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Installment 4: Meet Me by the Gate

Posted in art, family, Fiction, health, Personal, sister, Writing, tagged Meet me by the Gate on February 18, 2016| 29 Comments »

April 27

I went in for a biopsy today. Allie was going to go with me to the hospital until something came up with Ladies Guild. Something seemed to come up pretty frequently, but that was Allie. That was my baby sister.

“I’ll meet you by the gate,” she said, when she called early this morning.

I knew she meant she’d be waiting in my room when they brought me back.

But Charlie was with me. He was there overseeing everything, asking the pertinent questions and taking note of any instructions. In my room, waiting, I had Charlie. As they wheeled me towards a roomful of strangers, panic set in. But by the time I got to the procedure room, I realized I was holding my breath.

I need to remember to breath.

I had heard stories of my Mom, how she joked with the staff and even argued with them. Not me, I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t breathe, barely held back tears. I don’t know how she held it all together.

People were around me preparing, talking to each other, and hooking up equipment. I tried not to think about what they were doing.

I forced myself to concentrate on something other than what was about to happen. I tried to think about Allie, when we were kids. How we walked home together. I tried to recount the path. We’d start by the big oak tree by the gate to the playground.

“I’ll meet you at the gate,” we’d call to each other, parting in the morning.

And there she was waiting every afternoon. Well, almost every afternoon, sitting among the big gnarled roots of the tree.

My back started to tremble. I tried to relax the muscles to make it stop, but couldn’t.

You’re panicking just relax.

We’d walk down the side walk, the few blocks to home. We’d talk about our day and homework.

My teeth were chattering. I tried to keep my breathing even. I was shaking all over.

I needed to think about something else. I remembered Allie’s favorite dress. She wore it almost every day in the third grade. I tried to talk her out of it. It was embarrassing having your little sister wear the same dress every day. Mom washed it every evening. She didn’t care, but I did.

I could hear instruments rattling on a metal tray. My cheeks were moist from tears.

The dress, think about the dress, it was a cotton print with strawberries and a red collar. Grandma made it for her.

Someone slipped a plastic tube in my mouth.

And what about my brother, Bryan? Why had he abandoned us when we needed him most? How had he gotten so far away? How had I let this go on for so long?

I tried to remember to breathe, tried to relax, tried to stop shaking.

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Installment 3: Meet Me by the Gate

Posted in anxiety, Fiction, health, life, Writing, tagged Meet me by the Gate on February 17, 2016| 19 Comments »

NOTE: Someone suggested I try writing in present tense. I tried but just couldn’t do it. Sorry.

April 16

I met Allie for lunch today at a small Italian café halfway between her house and mine, which means about a block from her house and twenty miles from mine. She has a funny way of calculating halfway.

I was still debating about whether to tell her about my latest doctor’s visit. Only Allie was there with me when Mom had cancer. Making her relive that again seems unnecessary, especially since I haven’t even had a biopsy yet. There isn’t any point in worrying her if it turned out to be nothing, is there?

***

Allie was late again, as usual.

“Wait for me by the gate,” she had said.

It was part of our old childhood code.

When she finally arrived, she went on and on about being fat and ugly, as if we hadn’t had this conversation hundreds of times.

“You’re not fat,” I snorted.

I’d always been envious at how this awkward gangly kid had become a glamorous woman. She’d thrown on a black dress, flipped her auburn hair into a clip and added a pair of sunglasses. In fifteen minutes, she walked out of the house, looking like a companion fit for Jackie O.

“People are like shoes, you know. When I was in college; I was a strappy pair of heels. I was cute and sassy. Men were attracted to me. I could have had my pick.”

Leave it to Allie to boil her life down to shoes.

“After we had children, I became sensible, intelligent, hardworking – like nurse’s shoes. Like you,” she continued.

I on the other hand had brown hair that was never tamed by a clip or anything else. My clothes never quite fit right. The shoulders were too big or the sleeves too long. I wasn’t built for glamour, I was built for comfort.

Allie went on and on like that for half an hour and then I did the one thing I wasn’t going to do.

“Margo thinks I have cancer,” I blurted. “Not cancer really, a lymphoma. Not even lymphoma, a tumor. Just a tumor, not cancer.”

And that’s how I said it. No lead in, no softening the blow, I just blurted it out.

“What do you mean cancer?”

Allie’s fork stalled in midair.

“I don’t have anything really.”

I found myself back pedaling. I certainly didn’t mean to say it like that. I just needed to get it out.

“Mom’s cancer was cause by a virus. That’s not hereditary. No one in our family has ever had cancer, not genetically,” Allie reminded me.

“I haven’t even had a biopsy yet.”

“Gosh Jo, you scared me to death.”

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said anything yet. I wasn’t going to worry you.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing. Besides, Margo will handle it. You’re so dramatic,” Allie continued, hardly pausing.

She was right. Cancer doesn’t run in our family. I felt foolish and relieved. What had I been so worried about?

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Installment 2: Meet Me by the Gate

Posted in anxiety, art, Fiction, life, sister, Writing, tagged Meet me by the Gate on February 16, 2016| 25 Comments »

NOTE: I apologize. I don’t think I made this very clear. This is a work of fiction based very loosely on my experience that took place many years ago. I am not currently ill, but am using that as a bases to write this fictional story.

April 7

I was on a mission to get rid of the excess things in my life. Clean up, clear out, and get rid of my extra baggage. I was working on the bathroom. A cabinet full of products I hadn’t used in years – moisturizers, conditioners, makeup, lotions, and scented soaps, odds and ends of medicines, band aids, and gauze.

Leaning against the wall were the shell pictures Charlie had promised to hang. After all these years of being single, when did I become so dependent on a man? Do I really need a man? Man, no. Hammer, yes.

***

I was wandering through the rows at the hardware store, looking for a hammer. I came upon a rack of seeds. Carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, and flower seeds. Racks and racks, rows and rows. Beautifully drawn pictures and amazing photographs of huge specimens. I felt a change of plans. I needed to reconnect with my Mother and Grandmother. I find myself missing them more and more lately. I remember those summer days, watching my Grandmother and later my Mother bent over a patch of vegetables, weeding, watering and harvesting. As a child, I wandered barefoot through the rows of lush green plants. I want to feel that carefree peacefulness again.

I loaded my cart with more than thirty packets of seeds; seven varieties of tomatoes, six types of lettuce, two kinds of cucumbers, squash – yellow and green, spinach, beans – string beans, green peas, and lima beans, potato starters, garlic and onion bulbs. My cart was overflowing with bags of soil, containers and gardening tools.

Not to forget the gardening gloves. Grandma always had pink flowers on her gloves. I searched through the racks. Solid colors mostly – green, pink, and yellow. A few lavender flowers in back. But I needed pink. Finally on the bottom of the rack behind a row of red rose print, I found the last pink floral gardening gloves. I added them to my now impossible to maneuver basket.

Once home, I started on my mission. I filled rows and rows of tiny containers with soil and seeds, misting each set as I went. I literally had hundreds of soil filled containers when I finished. Perhaps I had gone a little overboard. It doesn’t really matter. Now I can water and wait. Waiting is how I spend most of my time these days. But this is much better than waiting for test results.