Happy

She held a box of crackers and a couple of other things in her hands, which I cannot remember now. And as her three items went beep, beep, beep, she asked me seriously, "How do you spell benign?"


And I thought: Hmm, I think there is a silent G in there somewhere- "Wait what? ... REALLY?"


"I never really believed that I was sick."


Her first doctor was wrong, very wrong. Luckily, her second doctor thought her first doctor might be wrong, very wrong and took his own scans and biopsies. The tumor on her leg is not cancerous, he told her. B-e-n-i-g-n.

My arms went up and down in squealing silly delight. I wanted to yelp throughout the grocery store, but I stayed where I was while my heart exploded and leaked out from beneath my finger nails. This is what it is like to win the lottery with a bunch of your friends. "We need to celebrate." I told her. 


On my drive home from work it was snowing and I was crying, as I knew I would. A quick cry of relief to reverse all of the fears I had had for two weeks.

Brunch. We'll still have brunches, I thought, of bacon and bread and coffee and orange juice and laughter and Sheila AND Liesel.


Happy. What a word. What a perfect, beautiful word to use today.