When Boobs go Rogue

My mother revels in sharing family medical information. I don't think it's a gossip thing. It's just that I'm a grown-up now, and I'm boring. She doesn't need to worry about me having unprotected sex on top of a bed of used syringes and unfinished homework. I'm married off, I have a job, I have a capable, if unused reproductive system. With the exception of my stint as a high-class call girl in Iceland, I'm a somewhat functional member of society.

So, Project Daughter was shelved and sealed and left to gather dust next to Project Grandchild, and her unofficial job became to serve as an ambassador for all of the aches and pains in the Cooper and ex-Axelrod clans. Needing a cause is a family trait. She talks in the style of the books she reads, and believe me, I know how those books read, because as a quietly rebellious tween I stole all of them so I could read the sex parts, and I specifically remember it was impossible to learn anything until at least page 200. Eventually she traded in romance for gentle, descriptive fiction that ends with a Christmas miracle. Anyway, she talks like her books. I think she thinks if she describes things really well, she's stacking the odds in favor of a happy ending.

My preferred literary style is geared towards heroines kicking ass in a post-apocalyptic hellhole, but it means something to her to wax poetically about poor uncle so-and-so's prostate, so I try to keep my ADHD in check and not think too hard about the fact that I'll have to make an effort not to look at uncle so-and-so's problematic crotch at Thanksgiving.

My stomach dropped when she left me a voicemail and a text asking to meet with me in person. Much like the 3A.M. phone call, "we need to talk" usually means somebody's dying, somebody's breaking up, or you got swindled out of the family fortune (I watch a lot of TV). My mom is 65, so I was relatively certain she wasn't pregnant, and given the cancer history in my family, I just...I knew. We are a weird family that doesn't particularly get along or understand each other, but I don't take well to them being fucked with, nor they with me. It took a millisecond for my rage-y side to take over. I knew it wouldn't have served a purpose to hulk out, so I submitted to my mother's incredibly detailed description of every MRI and poke and prod and oncologist and radiologist, and what this machine looked like, and how there was a tube that had to be inserted just so, and an awkward pillow where they squish your head to take a boob x-ray, and on and on and on, the whole time knowing that the punchline was cancer. I want my mom to set up her quest and her miracle in her way. I know it's about her, not me. But I still want to grab an axe and watch the villainous boob cells scatter before me.