Laughing at Melanoma Mimi

Laughing at Melanoma Mimi
By Tessa Falk

Blogger at:  http://www.pardonourpoo.blogspot.com

“I just called to tell you I have cancer.”

Those nine words poured from my mom’s lips, shot through the phone line and attacked my heart with a vengeance.

She was upbeat in her delivery, unaffected, in charge. I knew part of the façade was to help me better-handle the news. The other part was for her.

“I have malignant melanoma and there is nothing to freak out about yet. I’ll let you know when/if it’s time,” she said lightly.

I forced myself to stay strong through the conversation until I heard her end of the line click to an eerie silence.

Then I let the tears fall where they may.

Just moments before, I had been happily operating in my own little bubble — the most tragic of circumstances involving my 8-month-old son, Cooper, finger-painting with poo during a haphazard diaper change.

That bubble had since burst.

I needed something to cling to, something stable to keep the world from spinning off its axis. I grabbed my son, stood him on my lap and buried my head in his round little tummy, his half-inie, half-outie bellybutton tickling my nose.

Holding Cooper, his smell of lotion, powder and baby’s breath enveloping me like an airy hug, I allowed my mind to venture to those dark places that no one speaks about. The place where words like death hang like an albatross around your neck — a painful reminder of what could be.

My mind, however, was not allowed to linger.

Cooper got the giggles.

My shuddering sobs must have seemed like a smattering of raspberries on his tummy. And, as if on cue, Cooper sang out in a chorus of “ga ga’s and goo goo’s,” “he he’s and ooh, ooh’s,” with a shower of spit thrown in for good measure.

I looked into Cooper’s huge blue eyes and said, “Baby, your Mimi has cancer.”

He just laughed.

And so did I.

Our family had always prided itself on having a twisted sense of humor and if there was ever a time to put it to use, that time was now.

With Cooper still in giggle mode, I called my mom back so she could hear how her grandson was handling her news.

We got her voicemail. I put the phone to Cooper’s ear so he could coo on the machine. “We just called to say we love you,” I said against a backdrop of baby laughs. “Oh, and we have a new nickname for you. You’ll now be known as Melanoma Mimi. The shirt is already in the works.”

That night I made a tee for my mom to wear to her tumor-removal surgery — her new moniker emblazoned across the front in sassy pink letters.

Months later Melanoma Mimi is still healing (and donning her custom tee). She has her good days and her not-as-good days. But her strength, her resolve, her spiritual fortitude are pulling her through this little blip called cancer.

But on those off days when her spirits wane, she just picks up the phone and gives us a call—it’s at the other end of the line that she’ll find a little comic relief in the form of a bubbly baby always willing and ready to laugh at her. 

And that’s something worth smiling about.

Tessa Falk is an award-winning journalist and avid mommy blogger at www.pardonourpoo.blogspot.com who spends her days laughing with her son and at her mom, who is now cancer free. She lives in Little Elm, Texas with her husband, Chris, and now 21-month-old giggle-box, Cooper.  (Family photo by:  Devon J Imagery, http://www.xanga.com/DevonJImagery)