Cancer

Cells are the smallest part of you but you're outnumbered. There are more microscopic others on and in you than cells constructing you. I think of this when I think of cancer; how it's everywhere. It's in your past, hidden in cupboards, in your future, in the air you breathe. When I was younger I remember my mom telling me that there were little bugs that live in the moss that hung from the trees like curtains casting shadows on the asphalt of a road that came to a point in the distance. It mixed beauty and fear. It makes me think of driving to my uncle's home in the summer as a child, a three hour drive from Tampa to Stuart.

My dad, of course, was exhausted after working a full shift fixing machinery then driving all his family of 8 in a large maroon truck across the Florida peninsula, east to west coast. We weren't buckled in. We sang along with the radio. Although I knew a cigarette would appease him, I was conflicted. We hated his cigarettes. At school we learned that each noxious inhale was counting down to your last. We wouldn't allow him to smoke on the long drive. We were rule-keepers.

Hours later, night fell as we crossed bridges. Lamp posts lit the circle of driveway in front of my uncle's home as we pulled up in darkness. Wooden double doors set in coral blocks swung open. We opened the car doors and the cool night air filled the truck as we stretched our legs. The first night we always sat at the white wicker bar chairs in the kitchen. Fruit were painted on the counter tiles. Copper pans hung behind my aunt's head as she told funny stories. She never ran out of things to say. We ate bowls of ice-cream with black flecks of vanilla. I would then sit on my uncle's lap as he turned his gold ring on his chubby finger asking what I want to be when I grow up. Who knows? I wanted his wealth. He had a wart on his finger as well. My eyes would move from the ring to the wart with concern, having never seen one. He was a cardiologist. He wore light blue scrubs; overweight and over-tired as he had just come home from the hospital. I wondered if it was worth it all; his home, the limit of time on planet earth; telomeres.

My mother and father stayed in the guest home. There was a small fridge and a bed with four tall posts. We would walk through the windy courtyard to visit them and watch the late night news on a 13 inch television. My dad had showered at this point and would have the fuzzy blanket over his legs, snoring intermittently. Back at home, I would find his underwear in the dryer. They were small briefs. The fabric would cut all the way to the waist band. They were solid faded colors like maroon or blue or gray. Eventually we would sleep on the thick, carpeted floors of our cousins' bedrooms back in the main home watching green light dance in the pool outside the window which was frightening or intriguing.

We woke to bacon sizzling, putting our bathing suits on first thing. Not letting our trunks fully dry, we played Super Nintendo with a towel wrapped around our waists. Birthday celebrations were always shared. I don't remember reading the cakes around the oval table in the dining room. My uncle's home had a special room in which you only ate, or a special room where you only read, or a special room where you didn't watch television. Bathrooms were at every turn. At home we did so many things in one room. 

In the living room were soft leather couches and paintings of marlins jumping through the air on teal walls. There was a miniature replica of an old Corvette that would rewind your video cassette. The projection-screen television was large but very dark if you watched from the wrong angle. Their basset hound's nails clacked on the parquet wood floors. My uncle had a chess set. The characters were cartoons in the role of the kings, queens, bishops, knights, rooks, and pawns. We would turn the pieces in our fingers, so amused, as he taught us to play the game. Each player had different rules with different advantages.

When our visit neared ending we would search the pantry. My younger brother was overweight but I enjoyed it just as much he did. It's misleading in that way. Both of us put warm cans of soda in our pockets. The tiles on my uncle's roof were a glazed maroon and sparkled in the West Palm Beach sun as we loaded the car. The tiles had been shipped here from Japan my dad told us when he saw us looking up at them. I didn't understand where Florida and Japan were on the globe. I mentally mapped it but the shapes were in the wrong places.

There was a fast food restaurant nestled in the hump of an overpass where we would stop on the drive home for cheeseburgers with square patties. Even to this day I rarely allow myself to fall asleep against my own volition, but that day I did. It was an occasion where I let my guard down. The road can grow monotonous, you know, lull you to sleep. I had just woken up to the excitement of the stop hearing my siblings bicker. My head rested on the angle of my arm and I felt the tension in my neck. The highway sun had warmed me in my sleep and formed freckles on the curve of my cheek, quietly mutating the cells in my integument; introducing abnormalities. At some point it all causes cancer, right? There were two oak trees sheltering the fast food restaurant. Festoons of Spanish moss adorned the branches.