No coward soul is mine
Yesterday, I woke up and just thought, "Fuck it."
It was my birthday and I was on house arrest. Meaning that I was not supposed to get in public places and mingle with other humans. Maybe it would have been okay to mingle with aliens, but I'm not far enough along on the stardust chain to be able to identify them yet, so...oh well.
I just woke up mad. I was tired of being safe, being cautious. I thought about Helen Keller and her thoughts that life should either be a daring adventure or nothing.
I wanted to do something daring. And for me....that meant going out. Going rogue. I told T. She immediately frowned on it.
"The last thing we want is for you to catch a cold. Let's just cozy up here at home. That new Armistead Maupin show is dropping on Netflix today. We can watch that. I can get take out. Anything you want."
She looked at me hopefully, realized that this was going nowhere and said, "Okay, what do you want to do?"
I told her that I wanted to stick with our original plan. I wanted to go see Rocketman. Yes. At a movie theater. With other people around.
We talked it through. She thought that we could do this if I wore my surgical mask. If I felt embarrassed, she would wear one, too. We would bring sanitizer wipes and wipe every surface down.
I balked at the mask, but she put her foot down. I threatened to just go alone. She begged me.
I wore the fucking mask. I told her that she did not have to wear a mask. That would just make it twice as bad.
And that is what we did. I think we were pretty safe. There were only about ten other people in the theater, although one elderly woman was sneezing and coughing a lot. T put us well away from her and her companion.
It was so much fun. The movie was brilliant. I had not been to a movie in a long, long while. I forgot how lovely it is to sit in a darkened room and have this giant screen in front of you.
Afterwards, we stopped at Cheesecake Factory and T went in to get me a slice of raspberry white chocolate cheesecake. It looked delicious....until I got home and the fatigue of the day hit and I was suddenly too nauseated to do anything except sit in a chair and read.
So.....SHE ate it. I told her that I didn't think I would be able to eat it....ever. I'm just never hungry. We had tried to buy popcorn at the movie theater and one whiff of it made me hand it over to her. Food smells just aren't my thing anymore.
As we sat home after the movie, Hal, our postal carrier came to the door. I had received so many cards and gifts for my birthday that they wouldn't fit in the mail box.
I think everyone thinks that this might be my last birthday....
But, this is fine. Love is love and I felt very hugged. My little sister sent me a gift that flabbergasted me. It was so tender, so personal. So completely unexpected. She and I are not close. Yet, we aren't far either. We respect each other's boundaries (she is a very loyal Trumper and I am often annoyed at her tendency to be deliberately obtuse when he is the subject matter) and I think that helps. I heard from old co-workers, high school friends, cousins. People who don't usually send me cards or personal texts. Facebook tattles everyone's birthdays, but these people went out of their way to write kind words and wishes. My soul felt so....balmed.
That evening, T mowed the lawn and I sat watching her, almost gobsmacked by the beauty of our yard. The newly trimmed bushes. The sunflowers trying so hard to grow fast. The chives weaving all around our ground gutters like little hoodlums with their tiny purple helmets. Our hawthorne tree seemed to almost shimmer in the late day sun, its bird feeders and streamers peering out of the branches. The old cardinal who always sings when T mows came out to sing one last song before his bedtime.
Strangely, the gnats are back at attacking me. Probably because I am off all of my cancer meds now. When I am doped up with chemo, no bug will touch me. It's like they just know, can smell it on my skin.
After mowing, we watched an episode of NOS4A2. Joe Hill is a chip off of his Dad's block.
It was a good birthday. And I don't regret saying Fuck it. Life is for living. And like Emily Brontë said,
No coward soul is mine.
It was my birthday and I was on house arrest. Meaning that I was not supposed to get in public places and mingle with other humans. Maybe it would have been okay to mingle with aliens, but I'm not far enough along on the stardust chain to be able to identify them yet, so...oh well.
I just woke up mad. I was tired of being safe, being cautious. I thought about Helen Keller and her thoughts that life should either be a daring adventure or nothing.
I wanted to do something daring. And for me....that meant going out. Going rogue. I told T. She immediately frowned on it.
"The last thing we want is for you to catch a cold. Let's just cozy up here at home. That new Armistead Maupin show is dropping on Netflix today. We can watch that. I can get take out. Anything you want."
She looked at me hopefully, realized that this was going nowhere and said, "Okay, what do you want to do?"
I told her that I wanted to stick with our original plan. I wanted to go see Rocketman. Yes. At a movie theater. With other people around.
We talked it through. She thought that we could do this if I wore my surgical mask. If I felt embarrassed, she would wear one, too. We would bring sanitizer wipes and wipe every surface down.
I balked at the mask, but she put her foot down. I threatened to just go alone. She begged me.
I wore the fucking mask. I told her that she did not have to wear a mask. That would just make it twice as bad.
And that is what we did. I think we were pretty safe. There were only about ten other people in the theater, although one elderly woman was sneezing and coughing a lot. T put us well away from her and her companion.
It was so much fun. The movie was brilliant. I had not been to a movie in a long, long while. I forgot how lovely it is to sit in a darkened room and have this giant screen in front of you.
Afterwards, we stopped at Cheesecake Factory and T went in to get me a slice of raspberry white chocolate cheesecake. It looked delicious....until I got home and the fatigue of the day hit and I was suddenly too nauseated to do anything except sit in a chair and read.
So.....SHE ate it. I told her that I didn't think I would be able to eat it....ever. I'm just never hungry. We had tried to buy popcorn at the movie theater and one whiff of it made me hand it over to her. Food smells just aren't my thing anymore.
As we sat home after the movie, Hal, our postal carrier came to the door. I had received so many cards and gifts for my birthday that they wouldn't fit in the mail box.
I think everyone thinks that this might be my last birthday....
But, this is fine. Love is love and I felt very hugged. My little sister sent me a gift that flabbergasted me. It was so tender, so personal. So completely unexpected. She and I are not close. Yet, we aren't far either. We respect each other's boundaries (she is a very loyal Trumper and I am often annoyed at her tendency to be deliberately obtuse when he is the subject matter) and I think that helps. I heard from old co-workers, high school friends, cousins. People who don't usually send me cards or personal texts. Facebook tattles everyone's birthdays, but these people went out of their way to write kind words and wishes. My soul felt so....balmed.
That evening, T mowed the lawn and I sat watching her, almost gobsmacked by the beauty of our yard. The newly trimmed bushes. The sunflowers trying so hard to grow fast. The chives weaving all around our ground gutters like little hoodlums with their tiny purple helmets. Our hawthorne tree seemed to almost shimmer in the late day sun, its bird feeders and streamers peering out of the branches. The old cardinal who always sings when T mows came out to sing one last song before his bedtime.
Strangely, the gnats are back at attacking me. Probably because I am off all of my cancer meds now. When I am doped up with chemo, no bug will touch me. It's like they just know, can smell it on my skin.
After mowing, we watched an episode of NOS4A2. Joe Hill is a chip off of his Dad's block.
It was a good birthday. And I don't regret saying Fuck it. Life is for living. And like Emily Brontë said,
No coward soul is mine.
Happy birthday, M! Now I'm thinking about what I might have sent if I had your address...a goofy looking houseplant in a really pretty pot, perhaps. I have found I like the juxtaposition of funny shaped plants in prim and proper pots.
ReplyDeleteWe were out of town last week, so I'm behind here. We took the kids to visit P's family. This is always a bit of a umm...challenge. We stayed with 70 year olds who have never had children. Their house may be the LEAST child-proofed place on the planet. Every surface two feet off the floor is covered in tiny, breakable Hindu gods and trinkets. (I know...I shouldn't call them trinkets. But, when I pulled the 18th thing out of Ezra's mouth in the first 30 minutes, I lost all respect for culture and started counting down the minutes until we got home.) They were very sweet to the kids. I shouldn't complain...so I should just stop talking about it.
For part of the week, we were in Breckenridge with one of P's boyhood friends and his family. That was an incredibly fun and relaxing interlude. Exhausted from chasing the kids around a breakable death trap, I just let them run wild in the mountains for two days. I thought of you while we hiked on Thursday. It's been cold up there, so everything is just now starting to bud. You would love it--the chance to see Spring, which showed up in our yards a couple weeks ago, make her first appearance again somewhere else.
More later...Ezra just woke up.