Making October Peace With My Body
I’m just beginning to realize, or maybe just beginning to own, that October is almost here. Forever, fall has been my favorite season. I love early and mid-autumn, when the sun’s rays are still beautiful and bright, but fading, when the light plays through the trees in both early morning and early evening. Even when I was a young girl I would find myself mesmerized by watching the little flecks of lint play their floating games in the air, caught as they tried to migrate downward, almost suspended by the atmosphere but not quite. I love autumn for the bright colors, the husky yellows and the flaming oranges as the trees let go of the children they’ve raised since spring, nurtured all summer, and finally, finally, are whispering their farewells in the waning hours of warmth. There is something special about wrapping the first, light scarf just-so around my neck, cocking my head in the mirror, and knowing it is more for looks than warmth. There is a sensory pleasure in pulling my collar up around my ears, a delight in smelling my chunky sweaters as I remove them, one by one, from the fabric box where I so gently housed them, happy to greet each one, soft and woolen. There is comfort in knowing the season is bright and fleeting. It is a warning before the cold, but it brings its warning shrouded in gold and burnt umber.
In the autumn, I put my body away…just a bit…underneath denim and corduroy and wool. My favorite color is grey, with oatmeal a close second. As much as I enjoy the hot sun and its rays on my face, I welcome the soft closeness of my sweaters and blankets, my down comforter and extra blankets.
But October is coming, and where I have always been satisfied with just the autumnal color spectrum, this year there is the specter of pink following me everywhere I go. Pink is a summer color, and one I do not care for very much at all. I have a few pieces, sure. I’m a woman, after all. But it is an accent, not a primary. And last year at precisely this time, I told all of my friends not to inundate me with that pink crap. No ribbons. No walks. No bandanas no banners no signs. “I am just not into all of that crap,” I declared. And I stuck with that message.
I found it completely incongruous that in the midst of a sea of pink, a lobby awash with the stuff, I dragged myself (well, no, okay, my amazing friend Amanda dragged me — and waited patiently, and was everything I needed, including pink-free) into the women’s hospital flocked like a roseate ocean to have part of a toxic breast removed. Right in the middle of goddamn breast cancer awareness month. That which I hated was all around me. And that which I hated was in me.
It took only a few hours to remove ¼ of a breast and eight lymph nodes.
I cried a little when I typed that.
The summer solstice is today. October is just over a week away. The pink is coming.
I wore a beautiful Irish wool sweater with beautiful sleeves and a soft neckline to the hospital on the day of the surgery. With gorgeous leather boots. I did my makeup and hair. I wore amazing wine-colored lipstick.
The lymph nodes were clean; the margins were clean. The saline injected was fine. The recovery was long and really fucking hard and no one needs another essay about anyone’s cancer journey. I wrapped myself in grey sweaters and oatmeal sweaters, and I did not look in the mirror at my rotten breast. I took some photos of the incisions and the clear surgical covering, because I am a writer and I wanted to keep it. I noted where the radioactive pellets were, and I was pissed off because there was permanent ink on my body. But I wore scarves and of course soon I wore hats.
My autumn was stolen, and yet I was sure that if I accommodated, if I just went gently, I would reclaim it on the next orbit.
Slowly, the earth heals like the body. It turns, we turn, we heal. Time is measure. All will be well. I told myself to wait, to heal, to work, to pause. The span belonged to me, after all. One passing autumn in pain and turbulence would be counterposed by many, many more autumns filled with leaves and walks and blankets and parks and the smells of acorns on the ground, and those rays of sunshine and tiny flecks of dust floating by.
But my autumn now, my October anyway, is awash in pink.
I want to ban it, relegate it to the woodshed never to be seen. I want to burn it in the campfire — a campfire where I’ll be wearing a warm grey sweater and amazing boots and my hair will be perfect and my soft scarf will be angled just-so, and I will not smell of smoke, but instead my cabernet will sparkle in the light just perfectly. All of that will look the way it is supposed to look. And there will be no scar grinning at me repugnantly from the crease of my left breast. There will be no furrow under my arm, unimpeded by the expensive creams and scar-healing ointments I’ve rubbed and rubbed and rubbed. All of my body will be whole, and no one will ask if I want to participate in a survivor walk and no one will walk in my honor. No one will wear pink — we will all wear sweaters and marvel at the changing leaves and the soft sunlight and that is all we will care about because that is all that there is.
This of course is not so.
Instead, my flesh is scarred and burned. My soft skin is furrowed, and I have yet to make peace with October’s pink or my own body.
Perhaps next fall?
