How NOT to Talk to Your Kids About Your Mastectomy, Part 1

My girls are 5, 7, and 11 [Happy Birthday, Claire!], and I’ve always tried to be pretty open and straightforward about body parts and functions.

For example, seeing someone’s underwear shouldn’t be a big deal, right? We ALL have bottoms, and we ALL wear underwear. No need to dwell on it, freak out about it, or succumb to hysterical laughing just because you saw someone’s Hanes waistband. Certainly there’s nothing to *share* with anyone, especially someone who isn’t your parent or your pediatrician, but it’s nothing to be embarrassed of or make a big deal about.

So now you know my basic mindset when Hubby and I needed to tell the girls I was having a mastectomy.

Hubby valiantly broached the topic over supper one night – tilapia, brown rice, and broccoli, if I remember correctly. He was trying to be very sensitive about the topic; needless to say, my emotions were pretty raw, and he may have been trying to avoid me bursting into tears yet again. However, as he referenced their Grammy [my mom] having had cancer three times, as well as other family members, he was only getting just so far with Kate and and Amy, in particular.

Amy was looking back and forth between him and me, trying to put this new information about ‘breast’ and ‘cancer’ and ‘sick’ and ‘another operation’ into some sort of 5-year-old context. I’ve been known to interrupt Hubby on occasion, distilling information down to the lowest common denominator for a particular audience, and so I did just that (it used to drive him nuts, but now he’s so used to it I’m pretty sure he views it as one of those items I must have written in invisible ink on the back of our marriage license, right along with “I will not unfurl your balled up dirty socks, and they will NOT get clean that way,” and “‘squeeze the toothpaste from the end’ means from the narrow SEALED end,” and “despite your stance to the contrary, there’s more to music than ’60s and ’70s rock, and you WILL share the radio presets”).

I took a swig of milk, looked at the puzzled looks of Amy and Kate, and saw tears in Claire’s eyes, and said, “So that mommy doesn’t get sick like Grammy did, because that sickness can be really REALLY bad, I’m going to have my boobs chopped off.”

Well… that helped them understand right-quick what was going on, and led to some worry and fear and tears. All normal parts of the process of such a thing, and Hubby and I answered questions and reassured them as much as was possible.

The thing is: you never quite know when, where, or how often your exact words will be repeated back to you. Verbatim.

It started at Costco.

Now that Kwik Trip has jacked up their milk prices again, the cheapest place [nearby] to get our requisite 4 – 5 gallons of moo juice per week is our local Costco.

So Amy (the 5-year-old) and I are in the check-out line with two extra large boxes of flavored Cheerios and 4 gallons of milk. The kid could some day make a FORTUNE as a comedienne; her timing is uncanny. With two customers ahead of us and at least two behind us and several right next to us, she finds the precise moment when natural pauses in conversation converge with a break in grocery scanning to say, quite loudly and very articulately: “So mama, how many more days ’til you have your boobs chopped off?”

Jaws of over a dozen people dropped in unison.

Breath was held.

Eyelids widened abnormally. (Imagine a whole group of strangers simultaneously being poked in the ass with a pin – before the yelling and screaming — and you’ve got the picture.)

If ever I felt like a turn-of-the-century circus sideshow — and believe me, as a mother of three, stepmother of two, and second wife of one, there have been COUNTLESS opportunities — this would be it.

Of course, any normal child would be put off by such reaction, perhaps getting a little shy or, at the very least, quieting down. But not MY kid. Oh no. Instead, Amy notices all this attention and is a little jazzed by her power to command an audience.

Since the trap door I was hoping would appear and swallow me up did not materialize, I went back to my honesty-is-the-best-policy stance, and informed everyone within earshot that I would soon be having a mastectomy.

This time, the gaping and gasping was accompanied by a few sympathetic murmurings and mumbles.

You might think that would make the whole situation a little more bearable, right? Yeah… not so much. The young checker who was taking care of the customers in my line couldn’t seem to stop staring at us – Amy with a wide grin, and me with what I can only imagine was sheer horror and embarrassment (and, as luck would have it, I was still wearing my jammy shirt under my fleece jacket, and I’m pretty sure my hair was a bit dirty and greasy, pulled back into a hasty pontail – and NOT the messy chic kind).

And then I got to say the thing I’ve always wanted to say. This wasn’t a dream-come-true kind of situation for it or anything, such as a scenario where I had just miraculously rescued 3 children from a burning car, but the phrase was kind of appropriate, nonetheless.

With my remaining sliver of dignity, I tried to push my face into something resembling a smile, pulled my ancient LL Bean jacket over my plaid-flannel-button-down-tucked-in nightshirt, and said weakly, “Move along now, please. Nothing to see here.”

Yeah. Amy and Mommy: The Town Crier and The Village Idiot. What a mother-daughter combo, eh?

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Tagged as: breast cancer, Costco, embarrassing moments, marriage contract, mastectomy, public humiliation, talking to your children