Nothing, it’s nothing, just a lump, nothing at all, all ends in nothing.
“Hey what’s that lump? Hey did you hear me?”
“I’m busy.”
“Have you always had that lump?”
“What lump? I don’t know.”
I hear all of this with not even half my mind, I’m reading a book.
“Nate would you come over here?”
The conversation above clicks into place as I stand up, walk into the room. What lump? Lumps can’t be good. My daughter is naked - she takes her clothes off any time she can - standing in the living room turning in a circle holding a barbie doll in each hand.
“Look at this on her back.” My wife points. I walk a circle around my daughter at the same pace she’s turning. Yes, a lump. It’s maybe the size of my daughter’s elbow. It sits next to her shoulder blade. What if it’s cancer? My mind goes to both of my grandfathers hollowed out, once gigantic and powerful with voices that filled rooms “Nathan!”, turned to matchsticks, fragile, small shuffle-steps across tile floors in slippers and bathrobes, wheezing “Nay Thin” with a cough between the syllables. What if it’s cancer? I think of friends who lost children, losses I don’t feel comfortable writing about. What if it’s cancer? I picture children I associate with the Make A Wish people. Please don’t let it me be cancer, I think in the back of my head in the voice I used to pray when I was a kid and still believed in god, prayer. Please. Please let it be nothing.
I notice the muscles in her back and legs from her ballet class, the long bones of her forearms, her shins, her tangle of brown hair, the ridge of her nose, the concentration in her frown as she makes the two dolls talk about whether they’re going to ride horses or go to the zoo to see the lions. She’s perfect, how do I not notice this every time I see her? She’s perfect and amazing and has her own thoughts about the world - “I think grandma doesn’t REALLY believe Jesus has magical powers,” she told me the night before, “I think she just likes to pretend she believes in that magic the same way I like to pretend to believe in Fairyland”; “why is the weekend just two days and the week is five days and people have to work on the week instead of the weekend?” she’d told me once, “the weekend should be fifty days and the week just one day, so you wouldn’t have to work so much” - and I spend so much time around her distracted by work and job hunting and reading and moping and listening to stupid old records and maybe she has cancer and is going to die and I know it’s probably nothing, it’s definitely nothing, I’m sure it’s nothing, but what it it isn’t nothing?
I press my finger to my lips in the “shh” gesture and whisper to my wife “she’s got her check up coming soon right?”
“Yes.”
“They can look at it then, right?”
“I think so.”
“Good. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“I know. But still….”
“Yeah. Still.” Still maybe she’s dying. She’s not. She’s really not. It’s nothing. But it could be something. It’s really unlikely. But it’s possible and it’s the worst thing that could happen and if it happened then everything I did other than spend time with her was a mistake and amounts to nothing.
“Will you hang out here with the girls? I’m going to make that appointment, I’ve been meaning to set it up.”
“Of course.” My kids play. The dolls are Anna and Elsa from Frozen. I watch. Would my younger one remember the older one if she died? That won’t happen. Stop it. Stop it. It won’t happen. I know. But would she?
“I made the appointment.”
“Great, thanks.”
“I looked and there are tons of things online where people are freaking out about lumps like this on their kids and it sounds like it’s just in-grown hairs or something.”
“I’m sure that’s what it is.”
“Me too. Do you want to see?”
“Yeah.” Other parents’ worried posts on web forums, pictures of lumps that look just like the one on my kid’s back. I start to calm down. I stop reading before I run into anyone saying ‘my kid’s looked like that too but it turned out to be something else…’ I will stop worrying about this. It’s nothing.
Later my kids are in bed and I think about how my parents and brothers and nieces and nephews and wife and children and I will all die. I hope not to outlive anyone else in the family, then realize this is hoping to leave others to grieve. I remember my parents visiting their parents in the hospitals and at their funerals, I do the math to remind myself of their ages, when I last called. I think that I can not bear the idea of outliving my children or my wife, I think how I would feel like I have nothing left after that, I think that I should stop thinking. I read some article about how smartphones are distracting us from real human life and for a moment wish I had a smartphone.