With Something Comes Wisdom

At the mammography joint, they serve cappuccino, offer breakfast bars and bananas, free tubes of berry chapstick, and an abundance of hot pink shopping bags. The music is upbeat acoustic. Diffusers splash herby scents that complement the coffee aroma all around. The color scheme is creamy and warm. Even the Yoga Today magazines are crisp and current.

The illusion of hanging out at a hip coffeehouse is soon broken by a nasal voice... "Debra? Come on back..." Behind Happy Cappyland, it smells like Isopropyl alcohol, the X-ray Tech is too skinny, and even her tattoos lack color in the dim gray light. At least her fingers are warm as she does the discomfiting duty of trying to get something from nothing.

I may have folks who've never seen me naked fooled into believing I have actual woman breasts, but that's just what $50 a pop at Victoria's Secret will buy you. If there was a letter that came before A, that'd be my cup size. So there's a lot of woman-handling necessary to get enough meat between the plates for any kind of picture of what's going on inside my mini mams.

Twiggy takes her pictures and hems and haws. "Has there been any weight change since your last mammogram?" I proudly answer "Nope" - proud because at my recent physical the doctor lauded my consistently healthy weight.

Twiggy gestures me over to the computer screen. "If you look at the comparison x-ray from 13 months ago, you'll notice the tech got... um... more than I did." Yeah, I notice. About twice as much more.

"You mean they're SHRINKING?" I all but shriek. Here I am, doing a bang-up job at aging gracefully. I don't color my hair. I don't go in for Microdermabrasion. I don't let low back pain and arthritis keep me from staying active (mostly). But diminishing boobies?Totally unfair!

I try - valiantly, I like to think - to stay focused on the positive. I'm wiser. More forgiving. Less likely to gossip (this took years of deliberate effort and is still a work in progress). I keep my mind on how my weight is stable, rather than how my lower body has shapeshifted to the point I never want to wear pants again. And every time a nurse with a face piercing asks me "Are you still having periods?" I smile thinly instead of grabbing her scrawny throat while screaming, "Yeah, bitch, every 28 days!"

(I think this is a rule - and if it isn't, I deem it one now. Just as a man should never ask a cranky woman if she's on her period, a nurse born after 1990 should never, ever, ask a woman if she's still having periods. We know the monthly egg drop is on its way out - the sweats are nightly reminders, thanks very much.)

(By the way, who knew shins could perspire?)

(One more aside - I will be hosting a fete to end all fetes the day I get to finally answer "No, I'm not! I can quit clipping coupons for tampons! I'm finally free!" But still, Nurses. You need to keep asking "What is the date of your last period?" until we answer, "Seventeen months ago! Wanna come to my party?")

"I think we better see if we can get a little more," Twiggy tells me.

And we try. But there's nothing more to get.

While my ample bottom widens, I must accept my tiny little titties are going the other way. Pretty soon, I'll have to start padding my padded bras. Friends have all heard me say Embrace the gray! It's hard to imagine shouting - Embrace the Negative-A! - when there's literally less and less to embrace.

On the plus side, the screens came back clean. And here's another bennie - there's no sagging! I can run and jump and bounce up and down totally pain-free. (I tried this, the other day at the gym, and it did feel wonderful.) If I can embrace this new development (hah!) with the same dignity (errrr - braggadocio) as my graying hair, I might actually get back on track with the graceful aging thing.