The purple sage, visible from my window, wait for me to prune their plumes, two minutes in the morning I cut as many as I can until my arms and legs fall limp. In the evening when it is cool enough for me to walk outside, when I have a wave of energy and mobility, I prune them another two minutes. In between, they stand like children given a bad haircut, by a parent who can’t cut hair, but wants to save money. They wait for me, part tall tired plumes, part short green grey leaves beginning to sprout anew.
A Chinese Chicken Pasta Salad cools on the kitchen counter. If it had feelings it might be relieved that its waiting is over…that it has become a salad. Four hours it took me, to cut red peppers, and broccoli into tiny spears, to saute chicken, to mix soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, sugar and ginger into dressing and to boil linguine. I cut, I cooked a few minutes at a time, too many minutes at a time, until my body stopped, until I dragged it to bed or the sofa for a rest…and waited for a bit of energy to surface again. The salad, sweet and sour, is two nights of dinner, tomorrow I shall not need to use my trickle of energy, of movement to create a meal.
It is me that struggles with patience most, that struggles to wait for myself, that judges, that twists and turns inside my immobile body wondering “why?” and “how?” an always active me could end up with no energy, that an always thinking me could end up waiting for my brain to process… waiting for my brain to find words…waiting for my brain to regain energy.
Death waits. I do not want to be laying here, wasting precious time as if I don’t see him. I long to be LIVING, yes in all caps, doing what I long to do, if illness hadn’t moved in. I long to dance, sing, strum, run, plant, rake leaves and jump in the piles, run in run-a-thons, attending classes, sitting in circles of people exchanging thougths. I long to give cook, throw parties for my family, for my best of friends, for new friends, and to work to make the means to do it all…making every moment before my end– lived in.
Instead living chronically ill, is a process of letting go. I have lived with chronic illness and chronic pain for over twenty years. I was young and now I am middle aged. I am able do as much and at the pace of what i imagined I’d do at the age of 100…perhaps I could do more at 100 than I can now. What do I do with this little tiny bit of life that runs through my veins…with the loss of ever being young as an adult, with reaching a stage of life, just before death, long before death?
Some days I am patient and in that patience I am at peace. But, more days, I work at having patience and peace. It is not what human beings are wired for, this being young, and laying in bed every day. It messes with the mind to not be able to do what you know is good for you, exercise (exertion exacerbates this illness) and healthy food (most which my stomach cannot tolerate). I know without these, death steps closer. I grow angry not to have the tools to keep him where he would have been, if my body still worked. I grow angry, but can’t run off the anger, paint out the anger, prune the sages beautifully with my anger.
I want to write inspiring today…but I am not inspiring. I am sad, exhausted and body stilled. I am working at patience, at accepting that I have to have it, to know the moments that like just blown bubbles, float over ahead, make us look, and than fly elsewhere and pop. I don’t want to miss the bubbles, so I contemplate, a tear falls now and then. I will feel a fleeting sense of patience, think I’m getting there and then feel it no more.
I don’t want death to shake his head when it is my turn…and say “you could have learned from the loyal willow who you saw everyday outside your window, learned the act of being still and alive. You could have listened to the soft sounds, the whispers, the wind, and grown to know and embrace the good of the still life, the patient life, the peaceful life.” I want death to say that to me without the “could have”. I want him to smile and say “you did good at making the the best of was was.”
Today, I am a flawed, energy deficient, needing to learn and grow woman, in a bed, in a house that holds an imperfect, but loving family, in a town becoming a small city, in a little populated but mountain abundant state, in a country that makes mistakes but keeps on believing it can fix them, on an earth where some people live with more than they need, and more people live with less, in a universe that holds mysteries beyond our expanding minds. I am a little bitty someone in it all, hoping to be at peace with and patient with my damaged body and in so being, live fully in, this little place in the universe that for a short while, holds me.
Last night as I was falling asleep, my husband had the TV tuned into the History Channel. I listened to the narrator tell of how an astroid or comet, can enter a solar system and strike one planet. If this adds enough extra mass to that planet, it can change the orbits of the planets around it.
Is that life or what? Start at the universal level and bring it right down to earth, to its ecosystem and then to us human beings (who are pretty good at throwing in metaphorical comets of weighted change– current example, the oil spilling out into the ocean and gulf stream).
The influence of a change on one, affecting those in near proximity, goes right to human relationships and through to the individual.
Okay, so in my little family solar system since the addition of three members into the household, I have decided that we have been impacted by weighted change and that it has reset orbits. Some have fallen smoothly into their new rotations and others, like myself, who is slow to transition, is still in free fall, hoping a new orbit is waiting nearby for me to land in.
Out of reach, but in sight are my routine, my laptop, my cell phone, my feeling of comfort and security, even chunks of my identity,…they’re there I can see them…now I’m waiting, falling, waiting, hoping when I land they will all be near, and I can pick them up again…most likely in a new configuration, but in an orbit, I can count on.
Yes “count on”, the “false sense of security” we need, that things will stay close to the same each day. Even though asteroids and comets fall through solar systems, even though nature is unpredictable and our bodies fragile…even though those of us whose fragile bodies have gone too haywire to be “counted on”, we need that sense of security that helps us feel at ease. We need whatever routine and control we can put together…
At least I do. I’m a routine freak. Even though the state of my body has the greatest impact on my routine, whatever I can control and set in orbit, feels like a salve that spreads across my days. This morning my laptop spun close enough to grab and to write a post. Still, falling around me near, but out of my reach are the the new sounds of my granddaughter crying, my son asking for bleach to clean with, my explaining again, my MCS and how it relates to cleaning bathrooms (I can only tolerate vinegar and baking soda), dinners with five adults with different schedules and tastes and few cooks (I love to cook, but am most often unable to), a washing machine almost constantly full, baby products and finding one’s that are safe for baby and me, finances in flux, they’re all floating out of reach…as is the sense of false security I am longing for.
….and lemons…lemons…its hard to make lemonade outside an orbit. So for now, I’m watching yellow lemons float by. Imagine if they each had consciousness they’d be feeling a sense of false security…not knowing that someone is near who would like to make lemonade when she can.
How’s it going in your solar system?
I wrote this little poem years ago, on a day when losses felt overwhelming and keeping “me” in the midst of it felt daunting. Still I have days I feel that way. Today is one.
Fading
(by, Kerry Ryan-Kuhn)
Fading like a favorite t-shirt
Washed a hundred times
Like a purple sunset sinking
into night
The palette that once colored me
I fear…is fading to invisibility
The sky is grey today and the temperature is cold. I waited too long to fill a rx and am filling the side effects of suddenly dropping the dosage. My daughter had oral surgery and could sure use my “comforting mom” care. My challenge to give it this week shines light on the reality of where my limitations have slipped to. My stomach is bloated from Gastroparesis and Interstitial Cystitis, which are both acting up. This makes me feel extra fat. It is the week before that time of month (another feel “fat” factor). Estrogen is flowing through me and irritating my neurological system which is already irritated because it is broken. Okay, that’s enough of a complaint list!
A dozen years ago, when I could still play the guitar, sing and write songs, I wrote a song called “It’s a Blue, Grey, Lavender Day”. Today’s a blue, gray, lavender day…
We live the entire color wheel don’t we? Separately I like the three colors above, but somehow together they express this melancholy feeling. I like being at “green”, learning, growing and in the midst of nature, or “deep blue”. It is my favorite color. Blue to me is tranquil, soothing, and accepting. I also like orange…which I think is funny and giggly… the result of belly laughter and being wrapped up in a favorite blanket, or the arms of someone who loves you.
There is power in color. My daughter is taking a university course called “Art and Politics”. I asked her if it was about how the politics of an era effects the art of that era. She told me no, its the opposite. Its how the art of an era influences politics. I know it seems I’m going off on a tangent, but color is such a part of art. If art has the power to greatly influence politics and color is a major part of art, color has quite a bit of power. Right now, contemplating a new idea feels “green” which makes me feel good. (I realize I’ve been smiling while thinking about this). Perhaps I started feeling “green” first and that’s what started my contemplating.
Either way, “green” feels good.
