Michael’s Birthday Weekend (the start of Pisces)
First the startling. Tuesday morning, I wake up from a dream in which I’m traveling with my mother. We’re both young and happy and I go to hug her when I feel a peanut like object on the left side under her stomach. So that’s what a tumor feels like, I think, and I tell her that there’s something there that needs to be checked out.
I woke up from this dream so groggy, and as I stumble out of my room, I see my mom in the hallway. I just had a dream about you, I told her. We were traveling together and I felt a hard peanut thing under your stomach on the left side. You should get that checked out. She has a bit of a haunted look on her face and I said, don’t worry, in my dream it was nothing, yet as I was saying this, I realized I didn’t remember the rest of my dream.
Normally she just says, “Dreams are always opposite” when I tell her about a bad dream. But she didn’t say that on that morning. She said, “How did you know,” almost to herself, then said she’d felt something there, but her Chinese doctor had said it was nothing to worry about. She’d had an ultrasound done anyway a month ago, but the doctor never called with the results, so usually when they don’t call it’s nothing. I told her to find the results anyway, and when she gets them, to get a second opinion.
On Friday afternoon, my dad came home early and asked us to meet him in his room. I asked if we could meet in the living room, since I was already settled in there. He came over and sat next to me. That’s when I saw that his eyes were red, and he was shaking.
“I need you both to understand your mom’s been under a lot of pressure lately. She went to the doctor last month and it turns out they found four spots on her liver.”
My dad started crying, and I clutched his knee, because I didn’t know how he would respond to me hugging him in that moment. Perhaps that moment was even a little too naked for me. I asked if she was okay, and he said that she’d gone to the doctor yesterday and they verified the results and it turned out to be nothing. But he wanted us to understand that life doesn’t last forever.
My mom came home a few minutes later and we all hugged her. She explained that she had felt something hard under her stomach and had gone to get an ultrasound a month ago. She’d figured since she hadn’t heard from the doctor that it was nothing, until that morning when I told her about my dream. The next day, Wednesday, she called the doctor, and the nurse said there was no record of the ultrasound in the office. They investigated and found that the lab never sent it to the office. The nurse called her again and said there appeared to be something on her liver and needed her to make an appointment. She made it for the next day.
That night we all went to a basketball game, and as an opera singer was singing the national anthem, my aunt pointed out that my mom was on TV on the giant scoreboard, right behind the singer. She looked so oblivious, looking around without smiling, and later, my aunt would tell her that we saw her on TV, and she should smile when the camera’s on her. Later, when my mom was telling us about the ordeal, she said that she was worried about the test result and that’s why she couldn’t smile the entire night.
So the next day she went to the doctor, who looked it over and said it was fine. Cysts on the liver. She sent the results to her cousin who’s a doctor in LA, who had some other specialists look at it as well, and they agreed that there was no issue. That was Friday. As soon as she got the good news, she found my dad having lunch alone at his favorite restaurant and told him all that she’d been going through. It really shook him up. As much as they fight, I don’t think he was ever prepared for the thought of losing her.
I asked her if she thought I had that dream in order to cause these events. She said that it was because of the dream that she called the doctor and found the results, but then again, if I hadn’t had the dream, she would have never known. She paused, then said, “But it did make me realize, things are going to change now. What’s important. I’m going to be a lot nicer to people.”
It’s funny because the night before that, Michael and I just wouldn’t go to bed. We crowded into my mom’s bedroom as she was trying to get to sleep, each wanting to spend more time than the other. I was already in there asking my mom if I could sleep in her bed instead of my own, and Michael was telling me I couldn’t stand in her room because I was “blocking access to the closet.” Then she said, “Whatever happens, just know that I really love you and want you both to stand up for yourselves.”
*****
So that afternoon, after finding out, I took Michael to the gym for his training session. I came home and parked in front of our house. The sky was the kind of rich, moody gray that makes me feel most alive, but I couldn’t go into the house. I thought about how even if I were to call someone to talk about this, this heaviness inside me, the only person I could call is Rie. And how few real people we have in our life. I cried there, silently, head in my arm against the steering wheel. Just enough to not feel like I was drowning inside.
That night my mom decided to stay home with my brother instead of going to the game. I went with my dad. Josh had mentioned he would be at this game, so I said I would go up and say hi at halftime. I haven’t seen him in a month. Last time, I met up with him and his fiancee at the game, and it was an obvious diplomatic meeting; he made an obvious effort to make peace between his fiancee and I. She’d always been threatened by me, and it hasn’t always been that comfortable around her because of it. As they walked away, he’d turned around and nodded at me. On some level, I knew what it meant, but the conscious me finds it poetic and unknowable.
So on this night, I met him on the concourse and showed him my sling. He asked about the surgery, but as usual, he was talking to me with his arms crossed in that way where he’s definitely listening but trying not to look at me. He always stirs something deep and beautiful inside me.
I told him that I feel like I had surgery and somewhere between the anesthesia and the pain pills I’d been on the first couple of weeks, I’m stupider. Just little missteps in memory and articulation. He mentioned that 10 years ago, he’d had a brain tumor that they had to remove, and they’d given him morphine for that. He talked about how when you’re in bed for a while, everything feels different, like getting up and trying to walk. I was really surprised. I’d just learned that his father had died of a brain tumor 10 years ago, around the time I’d lost touch with him. I didn’t know they’d operated on him as well.
We said goodbye when the game started, but as always, the first time I see Josh after not having seen him in a while, there’s an ache. I still think it’s so strange. I always associate Josh and Aubrey together in my memory, but I was enduring friends with Aubrey. I would have never predicted that some day 10 years later, I would be closer to Josh. I never knew about his operation, what it had been like for him to lose his father and be diagnosed with a brain tumor. I realized I could have lost him before having gotten a chance to realize what a great friend I had. All of this life, is so fragile.
The truth is, sometimes I feel while others are out there living, I’m just waiting. I’ve always felt that if I stayed in one place long enough, I would find what I was looking for as long as I trusted myself to realize when it is here. Sometimes…I get scared. Sometimes I wonder if I died today, if my life is cleaned up enough to leave what I want to leave.
Michael is so mean to me. Sibling rivalry, don’t know, but I can’t even give him a compliment sometimes without him being mean. But I’ve always said his de
velopment is like 8 years behind, so he’s just about at that rebellious teenage stage. Maybe he’s just got to get to a place where he feels comfortable that I’m seeing him on his terms now. It’s just one of those things. I love him no matter what because he’s my brother.
I had a dream last night with an unexpected character from my past. Someone I know came to visit me, and I was living in some city (looked a little bit like the Gaslight District of San Diego or maybe San Jose but it was supposed to be LA). He was in town for just a little bit and called me out of the blue to go hang out. I showed him around but I couldn’t figure out what he wanted–to be taken around or to see me. All I know was he kept bouncing around in terms of what he wanted to do that I felt like I was being carried by wind that wasn’t allowing my wings to fly. Finally, I asked him if he wanted to go into this place for lunch (it had a lot of wood and looked like the pub on Santana Row). There was a moment where we sat down and I thought we were going to kiss, and as much as I wanted it just to know, I also realized clearly that this guy was too fast for me. I would never feel comfortable with him. I would never understand what he wanted for me. I would never feel comfortable that for him, it’s just me. I invited him to a basketball game but he was gone again that night, not there when I wanted him, so I called up some stranger and invited him instead.
I woke up struggling to hang on to the strings of the dream. There are some dreams where the people are so real, you feel like they were there, almost like someone dead crossed over, so in some middle dimension, they are real and there with you if even just for a brief time. When people feel so real in my dream world, it’s a hard thing to let go of.
Michael was having his birthday party at our house today, so we picked up his cake, which he was so excited about he dropped, but managed to bat it onto the ground so it fell right-side up, though slightly flatter.
I got frustrated with my rental deal for my condo (particularly my astoundingly incapable agent) and called the other agent directly and closed the deal.
The party started and I noticed that Michael had invited his trainer friends and they’re all young guys so they probably want beer. We only had 1 beer in the fridge, so my aunt and I went to the store. We talked about love and relationships and fate. I told her I just have a hard time with the idea of moving back to Fremont, because I’ll never find a husband. Fremont is the same people, the same old thing–work, gym, dinner with parents. I could spend a lifetime doing the same old thing, and that’s what I’m afraid of. But to be honest, this scare with my mom makes me want to be closer. I know she fears who will take care of all her responsibilities if she’s not there. My cousin has been calling me, trying to get me to come work on the same sales team as him.
One of the first guests was Curtis. He had mentioned he would try to stop by Michael’s party when he’d emailed me to find out the details. I was kind of hiding in the kitchen because I felt really shy. He’s shy, too. But very shiny. Like I can feel my pupils dilating when I look at him because he glows. But…my goodness. He’s the kind of guy who reaches for you, drawing you in, but you go deeper and suddenly he’s pushing you out. Like the tide. I struggle with these kinds of guys. Because I so want the face-value to be true within all depths. But with these types, you never know where you stand, and that can be hard for me sometimes. I have Need to Know Syndrome.
Curtis and Sean (Michael’s trainer) spent most of the party sitting in the corner of the kitchen with me. When they left, my mom came up to me and whispers, “That Curtis really likes you. It’s too bad he’s so young.”
I don’t think that’s the issue so much as…a guy has to want you. It’s not enough that he really likes you. He has to want you.
The truth is the week was intense. Happy for closing the deal with the condo. Big scare and lots of introspection for my family and I regarding life and what’s important. Uncertainty about my future.
Universe, I want a partner.