All is Well

 

When I wake up this December Sunday at 9 am, it is a summer day. The sun has set our living room on fire. The curry leaf plant basks in the golden beam warming the front window, its green lush against the flame of the Japanese maple outside. Everywhere the color splashes and swells after weeks of the gloom that’s typical of fall.

 

I think about my last week, the one in which I’ve sailed through a rainbow of emotions. On Monday, there’s the face-off with my husband over Facebook. When I drop him off at the airport, our marriage is at the departure lounge. He is in grave danger of being unfriended. By Tuesday morning, however, my husband is looking like an angel: when he’s away on business for a long spell, I can live how I want and not worry about cooking, or turning off the lights or watching the heating bill.

 

On Wednesday morning, I’m dreaming about the possibilities of buying Chinese furniture at a closeout sale in San Mateo. By that afternoon, however, thanks to a phone call from a man named Andrew (who, two weeks prior, had the gall to ask me if I were wearing breast implants) tells me my left breast looks out of whack. While this fact is nothing new to me, Andrew’s call draws attention to the number of things that I still have pending on the todo list of my life. If the suspicious spot on my left breast is, in fact, trouble, what must I do? Must I focus on cleaning my fridge? Must I get my closet ready for possible surgery? Must I inform all my friends about my condition so they may stock up their fridges and take turns to drop off food outside my door?

 

When Friday morning arrives and I sit in front of the clerk at the breast care center, I’m expected to sign a paper called the Advance Care Directive. I am not amused. Talk of timing in the American healthcare system: show a panicking patient a link to the closest mortuary and tell her the cedar casket is fifty percent off until year-end. Fifteen minutes later, my left breast is squished into a photo frame for the sixth time in one pressing week. The machine grunts and shudders. It’s about to launch my only left breast into the Milky Way. I’m told to hold my breath. In that moment, my son’s compressed grade from his last Calculus test begins to inflate into an A+. Holding my breath some more while I begin to orbit Jupiter, I tell myself I’m okay with what I’ve been granted in this life–my two average children who are rote scholars and not Rhodes scholars like Varun Sivaram and my above-average husband who is a good, humble man even though he isn’t George Clooney–and so will someone release me from this photo frame this instant?   

 

The machine grounds me back on earth in half a minute. I am pronounced healthy after I’m shown an x-ray profile of my breast, which, what do you know, looks like Angelina Jolie’s. It’s full, deliriously curved, tilted upward and looking at Brad Pitt. Two hours after that test, I find myself, once again, making a clean breast of my life to someone else, a high school teacher. After listening to my lament, my son’s teacher says my son is doing okay and would do even better if only he had the pragmatism to lower his course load this year.

 

In a week during which the juice has evaporated from my existence, this new Sunday morning feels like a gift from the heavens. The sun bathes the seat wall under our cherry blossom. A mug of Peet’s coffee in one hand and the week’s New Yorker in the other, I go out in my jammies and rest against the wall. Around me the light wind rustles through the cherry tree. I hear little snaps above me. Leaves bid a farewell to their branches. They tumble about my feet. I begin reading the profile of Eli Broad, a multibillionaire in Los Angeles.   

 

But in minutes, it seems, the promise of a perfect day vanishes. The first splat hits my head. A steady patter of rain begins. And on my bench, two feet away, a squirrel has left a legacy of poop, three oval beads arranged in a semi-circle that, presently, will get adulterated by the washing from the skies. At least all’s well, I tell myself looking heavenward. And just when everything is well, a little load of crap appears from nowhere and reminds you to stop gloating.

Comments

[shanthi Jayadev]

Are you sure after going under the panini press the left breast looks up to Brad Pitt and not down at Clooney? You have nothin to worry for the next 10 years. Looking good baby, looking good. Squirrel poop is not a good sign - chase those devils away with good old Cayenne.

[Rameysh]

Absolutely a delight to read your blog---funny how we would become so candid once we see liberation- in possible near term death- sets us free.

[C. Mohan]

Kalpana, something has gone wrong with the first photo. Only a part of it is visible. Please fix it.

Mohan

[Sharadaa S]

Mohan, I see why Kalpana "misses" you !!
Kalpana, love to read your blog always. I am glad you are ok.

[Subha Chandran]

Hi Kalpana,
I love it. Kalpana. You are getting there to get the booker prize . Great Job!

[shaila menezes]

Beautifully written, Kalpana!
Thanks for sharing and wishing you and your family a very healthy, safe, peaceful and restorative holiday season!

shaila

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[server management]

What a great idea!! i'ld like to know more how many people you met on 1st sept, i'm quite late to see this blog.Very good! Nice information this is really interesting. Good luck in building the table.

[Coach Bags Outlet]

If the Church truly wants to impact the world let us remember the great commission and begin to really make disciples. Let us stop being distracted with social programs as a goal or mission of the church and begin to see them as results and by products of real disciple-maafdsking in action. If we really want to effect La Jolla and Pacific Beach we need to affect the people. But to do that we need to first begin with ourselves- we need to truly be disciples and not just Christian converts.