Time and Bodies

I want more time. Time for my husband to become more like that 52 year old photographer in Vanity Fair- the one who is established, whose refrigerator is full of soft strong-smelling cheeses, who buys his suits in small stores run by men who stow tailor's needles in their mouths, waiting for the chance to say, "step up here, and we'll see what we need to do..." as if all he wanted in life was to make that 52 year-old photographer look a little bit better than he ever was.

I need more time, because that strapping photographer started when he was 25, and we didn't. We started when we were forty, and everyone said, "that's so brave..." and we thought, "yes, this is brave," and bold and crazy and courageous and terrifying. But, until yesterday, I never so much thought of all this - this big move, these giant shifts in place and profession - as optimistic.

Yesterday I went to the doctor because I have a head cold that won't quit and I'm hucking loogies - the big bad green kind, and I've always been told that those are the bad kind, because color does matter, you know. It does so. Yes hunh, and the doctor asked if there was anything else, and it turns out there is a little something else, that I just hadn't quite thought I needed to come see her about, and that little thing is my breast. It hurts a lot. The left one. At first I thought it was on account of that morning in late June when I started my new fitness campaign and did about five push ups, but three months is a long time for a muscle in waiting to hold a grudge, and yes, it's been pretty much constant and YES that hurts, when you touch it YES THERE like that, it hurts. Yes. She wants to have some photos taken. Diagnostic ones, and then an ultrasound. She's just being cautious, I'm pretty sure, but.

I once wrote about breasts. The very first time I read my work out-loud was at the Stone Coast Writer's conference, and I had just left Anna with her Daddy at Wolfesneck Farm and I was a wreck and the teacher said, "write about a body part, because, she said, "the artist never strays far from the body."

So I wrote about breasts. Here is my free-write, from way-back-then - my ode to breasts:

Breasts. In stories, they are slowly released things - freed from black lacy bra to bounce, announce themselves to the sensual world. They are warm- hiding behind pearl buttons and silk blouse, they are coveted in their mystery. From the man, because breasts are tits. And Tits! Are for men! (Let us keep them pert!) Let us cleave ourselves -create valleys in our bodies - a place for your eyes to dive and delve in wonder. (To talk about. "Did you see the Academy Awards? I saw a Nipple!!!" at the water cooler). And they do arouse. And woman to woman they can be coddled, admired, treasured and understood. Caressed. Blessed. But by none so well as Anna.

Although - there was that guy in Holland- Remember? Flat, flat Holland, where sailboats pass in canals above you - and the wind blew my shirt so tight against me that my breasts - flat pegboard breasts- looked cup-able and the old man riding toward me, his grey hair blown partly into his face from behind raised his two hands from his own handlebars and cupped his own imaginary two big boobs - expressed a silent (In Dutch?) UNGA BUNGA and rode on?

And I was flushed with the excitement of it - he NOTICED me!

Well, Um ... he noticed them. So... you wanted a horny old man, riding a rickety bike that changes gears when he applies the brake - somewhere near Gravenhustveg to notice your knockers? (That were, of course, too small to knock together? Or is it "knockers?" like a female doorbell? How quaint). The names we are called- can we claim them? Can we, as our own bodies become blighted and injured by your words - make them our own? No. there is no way for me to take back that other word. I cannot. But anyway, yeah, no one had ever noticed my breasts before that.

And anyway. I wanted to talk about my breasts. About milk. About Anna. And writing this now my hand softens and I know I can. I know I can, because the moment I mention her name, a droplet of milk hits my hip. 98.7*f milk. Hot milk! And I wonder whether any one in this room needs to know this - but if you do - this in not my cleavage! These are not my breasts! They are Anna's.

And then, I read the piece out-loud. And they said, "it lacks plot." And the teacher said, "It was a freewrite, for god's sake."

That was then. But still, my breasts remember. Which is why my left breast is larger than my right. Anna liked it better. Em liked it a lot lot better. So I told the doctor that yesterday. I said, "it's bigger because the kids liked it better." And she smiled. And she didn't say, "Your youngest is eight, now," or otherwise suggest that nursing habits have lost relevance. Instead, she asked another doctor to come feel the contours of that once adored bit of flesh, and they talked diagnostics.

It's probably nothing.