“We’ll obviously need to do a full assessment and complete workup before we can venture a definitive diagnosis or treatment plan.” You expect to hear the sound of your heart splitting, fracturing into shards and falling to the floor of your soul, but your heart stays in place. Surprisingly, with such a terrifying diagnosis rattling deep within the bones of your head, the most disturbing thing—the thing that hurts most—is how your son’s eyes fill with tears and how his chin trembles in a way you haven’t seen since he was twelve years old. When the doctor is done with you, she gently ushers you from the room with her patting hand, the manila folder tucked back under her arm. You make an appointment for more testing and then you do the only thing you can on a hot August day filled with bad news and poorly drawn clocks. You take your son out for ice cream.
When we’re done with ice cream and bad news and we’ve again found our brave and stalwart chins, Bryan drives me home.
“You gonna be okay?” he asks. I assume he’s anxious to get back to work with its ordinariness of contracts and endless verbiage regarding the movement of water through aqueducts or canals, or whatever it is my beautiful son does for a living.
“Of course. I’m fine,” I say. “Go do your water lawyer stuff. That’s what you do, right? Are you still a lawyer?”
“Yes, Mom, I’m still a lawyer. But, are you sure? I can stick around if you need me. I could at least make you some tea before I go.”
“No. No. Really, I’m fine. ”I wave my arm as if waving one’s arm through the air clears away any lingering words of disease or imperfect and troubled mothers. “Why don’t you and Allison come for dinner tomorrow? We can barbeque something large and lovely on the patio and drink enough wine to forget all about this doctor nonsense.”
“Good grief, Mom. Maybe you’re not well enough for that right now.” Bryan’s eyes threaten to cloud up once more.
“I’m quite well . Now get out of here and leave an old woman to her bonbons and Oprah.”
With his hands on my shoulders, as if holding me that way might somehow keep me from unraveling, Bryan bends to kiss my forehead.
“Love you.” His chin and his eyes barely maintain their decorum.
“Love you more,” I say.
“I’ll call to check on you tonight,” Bryan says.
I wave my arm again, but he’s already gone.
The house is dappled with afternoon light that, in spite of my wishes, rudely pushes its way through the partially open blinds. The news of the day has decided to settle into my lungs, making it hard to breathe through the room’s watery light. I try to catch onto the air as it leaves my mouth. I think of other, earlier days and I fumble my way to my cedar box. I drift through letters and papers and pull out something written across a creamy, thick, white notepaper that I hope will clear my lungs and strengthen my trembling fingers.
My dearest children:
I wish we’d had a Southern porch when you were young. You should have grown up with a porch—the kind that wraps around the front of the house, with a simple railing and unpretentious stairs leading to a sun-dappled lawn. Magic happens on a Southern porch; I wish to heaven you could have grown up with that simple truth. I wish you could have known the weightlessness of a child’s body when it hurls itself from the top step all the way to an explanation of how it got “those awful grass stains” on its knees. I wish you could have heard the music made by fingers pulling the strings of a banjo and I wish you could have sat and fanned your face with folded construction paper on a hot and humid summer night.
One never forgets their porch days, with the sound of fresh vine beans or snap peas crackling in the women’s hands, while the shoes of men tap out the songs of Riley Puckett and Fiddlin’ John Carson. A Southern porch brings the happy chatter of neighbors from up the road; it
When we’re done with ice cream and bad news and we’ve again found our brave and stalwart chins, Bryan drives me home.
“You gonna be okay?” he asks. I assume he’s anxious to get back to work with its ordinariness of contracts and endless verbiage regarding the movement of water through aqueducts or canals, or whatever it is my beautiful son does for a living.
“Of course. I’m fine,” I say. “Go do your water lawyer stuff. That’s what you do, right? Are you still a lawyer?”
“Yes, Mom, I’m still a lawyer. But, are you sure? I can stick around if you need me. I could at least make you some tea before I go.”
“No. No. Really, I’m fine. ”I wave my arm as if waving one’s arm through the air clears away any lingering words of disease or imperfect and troubled mothers. “Why don’t you and Allison come for dinner tomorrow? We can barbeque something large and lovely on the patio and drink enough wine to forget all about this doctor nonsense.”
“Good grief, Mom. Maybe you’re not well enough for that right now.” Bryan’s eyes threaten to cloud up once more.
“I’m quite well . Now get out of here and leave an old woman to her bonbons and Oprah.”
With his hands on my shoulders, as if holding me that way might somehow keep me from unraveling, Bryan bends to kiss my forehead.
“Love you.” His chin and his eyes barely maintain their decorum.
“Love you more,” I say.
“I’ll call to check on you tonight,” Bryan says.
I wave my arm again, but he’s already gone.
The house is dappled with afternoon light that, in spite of my wishes, rudely pushes its way through the partially open blinds. The news of the day has decided to settle into my lungs, making it hard to breathe through the room’s watery light. I try to catch onto the air as it leaves my mouth. I think of other, earlier days and I fumble my way to my cedar box. I drift through letters and papers and pull out something written across a creamy, thick, white notepaper that I hope will clear my lungs and strengthen my trembling fingers.
My dearest children:
I wish we’d had a Southern porch when you were young. You should have grown up with a porch—the kind that wraps around the front of the house, with a simple railing and unpretentious stairs leading to a sun-dappled lawn. Magic happens on a Southern porch; I wish to heaven you could have grown up with that simple truth. I wish you could have known the weightlessness of a child’s body when it hurls itself from the top step all the way to an explanation of how it got “those awful grass stains” on its knees. I wish you could have heard the music made by fingers pulling the strings of a banjo and I wish you could have sat and fanned your face with folded construction paper on a hot and humid summer night.
One never forgets their porch days, with the sound of fresh vine beans or snap peas crackling in the women’s hands, while the shoes of men tap out the songs of Riley Puckett and Fiddlin’ John Carson. A Southern porch brings the happy chatter of neighbors from up the road; it
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