my sweet wife?" 

"Stop making those sounds when you kiss me."

"Sounds?" He took a step back, although his hands continued to caress her shoulders, her arms. His softly fringed eyes, puzzled now, searched her face. The guests were all gathering, soon to be waiting at the front steps, ready to shower them with hard little pellets of rice as they made their getaway.

She saw herself as an old woman, urine passing through her body in a catheter, and knew he would tend to her even then. The wet, smacking moistness of his love had to be a test of some kind. The threat of failure loomed.

Mrs. Somers Takes Her Daily Walk

Today a small masterpiece, a sinuous path among the poppies, drew Mrs. Somers (who lived for the heat of the sun, although she didn't know it) along.

Some people, you see, will travel to the farthest ends of the earth in search of miracles and mystery, but Mrs. Somers dressed herself each morning and, after her toast, when the little teapot clock over her oven said nine a.m., was more than content to steal away no farther than a block (or two or three) around the neighborhood.

Her morning walks were but a tiny bite taken out of the day, yet they kept her going. She felt pulled along by the stalwart presence of city flowers that persevered without fail, all year long, despite the toxic fumes and inhospitable slabs of asphalt and cement. Now wasn't that interesting?

The poppy-edged path that wound around the hill at the end of her street reminded her with surprisingly great force that life still went along its meandering way, even when you could no longer please your husband in bed and, come to think of it, probably never had.

Retrospection was not one of Mrs. Somer's strongest suits, and her realization about the reality of her sex life caught her, quite literally, between a moth and a hard stone wall that abutted the yard of the eldery Asian neighbor whose multi-voweled name she could never seem to remember.

Her married life had curiously, suddenly explained itself.

Street Corner

What she couldn't bear had come to rest on the skin of her eyelids. Passionless conversations. Routines. Her untouched core. Tossing her hair in the fine light as she walked the asphalt, she focused her eyes on decay. Ghosts of dinosaurs reared their heads from within bursts of light on glass, memories of lust lay composting in sidewalk cracks, broken hinges hung by single, dazzling screws. Peeling layers of paint, crusted rusty walls, piles of rotted flowers and leaves seized her imagination.

The man driving the bulldozer at the end of the block, whom she would meet today for the first time ever and who would, in time, join her under a woolen blanket, was intent on clearing a path, making something out of his destruction. He swerved the machine into a magnificant, jerking reverse. Cement crumbled. Bricks cracked. A sweaty steam rolled over his mind.

They veered toward one another.

The Housecleaner

She came gently to clean their house, and often stood in the dusty sunshine speaking to the young boy of ordinary things she had seen and done, things that, she said, had been stuffed too full of people.

There were turnings in her story: what she had seen in a doorway, how she had stared with pleasure at a clean swipe of blue sky, how she had denied the impulse to lean into a certain man. She had never experienced the murmurings of love, nor the accompanying gusts of grief.

He left home at eighteen, the lips of his loneliness trembling, and while he was away at college he missed her more than he did any of his friends or family.

Without him to talk to, she fell into the habit of dreaming her way backward and forward through time, which seemed to her, now, a combination of cream and stone.