Author Archives for Moya Watson

the best of the ballet

the best of the ballet

i’m so proud of my nieces! yesterday, they starred in the ballet — sam for the second time, and it was mckenna’s debut on the stage! they are so wonderful …

yet… as i looked at them on the stage — groups of 3-5 year olds dressed as mice, 8-10 year olds dressed as maidens, 4-6 year old princesses, the occasional adults dressed as cooks — looking so proud, so confident, regardless of size or girth or the occasional clumsy maneuver, which that made them all somehow the more perfect with every step — yet as i looked at my projected perfection or the simple pure joy of a four year old, i could not help wanting to *be* her somehow. to go back to four years old and replay some time on the stage, unselfconscious and proud. was i? does it have to do with the difference between being a ballerina and a catcher? i think not. though i was a lot less selfconscious with a concussion at the plate.

can i still go back and be four? maybe we just have to get more creative…

flying by surprise

flying by surprise

swinging at venice beach

when i dare to become powerful, 
it becomes less and less important
whether i am afraid

or something like that, said audre lorde.

perhaps my fear of flight ties into trouble feeling good or doing well or being powerful — or maybe just being recognized as feeling/doing/being as said. this nervousness seems to tie in somewhere to the giddiness about breast surgery, as well as the fears and perhaps even guilt that i have felt.

at any rate, i flew. but i flew by surprise. so i’m not sure whether to feel good or proud about it or not. but therein lies the grain of salt, the bother, perhaps the pearl itself.

here’s how it happened… as quoth from the fofc.com bbs:

leanne wanted to do something special to celebrate my biopsy and its results, so she blocked last weekend, april 25-27, out on the calendar. i met her after work on friday and she led me to BART. just when we came up out of the tunnel on the oakland side, she broke the news that we had a 7:40 reservation on JetBlue to Long Beach. now… in my mind, i translated this – momentarily – to “we have a 7:40 reservation… for DINNER”, and all was well – but when she then produced a valium from her bag and said we were visiting ted in venice beach, i knew something was seriously up. she thought of everything – the valium (though i thought of flying the trip back without it, watching those planes before takeoff just sent me a bit far), the rubber band (!), the aisle seat, up as far front as possible, the preboarding.

the flight itself — it’s great! all great; i love the banking in the air, the view, and i love jetBlue! the (faux?) leather seats and the tv on every seatback… the wacky crew… the new A320’s. a little hard on the first landing – but leanne says that’s because computers control it — nose down so hard? she even chose the least intimidating airports she could think of — oakland is great, just take BART — and long beach — why, that’s practically like a small train station, and you even walk across the tarmack to get on and off the plane.

in venice, we went to a dinner where ted introduced us to his good friends and they and everyone in town seemed to be in on my trip, looking at me and wanting to know how the flight was. at first, it felt a bit humiliating, but then i realized nobody was saying “it’s so much safer than driving… the fear is silly… you shouldn’t worry… etc” – people were curious and understanding – one even shared his deep fear of dogs. it was really nice that way…
later, when i was talking about some past guilt i have about a relationship, leanne looked at me and said — have you never gotten over this guilt, and you feel like you don’t deserve to live through beautiful plane flights, instead doomed to crash and die? a thought that had occurred in the past…
but in the meantime, there’s valium – and – this time – total lack of anticipation.

of course the problem is this is not really practicable for that wedding in august i said i can’t go to, and i’m not running to purposefully fly anytime soon… but i did have a good time flying this last weekend… and would like to learn how to fly helicopters or something, since i seem to like it so much.

some doubtless will not understand this particular fear and babble, perhaps even dismissively. but everyone’s, for sure, got their own little spiders, dogs, and dark places — this i am sure of … as also of the freedom — and okay, the power — of overcoming them.

rock star, with knives

rock star, with knives

i went to see nima grissom about my little knot today; “you couldn’t stay away, could you?” she taunted me as she walked into the office. my secret’s out — it’s true. i feel like a bit of a rock star when i get to see dr grissom. or i feel like she’s a bit of a rock star. perhaps it’s all those breasts she handles. or her skillful hands. or because she’s the one holding the knife… or something.

sure enough, just as she had advised in her postoperative instructions, it only took a couple of minutes to deal with the incision. she got out some kind of tweezers and fished out what looked like the knotted end of a fishing wire, the kind my brother used to tie flies with. she said it seems like i’m the type that just gets irritated by and tends to reject internal suturing, and that for future operations, i should probably get a different kind of suture. funny that it was just one side of one of the incisions that kicked up such a fuss. i asked her if this meant it wouldn’t heal properly and she said it should be no problem healing, and even if it was, she could re-suture it if necessary. she asked me to come back and see her in three months, so i have an appointment on july 15. midsummer. my goodness. midsummer.

i did ask about two additional things that had been whittling at me – about how much tissue was taken out, and about what happens to it afterwards. now, it occurs to me that doctors probably aren’t excited about the prospect of someone writing about them on the internet, probably in case some sort of slander occurs. so now i feel an odd sense of privacy about publishing my experiences with specific doctors, even though i find this sort of thing valuable when i do my own searching online. anyway. i have no problem saying anything positive about dr grissom. about my seven centimeters, she simply said that ‘just the right amount’ was taken out. when i mentioned the marbly, hard sort of ridges around my lateral incision, and asked if the tissue would grow back around it, she said that breast tissue is indeed very forgiving (does it have to do with being female?) and that things would grow back to normal in about a year or so.

now leanne, on the other hand, seems to be a bit less forgiving at present about the state of my breast. it seems it freaks her out no small bit about the hard ridges in my current left breast. i hadn’t realized that was startling to her. i suppose all things pass.

the other little thing i asked about was “where does the tissue go?” they keep the tissue. they keep it, was all she said. i’m sitting up on a shelf in a jar somewhere. maybe in a cold dark room. this deepens my cloning theory. let’s see what more i can get out of her in three months. and on her way out, she asked if i wanted to take the little knot with me and we laughed. it wouldn’t make for a good picture on the internet – though i did think about it, i admit. dr grissom has a sly sense of humor and a funny sort of ducking smile. i wonder if i was awake during the surgery and could remember whether she wielded the same sense of humor with a knife. i decided everyone was covered up in masks anyway, and for all i know, i had cucumbers on my eyes and was getting a massage and facial. i know it’s perhaps a stretch, but i don’t get surgery all that often, and maybe haven’t quite gotten over that versed halo.

surely to the entire viewing public’s dismay, i guess it’s best to suspend the weekly pictoral wound updates until i heal a little bit more from our latest romp. i’m supposed to apply neosporin for a few days, and should scab up all over again over the little knot.
how will i wear my easter bustier?

oh and for the record, since we’re talking about records, i also definitely recommend marty at hair play: http://www.sfstation.com/specialty/hairsalons/hairplay/.