Nineteen years ago, some pre-cancerous cells running around my abdominal region demanded to be let out and thus, I went to the hospital for some invasive nether-region surgery. I was living in New Orleans then and was sent home post-operation to see what would happen next. (I’m not sure that’s how the doctor would have described the plan; that’s just how I lived in those days.)

That evening I shuffled painfully from my bedroom toward the bathroom and, from my studio, heard what sounded like a cabinet door creaking open. I went in, saw the cabinet door was shut, recognized the sound was coming from closer to the ground, looked down and saw a tiny little possum sitting in the fireplace, crying out for attention.

Not feeling up to the project of figuring out what to do with baby possum, I called my friend Tracy from two doors down and explained my situation. Having been prepped in advance that I was going to be home alone after my surgery, Tracy hurried over and scooped up baby possum between two sheets of my sign-board and nurtured him out the side door, where, it turned out, his mother was waiting for him in the holly bush! The two marsupials had a grand reunion, Tracy walked home, and I went back to bed.

Last Thursday I had an operation that the surgeon reckoned had been set up 19 years earlier with that first surgery; that, perhaps some reckless carving had left some gaps that invited some internal organs to arrange themselves into a hernia. I first noticed the body-changes in myself last December, but was way too busy with festivals and other work to stop for more internal excavation until the work-brakes were finally slammed and it was time to do it.

The procedure was done at Baystate Franklin, laparoscopically, which, a friend explained to me, “is where they send two robots in to do the work and then a third one goes along, just to watch.” At the end I was sent home again, to rest, sleep and see if I might feel like myself again one day. As it is absolutely insisted upon (up here) that the patient not be left alone the evening after surgery, I had arranged to spend the night at a friend’s house up the street. But when evening came, I was still so overcome with the effects of the anesthesia and whatever other pain medication they’d given me that I decided I wasn’t going anywhere that involved standing longer than three minutes, so I rolled up to sleep in my own bed, ready to pay any price for the luxury of doing so.

At about 5:30 the next morning, I was swathed in a deep dream fueled by some magical painkiller, when the story was swatted out of my head by the flush of swooping wings, patting me, nearly kissing me as they fluttered by. Well that woke me up and I turned on the light to see a bat swooping around the room, as anxious to get out as I was to see him leave. I remember about 10 years ago asking what to do with a homebound bat, and 70-something year-old Ann Hamilton telling me she kept a net in her bedroom for just the exercise; she’d jump up, catch the creature in her net and release him outside into the wild.

I looked around for a net, and found only a pillowcase most closely resembling one, but didn’t think I had it in my post-herniated body to chase a bat with a pillowcase.

Where was Tracy when you needed her?

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Which creature of the post-surgical procedure is more desirable; a possum or a bat? And why do they only come around to fill the void when I’ve had something internal removed? Are they the souls of my dearly departed organs, coming back around for one last round before heading out to eternity?

Recalling that bats don’t like light, I crawled up on my bed, gathered all the abdominal strength I could clench in order to pull up the two-hundred year-old window, wrenched the screen out, and turned on all the lights in the room. Then I stood back and watched the bat swoop in circles, recognizing that we both had the same exit plan for him; he wanted to go see his mother as much as I wanted him to.

He finally figured it out. The cool darkness called to him and he hurtled out the window, bless his little bat heart, and went to join his brethren in the black sky.

And I went back to bed, resolved that updating an old house, filling in all the holes that little creatures of the night sneak into might just be a really, really good idea.

Especially if I ever plan to have surgery again.

Nan Parati lives and works in Ashfield, where she found home and community following Hurricane Katrina. She can be reached at NanParati@aol.com.