Since there is no way my hand would hold up writing this out on paper, and my writing would never keep up with my brain the way my typing does, once again, the electronic version wins. Skip if you’e not interested in things non-food related.

I remember during treatment that the medical folks (and the counselor types) said that there would be low points – sometimes, there would even be incredibly low points where doubt and other things would take up space in my head. They weren’t referring to the treatment itself, but the mental fatigue that sets in as a byproduct of trying to survive the intentional damage being done to your body in order to remove the traces of the invited guests that have taken up residence. These low points, they said, could come during treatment itself, or even on the upside of healing once treatment is over.

I recall only a couple of points during treatment that I would deem low, since I, like many others going through it, was in such a fog from a couple weeks onward that so much energy was taken up just getting through the day that pondering too closely on anything was out of the question. One moment I do not remember well. The other I do: breaking down completely and apologizing to my mother and one of my sisters because they had to take care of me so much. It’s always been my job to take care of other people, you see.

Continue reading Full of spirit’s melancholy And eternity’s despair →

When I was a kid, I walked everywhere. When we lived with my Grandmother, my uncle – only a handful of years older than me – and I would walk to the movies, to the park, and anywhere else. When I got a bit older and into junior high, I finally got a bike of my own. From then on, I rode everywhere: to the park, to the community pool, just around the neighborhood, along the well-worn paths in the woods, and anywhere else there was enough space for me to squeeze through.

These memories came back to me the other day when I locked myself out of the new house. I have never, in all my years, done this. Of course, it’s rare that I have a door with a lock on both the handle and a deadbolt. Generally speaking, the places I’ve lived are deadbolt-only types. So it was without thinking that I stepped out the front door to pull my baby herb plants under cover in preparation for the severe storm that never arose and let the door shut behind. I must have missed the one way exit sign on my way out. I’d also locked the back sliding glass door to the patio. So, with no phone, no keys, and no id, and with an eye to the blackening sky, I plopped myself down in a chair.

Where I promptly fell asleep for about 20 minutes or so. It was a combination of many things: fatigue, the soft gurgle of the pool as the pump ran, the pines trees swaying in the increasing wind, that same wind gently nudging the chimes outside, and then whistling through the screens on the open windows as it gusted, the distant rumble of thunder promising something it would never deliver…

I awoke to the sound of a few raindrops hitting the top of the patio roof, and thought the storm had finally arrived, but as I roused myself, I realized the sun had broken through and the seven raindrops were all the rain that would be coming. So I hauled myself up and out to find a phone to call someone with a key to get over and let me in.

Overall, I was outside for almost two hours in enforced idleness, almost half an hour of which was spent napping. I can think of worse ways to spend a late spring day.