Early Days

In the days following, when we are trying to understand three words, when our lives, as we knew them to be, were robbed from us by the thief dressed in borrowed robes, are the start of the early days.

Distracted by my mound in the hills of white elephants, unaware of the two targets on my back, I walk my path, the path I’ve walked for thirty years. The ground solid under my feet, the scent of lilacs caresses my nose, the touch of ferns tickles my ankles in May, the chrysanthemums brighten my horizon in Fall, I recognize the jagged and irregular places where I must duck else be assailed by a low-hanging branch, I’m knowledgeable about which insects to avoid and about which to approach. I perceive the weather. There are both wonderful and awful memories, scars to commemorate where I’ve stumbled, but rose to my feet grudgingly persistent. This is my path and I know it.

And then, in a moment, it is gone, as if I have stumbled, and when my eyes glance upward, all, everything, has transformed.

The sun has fallen and risen on the other side of the world. Night descends as thick as the San Francisco fog. I don’t see it approach, I am suddenly, abruptly, standing (alone and naked) in the midst of a moonless, congealing fog. Unable to move, my instincts whisper primordial alarms: my face flush, slight dampness turns to beads of sweat, heart’s rhythm changes from steady beats to anxious racing, sound is amplified, inner voice screams, something is wrong, something is wrong.

I feel hunted. I’ve become the prey, I think. Prey in this murky, clinical forest. I turn my head, my gaze backward, squint my eyes sure to believe my path, my trees, my ferns, my twists and curves will be there. Nothing. I see but one familiarity, and yet, he looks as lost as me.

If I am the prey, who is my predator? Is it She? The one who stands before me with my belly and future exposed. I think back to what feels like, only seconds ago, when I, on my path, was–walking down the aisle, running with the bulls, moving my head to the tempo of life and my hips to rhythm of my husband. Until, she severs my spine with her annunciation of three words. My matador.

Instantly, I am attacked. Instinctively, I knew I would be, and yet, I am incapable of fending off my attacker, and now, I am wounded, deeply. I can’t catch my breath. I swallow, but no matter how wide I open my mouth there isn’t enough air to fill my lungs. The chemical elements are doing pirouettes on my tongue refusing to be inhaled. Oxygen escapes me. Blowing from my mouth in gales of hysteria.

I try to find stability. I realize that I have survived; I have survived the attack. My thoughts take control over my body–assess my surroundings. Isn’t that what survivors do? My vision is blurred and I see the terrain is unwelcoming. I think, examine this new environment carefully, scrutinize details, remember: survival depends upon knowing.

The sun is down. The room is dark, but something is illuminated in my mind, a flicker. The hand of the technician doesn’t slow in its movement to complete the exam. My cheeks saturate with tears, but I’m not crying because I do not comprehend. Ignoring all the sounds around me, my mind frantically tries to decode: Kär-de-ak/ (adj) relating to the heart.

I am attacked, again; this time harder. I crash, collide, collapse into objects on the path, objects I have never before seen. There is internal bleeding. My wounds are deeper. I am furious and terrified and the combination propels me, us, forward as I begin to decipher: A-nom-a-ly (noun) something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected.

I am sure a third attack will happen, and it does. It happens again; however, I am prepared. I feel the energy, the atoms, the electrons appearing and disappearing, my ears attune to the echoes from earlier, I smell the indisputable putrid scent of fear seeping through my pores. I now know my predator. Maybe, now I can protect him, I think. But nothing I’d been before, no role, no experience has prepared me for this journey—Ter-mi-nate (verb) bring to an end.

Time in this forest is mystifying. It settles and hovers and remains for much more than a moment, as it did that Salinas barn with the touch of soft hair and the end of the American dream. The years go by and this new path becomes mine–my own. I am no longer lost (that is a lie), but I have begun to accept that this is where our feet will walk each day. I know another attack will come, but I don’t know when. When? When? When? When? When? Haunts me.

Most of us agree on this. I find Others living in this forest, walking this path. Others who have been attacked. They wear scars like mine, like my son’s. Some are not as disfigured, not as rough, ridged–distressed. Some are worse. A very few believe the attacks are over. Most do not. I do not. And, I fear, maybe next time will be the time, the time, I, he, I, won’t survive.

I remember those three words that changed my path, that amputated me from my youth, that changed the music in my mind. “Cardiac anomaly. Terminate,” spit out in venomous saliva in a small room during an anatomy sonogram on Thanksgiving Eve, 2011. That was all she said. Those three words. No preface. No compassion. She repeats them a second time as if she likes the taste of them in her mouth.

I hear people laugh outside the window on Fort Hamilton Parkway. I look toward the sounds but see only a wall in this windowless box. The soundtrack of Brooklyn penetrates even here–my crossroads.

Seven years later, three open-heart surgeries ago, and a myriad of memories now undulate throughout my thoughts, my body, probably my soul, leaving me in a wake on unbalanced legs as I continue to make my way on this new path, through the forest of congenital heart disease. A mother of two. The first–a boy born with half of a heart. But, a boy who lives life wholeheartedly. The second a girl–born with blonde hair. A girl who brought the sun back into our daily lives with her radiance. And me, a mother of two. Who, like Paul, had to change the pain to laughter, just to keep from getting crazed.

But, we too, lived through those early days.

_________

Jessica Crowley is a full-time teacher, a full-time writer, and a full-time mom. She is currently working on her first memoir. In her copious amounts of spare time, she enjoys long exhales, entering the quantum field, and swallowing sunshine. She lives on Long Island with her husband and two children. Follow her on Twitter: @JessCrowley4628