Ubuntu!

Wednesday into Friday ~

"A warrior must only take care that (her) spirit is not broken."

We saw a polar bear today. And you know, that's not something that I can say everyday. There were other unexpected delights to the day, too: watching a way cool spiny soft shell turtle move its head in and out of its shell as it followed us along the side of its glass enclosure; singing "What is love? Baby, don't hurt me..." to a hilarious barn owl, who swiveled and pumped his moon-faced head to the beat in a spot-on Jim Carey/Will Ferrell impression; and chatting it up with the adorable little river otter that popped his head up to the sound of our voices and waited for hand outs of fish that never came.

Most of the animals we took in at the Eco-tarium in Worcester today are frequent visitors to our slice of the fertile valley, and as interesting as they are to see up close, observing them in their natural habitat, and not in some sad (though necessary, given that most are injured and not able to return to the wild) enclosure, is much more gratifying and exciting--hawks and bald eagles circle and sweep our skies, sometimes land in the towering dead pines in our back wetlands, and nest at nearby Barton Cove; at least once every spring, female snapping and wood turtles make their way across the road into our streams and wetlands to slow traffic and lay their eggs; and red fox have become an almost daily sighting around here. Recently, we've been conversing with a small kit that always seems to emerge from one particular thicket along the road just as we pass by on our bicycles or car. We usually stop to say hello in sweet motherese, and as his eyes grow wide and his ears perk, Dominick remarks that maybe this is the day we should take the little guy home. And river otters frolic in the waters of the Connecticut, just a stone's throw away, and every now and then we'll come up on one or two in our kayaks. But polar bears?

Seeing poor Kenda, the huge female who has lived out (nearly) all her 25 years in the Eco-tarium, sprawled out on her fake plastic ice overlooking her pool of Arctic seas in her dingy outdoor space, left me thinking that this is just one more way that we've gotten it all wrong. (And I thought of the polar bears roaming the jungles of Lost, too, and imagined Kenda breaking out of her enclosure and roaming the urban jungle, where idiots like me tried to talk to her as if she were merely a lost dog on the lam).

Earlier, driving out on the road from the Pike to the Eco-tarium, it's easy to feel walloped by Route 9's dizzying mess of strip malls, office parks, big box stores, car dealerships, and the ribbons of BUY CRAP! sentiment that seems to go on forever. Light after light after light, the glare of the plastic artificiality, cumbersome, oversized construction, and asphalt desert blinds, sears, and grows entangled with regret. We stop at a Borders to buy the latest books in two series that the boys have been anxiously awaiting; all those books laid out in neat, colorful stacks, and all I can see are trees. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The roads are laid out for the long commute, the parking lots are filled with luxury SUVs, their owners out doing their over-consuming and gas-guzzling, and all I can think of is the way the fog was rising and rolling over the tree tops along Route 2 this morning as we headed out of Gill, the grayish white wisps of clouds appearing phantasmic and lovely and ethereal.

We've come from Wellesley, where I've met with my plastic surgeon, Dr. Pitts, to discuss my next surgery. Her assistant takes several "before" pictures. I try to imagine the "after" pictures, and file a mental note to start working on my six-pack. I try to stand up straight and tell my girls to smile. Dr. Pitts arrives to take measurements of my right girl so she can chose an implant for the left that will match perfectly in congruence, symmetry, and droop. She has me stand in front of the mirror, points out that the expander is sitting just where it should be, that it no longer seems too high, but that a small lift in my right breast--something she could perform during the exchange surgery--would bring it all together in a near-perfect balance and radiance. As I expected, my new breast is being created to look like my 16-year old breast, and not, it seems, like my worn-torn, well-seasoned, 42-year old breast. She lifts my right breast with her finger to show how a mastopexy, the official name for a breast lift, would bring it up and more to the middle, to where, I suppose, it used to be when I was a virginal sixteen, restoring that well-centered perkiness and charm of my yesteryear, and better matching it to the sprightly joviality of my new girl. I see her point, I really do, but I cannot give her an answer just yet. The downside is that I will have a small scar around the areola if I decide to go ahead with the lift, and some residual soreness that I most likely won't notice much, given how sore my left side will be (even though it was awfully nice to not have any pain on the right side after the mastectomy).
But just how important is this to me? I decided to go ahead with reconstruction on the merits of symmetry, after all, but just how far will I take it? I opted out of going "bigger," choosing instead to preserve some sense of self and humility, I suppose--based on the idea that my breast size has worked just fine for all these years, thank you, so why would I change it now? Now, when given the choice, do I opt for an attempt at near-perfection? Reconstruction and restoration? Will it matter if my left is still a bit droopy (and trust me, droop is all relative--I've seen some serious droopage, and mine are still pretty darn perky in comparison) while my right shines like the sun? Will I care?

This whole process feels to me a bit like when you've re-painted one room in the house and it looks fabulous and suddenly you start to notice how faded and worn out the rest of the house looks when it looked just fine before you painted that one room in the house and screwed everything up.

That happened about two years ago when I painted Dominick's bedroom over--and suddenly, all I could see were the smudges and dirt and cracks and faded, sun bleached paint on the rest of the house's walls--and it made me wish I had the time and energy to repaint the whole house, but also set me on an annoying course of noticing all the other ways our house, which we built ten years ago, has weathered two children and dogs and cats and well, life. The scratches on the hardwood floor, the battered, warped, perma-stained look of the wooden kitchen cabinets, the clawed remains of the furniture. I suppose my body isn't so different. Once you start bettering one thing, you're going to want to improve the whole she-bang. Is that such a bad thing?

I used to watch snippets of Extreme Makeover with a detached revulsion--the women who went in for a life-changing nose job were suddenly wanting a boob job and a butt lift and a tummy tuck and a tooth whitening and it seemed as if there was no end in sight to the improvements they wanted to make. Hey, you've got great teeth, but boy, your butt is dragging on the floor! Why don't we skim the fat and make you some lovely new big breasts so you can feel really great about yourself? Sometimes I wonder how they would have fared with a really great haircut. Maybe that's all it would have taken--but they were never given the chance. It had to be extreme, after all. Our culture feeds on it.

And now, here I am, having to make a choice I never imagined I would have to make. The mindless, shallow, plastic superficiality of the over-consuming, unconscious culture of our big box world repulses me, and yet, my choices might not be so ample and well, safe, if it were not for some elements of that world that pushed the techniques through trial and error to the level of sophistication that breast reconstruction surgery now employs. If it were not for the women who came before me, to not only be reconstructed after a breast-cancer-induced mastectomy but quite possibly, to be outfitted with larger breasts just-for-the-helluva-it as well, I wouldn't have had the reconstruction, symmetry would not have been an option, and I would not know so much about re-growing girls. It's all part of the same world, after all. And it's impossible to say that one kind of need or surgery begot the other, or whether co-evolution was at work, with each market pushing the shared, symbiotic nature of the technology along, but logic would tell me that I would not have these wonderful choices to make if not for the culture, however malevolent, that advanced cosmetic surgery to the point where it is now.

"I am what I am because of who we all are." That's the creed behind UBUNTU, the African philosophy of humanity to others that Doc Rivers, Celtics coach and apparent mage, brought to his team at the start of the season, to learn and play and live, not always easy in a world of cut-throat competition and superstar play. I watch the whole of the Celtics play--the experience, substance and tireless play of the big three, Pierce, Garnett, and Allen, the dependable, under appreciated Perkins, the promising upstart, Rondo, with his flashes of brilliance, and the bench--the 38-year olds, Cassell and Brown, who have brought new vigor and pluck to the mid-life game, and the spunk of House, Posey, Powe and Big Baby--and am struck by the many parts working together to create a lovely, imperfect whole.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts. ~ Aristotle. Yep.

Sometimes, everything comes together in a perfect juxtaposition of parts that makes you only see the perfect whole. We all have our imbalances, our imperfections. We would not be without them. What would the gundy gut be without his paunchy belly, hanging over his waistband? What would the jackanapes be without his impertinent, overflowing boasts? What would the flibbertigibbet be without her scatterbrained spout of ceaseless chatter? What would I be without my scars that tell the stories of my youth, my laugh lines and wrinkles that run railroad tracks across my face, the crooked, slightly squashed bend to my nose, the...oh, I could go on and on! Suffice it to say, I wouldn't be me, and you wouldn't be you, without all your wonderful idiosyncrasies.

"Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality" ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
But my breasts will never look the same, despite Dr. Pitts' best efforts. Even if my right girl decides to "have some work done," she'll never be 16 again. And why would she want to be? She worked hard nursing my two boys for nearly six years between them, and well, if wrinkles are the seasoning of the stew that is Life, than a bit of droop can only add more flavor to the pot.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. ~ Mark Twain

I tell Dr. Pitts I will have to think about whether or not I want to have the lift done. She explains that I can always have it done later, but that it is always easier to have it done at the time of the exchange surgery, when I'm already out for the count. She reminds me of my four weeks of restrictions after the surgery: no bras, (but no drains or strange strap to wear, either), no lifting, no rigorous activity, no sleeping on the left side. I am already starting to lament going four weeks without biking, playing badminton, catch, Frisbee. I have enjoyed my few precious weeks of all-out activity with Luke and Dominick--after spending the first few weeks of my recovery walking all over town, I switched to bicycling a few weeks ago, and it has been great fun to wheel about the hills of Gill with the boys by my side and the beautiful landscape--sonorous and animated and ardently green--all around. It'll be hard to give it up for a month, especially smack dab in the middle of summer, when climbing on your bike and scaling the heights of the hills only to coast down in a spiraling joy that brings back banana seat bike days and fills your whole body with breeze, can be the best antidote to the hot muggies that seem to grip our July afternoons.

There will be other ways to stay cool, to get out my ya-ya's, to commune with the resounding blush of early summer: sitting in front of the trusty window fan, standing underneath the sprinkler, or sipping sun tea in the shade; walking in the early morning to avoid the wilt of the midday sun; fighting mosquitoes and weeds in the garden; floating in a kayak and letting others paddle for a while. Oy. I'm trying to get over the disappointment of having to swing out of my current state of rigorous and vigorous activity and return to the keeping-my-inner-puppy-quiet stage, but as you can see, it's not working all that well. Maybe I'm just being a baby. Maybe I don't want to have to go through another surgery. Maybe I'm afraid, of being knocked out again, of having to expel the gunk clogging up my blood and lungs and liver, of the scalpel and the needles and the IVs, of feeling as if I've lost my footing, again, my forward motion suspended, my mettle misplaced. Maybe I'm afraid of having to depend on others again for things I'd like to be able to do myself, of being disappointed, of falling back into the blues that keep knocking on my door. Maybe I'm afraid of meeting my new girl. What if she doesn't measure up? What if she weeps? What if my body rejects her? Maybe I'm just afraid of the commitment; after all, we'll be together for at least thte next twenty years, when perhaps, she'll wear out, and look as sad and sorry as my other 62-year old girl will feel (even if I opt for the lift, and she still looks, ah, 30).

Whatever the reasons, I'm looking forward to resuming my recovery after the surgery. I've been able to start physical therapy for my knee and hips, after having nerve-conduction studies and MRIs and consultations with neurologists to rule out MS and other diabolical diseases and conditions, and since there are many more repairs to be made, I hope to be able to continue with PT and bicycling and all-out yoga and peeling back and rebuilding the layers of good health. There's always mending to be done, holes to be darned, strings without tethers, buttons to be replaced, gardens to be tended, a new nipple to be constructed...it's the way of growing older, the dignified way we have of reinventing ourselves while making our constant repairs, an endless recycling and rebirth that kindles the spirit of each day and each breath. I am here. I am grateful, I am grateful, I am grateful...Ubuntu!

Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many. ~Author Unknown