Sunday, March 28, 2010

Revelation

I figured out how to shower with the cast-arm resting on top of my head. I still can't wash my left upper arm. Too close to the hand to reach it. I'm not sure how I'm going to make it through the next month with a four pound cast on my right arm, although if I've learned one thing from my life's trials, it's that when you start thinking "how am I going to make it" that's the turning point. The next day you wake up and it's been a month already. I suppose, like trying to watch an electron, becoming conscious of this revelation will change it.

When I woke up from the surgery, I knew my hand had to be on my chest, but it felt as if it were thrown over my head. The sensation stayed with me through recovery. At one point my blood pressure started to nosedive and the nurse started freaking out. She apparently hadn't been told about my blood sugar. A glass of apple juice and I bounced right back. I'm an impatient patient. I wanted to be out of there by 930, after walking in at 5 am. Next thing I knew, it was noon and I still hadn't made it from the gurney to the recliner. I knew the coffee would suck (I've been in that chair before) and the muffin would be a mushy one in a vending machine bag, but I wanted them. They taste like success.

I wonder sometimes why I started having all these joint problems in the last 3 years. Knees, elbow, shoulder-- even vertebrae, disks slipping around like wet flipflops at high tide. I tell my friends my warranty expired. I know, it started around the time Jesse got sick. But the first knee, first slipped disk, started long before. It just didn't seem to be a pattern till now. I could still do most yoga moves then. Now I'm stuck doing Pilates in bed. It's a challenge, and probably not as good as the mat, but bed is where I am most of the time. This weekend friends got me up and out, hubby took me to dinner, gf took me dancing, so I got a little sense of how atrophied I am. Good thing they were there, because they can run interference for my arm, and cut my meat for me. A few hours on my feet seems so small, and it wears me out, but it helps me feel just maybe I can find my way back to work soon. And now that this surgery is out of the way, I can start the long slow road to Kilimanjaro.

Yesterday I was napping with my back to the door (still recovering from dancing). It's one of the few positions I can handle, because the cast won't let me lie just any old way. I woke up because I felt someone behind me, leaning in near my left ear, and heard her whisper to me in an old woman's voice, "I just wanted to thank you for your relationship with Sa..." I couldn't tell if she said Sandra or Sarah. I turned around and there was no one there. And I was not asleep, and not on anything stronger than Aleve. What. The. Hell.

Friday, March 19, 2010

When I was the mountain

to the mountains the stars whirl fast as snow no
sooner do we rise up than we are cast along the sky
our living flanks scored with green and ice the water
shoulders its way in like roots
exhales itself into the sun
then in darkness wrestles its way back inside
springs forth along the promontories
leaps away into the waiting sky
toying with form in changing mine.

i promised

i will keep very quiet. I will
not scream or lay blame only
i had to stay.
They made me hide and gently
pulled loose his moorings
he slipped across the jagged
across the broken flanks
lept bright and falling
I clung on
but he slipped away.

Friday, March 12, 2010

I wish I had a mom.

I mean, I do, I just wish I had the kind that you call up and tell your troubles to, and she listens and understands and isn't afraid of what you're facing, doesn't run away or hang up when you're in distress, but comforts you somehow, and doesn't judge or blame you, or sound insincere when she sympathizes. Someone I could confide in who wouldn't turn around and tell others my secrets, or blurt them out in public in embarrassing and inappropriate moments. I wish I had a mom like me. But I don't. The mom I have would not be happy to know what I think of her, and how I see our relationship but I don't think she'd deny it, not anymore. At least that's a kind of progress.

Do I wish I had a son like me?