Beneath Notice

I've gotten used to being naked in the gym locker room. I don't worry about shocking people with my breastlessness anymore. If it's convenient, I'll throw a towel over my right shoulder and let it hang casually over my scar. If I don't have a towel handy, or it is getting in the way...I don't worry about it anymore.

So when we went to Idaho Springs for a soak, I didn't even think or blink about being naked among strangers there.

The hot pools carved into the cave floor are sex segregated. I don't know what they do on the men's side, but on the women's side, we float naked and steaming under dark, dripping stone.

Unlike the gym, it's slow and calm in the caves. No one is in a hurry to get to yoga on time, or blow dry their hair before they have to be at work. We all just melt into the stone and wait for the water to work it's magic on us.

Sometimes we talk. To the friends that came with us. To women from elsewhere.

I had a nice conversation with a woman from Peru. She told me about her middle eastern husband, How they'd been married years ago and split. Now they were trying to work it out again. Cultural differences, she said, were the problem.

She asked about me, my life, my history. We talked about breast cancer and mastectomies. She hadn't even noticed mine. After I told her she said, "You know, they do really amazing things with reconstruction these days and your insurance will cover it."

Later, K said, "She just doesnt' get it, does she?"

"No," I agreed. But then I wondered what "it" is. What is she not getting? That I think I look okay? That I don't think I look so bad that I need to be stitched and sliced in order to look better? That a problem she didn't even notice until I pointed to it doesn't seem worth the trouble of fixing?


Later in the day, K. asked me if I feel good about my body...even thought I weigh more than I want to and am out of shape compared to how I was. I told her that I didn't feel great, but I didn't feel awful either. Mostly I'm just glad to have one that works. I also told her that since cancer, how I feel about my body seems sharply disconnected from how I feel about myself.

Thank god, because shortly after that a horribly unflattering photo of me showed up in the Daily Camera.

Once you decide surgery makes sense for changing the way you look, for instance, on your scarred and bony chest, where does that reasoning stop?

In that photo, I was far too pale ... with one squinting eye, crooked yellow smile and a double chin. Should I make an appointment for an artificial tan? corrective lenses? tooth bleaching? facial liposuction?

Or should I just relax and realize that, probably, no one even noticed.