A Familiar Song

My boyfriend started singing a song I didn’t recognize. He assured me I knew the song, and carried on singing it. For over a minute I listened to him, wracking my brain, but couldn’t recognize it in the slightest. Johnny said, "It's More Than Words by Extreme. I know you've heard this song."

I said, with certainty, "I have never heard that song before."

He played the song on YouTube, and within three seconds I said, “Oh, yeah, I know this song.”

Lyrics have always been my super weakness. I can’t recall any of the lyrics to songs on my running playlist, songs I’ve been listening to for over a decade. I can hum a song, but, like Britney, I need the track playing to sing along. I only know the words to Karate by Tenacious D, a song I play for Geoffrey on his birthday because it makes him so happy, but one day a year is all we get of that masterpiece or it won’t be as special.

The kids went on vacation with their dad last week, and I maximized the time. A psychic once told me to always write when the kids are away and be present with them when they’re at my house. She finished the session by telling me when I find coins it’s my dead relatives saying hi, which I took as canned. But sometimes psychics are like religion, and you just have to take the bits you like and leave the bits you don’t.

I find coins all the time. If the psychic is right, I’m rich with celestial lookouts. Last weekend I was running and found a dollar bill. This was just the denomination I needed to go into the week.

The house is so quiet when the kids are gone, I keep the place as silent as a Scientologist Birthing Center when I’m writing. As the days went by, I started getting anxious and would lay awake at night worried that I needed to tell the kids things. I was really concerned I never told them they should avoid metal straws. This concern was compounded by terrible mental images of a metal straw in front of a face, and a sneeze sending their face forward so their eyeball is speared by the unbendable straw. 

I remember when I was driving with my mom once in high school. We passed a garbage bag on the road, and my mom swerved. She looked at me and said, “Never drive over a plastic bag, there could be a baby in it.”

I assured her I wouldn’t. That seemed like the most appropriate thing to do.

The kids still sleep in the same bed. I bought Geoffrey a queen bed when we moved into our new house because I was worried that with my boyfriend moving in, there would be readjusting since we all slept in my bed every night. Now Kiki just crawls into bed with G at night, and I usually read to them, and after they’re asleep I go to my room. Occasionally they will come and get me, and I end up sleeping on the bottom of their bed, like the dog.

The week flew by because I took care of a procedure I had coming since March when I had my first mammogram, and the doctor saw two masses he wasn’t sure about. He wasn’t overly concerned and said I could wait and come back in six months to see if they’ve changed size or to get them biopsied. This was the first time I’d gone to a doctor in six years, not counting the dentist I last saw three years ago, and still haven’t gone back to get the other filling, so I decided to get the biopsy because I can’t be on a six-month visitation schedule, and I don’t need another concern keeping me up at night.

The weekend before I went in for the biopsies, I had coffee with a friend, and she told me about a book she was reading and gave an anecdote about people who are diagnosed with brain cancer being THE NICEST people. So the entire time in the doctor's office, when I was interacting with such kind women who work on diseased boobs all day, I was trying my hardest to not react with genuine respect and appreciation for their work. It was impossible to not be nice to them, and I even became paranoid their kindness was out of sympathy and they knew something I didn’t know.

During the two days of waiting for the results, I closed off from the world, read books, and ate like Brendan Fraser preparing for the role of the lifetime. I felt bad for being such bad company on the phone with my sisters, and after they poured out all they had to say, I’d tell them I have to go. My sister told me about a 33-year-old woman driving down the freeway, killed by a piece of sheet metal that flew off the truck. A similar scenario has been playing in my mind since the snow started melting, and I've seen so many logging trucks on the freeway taking all the burnt-up trees off the Sierras, but I didn’t say so. My silence made them nervous, and they thought I was falling into a depression. I really just had nothing to say, and my mouth was only good at taking in food, not spitting out words.

My mouth wasn’t the only hole that couldn’t release, my butt did the same. All that food came back to torment me at 2 am when I had a stomach ache that felt like I was about to give birth. I was convinced I had appendicitis, but I must have fallen asleep and then farted out the pain because I woke up okay.  It could have been from sleeping in a sports bra. They advised me to do it, and I think it restricted all the gas in my body so it ballooned up, making me feel like I was about to explode. 

Two days after the procedure my sister asked if the doctor called with my results. I told her no, and she yelled at me to call them. After I tried to blow it off, she said, “You need to call them now. They don’t care we’re waiting, it’s not their titty.”

How could I not call after that? When I heard the results that both masses were benign I was so overjoyed and filled with gratitude. I called my sister and started crying when I told her. The tears were a surprise to me, but I had spent the two days trying so hard not to think of all the scary outcomes, I was overcome with relief. 

My kids came back the day before my birthday. Kiki said, “I am so excited 41 years old. It seems like yesterday you were 37.”

We went out to eat at a dumpling house and then came home and watched the Fabelmans before Kiki made me a cake. She gave me a sweet drawing and Geoffrey gave me six dollars, one of the dollars I gave him that morning, telling him I found it on my run. 

I went to bed that night hoping they’d come and get me, so I could sleep at the foot of their bed, like the dog. Then I thought about cars with sunroofs, and how I need to tell the kids to never stand up through a sunroof. There was a mental image, but I’ll spare you the details.

Back when I was 37