keeping abreast | keeping a breast

Every culture I’ve passed through has an opinion, a hope, a shared understanding about fertility.

The phallus-laden Lama Drukpa Kunley temple in Bhutan, the healing hut on the Masaii Mara in Kenya, the beachside tree in the Seychelles whose fruit is harvested, preserved and shellaced because it looks like a woman’s vulva, the pope in the Vatican, the fortune-teller in Hungary, the doctor’s office in California.

The human drive to continue on into the future is profound. Evolutionary. It’s the only reason we’re all here. From the vary root of our lineage – a cosmic cauldron of proteins and peptides – to bacteria and then fungus all the way to Animalia. Recreate, procreate, create create create.

It’s a bit narcissistic really. Creating someone in our own image. Isn’t that what some of the gods claim to have done?

I know through history, children were and are the farmhands. More hands and more food are one in the same. We need more of children too because so many died – of diarrhea, dysentery, snake bites, wild animals – along the way.

Just as being fertile has a celebrated cultural narrative – she’s fecund! Teeming with life force! So healthy and strong! How did being infertile create such a stigma across cultures – shame, hopelessness, a wrong-doing, a curse, banishment, lower caste?

How many times have I haphazardly stumbled into one of these situations? Women surrounding me, a guest in their home place, a prayer offered, a blessing for my uterine empowerment bestowed, smiles and encouragement to predict the number of children I would have.

I never asked for these. Nor have I felt any shame. So why does it still bother me?

I wonder if their stories were as grand as my memory of them.

The South Bend gloom, the perma cloud we called it. We made jokes – as we trudged across campus, interview notes tucked safely in our backpacks, sleet clinging to the still-green blades of manicured grass. We wondered about why Holocaust survivors, Black Americans in the Great Migration, would choose to live the rest of their lives here to the armpit of Indiana.

I had seen a flyer in the life sciences building. Looking for some extra money? Want to learn how to interview people? Want to help answer the question of: what is at the root of resiliency in people and why do they live so much longer? Dr. Bergemen who would be my boss – salt and pepper hair with cherub cheeks and a bounce step in her white smart tennis shoes – hired me, threw me into the research without any real training. I was 19 years old. No sense of the difference between someone’s healthspan and their lifespan, or what a long life could be, or what the spirit tucked deep into someone’s belly is that keeps an eye on the horizon while looking at the present air around them.

I was so nervous, sitting across from my first research subject. As I fumbled through the consent process, my interviewee sat there serenely in her wheelchair, in a quiet corner of the nursing home, calmly observing me, green and yellow afghan tucked around her, soft dark hair freshly rolled, nailed painted red. Her brown eyes with the blue film of age and having seen so much, all of it. Let’s call her May, after her birth month. She touched my arm, I breathed.

May told me her story, patiently, purposefully, like she was unwrapping an intricate and layered gift, so delicate. Growing up in the red Alabama clay, sharecropping, moving Northward, away from the Jim Crow South – she chuckled remembering a question she asked her dad about who just was this Jim Crow and would she ever meet him. Just a little girl hanging onto the promise of her dad and mom as she held onto their hands and didn’t look back down the road. Grasping for something she didn’t understand, a striving, a better up there-ing, a notion that north was up and out. She was 100 years young when I met her.

One of her sons was killed in the Vietnam war, a husband died of a heart attack many years ago, friends too, house fires, casual racism if there is such a thing, overt racism, exclusion. All of those things that are tethered to having a Black body in America.

And then how she became animated. Her community. The number of people who ask after her, call her. Some deep and down the hall and some less often. There is touch there, there is connection, there is meaning. There is profoundness.

Resilience. Resiliency at what cost, I’ll never know.

Many woman grieve the loss of not being able to carry a baby.

I feel guilty because I never wanted to carry a baby.

And now, I’m learning, I cannot carry a baby.

She told me to try and reframe it though, dark eyes peering over her tortoise-shell glasses, watching my reaction, encouraging me to give it a go. I kept glancing at the water color lilies on the wall, wondering if she chose those or if UCSF sanctioned the only piece of art in her bright clinical office. It’s not that I was trying to dodge her invitation, I was just twisted in a logical pretzel.

I was never certain I even wanted children. And when I got cancer, the choice was quickly taken away from me. It still hurt, and I was surprised at the hurt. Agency – or the perception thereof – is a powerful thing. So after hand wringing and pacing and bank account calculations and delaying chemotherapy by two weeks and 21 blood draws, 24 shots in my stomach, we harvested my eggs – or the doctor did – and fertilized them and created 11 embryos. Apparently it was on the verge of a good number, but not a great number. But all it takes it one, they said.

When I was small, I never played with dolls – they sat on my shelf collecting dust, their porcelain faces tranquil, staring at me and waiting to be loved. I never babysat either, unless you count hanging out with a girl named Lacey who was just a year younger than me while her parents went out. I’m 39 now, have 7 nieces and nephews and a goddaughter and godson and have never changed a diaper.

But here we are, in the reproductive health clinic, talking to the psychologist to help us sort this through.

I sigh. The psychologist takes me in.

The thoughts in my head swing back and forth, like a pendulum. Like how the medical field keeps volleying the attempt at medical certainty back and forth too – four years ago, my oncologist said if I begged her to take me off my medications to have a baby, she would do it, provided I went right back on. We sat on it, too busy to decide, too much uncertainty for what we wanted out of life, too much fear immobilizing us.

There were just a few studies that said maybe there was a protective quality of pregnancy.  My cancer type was so specific though, that if you squinted at the data, perhaps the study indicated the opposite, there was a great risk involved.

Now, my oncologist isn’t so certain. The volley is back to the other side of the court.

And while that game of back and forth might carry on in perpetuity, what will not is my friend Julie – who has my cancer type, my genetic mutation. We finished chemo around the same time. She – by some miracle got pregnant, had a beautiful baby, got sick again, and will die from her cancer. Shouldn’t that be enough to suggest maybe it’s not for me?

So we set a deadline for ourselves to decide. Decide on what, I don’t know. But decide by June 30. Ok ok, August 30.

The clock moves, the sun’s angle turning low and south, green leaves to yellow and red and brown, morning temperatures from damp to crisp.

I needed a sign, some grand gesture of the universe, a shift in its energy that would dislodge the ball of questions that remain knotted up in my throat, my gut, the front left part of my brain where it hurt. And it came in the form of baby Drew and his surrogate mom Amber and his biological mom Amanda. Two families coming together with shared, overlapping goals. And aren’t all babies grand gestures of the universe, after all?

By the end of my grandpa Pop’s life, we thought we had pretty much cleaned out his and GG’s house. Their third house, the first two having burnt down. Somehow they were able to salvage or save a few photo albums from the fires. Most of what was in their house – beyond the personal items like the stuffed squirrel Nutsy on their bed since time immemorial, and the miles of fabric scraps and piles of needles in my grandma’s sewing room – were things that their siblings – 10 of them all in – had left. They were the last of their family line in that way.

Uncle Wilbur’s mining hat and rusted lamp. Uncle Kenneth’s WWII pins and flags. Aunt Velda’s porcelain elephants from her time in Thailand.

All of them were wondrous in their own way. A period of time in someone’s life. Someone who I mostly never met and my mom remembers pretty well, long weekends of the aunts and uncles visiting, playing rummicub and spades and smoking cigarettes and pipes and 6-packs of beer in lawn chairs on long summer nights with the windows open and the cicadas chirping. I can feel those memories tucked into my own in that house on S. Hibbard street, the pretty white Victorian with gingerbread trim.

We would figure out what to do with those artifacts of my great uncles and aunt’s lives, mostly keeping them in boxes for now to deal with later when the Marie Kondo craze would ask if they gave us joy.

The thing though – the thing we were most surprised by – were the letters. Stacks of envelopes, with handwritten letters, delicate, from Alaska, the western Pacific Admiralty Islands, on a steam ship and plane and train all the way to my grandma in Gillespie, Illinois. And then those she sent back, on the train, plane, and steam ship to corners of the world, while my grandpa built runways and went below deck when it got too cold or too hot depending on which part of the Pacific he occupied.

When my grandma died unexpectedly, and my grandpa became fully blind, we found other ways to keep their memories alive together. Stories, books, photo albums, visitors. The longer he lived, the more he remembered, or at least shared, of his youth, his time in the war, the early days of their lives together. But he never mentioned the letters. And we didn’t do much cleaning out when he was alive – choosing to spend our time with him instead. To try and be present.

What do we do with these letters. My mom said, these hold my mother’s secrets. They are so private, I cannot possibly open them. What would I need to learn that I don’t already know? That they loved each other so fully and presently? That their love will endure forever?

Stockholm 2017. We were bopping around in the midnight sunshine, drinking up the fresh air and blonde people like we had one life to live.

The 14 islands around Stockholm, that spanning archipelago, providing postcard scenes that matched our mood. Pure, simple, shimmery.

Jens Lekman in concert, singing about love, sisters, and hallelujah. In an outdoor sculpture garden.

The cardamom spiced morning buns – fika! – they called the whole experience. And the drip coffee we enjoyed lingering in a grassy park, watching the two little old ladies on the bench across from us chatter away. We thought – this is us in 40 years if we’re lucky.

We tried this schnapps there, with the pickled herring, and the smoke herring, and the baked herring. Herring three ways. It was late in the afternoon right before I dipped in the convent-turned-hot springs.

This schnapps – I’m not usually a fan or connoisseur of. But what was it about that time and place that made it feel so smooth? The warmth tracing from my lips through every capillary, expanding them, all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes, an explosion of…Sweden, really.

But what was it called?

Swedish schnapps? No, not that.

The one fact we later marveled about was that it might have been aged at sea. But did one of us make that up? Dream and sleep talk it? How is that possible? Or even economical? Who even thought of it? The alcohol mixed with the salt air and salt water, providing the perfect aging environment for the wooden casks? Was it just that we both loved the ocean and wanted to be aged on a ship as well?

All my googling paid off: Linie Aquavit

8^th grade, I had just migrated the 10 blocks to the public school from a parochial school. I went from a class of 7 to 70. My parents were afraid I wouldn’t know how to do algebra and make the family decision.

The small town I was born and raised in still doesn’t have a stoplight. Or a McDonald’s.

We created our own fun and our own trouble.

Mostly revolving around bike rides down Windy Hill Road into the country, sitting on top of the abandoned trestle, playing in the creek, laughing at the cows. I can’t make this stuff up.

It all started when I made the cheerleading squad. I don’t think I even liked cheerleading. It was just something to do. Putting into use the three years of below-rate gymnastics classes to do cartwheels down the court and getting to leave class early and ride the bus to the basketball games. The maroon and white pleats of the skirt, the tights with the paw print on the left butt cheek were…cute, I thought at the time. I liked cats.

The first anonymous note shoved in my locker. Graduated to notes passed directly to me in class unsigned, then signed. The boldness of 8^th graders ratcheting up, a herd forming. And then in the hall between classes, bodies ricocheting upon bodies, it elevated to pointed whispers and sideways glances as I walked by, and finally comments to my face.

“You’re ruining everything. Go back to where you came from.”

The trouble is, where I came from was literally down the block. I could see their houses from my bedroom window.

I think of this today, because two days ago, a facebook message popped up from the queen bee of them all – let’s protect the guilty with their initials – SRO. It was unprovoked. We live thousands of miles apart. We haven’t talked in years. Or at least since I was diagnosed with cancer when a schadenfreude parade of “friends” I purposefully lost reappeared to possibly watch me die, and maybe even take enjoyment in it.

This time, SRO said something to the effect of, “you’re the most amazing person and have the best soul. I hope my daughters have an ounce of your goodness.” I sat on that for…well, I’m still sitting on it.

Does she not remember the scene?

I have an image a la the West Side Story in mind. SRO, striding confidently down the locker-lined hallway, KLM and KAP flanking her, chasse, chasse. TBS in the back, hesitant and torn but ultimately deciding this dance was her ticket to skyrocketing popularity.

Striding down the hallway, high hat tsk tsking in the back. SRO gives my shoulder a shove.

“Want to join our club?”

Huh?

Yeah, our new club?

What is it?

It’s the “I Hate Meaghan Club” and I’m the President.

End Scene.

From stage left JAB enters and as a narrator of sorts, solemnly states two observations. Or truths to all of the young women standing before me, in formation. 1) you look like a beagle. 2) you have a big butt.

I wish, I WISH my answer was better.

I said thank you. And stood there, tears wetting my face. Taking it. Turning the other cheek like that damned parochial school had told me to do, on repeat daily over their decrepit PA system.

Those women tormented me, hot and cold, cold and hot. The tears I cried could have filled an ocean. Wailing into my pillow, my mom soothing me with a gentle pat on my back, day after day.

Mom, trying to explain this, rationalize it to me, help me see that the future was around the corner, they would be in my rearview. That they were jealous. That they were insecure. That hurt people hurt people. But I was jealous and insecure and hurt too.

She even tried to suggest that they got dropped on their heads as babies. Anything to rationalize the venom they spit my way and put it into perspective. She threw everything she had at building up that protective armor night after night when it got torn apart piece by piece each day.

That was then, this is now.

But it’s there, a millimeter below the surface. The scene, the heat, the malice.

The facebook message blinks and blinks. Unanswered. Undeserving of a response.

October 6 in Illinois, I had driven to the cemetery for GG’s birthday. She died the same month she was born.

It’s a small-town cemetery, maybe a thousand people are buried there. GG is next to my grandpa Pop, and they are next to my other grandparents Nana and Baba who are next to their parents Marion and Louise. Six grave sites all tucked in, an enclave of souls, and I couldn’t find them. I walked and walked and walked, trying to find the casket compound, the bouquets of leaves – reds and yellows with tinges of greens – in my hand.

And I wondered – what is remembering someone? What is honoring their life? What is celebrating their legacy? Why do those phrases seem overused, abused, skimming the surface?

The old caretaker helped me find them all, in the same place they have now been for years. But I hadn’t been for years. Was it the angle of the sun that disoriented me and left me searching? How could I mistake my roots?

What date is it today? 10-26. GG left this world. The ruby-red throated hummingbirds were all around me that day, feasting on the purple papaya flowers and kangaroo paws. It didn’t feel like October.

The long shadows of the Bay Area sunlight confuse my body. How many years does it take to be in a somewhere to start internalizing its sense of place and biological clock? The microshifts in the birds, who shows up when. The golden cherry tomatoes in the garden that finally expire for the season. The smells of decaying leaves, wet soil, dew in the morning. The gradual shifts in the golden light, browning of the hills. The first morning when a warm cup of tea becomes a necessity.

But it’s October and there’s no crispness to speak of. How can it be October, and October 26 no less? I almost wrote March 4 on a check today.

I sat cross-legged and staring at the rows of cookbooks. So many memories, so many options, feeling like I should do something special, something to remember GG. My own altar to her. I ran my hand up and down their spines.

The jello book jumped out at me. Its metal rings tarnished, red cover worn thin, to a pale rose hue.

GG used to shop in order to save, a depression-era woman who raised 4 kids on my grandpa’s bricklayer salary and with a side job as a cook and a seamstress. After she died, it took us 3 years to clear out the jello she had stockpiled. And the kleenaxes, paper towels, flour, and baking soda.

Should I make the 7-layer jello? The one that takes hours, as layer by layer are put down, some with condensed milk and all topped with hand-whipped cream. It looks like a beautiful wrapping paper ribbon.

Or should I make the one that everyone despises but we ate anyway because it was just GG. Orange jello, shaved carrots, walnuts and raisins.

Or maybe the green one – I guess it would be lime-flavored jello, with marshmallows, pecans, pineapple.

Or maybe it’s the thought that counts.

It was Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 830am. A 20 minute walk, often in the South Bend gray. The permacloud we called it. If I was late, most of the time, I slinked in, up the left aisle to find a seat where I could splay out my left hand for writing in a right-handed desk. The world was unfair. He droned on and on about cellular functions – the cilia of that cell and replication of another, T-cells as the kingpin of them all. All the processes squirting and squeezing nutrients in and through the body, from one place to the next. I was struggling to make myself become a biology major. And I was squeaking by with a D-. The chapter on DNA and punnet squares was poorly timed in January, the iciest on record.

What is DNA anyway? They say it’s a thumbprint, unique, only yours. They talk about it like a zipper, a puzzle, a permutation. One set of molecules matched up in lockstep with another. Some pieces are the worker bees, repairing the broken blocks, the foundation. Maybe born broken down, passed on from my parents, or too much sunshine, or second hand smoke, or free radicals, whatever those are. Others are clues – what color will my eyes be? Moss with a shade of water, a college Lothario told me. How curly will my hair end up? Will my knees hyperextend? And most of the DNA in that beautiful double helix strand keep all systems go.

Until they don’t.

When I got diagnosed with breast cancer, I was so young. Thirty-two, a fresh-faced bride. An oddity. No history of breast cancer in my family that mattered in my case. The doctors wrung their hands. Clearly there had to be a smoking gun here in the form of a genetic mutation. I wondered, Why do these analogies have to be so violent? Wasn’t cancer violent enough, the DNA repair kit gone awry, its foot on the gas pedal on a one-way street going the wrong way?

Most cancers are not genetic. Really a tiny fraction are. So where do they come from then? They are in the air we breathe, the pollution we inhale and ingest, the plastics we use and toss to the side, the fibers we wrap ourselves in, the chemicals we wash ourselves with, and on. but I’m not about to blame myself for my cancer.

The DNA test came back negative, no mutation. The genetic counselor said well, there are hundreds of genes that we are unable to test. Your insurance won’t cover it because the cost is significant and prohibitive, in the thousands of dollars. And there’s a company – Myriad Genetics – that is trying to get a patent on all the genes and standing in the way. The case against them is in the Supreme Court now, but it won’t help you in time.  

So I breathed a sigh of relief. Genes be dammed. Mine were just fine, maybe confused for a few minutes, but nothing to lose sleep over.

So after and through a year of chemotherapy, I opted for the single mastectomy. I opted for radiation. I opted and opted and opted.

Until several years later, an academic paper caught my eye. On a sleepness night, I self-loathed enough to play around in Google Scholar and search academic publications for links between breast and kidney cancer, my dad having been diagnosed a year before me. I never did become a biology major, but my eyes glazed over enough academic literature to glean some skills.

Staring back at me was a hit – a genetic connection between the two now being more and more understood through the ATM gene and its rare mutation. A children’s hospitalist discovering it after working with children with a rare type of life-ending disease, ataxia. Their mothers had breast cancer more commonly, he noted, than any of the other diseases he worked on. So he started collecting data. And noticed other patterns. The genetics just hadn’t yet caught up.

And now they had, only to me.

The earth was something like a billion years old, stardust from the big bang blending together in of the right elements that give us life. Mohammed was long gone, the Buddha too, and Jesus at least 2000 years, conquests and empires, people fanning over the earth as the continents shifted from Pangea into hemispheres – east west north south. Millions of Indigenous people and later colonizers and then immigrants and then homesteaders and then illegals and then undocumented. No one more or less human than the next. Cruising the trade winds and avoiding the horse latitudes, scaling the walls and clawing their way, only to cross an artificial line on an artificial map drawn up by the victors, the authors of our supposedly shared history.

Revolutions – of science, enlightenment, art, religion and piety, industry, energy, technology, an invisible hand of economics. All roads leading to capitalism.

A thirst, a drive, a quest. Wanting more more more.

What, though, is happening in the here and now. The great unraveling. What if the more more more is not possible. The earth, squeezed, scraped, and slammed until she could give no more.

There’s an image of a snake that eats its own tail – the ouroboros.

Is that what we see today? Is capitalism finally, in a gorging, choking whimper, eating its own tail?