LUMPY MIRACLES

M4 has slid into place with hardly a whimper.

I will never get over how one minute they're just a wriggling mass kicking at their Mommy's ribcage and then, PLOP! Here they are…a living, breathing, sweet-smelling lump of love that you could never imagine living without.

My highest goal in life right now is to make him grin.  At anything...the ceiling, the light...hopefully, at me.

 

I struggle for words to tell him all he needs to know about this amazing life he has inherited. Even though he clearly shows signs of being the SMARTEST BABY EVER, he's not talking yet.  So for now, we communicate telepathically. Our conversations go something like this:

MiMi: Hey there, Baby Marcus...welcome to our big, round, wet, overcrowded ball.

M4: Hey, MiMi. Whaddya call this place?

MiMi: We call it 'home', and it takes a little getting used to. There is much to learn about surviving on this strange planet, but don't worry. We'll teach you everything you need to know.

M4: Gee thanks, MiMi. But all I really want to know is this: where did that pretty lady with the milk jugs go?

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Speaking of boobs...

Smack in the midst of grandbabies dropping from the sky, I managed to convince myself that I had breast cancer.

Seriously.

Just before our 35th anniversary trip to Dallas, I felt a strange lump. I tried to blow it off and enjoy the trip, but while cheering on the Texas Rangers, I felt a sharp *snap*  under my breast.  Right there in the Rangers Ballpark, amongst tens of thousands of fans, the underwire in my bra broke apart...ON THE SAME SIDE AS THE LUMP!!! It completely weirded me out. I took it as a sign, tossed out the rest of my Diet DP and resumed cheering with my left arm only.

When we got back home, I promptly called my doc who set me up for a diagnostic mammogram. In the meantime, I imagined all the ways my life would be changed when the doctor said those three words I have always expected to hear, "You Have Cancer". 

I didn't tell anyone about The Cancer. I didn't even buy a new bra to replace my broken one. Why bother?

I was amazingly brave and spectacularly stoic...until I wasn't.

The night before my mammogram, everything came rushing out and spewed onto the Dickman in one big messy pile of emo-vomit.

It had been a bad day of dealing with a rude patient, running out of Fritos before running out of bean dip, fires in Colorado...you get the picture. Poor, unwitting Dickman came through the door and asked something completely inane like, “Did you use my razor to shave your armpits again?”

And I exploded.

“You are so selfish and inconsiderate and I PROBABLY HAVE BREAST CANCER!!”

[Poor guy. Nothing in life prepared him for Menopausal Robin. Nothing in life prepared ME for Menopausal Robin.]

The Dickman was scared sh*tless. Or at least he acted as though he was. (I strongly suspect that when I wasn't around, he was trolling the internet for my replacement. Probably for a woman in perfect hormonal balance who owned her own razor.)

The next day, he called me every 30 minutes. As I pulled up to the clinic, I picked up my ringing phone and answered with, “Will you please leave me alone?” He said, “Never.”

After all the poking and prodding and sadistic squeezing of my poor aching breast, the results were in:

I did not have cancer. I had a fibrocystic flare-up likely due to hormones and/or too much Diet DP.

Until that moment, I hadn't realized how much I REALLY did not want to have breast cancer. As I walked out through the waiting room, I smiled reassuringly into the concerned eyes of kind strangers, realizing as never before the spirit of sisterhood that exists in such a place.

I made it all the way to my car before I started crying. And then...I couldn't stop.

I cried for all the people I've loved and lost to cancer, for my friend Karne's Mom who fought so bravely, for my young colleague Shayla who just completed her last round of radiation, for the ladies (and men) in that waiting room who on that very day, were not so lucky as I.

I knew I had to suck it up and call my Dickman.  I knew if he heard me crying he would think the worst. I pulled myself together, and he answered on the first ring.

“Seriously. Will you just leave me alone?” I said.

“Never.” He replied.

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There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

 Albert Einstein