When my kids were small, I hung around with other young moms. We had animated conversations about their sleep, their eating, and their pooping. Or the lack of these activities. Those women kept me afloat in the overwhelm that is mothering. 

 

These days I sit with people at a local café who are no longer parenting much. We watch each other eat pancakes with extra syrup, and sip coffee, without the need to hurry. The discussions lean toward cataract surgery, new knees, and colonoscopies. This week, I asked them what to expect with the prep for having a camera travel through my intestine. They did not disappoint. 

 

One man had sacrificed eighteen inches to cancer. Now he has a semicolon. Another has graduated, in that his doctor said he is old enough to forgo having them. No one sugar-coated the process, but at least I had company. 

 

I still had to endure it, of course. Which is not anyone's idea of a picnic. For a long, hungry day, I kept reminding myself not to absentmindedly eat a snack.

 

"No food. No food."

 

 Yet I felt amazed that some resourceful doctor invented a camera capable of such a labyrinthine voyage. 

 

When I was a kid, I sat mesmerized by a movie in which shrunken people navigated the human body, trying to escape the antibodies that saw them as intruders. I forget the name of the film, but the images still flutter in my head. 

 

Now, such pilgrimages actually happen, though the technicians watch remotely from the comfort of a lab. 

 

It will be a few days before I find out whether I am polyp free. In the meantime, I am even more grateful for a warm meal.