Too Much Sunshine

If you know me at all, or have followed my blog for any length of time, you will no doubt know that I spent my childhood in the Caribbean – the Virgin Islands, to be specific.
  

I ran about (barefoot most of the time) happy and carefree, kissed by the sun and my hair sprinkled with golden sunshine.  Okay, not so carefree.  But happy a good deal of the time.  

Who else gets to ride their horse on the beach after school, or snorkel tropical reefs at whim, or crew in sailboat races every week and occasionally international races? 

Or swim with their pet sea turtles?  Or danced with the dolphins atop the whitecaps?  We just reveled in the sunshine.

If my friends wanted me to play, they could come pick me up in their motorboat – after all, they lived a mile and a half away.  And when we were done hanging out, I could walk the mile and a half home hoping to hitch a ride along the way, because my dad knew everybody who lived out on East End.

Yes, my third grade teacher beat me with a mahogany stick because I was left handed.


  And my handsome fifth grade teacher could spin around in a flash from writing on the chalkboard, and very accurately fling that piece of chalk so as to hit whoever was talking with a 70 mph pitch. 

But for the most part, we were blessed and kissed by the sun.  I had a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of my nose that danced off across my cheeks.  And the sun melted my mousy brown hair into spun gold.

Okay, maybe I was kissed a little too much when I was a child.  

The fairest of the Carson children, with my light hair and green eyes, I also was the last to tan.  

I burned, then peeled, then burned again, then freckled, then eventually tanned.

And I learned early on that even the sting of the worst sunburn could be extinguished with a generous splash of cider vinegar.

On horse show weekend, once a year, it was not uncommon for the part on top of my head to sunburn so badly that it would blister.  Or my lips to burn so badly they’d crack and bleed.  



But it was worth it to see the dashing Hans Lawaetz on his stunning stallion.  

Or my sweetheart, Matt riding his thoroughbred mare, Rainy May.  Or some of the Skeochs and Schusters and other island gentry compete for ribbons and the crowd's exuberant applause.

I remember my first experience with too much sun.  It was the first family vacation we ever took.  

I was six years old.  And my father and his brothers and sister all planned a week’s vacation in Tampa.  A full week of aunts and uncles and and cousins…and first cousins once removed.

These are still golden memories.  Crossing the road to the wide, sandy beach to play in the water. 

Or scurrying gleefully along the damp sand as the waves washed out, trying to collect the sunrise tellins as they tumbled and rolled back down following the foamy salt water.

The beautiful tellins, their rays of pastel colors capturing the artist’s heart budding inside me… 

I remember all of us going out to eat at a restaurant – quite an extraordinary thing in the days of home-cooked meals where people sat around the table and said grace. Before fast food and take home became popular.

I probably remember that most clearly because I was a picky eater and hated eating animals – most especially fish!

When I began to cry as they called our huge party, my mother told me (as she always did) that I didn’t have to eat anything I didn’t like.  But I had to take at least one bite of everything in order to tell for sure whether or not I liked it.

But the thing I remember most about that glorious week in Tampa was not the sunrise tellins, or the seafood, or the cousins and first cousins once removed.  It was the smell of Sea & Ski suntan lotion.

Mind you, this was in the days eons before anyone spoke of ultraviolet waves or SPF ratings. People generally didn’t worry too much about getting too much sunshine – after all, sunshine is good for you!  

My mother, bless her wise heart, didn’t want to be overwhelmed by six cranky, sunburned children each night at bedtime.  She was no fool.

To this day, the smell of suntan lotion takes me back to that one week in Tampa. And my dear cousin Peggy Lou, on whom the sun rose and fell, who took us across the street to capture dancing sunrise tellins.  

And even to dutifully taking a very tiny bite of each of the seafood dishes offered before making horrid faces and secretly spitting it out in my napkin as everyone else talked and laughed.

It depresses me to realize that though I can smell the smells, and hear the sounds of that week like it was yesterday, it was almost 45 years ago.

I got up this morning and looked in the mirror and what I saw made me sad.  

It’s not the gray hairs.  I am kind of proud of them – so long as there are still not too many of them – just a sprinkling here and there.

And it’s not the fine lines that are beginning to etch themselves into my face.  I kinda like them, too.  They give a face character.  

And I still have fewer wrinkles than the average 50-year-old woman.  It's not even that I wish my face were a lot less round these days.

What saddens me is that the sprinkling of freckles that danced across the bridge of my nose and across my cheeks have joined hands and turned into “liver spots.” 

It’s the barely noticeable scar that runs from the right corner of my nose down to the right corner of my mouth.

Not that I am ashamed of scars either.  In fact, when I look at this one on my face, I actually feel thankful.

Let me back up a decade.  At age 40, I was teaching 5^th grade at San Gabriel Elementary – a job I dearly loved.  I would drag myself to work even when I had pneumonia.
 

But on one particular day in May, I had a migraine.  I’d gone to school with migraines many times before.

Yet for some reason, on this particular morning, I called in sick and stayed home.  

And I got to do something I never got to do: watch the second half of the network news followed by the local news.

They had a piece on Skin Cancer Awareness Week, and showed some examples of what skin cancer looks like, and reminded me of something I already know – fair-skinned people with light-colored eyes are much more prone to skin cancer than your average Joe who isn’t.

But then they went on to say that several hospitals were sponsoring free skin cancer screening and to call the number on the screen for a location near you.  

Being an introvert, and not known as a joiner, it was difficult for me to do, but I picked up the phone and called.  

They gave me the number of the location in my area, and once again I took a deep breath and called. The bad news was that they had just given away their last appointment.  I was very eager to hang up the phone and crawl back into my safe zone.

But after a moment’s hesitation, the woman on the other end of the line said, “I’m not supposed to do this, but I am going to squeeze your name in here at the end of the day.  They’ll be mad at me, but who cares?”

On the appointed day and hour, I arrived for my free screening (fighting the urge to turn and run) and was seen by the very personable Dr. Chu.  I showed him the funny patch of skin on my calf and he assured me it was not cancer.

Relieved, I was about to get up and go, but he said, “Let me take a look at your face.  How long has this been here?” he asked, pointing to the recurring zit on my lower right cheek.

Long story short, he said, that is not a zit; that is cancer.  I called his office that very afternoon and made an appointment for the necessary surgery – an outpatient procedure.  In fact they wouldn’t even put me under.

So on the given day, at the given hour, I lay back in the chair – much like a dentist’s chair – and asked if I was going to be awake, could I have a mirror overhead so I could watch?  (Ever the curious mind…)

And I should tell you that watching the cutting and bleeding and stitching didn’t bother me in the least – it was the smell of burning flesh in such close proximity to my nose as they cauterized the bleeders that turned my stomach!)

It was fascinating to watch as he made a 3-cm incision from the corner of my nose to the corner of my mouth.
  
Then he laid it open and took a tiny instrument that I can only describe as a minuscule ice cream scoop and began to scrape out the cancerous tissue.

For cancer, for all of its bravery and bluster, is actually very soft, mushy tissue.  So he scooped and scraped until he hit solid, healthy-feeling tissue.

At that point, he didn’t stop.  He went one step farther and cut away the healthy tissue just beyond with a scalpel to be safe.  

For cancer is an evil, devious usurper.  It sends little tentacles out to ensure its stronghold.
 

So though he got the tumor out, he had to be careful that little bits of it hadn’t seeped out beyond, unseen.  And with his scalpel, he cut out even more tissue – healthy tissue – to be sure he “got all the edges.”

Then he stitched me up and sent me home.  Since that day he has had to do an even more extensive surgery on my elbow for another cancer.   He has also scraped, sliced and burned numerous other cancerous and pre-cancerous lesions off my face and arms and chest.

He has instructed me, of course, to avoid overexposure to the sun, and to wear a good sunscreen and sunglasses with UVA and UVB protection.  But he tells me at the same time that none of those will really be big deterrents to future skin cancers.

You see, the damage that seems to trigger skin cancer (and liver spots) doesn’t follow after a day of too much surfing or too much lying on the beach.  The damage has already unwittingly been done – years, even decades earlier.
  

It just lies in wait until it is ready to catch you unawares.

It enters your life undetected, unsuspected. It’s the innocent days of running wild and free and having carefree fun in the sun as a youngster.  

Though I was minding my business just having good times that hurt no one, I was laying the groundwork for deadly cancerous cells to spread, undetected, through my body.

And so it is in life.  Often, it is the innocuous, unconscious things that can sometimes turn into festering problems.  It’s the things we let in (to our body, to our mind, or to our hearts) unawares that just don’t belong there that cause the spiritual cancers.

It might be the excesses we allow into our lives – whatever they may be.  Or our seemingly innocent fascination with vampire series.  Or any number of other things that come between us and a relationship with our Maker.

Liz Carson Rosas

5 February 2010

  Above all else, guard your heart,
       for it is the wellspring of life.

  Put away perversity from your mouth;
       keep corrupt talk far from your lips.

  Let your eyes look straight ahead,
       fix your gaze directly before you.

  Make level paths for your feet
       and take only ways that are firm. 

            --  Proverbs 4:23-26

'Or if a person touches anything ceremonially unclean—

whether unclean thoughts or vampire sagas or any vise to excess

— even though he is unaware of it, he has become unclean and is guilty.

                         --  Leviticus 5:2 (okay, I paraphrased)

Finally, brothers, whatever is true,

whatever is noble, whatever is right,

whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,

whatever is admirable—

if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—

think about such things.

             --  Philippians 4:8