Sign Spotting

I believe in signs. But because I'm a "glass-is-half-empty" girl, the signs I see are usually bad. Example: During the first week in January while awaiting biopsy results, every pen I tried to write with had no ink, plus I ran over my cell phone headset and spotted a hole in my favorite sweater. I took these things as omens. The following Tuesday I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I learned I would have a long road ahead of me and couldn't imagine how I'd traverse it. I couldn't imagine how I'd get to a place where I believed I'd be OK, or make it to day two. Immediately my mind churned out the worst possible scenarios. My cancer would spread, I would have complications, I would be weak, I would look ill and old, I would never get to Italy. 

Then I had another horrible thought. My non-positive nature would surely doom me … because we've all heard a positive attitude is vital to good cancer outcomes. I panicked. Would this character flaw worsen my prognosis? I panicked until I was hyperventilating.

For weeks I hyperventilated often. I cried a lot. I kept seeing bad signs: A dead bird on our front lawn, my car running out of gas on the road, the ceramic coaster my daughter made, monogrammed with my initial, shattered on the floor.

About that coaster … A couple of weeks after my bilateral mastectomy my daughter painted a set of five coasters at Doin' Dishes, each a different vibrant color, each emblazoned with the initial of one of us: P for my husband Pete, J for my 16-year-old Joseph, A for 14-year-old Anabelle, L for 11-year-old Lucas and S for me. They were minimalist and elegant, stacked on my kitchen's granite peninsula, S on top. Then suddenly, mine was crashing, gone.

Well, not gone exactly. As soon as it fell off the counter, I'd dropped to my knees and frantically gathered the fragments, sobbing like a maniac. To my relief my coaster wasn't completely smashed; it had broken into four clean pieces that could be easily mended. I picked up the pieces and placed them in their proper form back atop the other coasters.

The coasters remained that way for some time, assembled on the counter with my broken one on top. I don't know why I didn't glue it, because every time I noticed the stack I winced and worried.

One night Pete was preparing dinner and he slid the coasters out of his work area. The segments of my coaster separated and teetered. I gasped.

"What's with you?" he asked.

I pointed to the coasters. "It's a sign."

He stared at me, angry, and said, "You can find a sign anywhere if you're looking for one." 

The other day I was taking a shower, thinking about my coaster. An idea struck me. I quickly turned off the water, wrapped myself in a towel and dashed dripping down the stairs into the kitchen. I grabbed a Ziplock bag and gingerly put the coaster bits in it.  My coaster may be broken at the moment, kind of like me, but the pieces are all there waiting to be put back together – also kind of like me. It's a sign.