I went from a rangy size 8 to 10 to a curvy size 10 and had to exercise regularly to remain so. I didn’t notice my reconstructed breasts, apart from an obvious cleavage in low tops. Sometimes, and this seemed odd, I got phantom tingling where my nipples used to be. It reminded me they’d departed. Also the fronts of my breasts were colder to the touch, especially along the scar lines.
Most of the time I loved my body. I was 37 and had experienced many invasive surgeries, from the horror that was Celso’s birth to surgery for cancer, and the gruelling regimen of chemotherapy plus daily drug taking to suppress my hormones from attempting to develop another cancer site. I was not perfect in body, but with the return to health and fitness my body felt perfect.
Heightened experience: is life’s meaning found in connection with others?
When you climb
out a black well
you are not the same
you come to
in the blue air
with a long sore scar
circling your chest
like the shoreline
of a deep new sea
your hands are webbed
inviting you
to trust yourself
in water stranger
and wilder
than you’ve ever known
your heart has a kick
your eyes have
a different bite
you have emerged
from some dark wonder
you can’t explain
you are not the same
Dorothy Porter, ‘Not the Same’
Through the pain of the breast cancer diagnosis and treatment I sank so low. When I went down into the pit of my stomach with my elevator emotions, got out and had a look around, I saw myself as someone who was never going to become an old woman, or achieve things like becoming a writer, or support my family financially in a job which satisfied my desire to care for others in a professional role. The word ‘loser’ kept springing to mind. After the blackness of this despair, the opposite, light, seared through into my daily existence. I was happy: plain and simple. And alive.
I was alive.
Every Monday in Celso’s first few years of life we attended a feeding group, and in the afternoon he and I drove to another place north of the city for speech therapy. Every Tuesday I took him to a ‘neurotypical’ playgroup for newborns to five-year-olds in a cavernous room in a Baptist church. Every Wednesday he attended an Early Childhood Development Program playgroup for high-needs kids. The children in this group had Down syndrome or other chromosomal disorders; some were autistic and a few had unspecified problems and an overarching diagnosis of Global Developmental Delay (like Celso at the time).
I enjoyed both playgroups, where I spoke with other mothers. I loved it when Celso sparked another child’s interest and they played ‘hello’ or a toddler rolled a ball to him as a means of introducing themselves. In the preschool primordial world of playgroups, morality wasn’t known yet and no societal rules were followed; a grumpy boy poured sand over Celso’s head and into his eyes because he’d taken hold of the boy’s tractor; or a boy with flyaway blond hair and a brain that short-circuited and stopped him from walking properly kissed Celso’s hand.
The reverb after being told your child’s disabled is numbing. I took a step back with the force of it. Then leant into it. I hoped Celso wasn’t so developmentally delayed that he couldn’t function in the standard schooling system or socially. My pregnancy fantasies of having a brilliant boy, like his erudite father, were gone. I’d imagined us both teaching him the wonders of life. The genie in the bottle was expectation. I let it out and let it go. There was a risk that Celso’s medical issues isolated me from other mothers’ experiences of mothering. In high-needs groups I found an understanding of the depth of tiredness and the circuitous, rolling worry associated with caring for these special children. It was the same situation I’d had with my cancer: snap. I went to support groups for young women with breast cancer, and support groups for young women with breast cancer and young children.
Come bath time for Celso I’d perch an Astro Boy rubber stamp on the bath’s rim: One, two, three. I flicked it into the water. Celso would lean over and shudder with giggles. Red-faced, he grinned with all of his teeth filling up his face. Then he’d pause and pass the rubber stamp up for me to do it again. Flick. Cackle.
Stripped down to its core, my primary focus was still about mothering a child. In this I could connect with other people and their parenting experience. This was important. Writing and mothering went deep for me. The world sat well when I did both: the sun shone, petty things were left, unkind words forgiven. My diagnosis of breast cancer only re-confirmed my need to have both at the centre of my life. This, and my relationship with my partner. All three were essential to my happiness.
Where else to go once you’ve seen the bottom?
I could comprehend how it was possible to keep sinking: to suicide. I’d never had a true suicidal thought or more importantly a plan before cancer; I wanted life in full Technicolor, please. I had Dorothy Porter’s puckered scar across my chest to indicate where I stood in the black well; my heart had a new kick to it; I was not the same. Oh, but for the gods, I was happy again. The minutiae of daily life, mostly domestic, didn’t overwhelm me; there was a heightened quality that surrounded my interactions with friends and family. I boarded that plane to see old family friends instead of putting it off, and sent that letter I’d meant to write. The most surprising of all was my complete forgiveness of my father. My relationship
