I.
There is a story that my father has told me all my life. It’s 1964. I am two years old and he is forty-three. We live on Park Lane in Bloomington, Indiana and every morning when my mother frees me from the crib, I go downstairs in my diaper at night and crawl across the kitchen tiles and down two more stairs to the half bathroom of the family. room, where my father prepares to shave. Dad leans over and places me on the closed toilet seat, where, according to legend, I watch him engrossed moistening his two-day beard, measuring out Old Spice shaving cream, and carving precise paths through the scented snow to reveal cheeks. of potato. Smooth. Ready for my kiss. Dad always ends this story with, “Your mother must have encouraged you.” He shakes his head in amazement. “You came every morning.”

II.
My mom and dad often pass by with a bowl of chicken soup or a small gift for my 10-year-old daughter, so I wasn’t surprised when at mid-morning one day last month, the front door opened and I heard my parents’ voices. I got up from the computer and headed for the front door. Mom had been crying. Dad was pale. “I have pancreatic cancer,” Dad snapped from the doorway, before I made it to the living room. “We just came from the doctor.” I almost say, “You’re kidding me,” but I only allow myself a fifth of a second of denial before the slap! Gut-tight acid esophagus, iron thrusts, then brain reverb – this is how my dad’s life will end.

III.
The pancreas: mysterious hermit of the abdomen. The unwritten creed of medical students is: “Eat when you can, sleep when you can and don’t mess with the pancreas.” A happy alchemist transmutes small food particles into an enzymatic energy drink that braids bones and braids muscles, nourishes dendrites, and regenerates skin. A stingy tyrant when crossed, he hides while doing any kind of damage: no more insulin from his islets of Langerhans (imagine the Norse gods brandishing swords against the raging skies as they curse: “No more sweetness for you!”); pancreatitis (acute, chronic, recurrent infectious and relapsing interstitial); cysts and pseudocysts; atrophy; Calculation; Fibrosis; Cirrhosis; and, like any other part of the body, cancerous. In the United States, pancreatic cancer is the ninth most frequently diagnosed cancer and the third leading cause of cancer death in men. The median survival period from diagnosis to death from untreated advanced pancreatic cancer is approximately 3-1 / 2 months; with good treatment, this increases to about six months. Later, I wonder how I somehow knew, the instant Dad said pancreatic cancer, what all of this meant: hidden, dangerous, sweet.

IV.
Kant believed that the soul permeated all parts of the human body. Carl Du Prel, a German philosopher who lived in the mid-1800s, argued that our emotional center originates from the solar plexus, located just above the navel, near the pancreas. A new age guru who maintains a diseased pancreas is the result of rejecting the sweetness of life.

V.
Two weeks before the news about Dad’s pancreas, I’m flying home from a job in New York, feeling horrible. I had a glass of wine the night before, waiting for my friend from college to call me, but this morning, it feels like I’ve had two bottles of rotgut. I dismiss it as a nagging cold and jet lag. Days go by. I am not recovering. I get worse. Then a little better. Worse again. Weeks go by. I decide that I have a low grade error. Go to my naturopath. Take more herbs. I feel worse. Waves of nausea and fatigue that resemble the sudden, chilling bout of the flu, rush to the bathroom. It seems to hit between ten and two.

SAW.
What I’ve learned from my father: admit when you’re wrong; do the numbers and don’t hide from the truth; when you have nothing left to continue, get nervous; don’t lock me up; modesty; cordiality; the habit of leading me to a future where things will be better; and an often visceral feeling of being one step away from life’s breathtaking moments. Just yesterday, walking through the Grand Forest near my house, the puppy came forward and then came back to my side, a flexible silver streak, I turned around and the autumn sunlight illuminated a group of cedars and a large leaf maple and flexible, all velvety. with fairy light. The air was saturated with cedar, fir, moss. I stood still, feeling a surge of well-being, connection, gratitude, or did I see myself feel? Moments like this, the sweetness is there, but I can only take small sips. My father always mutters the same thing in these moments when life shines the brightest: “This is wonderful. This is so wonderful. Isn’t life wonderful?”

VII.
I finally go to the doctor, waiting for a quick prescription of antibiotics. She orders a complete blood test. When he calls in with the results, he tells me that my pancreatic enzymes are elevated, very unusual. She asks if I know where the pancreas is. I can not answer. I’m too busy imagining the various diagrams of the pancreas that I have seen in the last two weeks: at the oncologist, at the surgeon, at the oncologist again, not to mention the thirty or so websites that I have obsessively visited, clicking for hope . . Every doctor asked my father, “Do you know where the pancreas is?”

VIII.
I tell my daughter that Grandpa could be very sick. I tell him while we’re in the car, running errands. She cries, easily, immediately. “I mean, I love him, he’s the best grandpa but, Mommy, he always tells you: ‘Don’t make her hug me’. I want to hug him!” She asks why Grandpa doesn’t think we love him for himself, without Mom as mediator. Looking at the highway, I open and then close my mouth. How do we explain to a child the messy stories we create in order to survive and then unfortunately half believe it? That weekend, Lilly takes Dad out to the patio. Dad sits down, Lilly dances around him as she tells him she loves him just for himself. That nobody makes her want it. She punctuates her statement with a cartwheel.

IX.
An ultrasound shows that my pancreas is smooth and without tumors. No one knows why I feel bad or my lipases are high. Could I be creating a “factitious disorder”, inducing my illness in some way to show my father that I really love him? When someone hints at a connection, I protest, “But I started feeling bad two weeks before we found out about Dad.”

X.
One customer comments: “You are on the verge of a mystery.” In some parallel universe, am I, once again, walking down the stairs in my diaper at night?