Don't faint: Return of the Wacko

It's funny. I have tried to complete a couple of more entries about two pivotal incidents in my life. What, you say? MORE? Unfortunately, yes, there were two other bizarrely disturbing particular incidents.

You know what? I couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. They will go in the memoir, in one way or another, but I think I am done with that for a good long while. It would appear I have set a course for myself at last. Mind you, when I set a course, I am always award that I may very well find myself on an unplanned detour, but that's what is so intriguing about life. Goals can so often simply allow us to choose a path, to start a new leg of a journey.

It's, for me, having the goal and starting that matter.  I have rarely found myself meeting the goal in the way I chose. Just as often I've found myself detoured in such a way that I change the goal entirely. Who cares? It's fun. Yes, I did say fun. I think I got this from my dad, who was talking about how living life had very  little to do with whatever we planned, LONG before John Lennon sang about it. And when my childhood plans were so often squashed and I'd climb in his lap or sit on the floor, leaning against his knee, I would feel his long fingers in my hair.

"What is it this time, Jetty?"

"Life isn't FAIR, Daddy."

"That, snigglefritz, is an irrelevant observation. Try again." He'd say it with affection, but he brooked no talk of fairness. Again, long before I heard it in church, it was he who would point out that no one seems to say life isn't fair when something GOOD happens.

True enough.

Have you ever noticed that it takes me about a year and a half to get to my point? That is, when I even have a point to get TO. I have one. Honest.

I seem to be writing about my future now. And living very much in the present. I mentioned that I was having a terrifying time with my back. While there is no new damage, there are new symptoms that are due to the longterm severity of the existing issues. The new developments have forced me to develop what is a very grueling exercise/PT regimen. I did this when I was about thirty-three, after the last of my eight major surgeries. I had to train all the peripheral muscles of my foot, calf, and, well, entire leg, to take over. I had to become extremely strong below the waist, so that when my foot muscles gave out, I did not fall. Now I have to do that for my left leg and foot. I must become as strong as I possibly can, below AND above the waist. If I start to fall, I MUST be able to catch myself, if there is something to hold onto. I must be able to have other muscles click into overdrive when both feet suddenly start to fail. I have to learn every shade of a warning signal in the left foot, just as I did in the right. And there is no particular pattern for having both go at once. And, naturally, the warnings of the left are not quite the same as the right.

Still, the commitment must be the same. It was how I stayed walking before, so it will be how I stay walking this time. I am certainly NOT going to write about the regimen or I will bore myself and all of you--any who still read my blog when I write--to tears!

What I will write about I think, is my plan. The plan I have with two of my best friends. Approaching old age together, all of us with incomes around the poverty line and less. All of us with some fairly nasty health issues. All of us artists of one sort or another. All of us needing solitude as well as company. I think a lot of boomers are developing coops and mini-communities and, as we are going to be doing, semi-communes.  We dream out loud to one another, knowing that this will not truly be off the ground for another year and a half or so.

I find myself looking more and more at the future, in GOOD ways. In the terror of not knowing why BOTH legs were failing me, I saw only the possibility that my future was about to be taken from me.

AGAIN.

I stared that wheelchair in the face and more pain and dependency. And wouldn't you just know that the myriad women came running. Once again I could not hit ground from all the outstretched, loving hands. NOT just women. I have one man friend, too, and he was there JUST as strongly, just as lovingly. We waited together. They took me to tests, grocery shopped, helped me to find the center, the calm. Helped me ready myself for whatever might come. We were afraid that within two days I would be on an operating table.

NOPE. Didn't happen. What happened was excruciatingly painful. And I am afraid that this development will continue to be so when it hits me full on. However, you see, and here is the beauty and the kicker.

When I wait it out, it goes away.

I need no more than that knowledge. It is not paralysis. It is not severed nerves or a broken fusion. It is not, it is not, it is not. And what it IS, I know how to deal with. Once again, just as I had when I was in my late twenties, I have a tangible present enemy to fight. I have something I must conquer because I want to live. Not survive. I want to live... no. LIVE, with a capital L and a capital IVE!

So I can set my concrete goals, which I am meeting, which I have met now for more than a month, so they are habit. And I can at last start finding the way to schedule creativity as well. For a time, pain and exercise were all that I could cope with in each day. Now?

Now I am free again, like a phoenix. Once more to the flame and ashes, only to fly up and free once more. Did this change my dream a bit? Well, yes. Of course. But not entirely. What I did, what WE did, we three friends, was come up with a better dream together. I call it the "yellow house" dream.

For over a decade I have dreamt various versions of a big yellow house where I live with some friends. In the dream I never know who they are because I see them. I know who they are because, well, I know who they are. I feel them. Sometimes the people have changed. Funny.  These two women are among the strongest people I have ever, ever known.  And creative, and smart. Perfect for this dream. But in the dream there is a flower garden and a solarium. Yes. NOT a sunroom. It has a marble floor with a high, high ceiling of glass. It changes; but it is a solarium.

The house is not the point; the joy and contentment are the points. The house smells of my homemade oatmeal/nut bread and turkey soup. Sometimes together, sometimes just one. Always in the dream I am singing, getting ready for company. The energy in the house is light, excited, welcoming. I love this dream.

So we are planning it. We don't care what color the house is, but it will be full of light and laughter and, yes, love.

And for now? My writing is in my dream book. Lots and lots of dreams, and how to make them come true. I live in the present because I MUST. And I think that my priority should be my back and my physical strength for now. It is my job. That's what I'm calling it. My part-time job on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the least is forty minutes at the gym and at least 80 minutes on the bike. I stretch and I rest for at least an hour and a half in between. I must. It is the only way it works. But that eats up the bulk of my upright time. And that's okay. I think seeing it as my job, giving it the weight of a job is important.

The secret, I've always thought, to making physical therapy work the most, was to approach like a professional athlete. It is an all out commitment or I am wasting my time. Sometimes it's okay to do more, but not to do less. Not now. Not yet, and frankly? For the rest of my life, as long as I am able. On the days I do this, I am spent. Not a creative thought seems to wander into my brain. So I NEED to give myself Tuesday and Thursday for creativity. The other part time job I must offer myself. And that I need to approach as if creativity itself is my career. Whether it's writing songs, writing on my book (my other one. The novel I never EVER talk about!), or painting, or sketching.

So you see, the last six weeks have been very full, but have left me little room for blogging as I've blogged. It is not about "letting go" of the past. The past is integral to who I am. ALL of it. However, there is no room for now to take the memoirist's look at it, to remind myself of how I've had to do all this before, or to remind myself of how many dreams have been grabbed from my hand just as I was feeling their heft, and marveling at their beauty. No, now is not the time for bitter thoughts, or even, perhaps, particularly introspective learning.

Sometimes living in the present is hard enough. And sometimes carving out a dream or six makes living in the present more palatable. There is much in my past that I cherish. You all know that from some of the earlier blogs about my mom, my sister, gardening, pluots, even, for heaven's sake! But I am going to try to write about this new life I'm carving out.

I mean, never in my life have I written ONE song, let alone two in a week! And singing, getting to my song circle through the winter. Singing is opening up my soul to let more light IN, and to throw maybe a little bit more OUT. I want to look into, perhaps a way to help inner city or poorer kids closer by with things like SAT preparation. They don't have the money for what other kids do, but I KNOW how to help. Surely there is something I can do.

Watching this election has made me want to do more... to do something beyond my infinitessimal self. Sorry, to any of you who are Republicans. Feel free to drop me like poison, if you will.  I do not want to be part of a nation that does not want to help the poorest among us, the least advantaged, the "invisible people," if you will. I AM one of those invisible people now.

No more. So I may be kicking around these ideas. What would it be to organize the retired and retiring boomers to be the boomers on the go FOR OTHERS? Tutors who need money only for the supplies we must buy and the gas we must use. I could use more money, but not on the backs of people worse off than I. I need to root around to find a way to put my abilities to good use, even if it IS for just a few hours a week. IF that is what I have, I MUST give it. I do not see people who feel they are ENTITLED to having us all care for them, any more than I feel entitled. Yes, I put money into Social Security. You know what? If I could find work I can do that pays, I would and will be THRILLED to pay my self-employment tax--social security. My rate is about 11% out of my gross pay. I did it before.

But Governor Romney is correct; I will never vote for him. Do I think bleeding from every pore liberals like me NEED reality checks in financing things? YES. But I have the philosophy that Jesus did teach. If I have more than my neighbor, and do not try to help? Well, what does that say about me? And if greatness is measured by how we treat the least among us?

By all means, cut Medicaid. The process of qualifying for disability is humiliating and degrading. It hurts. It takes a year and a half. Living without an income for six months was terrifying. Not knowing whether I would even be awarded disability added to the pain of that time. Very few people see welfare as anything other than a last resort.

I have been following the campaign, riveted. Scared. Revolted. Inspired even. I have not drunk the Koolaid for anyone, but I do believe that I cannot vote for anyone other than my President. He ain't perfect. Neither am I. But I do believe his vision of what this country is, at its best, and what we can help make it become.

So I know that I have to put the memoir stuff aside. This blog helped me find my own voice. Now this blog will help me become a better person, I hope. This blog can be where I put my dreams, how I make progress toward them. It can be where I celebrate these friendships that I've been lucky enough to have.

I don't know what that means. I return to my daughter's voice when I began. I am not reinventing mySELF. I am simply using this voice of mine, I hope, in a new way. Simply using the voice that I did find here, using the gift I STILL have of my legs, using the gift of being a wide-eyed wack-a-doodle dreamer--using my gifts in new ways.

At least that is what I hope I can do here. Winter is coming, and that is my season of LIFE, oddly enough. I paint more. I write more. I dream more. I have trouble with the light thing, but I know what to do about that now.

I miss reading blogs and writing in mine. So slowly, as I begin to feel more IN the dreams I'm hatching, I will return to this blogspot place I love. I love it because of the people I meet. So many of us drift away, then drift back, write a flurry of entries, then become silent. We each have rhythms that are a joy to witness, I think.

Happy October... ALMOST. Soon.