Shaken and Released

I got sick this week, and it put me face-to-face with that darned companion, mortality. 

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning on Monday with terrible chills and a headache.  Up for an hour, back to sleep, back up a few hours later to throw up and then collapse onto a quilt on the living room floor, where I spent the rest of the day.  (I was so focused on just existing that it didn't occur to me to return to the bed.)  My husband quickly realized that I was not about to make breakfast for our children, so he called out from work and left the kids with their nana during the times he came home to check on me. 

It turned out I had a bacterial infection.  I had a fever, chills all day, a constant headache, every joint ached and part of my body throbbed with pain from the infection.  I was so weak that it was a terrific strain to even sit up, and I ate the soup he fixed me with my chin barely off the floor, just high enough so the spoon could clear the rim of the bowl.  I had gone from the version of myself where I'm 35, lively, always doing things and interacting with people all day, always planning on the future, to a new, unfamiliar version of myself in which I'm maybe 82, quite sickly, quite alone, not caring much about anything in the world other than water and a little food because I simply didn't have the energy to care.  Being sick showed me what illness can do to a person's vitality.  It's not just about the pain; it's about the energy left over after you've dealt with the pain, with the illness.  There has to be some liveliness left if we want to take enjoyment in the world, and if there's none left, there's not much of us left.  Then we're just a mind operating a body coping with illness, or at least that's all that was left of me. 

At one point, I got myself with great effort into the kitchen for a glass of water and a straw to drink it out of.  I remember my hands fumbling through the cabinet, and cursing the way I had to bend my aching wrist to get at them behind the olive oil, where I've never realized it's any effort to get at them.  I suddenly saw, instead of me, an elder in a worn nightgown, living alone in this state.  Alone and just making it through her days, day after day, so sapped by illness that she had no energy left to take interest in any of the beauty of the world, or children, or birds, or the sky.  Just staying alive, that's all.  Just carrying on, with no spark, nothing treasured except maybe a comfortable place to sit and a warm meal.  No striving except towards physical comfort from some source.  I don't remember feeling sorry for myself as I saw that I was like this woman I envisioned, I simply saw it.  There was no energy to be sad.  I just saw. 

During their visit to see me that first day, my little girl smiled over her shoulder at me as she practiced standing up while holding on to a chair.  My boy told me in his usual jubilant manner about what he had done at Nana's house and then showed off his wonderful Halloween costume for me, all smiles, before going trick-or-treating with his father.  For my part, I did my best to turn my head and aching eyes all the way over to where they were, which was a true challenge, as unreal as it sounds to me now.  I loved them and wanted the best for them as much as I always do, but it was a detached kind of love.  Lying there, sick as I was, it was a relief when my husband took them away so I didn't have to expend energy paying attention to them and trying to return their smiles.  All of this was exhausting.  I could love them from afar.  (I recognize that this post reflects a two-day illness; I have no idea how I would have felt after a week of only short daily visits from them.  I like to think that my heart would have broken.)

I've been sick before, but always - always - from illnesses my body could reliably recover from on its own: colds, flu, chicken pox, etc.  The one that got me this week held on with force into the second day, which is the point at which patients are advised to go on antibiotics, if they aren't already.  It's not that I would have died without the medicine, but if I had been fighting that case of that illness without access to any medicine, it could have gotten very ugly, requiring surgical drainage, removal of abscess, etc.  Not things my body can do on its own.

And that was the disturbing part.  That was the part that shook me from my snug little nook up in the land of Someday I Might Be Old and Maybe Need A Little Medicine...Maybe, down to the swamp where We Are All Vulnerable All of the Time And If It Doesn't Show, We're Just Lucky.  

On being "crazy"

So I've done it. I've finally flipped the switch to "To Hell With It" and begun praying in public. We live on a busy road and I'm sure that many people have now seen me holding my hands up to the sky as I offer energy up, kissing the earth as I give thanks, or just sitting in the car with my hands up and my eyes closed as I center myself and get present before I drive with my children.

My next door neighbor appears to have noticed. She moved in last year and is not often at home, so our interactions have been few, but have all been pleasant, and my husband and I both have been quite pleased with her as a neighbor. Lately, though, she clearly regards me warily, and I can feel her keeping a certain distance when we talk across our driveways nowadays.

The reason I spent the first thirty-something years of my life hiding my prayers is for this very reason: I didn't want people to think I was crazy. Now my neighbor, whom I like and whose friendship I would have liked, doesn't want to have much to do with me and looks at me as though I'm a crazy person. And indeed, in her eyes I AM a crazy person, plain and simple. She can tell by the way I act. I'm clearly "not normal."

Our latest awkward interaction was this afternoon, and this evening, needing encouragement to stay true to myself in the face of judgement, I sang my girl to sleep to the tune of "Lord of the Dance" in the Christmas Revels, only with new words to help me remember to keep on this path:

"Stand true, whoever you may be
For we each carry part of the truth, you see.
Hold my hand, stay strong, and walk with me.
Hold my hand, walk tall, as true as true can be."

I have lots of versions flowing through my head, but that's the jist of it.

Any ideas? Other verses? The idea is to create an anthem to being who we are fully, the world be damned! Now is the time.

Pictures!

Ducklings at a little under 3 weeks old.

Their first swim hole! The "pond" left over from an above-ground pool.


Some of our year-old flock behind the coop.






Swimming in their current "pond." We are having some folks from a local eco-friendly pond building place visit us soon to advise us about building a pond in our yard.

On their way up the steps to bed tonight...

...and up....

...and up...


...and in to bed.

Ducklings

Our five little Indian Runner ducks are four weeks old now, and absolutely adorable (pictures will come at some point, I promise). They are still spending nights in a pen in our indoor porch, until we get the duck house built (hopefully this weekend), but their days are spent outside.

They have us trained so that in the morning we open their pen door, they peep, quack, and waddle through the porch onto the deck and then one by one flip-flop their way down the stairs to the grass and waddle in an urgent shuffle together to their kiddie pool. They spend their days splashing in the kiddie pool, eating grass and bugs, exploring the yard, and getting acquainted with the chickens. Around 8 PM, from the evening hush there arises a tremendous peeping and quacking from the backyard as the ducks decide en masse that it's time to go to bed, at which point they shuffle back across the yard up to the stairs, and hop and flop their way up the steps (it's remarkable to see ducklings doing this). We open the porch door, and they peep/quack/waddle their way through our porch back into their pen. If we merely open the porch door and then take the liberty of going back in the house to finish whatever we were doing while they go into their pen by themselves, they emit a very special, nasal, high-pitched, URGENT peep, which means that YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO STAY WITH US UNTIL WE MAKE IT ALL THE WAY INTO OUR PEN, THANKYOUVERYMUCH!!! Once they're in their pen and the door's closed, we're at liberty to do whatever we please.

Life is good.

Astray

Been astray. Rearing kids. Raising a new batch of chicks to replace the hens we lost over the past year, plus five ducklings just for fun. Getting all my spring seedlings into the garden and weeded, keeping an eye on this year's resident birds in our birdhouses. Spending time with my husband and keeping our relationship alive and happy. Cooking, cleaning. Life.

I turned 35 this spring. Turning this particular age has been a doozy. Twenty-seven was a big one for me, too: leaving my early 20's and approaching 30 without a partner, without a career, without having traveled as much as I'd always thought I would have by that age. But where 27 was mostly about taking stock of what I'd accomplished so far in this life, 35 has got me taking a good look at exactly how far into this life I've already come. I'm accustomed to thinking of myself as "a young person," and now, 35 staring me straight in the face, I'm realizing that that's just not true anymore. I'm not a young person. I'm as old as the folks I used to babysit for when I was "a young person."

It's calling for a shift in my concept of myself, and at the same time is forcing me to reconcile with my mortality. I'm no longer in the start of this life, I may be halfway through it already!

Day Fourteen: Writing Break

Sat out tonight with the lass. Giving myself a writing break for the evening.

Day Thirteen: Sick

No sit tonight. Doing taxes + sick with a bad cold + raining out = me going to bed instead.