Do I miss them?

Yesterday our niece Allyson (Alvin) arrived in Daytona to spend a few days with us. It was nice to see her and we started out with a nice beach walk. She should be one of those 20 year old spring breakers trying to scam drinks with a fake ID, acting crazy and hanging out. Instead, she is hanging with us. We feel honored. She is going to be with us through the weekend as we move onto Orlando. I have my conference starting Saturday and she and Mary will hopefully, spend their time doing things I don't want to do like Disney. I have always been close to Alvin and it is a pleasure to see her growing up and an honor to be developing an adult relationship with her. She's way more fun now except that she was always my date to those animated movies that I wanted to see that were geared for the kids.

This morning no one wanted to accompany me on my daily beach walk. Alvin was still out cold (after all, it was 7:30 am) and Mary declined today too. So off I went, alone. As I walked along I started to get too warm and took off my t-shirt and continued in just a ribbed undershirt. It is quite obvious that I don't have breasts. I started thinking about something that happened yesterday after our walk. I was wearing the same thing...an undershirt and shorts. Again, it was obvious that I have no breasts. Two co-eds were laying in the lounge chairs...one nudges the other and points at me. They begin whispering and staring as I stood there on the pool deck waiting for Mary. It was quite obvious they were talking about me and I imagined they were noting my breastlessness. I wondered what they were thinking.

Today as I walked along, I pondered the question above...do I miss them? My initial response is no, I don't. Particularly as I walked along the beach. No sweating, bouncing or other discomfort related to them. No more having to buy expensive underwire bras, and no more mammograms. But those are the immediate and obvious responses. Many of you reading this would probably agree with me at this point. But in our society, breasts are a big deal. They are a symbol of womanhood, like it or not. They are extensively dressed and undressed, photographed, altered and otherwise revered by a significant cross section of the population. They are an outward identification of gender.

I thought about the co-eds again. I wondered if they thought I was a man. After all, short hair and no breasts. I was also wearing sunglasses and running shoes. Nothing on me to advertise gender.

I would like to think that in society, women are more than their breasts. In fact, I used to believe that we were. Now making observations of people as they look at me, I am not so sure we are in a societal way but I have to continue to collect data on this issue. One thing that I am learning is that I am sometimes too quick to judge others on their appearance. After all, I don't want people to judge me based on my appearance. This revelation is one of the gifts of my cancer. I can be too judgmental of others and must remember that each of us has a story and life events that make alterations in us that we cannot control. We are all more than our appearance.

And now, off to the beach. Sunscreen? Yea...I think we have some SPF 8 somewhere!