Bad Timing: Shit Happened!
This is a true story from March 1991, when I was 31 years old. I originally posted it in a short story challenge in February 2021, in response to the prompt, “It Happened.” Required word count: 1000 words.
When we talked about it later, Joan told me my face had turned white as a sheet right before I summoned her to the front of the room to take over mid-song. She was still in training and it was against Jazzercise, Inc.’s rules to let her teach, but it beat the alternative. In early-90’s style leotard and tights, with a hallway full of 6th graders, parents, teachers, and science fair exhibits between me and the nearest bathroom, I was on the verge of finding out what I hadn’t thought to ask at the doctor’s office – how soon after consumption castor oil accomplishes its goal in your small intestine.
Four months prior, I’d made an overdue visit to the gynecologist. “Did you know you have fibroids?”
“No, what are fibroids?” That was when my life-long demon of bad timing caught up with me again and I found out I would need a hysterectomy.
This was familiar territory, the intersection of shock and disappointment, where what I think is my future gets snagged away from me. I’d been there in 11th grade, when I had an excellent senior high school year all planned out, only to have my parents tell me one Saturday morning we were moving 900 miles away. I would finish high school in a new place where I didn’t know anyone. Obviously not tragic, but pretty daunting for an introverted 16-year-old.
I met the demon again in Oklahoma City, that day I got laid off in a crashing industry four hours after closing on a 30-year mortgage. Not the end of the world or even the worst thing that could happen to anyone, but to my 25-year-old self it felt as if whoever was in charge of my life had decided to take the nuclear option. Eventually I came to view it as a necessary course correction, because it was the fallout from that layoff that brought me where I had to be to meet the love of my life.
Six years after moving to New York State, six weeks shy of my thirty-first birthday and six months after meeting Jim, we were in my apartment. He was sitting on the floor cutting a big flower out of orange poster board, with a cut-out for my face, so I could be a dancing flower at my Halloween Jazzercise class. Who couldn’t love a guy willing to help me do something so ridiculous while my cat continuously circled his working hand?
“I got some news at the doctor’s today,” I said from the couch. Two years later, on our honeymoon, Jim told me he already felt married then. I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was although I’d never counted on getting married, I always thought I’d have kids if I did. Who doesn’t notice potential baby names and imagine the things you’ll teach them or do together as they grow up? Especially once you think you’ve met “the one.” See what I mean about bad timing?
Thirty years later, I can still see Jim gently resting the scissors on the floor. I feel him quietly coming to sit next to me on the couch, putting his arm around my shoulders. He listened as I told him about the benign tumors, why surgery was the only option and that it meant I wouldn’t have children. He firmly planted all his weight on the rug the demon was trying to pull out from under me and told me he never saw any difference between conceiving and adopting. He loved me, not my parts, and I would still be me. And just like that, the operation was reduced to something we had to do together instead of – as I’d feared – something that would take away my identity, my love, and my future.
Preparing for surgery was a strange odyssey, including a series of menopause-inducing injections meant to shrink the fibroids. Jim didn’t believe hot flashes were real until I had him feel my skin.
One morning, half a week before surgery, the doctor’s office called. “We forgot to schedule an appointment for pre-surgery imaging. You need to come in tomorrow, and at three pm today you have to drink some castor oil.” It was too late to get a substitute for my six o’clock Jazzercise class, so I drank up and crossed my fingers that the effect would happen before six or after seven. Nope, that old bad-timing demon had a parting shot for me. I don’t know or care how my panicky run through the science fair was perceived; I was only glad to make it on time!
Early in our marriage we briefly discussed adopting, but – as it always does – $#it happened. Jim’s multiple sclerosis – another demon – started revealing itself. I dealt with thyroid cancer. We lost three out of four parents in a four-year period. We worked, got a dog, threw parties, traveled, and volunteered at church. Watching our contemporaries raise families, we wondered if we would have had the skills and temperament. Occasionally I would hear people say things like, “You don’t know love until you have a child,” or “Raising a child is the most important thing anyone can do” and I would remark to Jim that we had missed out on something. No matter how old we got or how far beyond the point of practicality it was, he would always respond by asking if I wanted to look into adopting. But we had accepted it wasn’t meant to be and although I’d feel a sense of lost opportunity at times it never rose to the level of regret.
Sometimes people did, and still do, tell me I’m lucky not to have kids. No worry about all the potential heartache that always seems right around the corner in today’s world. No college bills. No drama. No debt. All true. We had a full, fun, and rewarding marriage. But $#it happened. As a childless widow, I do bristle when people call me lucky.