Sugar coatings

I’m not going to sugar coat this.

Mostly because I’ve reached an age where you say things like ‘I’m not going to sugar coat’ things. 

On the timeline, it’s somewhere between ‘I can’t believe I sound like my mother’ and ‘get off my lawn.’ It's just a hop-skip away from wearing purple AND red, and not quite managing to keep my lipstick from traveling to other parts of my face.

There’s nothing quite like counting birthdays in terms of new and more invasive (not to mention unmentionable) health screenings that are really just looking for c-a-n-c-e-r.

I thought only people my grandparents’ age refused to utter the word aloud. People my age are supposed to say it with an expletive preceding.

But then I looked in the mirror one day and saw someone who resembled my grandmother looking back.

Eventually, if we’re lucky, we might get there.

But there’s a checklist.

You mark your forties by getting the fatty deposits in your torso pressed into an X-ray machine that looks like an icebox door.

And before you know it you’re facing a date with a tiny camera, which will take a week to prepare for, and a day to get over once you’ve been given the “good” drugs that will make you forget what happened.

Katie Couric, bless her heart, has tried her best over the years (and on live television) to prepare us all for the potentially life-saving test we don’t want to think about let alone discuss.

But it doesn’t really help to know that “thinking about it” is worse than “prepping” for it; which is worse than the actual “procedure,” which entirely melts away — along with the room and the monitors and the strange coiled object on the tray behind the gurney— a few moments after an efficient nurse injects two types of amber liquids into your saltwater drip.

It doesn’t help because I don’t know how to turn off my thoughts, which always run away to the darkest place imaginable in the weeks leading up to any date circled on a calendar.

All the ‘what ifs' running rampant.

More circles on calendars.

I can only divert my attention for so long. The holidays are coming. Thanksgiving and Christmas. Too much could happen between now and then.

You just have to do it. Hold your breath and get through one day ... one test … one solution at a time.

And be hopeful that you wake up to a room full of smiling faces, who have only the best news to share. And that all your worry was  for naught.

A sip of ginger ale breaks through the haze, and I begin to remember where I am, and how to pull on my shoes. And there are smiling faces as well as jokes at my expense.

When I go home to my calendar full of circles, I will settle for a Netflix comedy as I root around in the leftover Halloween candy. 

Perhaps I’m not ready to give up the sugar coating after all.