4. A miracle is a shift in perception

I was collecting caps and gowns from sweaty art school grads, when I got the news. I stepped away from my black and white spreadsheet to take the call. Even after 2 weeks of being carted from scan to, ultrasound, to biopsy by doctors using the word “suspicious”, I was not prepared for this moment.

She never actually used the word cancer. What I did hear was a jumble of nonsense soon to become my familiar badge of courage “in situ invasive ductal carcinoma, ER and PR positive HER negative”. The words tossed by me so quickly there was no catching them. I’m not sure which dropped first, my heart, my stomach, or the floor. There was no time to think, I was engulfed by the angry currents of a violent river. No footing, no sound, no bearings, no control. I would stay trapped under those dark waters for the next month. Tumbling for tiny breaths of air. Desperate to find the ground and the light.

What I heard was a death sentence. The end. And in a sense it was. But I see now it was the beginning. A miracle so divinely timed and presented. Of course commencement would be the day chosen for this journey to embark. My students, for the first time in their lives, were released from the grips of their predictable and predetermined path. They, like me, plummeted into the waters of uncertainty.

On this day, the tornado tore me out of Kansas. I would never see the world the same. It was a calling to rise above my perceived prison of monochrome drudgery, and begin the journey home.

I took the call. I was initiated. And so, on Monday, May 19, 2014 it commenced.