You Don't Look Your Age...and Other Fairy Tales by Sheila Nevins

Author:Sheila Nevins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

The Humble Beginnings of My Somewhat Spiritual Self

IT STARTED when I was twelve, with my period. I had an inkling that I was somehow related to the universe because how else would the moon have had a direct line to my ovaries? Every twenty-eight days, like clockwork, with accuracy rivaling Big Ben, these two entities—the moon and my eggs—would be in precise and direct communication. Blood brothers they were. Or was it sister and brother?

Years later, when I tried to explain these celestial occurrences to my college roommate, Stephanie, she said I was turning into a Woodstock “woo-woo” and would soon be running braless on campus. These collegiate put-downs silenced any intimations of immortality for many decades to come. My roommate was a political science major mired in realpolitik.

So I went around for years doing earthly things, gathering and spending and toiling and focusing on rising in the corporate world, giving little attention to the wonder of my chance placement under the magic pull of the stars and the heavens.

But one day, several years ago, I was minding my own business when suddenly a searing sharp pain pierced my right side, forcing me to crawl and scream. On my gurney-foxhole I may even have prayed to God for the pain to stop, though the latter salutation may be revisionist thinking.

Rushed to the ER, child-doctors poked and X-rayed my crumpled self, revealing angry stones lodged in an organ I had never paid any attention to, a tiny, little spiteful thing called a gallbladder that was angrily erupting between my liver and my pancreas.

Two days later, some forty-eight stones were delivered to my hospital bed, where I lay in a stupor. Dr. Morrissey, one of the few remaining “doctors of yore,” smiled and held my hand reassuringly and tightly. He said the green vomitus would recede and life without bile would return. He presented me a urine cup with a tight green lid labeled, 48 PRECIOUS STONES: SHEILA NEVINS’S GALLSTONES. Touched by this handwritten cup, yet in a haze, the significance of the gift eluded me.

Some twenty-four hours later, pain and gallbladder were ancient history and I was ready for a pastrami sandwich with hot mustard. I was also primed to appreciate my gift. I opened the urine cup and there they were, glittering pebbles, nature pebbles, outdoor pebbles from inside of me. Forty-eight of them, matching exactly the millions of pebbles placed all over the courtyard of my house in the country. Now I could accept this pebble-match as a mere simple finding. Yet I gasped and cried, and waxing poetic, I sobbed to my husband that I was a spiritual being, part of the universe. “Just look at my stones!” This dearest of men was more than relieved to relinquish me to this newfound universe, having nursed me back to health (I am not a good patient) for an exhausting week.

But yesterday came the spiritual pièce de résistance. Owing to my increasing anxiety and workload and panic over what I believed was an imminent heart stoppage, I agreed to what my kind internist, Dr.

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