I am two months younger than my uncle Murray Howell was when he died of brain cancer. I was only 6 months old and so I did not know him, but have heard of him my whole life. But only now do I feel like I understand the undertone of pain when he was talked about; that it was heartbreaking to lose someone so young. I think about Murray a lot. I think about the grief my mom carried while she was pregnant with me, while she also carried me. I think about what it was like for my parents to deal with such loss while dealing with a new life. I wish I could ask my mom, now that I am a mother, how did you lose and love at the same time? But my mom, too, has passed away from cancer. So I wonder for me is cancer an if, or simply a when?
I have spent so much time thinking and agonizing about my body. In the locker room at the gym I like to listen to the older women. They dwell on their bodies. One woman always starts her hellos by saying, “Well I am still on the right side of the dirt, so I can’t complain too much.” Their conversations go back and forth with lists of aches and surgeries — not complaints, just statements of what is. Their bodies define their lives. They say to each other: “How is your shoulder? Did your hip heal OK?” For me, this is a land that, at 36, feels far off but isn’t. Hearing these conversations makes me grateful for the health I have, even if my healthy body is one I still don’t totally recognize.
After having my baby, my body became foreign to me. It has been painful at times to be in a body I did not recognize, or cannot trust to be the way I want it to be. But I made the trip from Maidenhood to Motherhood and shouldn’t that leave a mark? It has been a conscious practice of letting go of wanting things to be different. I had the sharp realization recently: What if instead of wishing for smaller inner thighs, I was wishing for a tumor to shrink?
It’s harder to write about bodies than you would think. We all have one, but we all have such different relationships with them and we all want different things for and from our bodies. And it might be cliche to just say I am healthy and therefore grateful, but I am.
A year and a half after Murray died, we learned that my much adored and beloved older brother, at 8 years old, had cystic fibrosis. My parents were told their son would be lucky to live to see his teenage years. How do you hear that news as a parent? How do you raise a child you think you will lose? My mom always said her goal was to get her son to live longer than her brother Murray did, but she died before she saw that happen. She mercifully had children who are all still outliving her.
My current body issues are not cancer, not cystic fibrosis; are they then inconsequential? No, not to me. But it does leave room for a little awareness, and some appreciation of what is actually happening, which is time passing and the gift of getting older.
You would think that in a family with so many bodies that seemed to be working against just living I would be grateful for whatever shape my body was in, as long as it kept breathing. But this gratitude is something I have to cultivate. I have to remember to, and choose to, love my healthy body. And I wonder, why?
We are about to enter the heavy season of self-judgment, especially around food and our selves. ’Tis the season to wonder why did I do that, say that, eat so much of that? But maybe this year we can pause before we say how bad we have been. You are not a better person if you eat nothing but celery with water for Thanksgiving than your relative who eats a whole pumpkin pie.
I’m going to try to enter this season by appreciating all that my body does for me, has always done for me. All I ask, it does, which I am reminded of when I look at my son and I think how could I ever feel badly about anything that brought me you? Since I would like a time in my life when I can just let myself love my body, before the complaints are physical rather than aesthetic, I am going to stop wanting something I don’t have and love what I do have, which is my health. As quaint as it sounds, I have what I love, I love what I have, and for right now I know that is enough.
C.S. Hammond lives in Hartland.