Summer Sunday in San Antonio

Thanks to my new robotic device, this has been an awesome week! I'm calling this The Change of Life--a huge relief after almost three years of foot pain.  I'm grateful to modern medicine for inventing a device that starts at the spine and moves all the way to the toes! 

I still monitor break-through pain occasionally, but the post-anesthesia fog, sciatica, and foot pain have all virtually disappeared. 

Yesterday, I made four books; the day before three! Spending less time managing and relieving pain made me appreciate the  impact of chronic pain on so many people.  This week (knocking on wood as I write that!) has made me appreciate every hour of being able to do creative things--and social things!

Last night, Jan and I--and a few other friends--attended an extraordinary concert by Agarita and Imani Winds.  Two other nights, I met friends for dinner.  For so long, my social life has been stunted and unpredictable, and it was great fun to get out in the world and enjoy my friends. 

When Carlene was almost exactly my age, she wrote a book called Random Renderings of my Rememberings. She typed out her stories on beautiful deckled-edged stationery and packed them in a pink flowery box.  I have treasured that box for years and often taken it out to read a particular chapter that spoke to me.  But now!  Now I am, age-wise, where she was when she wrote it--and it touches me profoundly, like music.  

She writes about her family growing up on a farm in Georgia--and about the comfort of being with her beloved grandmother, Cana, after her 10-year old brother died.  At the age of seven, that death impacted her in so many ways.  As she grew older, she loved going to Cana's house "in town" and being close to church and school. 

I am turning off the horrific news and spending a quiet Sunday finishing this book!  It's the mother of my impulse to write this blog, a way of saving all the treasures and life lessons along the way. 

Here is an excerpt:

A Simple Sentence

If I were a writer, it would happen in the morning. There's an interlude between waking and rising when prayers and memories mingle and merge into a story.  Then an alarm rings, "Write it!"

A few days ago, in a state of melancholy and concert about aging friends, someone asked, "Why do people have to die?"

And so, a spark appeared this morning--a time I felt the reality of the statement, "You are going to die."  Fortunately, this was not relayed by an oncologist saying, "You are going to die" or even a sermon plea from a pulpit promising "You are going to die."

With an awareness as real as the tall steel tripod that held a windmill while it did its pumping work, or the simple barrel bearing weight for a long wide board to be a see-saw, the word, are, took the shape of a fulcrum--and still moves me back and forth like a lever. 

This sentence is not something I dwell on, even now, but the thread of it that settled in me along the way, and with which my life experiences have been quilted, is the support that keeps me afloat and healthy.  Mu gratitude could fill a lake.

February 23, 2002