Coyotes Howling at Dawn

Yesterday morning I had my now-normal annual head MRI.  If you've never had your head immobilized in a plastic cage for 45 minutes while you are told to lay perfectly still as a group of rowdy maniacs in hospital garb sledge hammer the exterior of the tube you've rolled into, you have no clue what I am going to write about.  Well, you might if you have been held against your will in a narrow chamber in a cold basement during wartime, immobiled for fear of death.  I am not claustrophobic but having to lay perfectly still while giant magnets clang and bang to a rhythm all their own, is upsetting.  Radio waves aligning the water molecules in my head to produce images of my brain like sliced bread are interesting but don't help me to relax.  I breathe in for four, hold for seven, and breath out into the stillness of the sterile room for eight.  My dad tried to have an MRI many years ago.  After the 3rd failed attempt they told him to come back with drugs.  I used to think he was a wimp.  My husband, a big Nordic-type guy, schlepped down the hall like the walking shocked, pale skin and all, after his MRI where his shoulders were so big he couldn't breath properly.  Jesus, what's the matter with these men?  I used to shake my head in scorn.  But I now get it.  Fortunately, this MRI was a follow-up and only twenty minutes long.  Which is bearable and by that I mean I didn't feel the need to pop a Valium to prepare.  I have heard of people who sleep during their MRIs, crazy souls who embrace torture.  My daughter-in-law who has twice-yearly 90-minute long MRI sessions to check her spine brings her favorite music and snacks.  For my yearly brain scans, I just need my husband to come along.  I don't need him for mammograms, bone density scans, or most other body tune-up appointments but having my brain examined, yes, please at least drive me to the appointment.  But I am not so sure how much his presence helps as I lay down in the freezing cold room on a hard plastic bed that slides into a big tube with a needle in my arm and a hard face mask over my head, face, neck.  "Don't move."  I am always advised.  As if I could.  I asked why the room is so cold that I needed a blanket.  "Because we don't want the gazillion dollar machine to heat up," the awkward technician might have smiled at me under his mask.  I wonder if they will yell at me for shaking, I ponder as I feel myself gently shiver.  I ignore the mucus collecting in the back of my throat encouraging me to cough.  I pretend I don't feel the tickle of a strand of my wild curly hair on my right cheek.  I'd really like to adjust the earplugs and headphones that make my ear itch.  Am I crying I wonder?  I'm counting on not having to pee before this is done.  My trick is to close my eyes once I lay down, am restrained with the head mask and rolled into the belly of the beastly machine.  I don't open my big brown eyes until the Hannibal Lecter mask is removed and out of sight for fear of my emergency brain might get activated.  Visions of me screaming and running down the hospital corridors with my IV and blood trailing. Technicians chasing me. Loose boobs flapping under my shirt cause they make you take off your bra.  "Why am I only taking off my bra?"  I asked.  "Well we don't want the magnet do be attracted to the bra clasp and pull you up against the tube wall. Now do we?"  I think the nervous technician might have chuckled as he raised his eyebrows.  Dramatic.  However, I do get a grip.  Once I close my eyes and am alone with the machine that feels and sounds like it's drilling through the core of planet Earth to China, I calm myself.  I call to my zen place.  And yesterday morning I landed  at Lake Mead, mesmerized as I listened to the coyotes howling at dawn.  My soul is embedded in nature.  Maybe all our souls are.  Lake Mead is a place of peace for me in the deepest of ways I don't even really understand.  We found it on our RV trip around the United States the fall after my husband and I retired.  And my mind took me back there yesterday morning. But what might be more mysterious, or maybe not, is that once I got home I logged onto FaceBook, which I mostly loathe these days. And I saw this photo of dawn at the edge of Lake Mead, FaceBook reminding me of where I was on this exact day and morning in 2016. I choose to believe that this is more than coincidence.  I know because those howling coyotes settled my very soul.