When we got the warning about a violent storm coming we drove to the store for ice cream and organic cheese puffs and gas for the generator in case the power went out. I had gotten the blue light pre-cancer treatment on my face but hadn’t read the post-op instructions carefully enough and thought I just needed to wear my broad-rimmed hat to go outside but I was wrong; the skin on my face was now like an albino’s and ultra-sensitive to any light (blue wavelengths to be exact), even on cloudy days or indoors under bright light. So I re-burned myself getting gas and ice cream and then I did it again in the morning having taken a wrong turn in the woods, racing to my car before the sun came up like a vampire.

But there were new smells in the woods following the storm, the salmon berry I thought, and it was a smell you could only get once a year at springtime. And morbid though it was, I wondered at the fact that we all get just one portion of life, no quibbling for any more. And how I’d feel at the end of mine, as I hurried around the muddy path, wanting to savor my short time in the woods.

When I went in for the treatment they told me to turn left at the end of the hallway, a sign on the door that said photo treatment, which sounded banal enough, but then I had to sign a bunch of forms and got nervous. The dermatologist was masked, a young Asian-American woman with a voice like honey who reminded me of an actress from Severance, the protagonist’s dead wife, and as she rattled off the possible side effects (pain on a scale of 4 – 6, swelling, peeling, if blistering use a solution of vinegar) the room seemed to get smaller, the feeling surreal. Then she painted my face with a liquid medication that would make me super sensitive to light, and set a timer for an hour until it fully activated. I sat waiting, looking out the window at the skyscrapers, the coming storm.

And then she put my head inside a 360-degree unit with bright lights and goggles and gave me a slow sun burn. I guess it’s better than cancer!

Now my face had a tawny look made worse by the shine from the ointment or aloe. It felt the way it did the one time I came off Mt Rainier, my face so dry and tight it hurt to open my mouth. And there was a ring of white around my lips that looked comical, the same oval shape as the clay figure Mr. Bill from the Saturday Night Live skit.

Stuck indoors then for a few days, going out for groceries at night. Watching people do a double take on me under fluorescent light.

Last night it was just me and Charlotte home alone on a Friday. She’s going on 18 but wanted to watch an animated Barbie movie and though it hurt to watch I realized it was an important movie for her—she said dad this is my whole childhood—a story about not fitting in, finding confidence, and as we sat on the couch side by side I tried to remember what she looked like as a little girl, just 7 years old when she first saw it. She was the same now but looked a lot different. There would be a few versions of her over her life and hopefully I’d get to see most of them. How big our portions, no one knew.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, parenting

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, death, journal writing, parenting