A spot of brown pigment the size of a small kernel of corn sits in the white of my eye. I take myself to an eye doctor, who examines it and says, "Come back in four months." I begin to obsess on it. Figuratively, it limits my vision. Obsessing on a spot is like proofreading, and I'm a genius at it. Detail-oriented is an understatement.
This is not the first spot I've obsessed on. There was the premature skin cancer on my temple. The mysterious mole on my palm. The dark spot on the sole of Adele's foot. The white spot on my mammogram.
Each one has stopped me cold for weeks. In each instance, my life has suddenly become small, like a rain poncho that folds up into its own tiny sack. The spot becomes all that I am.
How are you?
I am a spot, thank you.
For a time, I live inside its small circle, confined by fear.
How can I push through the anxious thoughts and view this as a circle to look through, a lens on my life? If I look through it, what can I see? The future is unclear, unknown. What will I do when my fast-growing girls leave home? Teach? Write? What will life be like without the anchor and structure of raising them? How will I face my own aging and my parents' inevitable passing?
I want my girls to go forth in the world strong and resilient, and I try to prepare them for all that lies ahead. It's an impossible task. Even without major trauma or illness, our lives will unfold into new shapes entirely, and I wonder whether we'll be able to absorb and adapt to the changes. It's scary to look through this lens--maybe easier to stay focused on the spot itself.
Using a cognitive behavioral strategy to curb my anxiety, I ask the eye doctor, "What is the realistic probability that this spot will turn out to be a problem?"
He hesitates, looking serious. "Twenty percent," he answers.
My strategy backfires. Twenty percent feels like a big number. The remaining eighty percent is for the moment blotted out by anxiety, eclipsed.
On the girls' spring break, we visit with friends, staying for two days at a hotel with a special water feature--a pool with a current, in the shape of a circular river. Guests float around and around the water track in clear vinyl, doughnut-shaped innertubes. My old college friend and I get in, jostled by other vacationers. If viewed from above, we would look silly, crowded creatures bumping into each other, drifting in circles. Why do we do this? Does it soothe our souls to travel in circles, passing by the same reference points over and over, without need of volition?
From my innertube, I ask my friend what she thinks about my obsessing on the spot in my eye. "How do I break out of it? Is this normal?"
She consoles me as we float along together. "It sounds perfectly natural." Any new spot, she suggests, is a subtle reminder of our mortality. "Aging, mortality--they're hard to accept."
I relax in the sun with her words, perfectly natural.
Back at home, I want it gone. I'm mad. Out, vile jelly! I tell my eye.
Then again, I'm attached to it, to its sharpness of vision.
I want to shake out the little sack that is this spot so that my life opens up again and is expansive--a warm, infinitely wide bed sheet from the dryer, floating down to where I can smooth out its flowers and curl up on it with my dogs, my family and our community, with a cup of tea and a magazine, a breeze at the window, and the sounds of birds and lawn mowers ushering in a new spring. I want to experience and share with others the beauty and fullness of life all around me. This will require a softness of vision and compassion. I don't cause spots. What I can do is to do what the doctor tells me while gently training my eye back to bigger things, like supporting and connecting with all those I love.
3/24/10
3/11/10
A Winning Season
I was not as vocal at Colette's basketball games this year. Maybe the many pressures of her junior year of high school have affected me, like second- hand smoke. She got through the season with some good rebounds and a few good steals and post moves, and I was fine with that.
That's not how it used to be. When Colette was in sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth grades, I was 100% engaged in the game from the bleachers, my shrill, piercing voice carrying to every player on the floor, supporting the mastery of their skills and the pursuit of mastery itself. I cheered loudly for each pass, block and basket. I took Colette to every camp, clinic and practice, so she could build her skill set and become a competent, contributing member of the high school team.
This year, the team finished with a record of 15 wins, 10 losses--a winning season overall. Colette's own performance was strong in practice and decent in games. I felt more detached. It's her game now and her team. For the first time, I missed over half the games because I worked Tuesday nights. I picked her up when the games were over.
She's not the rising-star post player I fantasized about when she was in ninth grade, but she's no slouch either. More importantly, her team became her world this season. The coaches and players kindled laughter and happiness in Colette every day from October to March, as she did in them. On the court and off the court, they learned to rely on one another.
Over a glass of wine at Christmas, I asked my sister-in-law, who played Division III basketball in college, whether she thought Colette should consider trying to walk on to a DIII team even if she's couldn't get playing time, for the sake of being part of a team, since she's loved it so much.
No, my sister-in-law said, she didn't think so, not unless basketball was Colette's first love. She described all the traveling that college basketball requires and how she'd often felt she was missing out on experiences on campus with friends. Then she became wistful, noting, "But I did love scoring." Turning to Colette, she asked, "Don't you just love that feeling of scoring, of putting the ball through the net?"
Colette hesitated, but I knew the answer. My broad-minded, deep-thinking, culturally-oriented daughter told her sacrilegious truth. "Not really," she said. "It's not that great."
As Colette's season ended, the college search process formally began for the juniors. A questionnaire from the college counselor asked, "What experiences have had the greatest impact on making you who you are?" One of her answers was playing varsity basketball. I think I understand that contradiction in her of not being driven by stats and scoring, but of being motivated and shaped by the team and the experience.
Basketball is where she pushed herself to perform in front of the school and to find her own strength going up against big, powerful opponents. It is where she confronted her fears and limitations. And it is this team of girls who accepted her as one of them, enabling her to forge close, new friendships and to feel and expand the shape of her own identity.
As the locker room door closes for the season and Colette begins to explore her other interests and to think about colleges and new possibilities, I sometimes wonder, What's the point of a post move? Does it make any difference anyway?
Maybe one day when she's writing a college paper or applying for her first job, she'll hear a voice in her head reminding her to hold her ground, box out, take care of the ball, or--my favorite--go up strong. Or maybe she'll forget the words and moves entirely, but will remember the feeling of working together, supporting each other through wins and losses--of caring deeply for one another, serving as family.
That's not how it used to be. When Colette was in sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth grades, I was 100% engaged in the game from the bleachers, my shrill, piercing voice carrying to every player on the floor, supporting the mastery of their skills and the pursuit of mastery itself. I cheered loudly for each pass, block and basket. I took Colette to every camp, clinic and practice, so she could build her skill set and become a competent, contributing member of the high school team.
This year, the team finished with a record of 15 wins, 10 losses--a winning season overall. Colette's own performance was strong in practice and decent in games. I felt more detached. It's her game now and her team. For the first time, I missed over half the games because I worked Tuesday nights. I picked her up when the games were over.
She's not the rising-star post player I fantasized about when she was in ninth grade, but she's no slouch either. More importantly, her team became her world this season. The coaches and players kindled laughter and happiness in Colette every day from October to March, as she did in them. On the court and off the court, they learned to rely on one another.
Over a glass of wine at Christmas, I asked my sister-in-law, who played Division III basketball in college, whether she thought Colette should consider trying to walk on to a DIII team even if she's couldn't get playing time, for the sake of being part of a team, since she's loved it so much.
No, my sister-in-law said, she didn't think so, not unless basketball was Colette's first love. She described all the traveling that college basketball requires and how she'd often felt she was missing out on experiences on campus with friends. Then she became wistful, noting, "But I did love scoring." Turning to Colette, she asked, "Don't you just love that feeling of scoring, of putting the ball through the net?"
Colette hesitated, but I knew the answer. My broad-minded, deep-thinking, culturally-oriented daughter told her sacrilegious truth. "Not really," she said. "It's not that great."
As Colette's season ended, the college search process formally began for the juniors. A questionnaire from the college counselor asked, "What experiences have had the greatest impact on making you who you are?" One of her answers was playing varsity basketball. I think I understand that contradiction in her of not being driven by stats and scoring, but of being motivated and shaped by the team and the experience.
Basketball is where she pushed herself to perform in front of the school and to find her own strength going up against big, powerful opponents. It is where she confronted her fears and limitations. And it is this team of girls who accepted her as one of them, enabling her to forge close, new friendships and to feel and expand the shape of her own identity.
As the locker room door closes for the season and Colette begins to explore her other interests and to think about colleges and new possibilities, I sometimes wonder, What's the point of a post move? Does it make any difference anyway?
Maybe one day when she's writing a college paper or applying for her first job, she'll hear a voice in her head reminding her to hold her ground, box out, take care of the ball, or--my favorite--go up strong. Or maybe she'll forget the words and moves entirely, but will remember the feeling of working together, supporting each other through wins and losses--of caring deeply for one another, serving as family.
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