Before I Forget // April
No news is good news?
No news is good news until no news is a second opinion and a vague voicemail from your dermatologist saying “sorry for the delay!” Yadayada… “I don’t leave test results over voicemail...” Blah blah big words. Blah blah “try you again tomorrow. Don’t lose any sleep over this!”
Anyone who tells you not to lose sleep should be fined the cost of your next three therapy sessions and a box of Z-quil.
No news is good news until the doctor who told you not to lose sleep calls back just as you’re parking your car at the gym. It’s melanoma, he says. It’s small, he says. They caught it early, he says. They’ll remove it in the office. Skin checks every three months for a year. It’s no big deal, he says.
It’s just skin cancer. No big deal.
My natural sense of risk aversion has only been amplified by motherhood. I can’t die. Who would braid Lucy’s hair each morning? Who would run the back of their finger down the bridge of James’ nose until he falls asleep at night? So I don’t step out on narrow ledges when I’m hiking, and I don’t text and drive and I never have more than two drinks on a Saturday night. I don’t bike on the road or sky dive or scuba dive. I avoid anything that could kill me prematurely.
And yet, there are more ways to die than I can count or control, more forces inside and outside of my body that could cut the shimmering thread between life and death on any given day. But the sun? The sun wants to kill me? Really?!
I consider the possibility of just not telling anyone. If it’s really no big deal then I can have it removed and no one will have to know. I don’t want to upset anyone. I don’t want to get my skin cancer on them.
But as much as I hate being a burden, I love attention more so I tell everyone, starting with my best friend, Kelsie. She calls her mom who calls her best friend who’s a nurse at the local cancer hospital. The next day I get a call from a surgeon who introduces himself by his first name, not just doctor and I immediately google him only to see that he has more five star reviews than a Sarah J. Maas novel. He asks me how he can help and tells me that they’ve already got all my basic information. How? I wonder and immediately know the answer. There are things you just know about someone when you’ve been friends for twenty years, not the least of which is their date of birth.
When my friends have a new baby or a cold, when they’ve lost a loved one or their own sense of well being, I want to show up with a meal or a hot coffee or a bouquet of flowers. I love popping a card in the mail. I love praying for them in a voice message so that they can hear my voice praying their name.
Sure, it’s inconvenient. Sure I’ve got other things to do. Sometimes putting a card in the mail feels like the hardest thing to do, but when I do it something clicks into place. I remember that some things are more important than laundry or deadlines or emails.
I wonder if this is why we so often say “no, no, I don’t need anything. I’ll be fine” even when a jar full of daisies or a funny little card or a bowl of soup might be exactly what we need.
We don’t want to inconvenience people, and we may tell ourselves it’s because we love them, but I wonder if it’s because we have a have a hard time believing in our own belovedness. And so we deprive ourselves of the things we need most, at least I do. Confronted with my inability to save my own life, my own desperate need for care and tenderness, my first thought is to tell no one. To spare them the inconvenience.
Instead, I take Kels up on her offer to have a silent reading party while the surgeon cuts open my left thigh and scrapes away the cancer. My mother in law offers to watch the kids and I say “yes. Thank you.” Megan offers to bake cookies and I say “yes. Thank you.”
And in all the group chats I say “I love you all. Get your skin checked.”
READING
The Great Divide by Cristina Henríquez ⭐️⭐️
I know several people who LOVED this, but for a book that was marketed as an epic, I found this disappointing. I finished it but should have DNFd it. Pro tip: if you catch yourself saying “maybe it will get better!” (to any book, not necessarily this one) IT WON’T.
Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
A second chance romance between an infamous actor and a journalist meet when she’s tasked with interviewing him after he’s controversially cast in an upcoming film. This was a delight by the pool. Easy breezy. Two open door scenes in the back half of the book so do with that what you will.
Yellowface by RF Kuang ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
This book was so…weird. I want a better word for it but I can’t find one. It’s not horror, but kind of? Part ghost story, part cultural critique, Yellowface was strange and disturbing and refreshing all at once. Kuang’s writing is razor sharp and the story is well told with a satisfying ending. It did feel a little slow in the middle, and I probably wouldn’t read it again but I’m glad I read it.
Just For The Summer by Abby Jimenez ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Kels and I preordered this and saved it for our silent reading party during my melanoma removal which is just so unbelievably on brand for me. Getting melanoma scraped out of your thigh could never be considered a vacation, but this was the perfect book to read before, during and after. Abby Jimenez always delivers a good time and it was fun to re-visit characters from Part of Your World and Yours, Truly.
An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Just an exquisite book for any person of faith or spiritual practice. She invites us into spiritual practices that are as simple as they are unorthodox, like standing naked in front of a full length mirror, saying no, and feeling pain. I’ve highlighted dozens of passages and will return to this over and over again.
EATING
This roasted garlic aioli is SO GOOD on sandwiches (especially a turkey club on sourdough). I found it at the gourmet market I love to visit in FL and immediately ordered some online to have at home. The Five Minute Tzatziki from Kat Ashmore’s Big Bites (extra garlic and parsley instead of dill) is so good and I have a dozen more recipes flagged. I served it with grilled shawarma chicken and roasted potatoes. I think I neglected to mention that we have roommates right now. Our friend Gemma and her daughter just moved to town and are staying with us for a while.
The reason I’m saying this now is because Gemma and I made homemade Eggs Benedict with my grandmother’s hollandaise sauce and it was truly the best I’ve ever had but it is also a two person job; one poaching eggs while the other is whisking the sauce. Just one of the many ways their time with us has been a gift but that’s another story for another time.
LOVING
You couldn’t quite catch it all the way. And now it’s gone.”
This dress was the perfect thing for my flight home from Florida. Looked like the cool art teacher who always signed your hall passes and let you hang out in her room during study hall but felt like a nightgown.
We got these candlesticks as a gift when I was pregnant with Lucy and they are now an essential part of every birthday celebration.
For my fellow Substack writers,
Substack Cohort is amazing. Her whole Substack is a generous resource for anyone wanting to write well in this space.
Your words are a gift. Glad you accepted help and grateful to be reminded of our own belovedness.
Just asked my doc about a skin check last week! Thanks for this push to just do it. Glad you have people to show up when you need it and glad you’re well. 💛