The Pebble On My Son’s Phone

There’s a good lesson in the mistake I made recently

Friday was hard.

I like to joke that cancer is the gift that keeps on giving.

I’m not sure it’s funny.

(Most of my jokes aren’t.

⬅️ Did that make you laugh?)

As many of you already know, two years ago this July I had an enucleation to remove the melanoma in my left eye.

A year after losing my eye, I was feeling like I was finally figuring out monocular vision. I was tired a lot, and brain foggy. Still, I assumed I was on the mend.

Then, four months ago, I found out I now have stage IV metastatic melanoma. The joy! The excitement! The fabulosity!

Living it up in my liver

One doctor, after reviewing the results of a 19-page RGCC Onconomics Plus test, described the gift I’ve been given as “sticky.”

In other words, this cancer likes to grow.

It appears to be particularly fond of my liver.

I had a c/t scan last week that shows that it’s partying more than ever in there. Which is exactly what we don’t want and suggests that the treatments I’ve been doing thus far aren’t working. Surprise! So … it’s time to pivot.

I got this delightful news on Thursday. I maybe kinda spent most of all of Friday in bed. I was maybe kinda in too much emotional distress and physical discomfort (I have unrelenting pain underneath my ribs as well as in my ascending colon, where there’s inflammation and fluid build-up. See aforementioned remark about how generous cancer is with its gifts) to do anything but lie still with my eyes shut and try not to vomit.

In the midst of this pity party, my friend Angie invited us to join her family on this year’s maiden voyage of their motorboat, Family Time. Getting out of bed felt like a Herculean task. I almost said no. But I do well with last-minute invitations—I’ve always loved to be spontaneous—and when my son said he was “down” to join me, and his bestie would come too, I put the metaphorical violins away and somehow managed to get vertical.

A tapestry of purple flowers

Sunshine sparkled off the water. The hills surrounding the lake were five shades of green, adorned with tapestries of purple flowers. The Canada geese honked happily at us and I even caught a glimpse of a great blue heron skimming across the water.

Ryan drove. Angie and I sunned ourselves in the prow of the boat, huge smiles on our faces as we watched her daughter, my son, and their two friends intrepidly throw themselves in the water, wake board with aplomb, and eat fistfuls of popcorn.

We stayed on the water until the sun started to disappear behind the mountains and the air began to chill. We packed our gear into the car. Behind the wheel and about to start the car, my son realized he’d left his phone on the windshield.

“I’ll get it,” I volunteered, opening the driver’s side door.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said. “See that pebble on top of my phone—?”

Before he could finish his sentence, I swept the pebble off with my hand and handed him his phone.

“Mo-om,” my son protested. “That was bling that fell off my shorts! Dude. I was going to glue it back on.”

In that split second, I realized I’d messed up. I didn’t let my son finish his sentence and I’d simply assumed he didn’t want the thing he was calling a pebble. Without thinking or listening, I’d swept it onto the ground.

“My bad,” I said, instantly regretting my mistake. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

“Obviously I wanted it,” he cried. “Why would I have left it on top of my phone?! To tell you not to give it to me?!”

Acting on autopilot

I’d been acting on autopilot, stuck in my own paradigm, thinking about getting back home so I could rest, not listening to what my son was trying to tell me.

I was making the mistake of rushing for no reason that the Old Jennifer has been guilty of many times over in the past. A mistake that the New Jennifer is trying to rectify.

I apologized maybe five hundred times.

“No big deal, Mom,” my son said graciously. We’d had so much fun on the water and such a nice evening that he had no interest in staying mad. I suggested getting a bling gun.* “That would be cool,” his friend concurred.

I sat with my mistake the entire car ride home, wishing I could have a mulligan.

The Old Jennifer would have felt a lot of guilt. Guilt about her son’s irretrievably lost bling, her thoughtless actions, and the inherited habit (from the Alexander side of the family) of interrupting people, so ingrained that sometimes the interrupting happens without even speaking any words out loud.

The New Jennifer, the skinny lady with the graying hair, one eye, and a bloated melanoma-ridden liver who just finished reading David Hawkins, M.D./Ph.D.’s Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender* (as mentioned in this post), acknowledged the mistake to herself, allowed herself to feel the accompanying guilt, and tried to unpack the unhealthy “benefits” she might derive from allowing herself to wallow in an inappropriate amount of guilt.

It clearly wasn’t enough to be discouraged about the c/t scan results, depressed, and in pain all day from cancer when she could also beat herself up for … wait for it … being human.

She let go of the temptation to self-recriminate. She resolved to be a better listener moving forward. And to remember there is only this moment right now, with the cooling breeze drying the droplets of lake water on the fine hairs on her forearms, and that there is no reason to rush.

Then the New Jennifer took a pair of scissors out of the imaginary drawer in her prefrontal cortex. She used them to cut herself some slack.

Related posts:
🍎 Long Overdue Update About My Health
⏲️ When Hurry Becomes a Habit
🕥 Why Telling Yourself “I don’t have enough time” is a Big Fat Lie

About the author: Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., has been a medical researcher for over 20 years. She has published eight non-fiction books, including Your Baby, Your Way,* a finalist for a Books for a Better Life Award, and The Vaccine-Friendly Plan* (co-written with Dr. Paul Thomas, M.D.). A Fulbright grantee and sought-after speaker, she has appeared live on prime-time television in Paris, France; worked on the literary component of a child survival campaign in Niger, West Africa; and taught post-colonial literature to non-traditional college students in inner city Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more at her website www.JenniferMargulis.net. You can her her with cancer treatments by donating to her GiveSendGo campaign or cut out the middle man and Venmo her directly: @Jennifer-Margulis-2 (last 4 digits are “1256”).

*Amazon Associate referred links