The "C" Word

In Dublin, Mom and I rode the LUAS Red Line a few times to "save ourselves some walking" but really we rode for the experience of it all. The third trip or so, we actually sat down, in two facing seats and she started telling me about when she was in the doctor's office recently for a physical and was asked whether she'd want to "do something" about her smile lines and crow's feet. She was appalled. "I earned those. Those lines are a part of who I am, from smiling and laughing for over 60 years." She talked to me about looking in the mirror and seeing the lines in her face, and not really remembering a time when she didn't have them.

I dialed Mom's cell phone after work Friday because I wanted to ask her the best way to get rid of ants. She didn't answer, but called me back a few minutes later when I was trying to nap on the couch before the BF arrived for the weekend.

I tried to keep the conversation short because I needed to clean up and straighten up and get to the grocery so I'd actually have something to eat for dinner. I was about to say bye, and she said, "I have something I want to tell you, okay?" and her voice got that tone in it, that extremely uncomfortable tone she always gets when she tells us very terrible news, or warns us of something frightening that is about to happen. I knew it was going to be something "medical" about one of us.

"I'm going to have some surgery done next month. I don't think it's a big deal..." And she went on, telling me the details and the medical terms, all of which I've already forgotten, because I wasn't listening in the first place, because all that I heard was that Mom has skin cancer. In the office they asked her to smile so they could take note of where to put the stitches in order to mimic her natural smile lines, and she's thankful that it's on the left side of her face because, she joked, if it were on the right side, she'd lose her dimple. "It's a good thing I'm not vain."

She almost had me convinced that it would be a simple, minor procedure. But at the end she told me, "It's only about the size of a dime."