About Me

My photo
Learning and trying to be kind and living my life as fully as I can stand it.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Away we go

September 2015 has been a doozy of a month. As a writer I'm struck by the number of times I start off with "It's hard to find the words to describe. . " Um yeah. That's where the writing comes in, lady. The wordy part. And with all the words in the world, in any language, I would have to spend many hours searching for one that would describe September. Get ready for lots of blogging.

I want to start at the beginning but instead I will start where I am. I will wrap it up in a messy bow because I neither know how nor have the patience to learn how to tie a tidy one. Then we can look at it all together, in one handful, from all of our different view points and see what we see.

Where I am is sitting at our desktop computer eating Italian Castelvetrano whole green olives from a jar, listening to my two older children cry and moan for me to come get them out of their cribs. It's quarter to eight in the evening and they need sleep more than they need anything else except maybe to cry. I hope they can relax into sleep soon. The little girls are asleep. Today has been a combination of a big, huge bag of whine and absolute glory--and by glory I mean two beaming toddlers chirping "Good morning" to busy adults streaming into Peets coffee and watching every.single.one respond with that light of recognition in their eye. The light that is God or humanity or connection or something. Even the grumpiest ones were pulled like magnets and smiled and greeted back. What is that magic?

Of the thirty days in September I spent thirteen admitted as an in-patient to two different hospitals. We just got the insurance claim in the mail letting us know that the total bill for the first three nights in our local hospitals was $730k and change. $732, 280.95 to be precise. That's just a fun aside that's not even showing up on my top twenty things I want to write about but falls into the category of what in the fucking hell are you even talking about, hospital? Almost a million dollars to get three days of IVs? Moving on because I just can't right now.

So almost half of the month being a patient. My post Deep in a Hole, an essay that deeply concerned a lot of people, was written the day after I got released from the first hospital and two days before getting admitted to the second. Of note, the second hospital stay began on September 11th which is only relevant because I am of an age and live in a time when that date on the calendar means you have known the date all day long, every year for the past fourteen years.

I wrote a post about how terrible I felt--how sad and sick and weak. The night of the 10th as I lay in bed between bouts of diarrhea, mathematically aware even with my truly awful addition and subtraction abilities that there was no way I was okay based on the volume that was coming out of me, my left hand clutched the sheet in misery and desperation. "Please," I thought aloud.

Was that the prayer that started things? No, I don't think so. Where I am now feels like it has been a long time in the making. Is there a rock bottom when we're talking about physical pain and illness? I will have to think more about that. Something happened at that moment. Something that looked and felt like giving up and standing up at the same time.

There is profound, powerful stuff happening in me right now. I want to write about you so you all can share it in any way it is possible to share. I don't think it will last forever but I imagine it will send ripples in me and beyond me for a long time.


3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't know what to respond to - the beautiful ease of your writing or your incredible story and life. It reminds me of the podcast "Serial," where the reporter tells the story as investigation and in-the-moment discovery, all the while never knowing where she is heading. There’s something very powerful about witnessing discovery and the willingness to be in the moment without the thousand of protectors that tell us edit edit edit the life out of it.

    I wish I lived nearby so Kevin and I could pick up a few babysitting hours to help you both rest and write. I'll keep ready and writing your blog and will post on Facebook.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much. I love to hear your perspective. I wish you lived closer too! We will come your way next summer. I'm glad we're in touch now

      Delete