I'm sitting, cowering, in a restroom stall at the airport. I've never felt lonelier in my life. And yet I feel safe as though hiding out in an airport terminal full of strangers will protect me from the pain that is lurking out there.
"Dust In The Wind" -- Muzak style -- is playing in the airport gift shop. I'm staring at Life Magazine, the cover shows Kermit the Frog embracing Jim Henson's empty chair. I cry. Sob.Empty chairs. Empty wombs.
A young, blonde woman is embraced by her male friend. Celebrating. Aha! Of course...she is pregnant. Slight bulge to her tummy. I turn away.
I cannot stop crying. I cannot stop hating the young, blonde pregnant woman. All I want is to be pregnant -- to feel life -- to give birth.
But all I have instead is "a mass", a lump, a nodule in my left breast that needs to examined. Not today, not tomorrow, but two weeks from now. And so I wait. Wonder. Worry. So alone, yet secure, somehow, in my tiny bathroom stall tucked away in the Delta terminal full of strangers at the Cincinnati airport.
(Discovered this tonight, hastily scribbled in the back of my copy of Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down The Bones/Freeing The Writer Within" 22 Junes ago. Fortunately, the breast lump turned out to be nothing. Two years later -- almost to the day -- I found out I was finally pregnant! Daniel John was on his way! At last!)
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