Tying my son’s shoes, worried if I have cancer

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Updated: January 16, 2012 10:22AM

I knelt on the office floor of my son’s school, tying his shoes tightly, a lot on my mind. Yet, all I could do was wait.

My boy had called home earlier. He’d forgotten his saxophone and needed it for practice after school. The secretary must have seen me coming up the walkway with his black sax case in tow.

For within a few moments, my son, 9, appeared — half smiling, one collar of his pressed powder blue shirt sticking up and the laces on one of his black boots dangling, but his shirt tucked neatly in his pants, his belt straight. All of this I digested in a glance.

Tightening his shoelaces and turning down his collar — and with a kind “thanks” from my boy — I walked out the door, away from the school, back to my worries that rippled like an ocean.

For days, I couldn’t help thinking how life sometimes can seem unfair, how a telephone ringing late at night with bad news can forever change your life. How awakening to morning sunshine is no surety that the skies of life that same day won’t suddenly turn ominous.

How the unthinkable can sometimes be just a minute, or a second, or a moment away. Or even how a medical test can make you take inventory of life, stare into the reflection of your own mortality, cause you to recalibrate, reassess, reflect, pray.

Days earlier, I had undergone a colonoscopy. At age 51, time had come for the procedure recommended for middle-aged men for early detection of colon cancer. Suggested for African-American men even earlier, my first colonoscopy was 10 years ago — a clean bill.

But this time I awoke to the doctor’s voice and the sight on a monitor of the last polyp being snipped. The doctor explained he had discovered four in all and that they would be sent for analysis. I had researched enough to know the existence of polyps doesn’t necessarily mean cancer.

Still, I feared the worst. I was at least grateful that I am conscientious enough to get regular checkups, to follow the doctor’s orders and to seek to live a healthy lifestyle.

Not all men do, especially black men. My doctor, himself a black man, says we often don’t see a doctor until it’s too late — a truism I have witnessed too often.

As a black man, ever before me are the sordid statistics — even as I hit the treadmill or Lifecycle. Ever lurking — even as I consider what foods to eat or embrace the benefits of not smoking — are the enemies of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and stress that lead too many brothers to premature autopsies.

I cry for them — for us — even as I have resolved to assume responsibility for my health.

And yet, I am reminded of the words of my grandfather, now 90: “The day you’re well enough to live, you’re also sick enough to die.” Reminded that there’s only so much you can do. Reminded that we shall one day all succumb to something, but driven to not cut my life short by things within my control — driven by the belief that the greatest gift men give to our families is not our presents but our presence.

Finally, the news came: No cancer.

I felt numb.

Then, moments later, the telephone rang again. It was my son, saying there was no practice, after all. The sound of his voice, mixed with news of my lab test, brought me to my knees.

And I wept — tears for my brothers who are succumbing in this struggle for our lives, even as a wave of relief washed over me like the morning tide.