Just Fine

I watched 100% of the College World Series while I recovered from my quick lumpectomy, reduction and lift.

If ESPN had been in the market for a different perspective on the proceedings, maybe a dreary, black-mooded color commentator who talked less about thrilling draft prospects and more about phantom lymph node pain, I would’ve made an excellent hire.

I sat in an armchair moved out of its usual corner habitat and oriented at the TV. My legs were propped on a mismatching ottoman from the other room. Water and Tylenol and tea and a book I was pretending to read were stationed on a small table beside me. My heating pad lined the back of my chair, and sometimes the most industrious thing I did in a day was to move the setting from high to medium when the heat, as it does, changed from soothing to just hot.

Weeks later, my two middle kids would ask me to stop sitting in that chair. I seemed recovered and capable of returning to the sectional, and by extension, life. They found my constant return to that seat triggering. But I was attached to the habit of my chair. Like wearing maternity pants well past delivery and then waking up one day to realize your infant is nine months old and it’s time to start wearing zipper pants again.

Before it became a habit, back in that first post-surgical week, I sat in my chair and wallowed. I felt less lucky than I had…