34DDDD's and waiting

I didn't know they made bras in size 34DDDD until I was in the market for one.

I worked at a department store in high school, a regional chain called Elder-Beerman at the Concord Mall in Elkhart, Indiana. I dreaded the "May I help you?" portion of my job, so I kept myself busy folding the table of turtlenecks that was continually in disarray and helping the Lingerie Dept. manager reshelve bras that had fallen from the racks. The manager was a heavy woman in her 40s who wore pantyhose and black tennis shoes and kept a yellow cloth measuring tape around her neck. She gave me directions and then left me alone. The task was interminable, untangling bras straps and slipping them onto tiny plastic hangers, but I liked the quiet. Occasionally I'd stumble onto a gigantic bra at the back of a row--a bra the size of my head.

Ten years later, I placed my bra on my head in an attempt to be funny and found that it fit perfectly. Whereas an average sized bra would rest on one's head like a yamaka, mine fit more like a knit cap that could have kept my ears warm in winter.

For years I'd hated my breasts and would cringe when I'd unhook my bra for a boy and hear, "What are those DD's?" To which I'd reply, "At least," as he gripped them and smiled. And shopping was quite possibly worse, my upper half something like a 12, my lower half more like a 6.

It's been six months since I had surgery to reduce them. Plastic surgery, which sounds as absurdly grown-up and bourgeois as the fact that my boyfriend is a "divorcee."

I've been told the surgery can take up to a year to achieve a final result, and I've begun to repeat this to myself when I am irritated at the fact that my breasts still lay heavy against my chest and buttoning my coat is not always possible. My breasts are still big, not much smaller than they were, and this fall has been a season of waiting, something like Advent, for the swelling to go down.

So for now I spread shea butter on the thick purple scars that run around my nipples and down the front of my breasts. And as I do I am resassured that the sensation is odd, not unlike touching a twisted and swollen ankle. I can feel the fluid between my skin and flesh and hope against hope that when the swelling goes down, I will be happy.