Junebug vs. hurricane

When I was a kid, I went through phases of obsessions with different disasters. I saw Twister and became terrified at every even slightly darkened cloud. I watched a murder thriller and lost my ability to be alone in a room. Back then, people said I had a wild imagination. It even kind of passed as cute at times. As a teen, I was "just sensitive" and "a bit of a worry wart." Nowadays, my doctor calls it "anxiety" and says Celexa may help.

So when I was faced with the potentially most devastating news of my life--like when we were told two weeks ago that my mom likely had late stage ovarian cancer--you'd probably guess that I'd pretty much just lose my shit.

And while I can't say that in the week leading up to her hysterectomy and tumor biopsy that my mind didn't entertain the most tragic outcomes, still I was somehow, almost strangely, uncharacteristically calm. Because even though my heart held an unshakable sense of utter despair and melancholy, the small everyday things that usually freak me out faded almost completely away. The sense of impending doom I became so used to waking up with was replaced with a legitimate fear. And I suddenly just didn't care so much about the orange level terror alert at the airport, any of various random, depressing statistics that pass for news headlines each morning, or even my chronic nagging sense of guilt from my bratty childhood disposition and how I feared it would come back to me one day.

And as it turned out, my mom's tumor was benign, and she's recovering from surgery quite admirably. I've since resumed my post in Philadelphia after many grueling hours in hospital waiting rooms. Things are back to normal, other than the fact that I'm going to be much more meticulous when it comes to scheduling my regular checkups and encouraging all my friends and family to do the same.

I consider myself an un-believer in miracle cures or other sappy-movie-esque life transformations, but the impact my mom's cancer scare had on my family did bring us closer. If nothing more, it was a brief intermission from our everyday stressful lives that reminded us things could be a lot worse, and that we are by far the most important things in each other's lives.

My calm in the eye of the storm felt almost like a fight-or-flight survival instinct. When stakes are high, sometimes you do things you never thought you were capable of. When you're dying of thirst, you'd do anything for water. And when someone you love may be in trouble, you do whatever it takes to get to their side as fast as you can.