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1st PLACE - 10th ANNUAL FUNDSFORWRITERS ESSAY CONTEST - NO ENTRY FEE CATEGORY Don’t Look Down By Alissa Johnson Katie would lose her breasts. I read the news from three states away: easy decision; cancer twice is enough; the radiation that beat Hodgkins Lymphoma at 15 caused this cancer now. “If you’re a momma with two kids and you breast fed, you’re jealous,” she wrote. I remembered the way Katie once sat across from me while I cried, promised me I was still good and kind even if my marriage failed. I re-read Katie’s words, searching: what kind of fear did she face? I’d spent the summer standing on the sides of cliffs, the strap of my helmet tight under my chin as I leaned my forehead against the rock. Exhaling against the panic in my throat. The day before Katie’s surgery, I hung from my harness eighty feet above the ground, a climbing rope draped over my ankles as I belayed my boyfriend—my first love since my divorce. My inner thighs shook, deep shivers originating from my hips. Between glances at Pete, I checked and rechecked the system securing me to the rock: bolt, carabiner, sling, carabiner, daisy chain, harness. Check, check. Don’t look down. “I can lower you to the ground,” Pete said over his shoulder. I’d made him do it before. But I knew the disappointment that came when my feet touched the ground without reaching the top. I missed the way the rock brought my mind into sharp focus and the point where my fingers met the granite. If I pay attention to the rock under my fingers, I think, I will learn to understand fear. “I don’t want you to,” I said. When it was my turn to climb, I placed my big toe on a narrow ledge. Push up, I whispered. My stomach turned as I stood, but my foot held. Katie’s news did not end with mastectomy and chemo. Cancer would be followed by five years of induced menopause, and after that, possible removal of her ovaries. “I’ll get to enjoy hot flashes with my mom and all her friends,” she joked. She was sad, she said, but her reasons for optimism were long: she’d beat cancer before; she’s not afraid of chemo; this time, she knows why she has cancer. Maybe her hair would turn curly, like last time. I stuck my fingers in a crack, placed each foot higher on the wall until I hung by my hands in a squat. Pull up, up, up, up, I whispered. I strained upwards, but my legs held. I pushed myself up onto the ledge next to Pete and moaned. He laughed. “That is an unmistakable sound. Are you having an orgasm over there?” I laughed, too, but clung to the rock. My leg shook until Pete rested his leg against mine, preparing the ropes for rappelling to the ground. I concentrated on the pressure of his leg against mine, looked out over the pine trees spreading up the canyon and the river so clear I could see through to its bottom. From the top of the climb, the problem with fear seemed to be a lack of faith. The inability to trust that that if I stepped up, there would a place for my hands. That the gear would hold—that Pete would catch me if I fell. The night before Katie’s surgery, I stood the gate of Pete’s truck drinking a Sierra Nevada and celebrating my climb—my new life. Katie sliced into a cake she made herself, shaped like a woman’s breasts. “I’m scared to wake up from surgery,” she said. Scared to look down. Scared to see what was no longer there. I took a sip of my beer, wondering why I got to meet my fear on a cliff in Colorado when Katie had to meet hers on an operating table in Minnesota. I watched the way Pete sorted gear into packs and thought about the way I kept climbing, in spite of my fear. Maybe, I thought, fear was not lack of faith. Maybe faith came in showing up—again and again and again. I wished then for Katie to keep showing up. To trust her feet to hold when she stepped higher on the wall. To find solid holds and safe anchors along the way. To have a companion to make jokes at the height of her fear. BIO Alissa Johnson writes and teaches in Crested Butte, CO. She arrived there by way of a simple goal: pack what she could fit into her Mazda and start over in the mountains. One thing is clear: reinvention is possible. http://alissajohnson.wordpress.com/ |
A Carolina Slade Mystery
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