It's a New Year 2022

My friend, Heime Delbert and I do writing practice. We pick a word, and then write for 10 minutes. We use the instructions from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. Don’t edit, don’t stop, just flow.

Here is mine.

New Year   10 minutes go

It is two words.  All moving forward.  Time, the days, the months the year.   After a day at the doctors office on January 3rd, filling out the new paperwork for their records, 6 pages, I finally got the year correct.   2022.    Some people look back, what happened this year, magazines, newspapers, “The year in review”—I live now.   Every moment I was aware and awake in 2021, I was living and breathing it.   Living in it.   As I sat in the waiting room on Monday, the visit to the surgeon was going to be my last post op.  The appointment after that was my visit to the oncologist.   Reminding me that 2021 was fortunate.   Regular mammograms do their job.  Detection of early breast cancer.   

I sat in the chair in Dr. Shirlings examination room with the gown on, the open front loosely tied.  One size fits all.   When he walked in, I moved to get up on the examination table, he said, its ok stay where you are.   I open my gown.   He looks, says everything looks good.  Remember I told you to make me look like the picture?, I say.   Yes he says he remembers.   Is this as flat as it will get? I ask.   Yes, it actually looks really really good, that is as smooth as it can be, he responds.     

You did a good job I tell him.    

Then I take two minutes and tell him what it felt like.   I reach forward with my right hand and grab his knee, and lightly squeeze.   This is what it feels like now.