38/2021
I got my yearly mammogram yesterday. A routine thing, yes, but also a loaded thing. Breast cancer surrounds me — this friend is undergoing treatment for it, that one was just diagnosed, an acquaintance is battling it for the second time, someone dear to me died from it this year, my grandmother had it, my mother might’ve developed it but I don’t know — it’s scary, to say the least, to think about going in year after year only to ask beforehand, “Is this going to be the one?” I have always had a sense of foreboding about it, as if my breasts are ticking time bombs. Since I became a mother that sense has only increased. As someone who lost her mother at an early age, I can become fixated on the idea that I will leave my son too early, so much so that I wrote a piece about it called “The Breath,” for my new book about getting a bad result from a mammogram a few years ago.
Women who lose their mothers at young ages are petrified by the idea of their own mortality when regarding their children’s lives. My mama died when I was fourteen. With her went my anchor, my sense of safety in the world, and my home. I cringe when I think of my son feeling the way I did then, the way I still do, even now. I want him to know he will always belong to someone, to someone who will always be there. How I long for control over that part more than I long for control over any part of this and it’s the kind that’s absolutely unattainable. Damn it. I can’t leave him. I have to do everything I can think of to ensure my own safety here now because I have to make sure he’s okay, that he has what he needs, that no one harms him. I have lists of things to make sure of for him! The knowledge that I will leave him too early, just like my mama left me, bangs around in my brain like a hateful ghost. Though I try so hard not to, I will fail him. Chances are I won’t outlive him. The possibility that I could is another, even more unwelcome vision.
Oh, the things we put ourselves through. I do hold on tight. I do cross my fingers. I do try to find my breath. And at the end of all that I know what will be will be, but I pray that it will be okay for us just a little bit longer every single year. Just a little bit longer. Then I remind myself that all anyone gets is just a little bit. And the more I know that, the more I can let go and be the mama my son deserves for as long as I’m supposed to be according to how it’s subscribed in the stars. We’re not in control of such things.
However, please don’t forget to get your mammogram. We may not have control, but we can do what we can.
Sending love everywhere,
AM
For me, achieving the age she took her life and passing it was a miracle to me. I still silently mark each birthday past her ultimate year.
And yes: I do take the care I wish she’d given herself to live beyond her allotment (sometimes somewhat guiltily) for our son.
I put off my mammogram last year. Next week I am scheduled to have one. Although breast cancer isn't in my family, I sometimes worry that all of the many pesticides I was exposed to as a child growing up in a farming community in the country's top ag county will affect my health. I remember crop dusting planes spraying fields next to my elementary school as we played on the playground. And that same elementary school tested positive in the 80s for DBCP, a pesticide banned in the 60s. All I can do is take a deep breath and let my worries go. I'll do that every time they come back.