Interesting weekend. Here's what you DON'T want to have happen on a Friday...
You go for a mammogram in the morning. You receive a phone call from your doctor in the afternoon. Because it never occurs to you that there could possibly be a problem with your (yawn*) medical test, you answer the phone call. There's a problem with your mammogram.
Turns out the breasts that you've lugged around for all these years, love 'em or hate 'em, have suddenly become...somehow defective.
Then the doctor says, "Have a nice weekend!"
Suddenly the sky is bluer. You worry about all the things you've never done in your life. You want to see and touch all the people you love. You vow to be a better person. In fact, you hope you get to even keep being a person...it's all in the one minute phone call.
And suddenly it is quite impossible to "have a nice weekend!"
So I know. These are the kinds of things that happen when you are around age 50. If it's not your breasts, it's your gallbladder. If it's not your eyesight, it's arthritis. The acne of your adolescence hasn't even gone away, and the wrinkles of your future are suddenly demanding equal face time. But knowing about something and expecting it to actually happen to you are two different things.
Monty Python left us the memorable line, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" Truer words were never spoken. How could you? If you really expected any of the bad stuff, you'd never pick up the telephone.
So I spent the weekend looking for antidotes to this kind of experience, and I found a few good ones. I held a new baby (1 1/2 weeks old!) for about an hour. I marveled at her tiny fingers and toes. I breathed in her baby smell. I remembered my own girls' dark brown, sticky-up hair and perfect little valentine lips...
I went to a really good Mexican restaurant. I ate more than my share of the above average guacamole. I closed my eyes and listened to a classical guitarist serenade me with surprisingly beautiful music, and lingered long after my enchiladas were gone. I tipped him $5.00 on my way out, and wished I'd had more to give...
I watched Perry Mason, and walked the dog, and shaved my legs, and bought groceries, and did all the normal boring things I do in my normal boring life. I bought the new Michael Buble album and played it way too loud, and I ate almost an entire box of Dots myself, and that was after finishing my ice cream. Behaving just as if I hadn't a care in the world...
I went for an early morning run. I skipped all the songs on my ipod that I didn't want to listen to, and I enjoyed the solid slap of every single step. I sang "Let's Do the Time Warp" with gusto, even though I was running in a public place. The people who live in my AZ neighborhood are mostly old and quite deaf anyway...
And I have almost made it through the weekend. Not that Monday brings answers. I have several more days to wait for my several more tests. But I can live until then. I just needed a few days to get comfortable with the idea that nothing has really changed at all. Sure, it was an unpleasant phone call. And it unleashed an avalanche of "what if's" and a boatload of anxieties. But then I had a whole lot of worries in my head before the phone even rang...these new ones just helped me reorganize the pre-existing ones a bit. Which probably needed to happen.
Aha! I see! Life is uncertain...even MY life. Every second of it. And it's a good thing to have that brought to our attention now and then, I guess. Because we need a reason to empty the gratitude out of our pockets and spread it on the table. We need a reason to count up what we thought was just spare change, and realize that not only does it amount to a fortune, but it has already bought us everything.
And because, as a result, we really have an obligation to enjoy every single uncertain second just a little...bit...more.