Should I pull on the T-shirt?

A vintage rear-view mirror hangs from a bent nail on the unfinished wooden wall. Light filters in through curtains across a small window frame. Clearly visible in the frosted glass of the mirror I see a pale lump the size of a walnut, near my right shoulder, where a port makes its alien presence known just beneath taut skin.

I lean forward to eye the 6-inch trail that travels from the port north to the jugular vein in my neck. If I can see both lump and line in this crappy mirror in a room with refracted rays, then, hey, so can everyone down by the lake in broad daylight.

The sounds of laughter filter in from the lakeside. Everyone else is hanging out, shooting the breeze. I look down at the fresh scars that mark my chest and abdomen. One has turned my belly button from a sexy innie to a sideways outie, stretched into a permanent wink, a knowing expression of a shared secret. The other day my wife Betty patted my muffin top and sighed. Three months after surgery, she and I came to the same realization. My abs might never be the same.

I consider calling out to my 20-year-old daughter for her opinion. Katie is in the adjacent bedroom, changing into her swimsuit. She possesses a keen fashion sense, which is heightened when my clothing choice mortifies her in public, even if the public space is out in the middle of nowhere, like here on a casual family outing in the Catskills Mountains in mid-July.

I ponder my two options, frozen in the coolness of the back bedroom of an A-frame cabin by the lake. In 1972, our family built the A-frame from a kit. “Four Men, Four Days” promised the manual; two months later we were still hammering away, mostly happily.

The lakefront property has been in my family for generations. Bright green ferns, thick maple trees and rolling hills encompass the rustic 1-acre refuge. No plumbing. No electricity. No Wi-Fi. Open campfires. Open-air outhouse. Open expressions of love and laughter.

Now, 55 years after my hardy parents introduced me, their youngest son, to this sacred space, I feel for the first time in our home-away-from-home uneasy and ashamed.

Katie should be just about ready for an afternoon of sunning herself on the dock, having vowed on the flight from Atlanta that she would not swim, just tan.

I need to come to a decision fast.

Hands clammy, unsure what to do, I clutch the T-shirt. I am standing barefoot in a bulky, knee-length bathing suit with its drawstrings pulled so tight the ends dangle nearly to my knees, accentuating legs so thin and fleshless as to be unrecognizable. Not so long ago I had been a runner, a soccer player and coach, a wiry cross-country athlete with strong thighs and a marathoner’s endurance.

I tilt my head toward the sounds coming from the shore, longing to wade out into the clear, cold lake and backstroke to the middle where I might tread water in peace. Between the privacy of the back bedroom and the solitude of the lake’s center, however, is a gauntlet of smiling faces, my network of encouragers, a gathering of loved ones who love me for me.

I pause another second, hearing Katie’s footsteps on the worn plywood floors, feeling alone, lumpy and unsightly. Do I remain bare-chested or pull on the AJC Peachtree Road Race T-shirt?

Like father, like son

My father was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 74. After surgery he was informed he had two years to live. He died 20 months later, having graciously said “thank you” and “good bye” to everyone he could. The Rev. George E. Calvert had ministered for 43 years in East Harlem, N.Y., and after retirement tended to his neighbors upstate. Even though Dad’s middle name was Edward, he liked to say his middle initial “E” stood for Energy. His enthusiasm was boundless, contagious. After his diagnosis he did not retreat; he embraced anyone who chose to walk with him along his journey. He celebrated the knowledge that the Holy Spirit brings people together in times of need.

Dad had been deceased a decade when, during a colonoscopy, a malignant tumor was discovered in my colon. Afterward Dr. Ian Katz sat next to Betty and me in the recovery area. Typically a half-hour session in Katz’s examination room involved three minutes of poking my insides and 27 minutes of swapping temple and church tales.

No funny stories today.

Katz soberly showed us the high-definition color image of the inch-long tumor bleeding inside my colon, a photo he had just taken with a tiny camera affixed on the end of a flexible probe. Betty sat teary-eyed, struggling to take it all in. Katz explained the next steps, but his voice sounded like he was in a vacuum. I choked up and felt the impending onslaught of shock. I was destined to follow in Dad’s footsteps in more ways than one.

In the two weeks between discovery of the cancerous tumor and surgery to remove it along with a section of my colon, I updated my will, had a living will notarized, and said “I love you” to anything that moved. I spoke with my family, church members, friends, next-door neighbors and medical personnel, inviting them to enter into the unknown, the challenges and even the joy with me.

Like Dad, I made a choice to do more than survive, whether I lived for another two weeks or two years. I would thrive with humor, honesty and hope, defined by God rather than by a life-threatening malignancy in my colon. One way or another, I would be healed and made whole, even if there was no cure.

By the time the sun rose on the crisp May morning I was scheduled for surgery, I was keenly aware I might not survive to see another dawn. My mantra “Be not afraid” ran smack into the C-word.

I was wheeled on a gurney into the operating room on the second floor of DeKalb Medical Center. The room was packed with white cabinets and white machines and white lights. But when I looked around the room, my focus was on the figures in blue. I wondered: Is this my last view of earth from this side?

Fear would not have the last word. I was damned if I went down and out and beyond without a fight.

My trust in God and God’s people has gotten me this far and I am all in, I thought.

As two staff members hoisted me onto the operating table, I saw that one had a small silver cross dangling on a silver chain around her slim neck.

“Right now people are praying for y’all from New Zealand to New York, from Atlanta to Paris,” I said.

“That’s nice,” said the masked face. “We need their prayers. Now go to…”

When I awoke in the recovery room six hours later, the first thing I saw by my bedside was an angel in blue, holding a clipboard.

“I am so glad to see you,” I exclaimed, “and so glad to be alive!” Then I passed out.

That night in the hospital room upstairs on the third floor, I turned my head to see Katie standing by the dark window.

“You can go home now. I will be fine,” I said.

She pointed at the lounge chair beside her.

“Dad, I have a change of clothes and this transforms into a bed.”

Her mother was at home, bedridden with a sudden case of sciatica, and her brother Henry was in the Caribbean serving as a Christian missionary. Discussion over. Her intention made clear, Katie curled up with a book to keep watch in that hour of darkness.

The next morning I felt like someone had punched me in the belly. I told the nurse on duty I wanted to get out of the bed. Thirty years of visiting parishioners had taught me that if a patient rose and walked the day after surgery, even if only for a few steps, recovery time would be hastened. I reached out to her for a steadying hand. Both arms remained firmly at her sides.

“Roll over on your side,” she said with a lilting Caribbean accent. “Slide your elbow underneath. Push yourself up.”

“I could use a little help,” I said, and pointed at my stomach. “This really hurts.”

Again I stretched out my right hand.

She stood stock-still and repeated her instructions verbatim.

Miffed, I swallowed my pride and followed her instructions. Slowly I rolled over onto my elbow, wincing at the pain. I took a minute to recover, then worked my way into a seated position, rested and stood up.

“Look at you,” she said, as she reached for my arm. “You can do it.”

The three of us shuffled slowly, carefully toward the door, a portable IV pole clutched tightly with my left hand, the nurse holding my right elbow, Katie beside her. We reached the nurses station 10 yards away by the elevators in glacial speed.

“Good bye. I’m going home now,” I told the nursing staff as I pointed toward the elevator. We grinned at each other across the counter.

“Sir, would you like the back of your hospital gown closed?” inquired a nurse who swiftly came up from behind me. She leaned over to tie the loose drawstrings.

“The first look is free. After that they have to pay,” said a nurse seated at the station desk.

As our party of three ambled toward a pair of double doors at the far end of the hallway, the nurse congratulated me for walking so far and said we should head back to the room. I began a deliberate U-turn when, right in front of us, the double doors yawned open in our direction.

I mentally reminded my legs they had completed the Montreal Marathon in ’82, two Atlanta half-marathons and a dozen Peachtree Road Races. I sent my thighs and calves the distinct message they had darn well better outrace the two doors now swinging toward me.

Katie and I giggled the next day when we recalled the near collision.

“Dad, that was hilarious,” she said, shuffling across the hospital room in a mime of my protracted gait. “The way you were hobbling, holding on to the IV pole, desperate to get out of the way. We couldn’t laugh ‘cause you were so intense. You should have seen your face.”

My daughter could have been doing whatever college sophomores do in the summertime. Instead she stayed all five days and nights with me at DeKalb Medical.