So, again for no discernible reason, I got sick mid-year of 2010. I had to have a fibroid removed (myomectomy) because of abnormal and heavy bleeding. Each time I mentioned the (bloody) situation to my husband, I would get an earful from him, telling me to have myself checked already. But because I am such a daft prick who had fashioned the daft idea not to fix anything if it ain't really really broken, I did not heed his advice.
Honestly, it's because I am always petrified of what I might discover when I see a doctor. I normally have that apprehensive twinge when I enter a clinic or hospital---something which comes off now as an involuntary reflex towards an imagined pain—that I'd rather not do it at all. It takes a lot of courage from my end, and a lot of wounding words and almost an attempt to manhandle me by another, understandably so--before I'd consider going. As the rather gory circumstance then presented itself by early November, I had to make that call, and decide on my fate, or else suffer the dire consequences. The surgery went as planned, and save for the part where the daft prick of an anaesthesiologist cost me a couple days lying down flat on my back because of messing with my spine and killing me with a headache too awful for words, I survived the bedlam on bourbon street. Apologies for abusing my british slur...
It's strange actually, the many times I have gone under the knife in my 39 years of existence, as I would even joke about my body being a needlework in progress, that I would still fret and mentally obsess about dying every single time. It's just the anticipation of pain—the kind of pain that begs for description, the kind where you dread just thinking about it, exacerbated by the hours you'd have to wait until you are led into the operating room, even when half of your brain has wandered to la la land, musing whether the faint whispers you hear all along are of ghosts of the netherworld, or of nurses telling you to put your feet up and feel the sheets, and because the better half of your brain would indubitably remind you that you are about to be cut in pieces. I've had an appendectomy, breast excision biopsy, one aborted pregnancy, two caesarean deliveries, a lap-cholesystectomy and then the myomectomy. The prospect of anything sharp and metallic in my body, the biting cold, the acrid smell of disinfectant, all that, barely a few months apart from my last gig ,would scare the living daylights out of me, so much that I promised this has got to stop at some point. I have to get healthy. And that, 2011, should be the slogan of the year.
At the home front, things went okay. We are still at our jobs, Oliver and I, and hanging on to our dear life as usual. We had family goals that we were unable to fulfil last year, which we could easily blame for things beyond our control. Like illnesses and career setbacks, you know. If it were not for the kids who take away the pessimism every time they do something rather unexpected, yet ultimately brilliant, I wouldn't know if we had done anything useful to our future at all. But being a parent is by itself liberating. And I am proud of my kids. Any mother is proud of her offspring.
Gabby is decidedly something of a reader. He loves science and muses about the aurora borealis, or the currency of Riyadh, and the invisible planets. He spent part of his Christmas money to buy a chess set, and now teaches me about the concept of castling. He put his lunch money aside and had saved enough by the end of year to open his very first savings account. Apart from the occasional childish squabble he gets into with his sister, he considers himself a tweener, and that I should never submit him to the humiliation of joining kiddie games again. At times, it cracks me up, but I try not to show it, in deference to his feelings. Sophia is just well, Sophia-- light hearted, funny, and radiant. She does good in school, too, being consistently on the top of her class. She loves to dance, draw, sing—all indicative of a desire to be great at something, maybe the arts? I do not wish to be too forthcoming of my children, but I have earned some bragging rights on them, haven't I?
When I come to think of it, the failed expectations, the goals that didn't come to fruition in the past year--- they were thwarted endeavours, only because we didn't try hard enough. I guess everyone carves up to his own share of bad years and good years, and 2010 was neither good nor bad for us, but just in between. It's not a very good thing, if I have to be very honest. Complacency is never a good thing. But as long as there is a resolve to do better, and as long as I can learn to be content, then I am sure to triumph.
Yet time isn't much of a friend. 2011, hello, you're a bit scary to ponder. You're one year away from the so-called apocalypse, and I wonder whether my kids' shocking questions, courtesy of discovery channel, about who dies first when the world comes to an end—is it by order of age or inconsequence---shakes me up in the sense that I feel something must happen now, something definitive, or I will really really miss my train…
