Wednesday, September 13, 2017

It's either a lemon or a chicken


Walt knows I'm crazy, but occasionally I have to prove it to him.

Now  don't know if I can explain this properly, but often I get images floating through my head that don't really mean anything but are somehow associated with something I'm doing.  It happens often when I'm reading a book that in some part of my brain, I am picturing something that has nothing whatsoever to do with whatever it is I'm reading.  I might be reading a book about elephants and in some part of my brain there is a locomotive. This has happened my whole life and I just accept is as part of how my brain works.

But occasionally I stop and think about it .... what was that?

I was thinking about my pain the other day and remembering that it was on the right lower quadrant of my abdomen and when I thought of it, I thought of a picture frame around that area.  so far nothing that weird.

But then I realized that in thinking about the pain--every time, especially when describing it to a medical person, my brain pictured a rectangle with a yellow spot in the middle of it looking like a lemon...or maybe a baby chick.  I don't have a clue why it did that but I'm glad that the yellow spot is gone, finally.

So yesterday was returning to normal day.  I was scheduled for lunch with Char at the Red Lobster.  We planned this lunch during Red Lobster's crab fest but it had to be postponed because of my mother's broken bone.  Now crab fest is gone, but it's a time of endless shrimp and we both love shrimp, so we decided to go anyway.

My shrimp plate was huge (and I forgot to photograph it) and waaay more than someone in my abdominal condition should have ordered (so I brought home enough for Walt to have for dinner last night!).  But it was delicious, even if it did cause some minor abdominal distress.

Of course, we discussed the current political climate.  Discussions like this these days are so discouraging, so pointless, and so depressing.  You feel so totally helpless.  And we've come to accept lying as normal.  Owell, another lie, we say.

Ned pointed me to comedian Marc Maron, whom you can find on Netflix.  If you are feeling like I am, I STRONGLY urge you to check out his video, which is both hilarious and says it all.  The first set, about 10 minutes, perhaps, about Trump (in which he doesn't mention his name at all) is so spot on and says everything I'm been thinking and why I'm so depressed.

But other than that, it was a pleasant lunch.  It always is.  One of the things Maron talks about is that, at 53, he doesn't know how much time he has left and he thinks he doesn't have time to learn something new.  Like if Phish is a great band, if he listens t them, he doesn't have time to go back and get up to speed on their music because he might not have that much time left and he needs to concentrate on what he has NOW.

That's kind of what it's like in your 70s.  Do you have enough time left to start a brand new friendship? with all that entails?  

It's worked well for Char, who has a bunch of new friends in the senior living where she's moved, but here in Davis, where I'd have to go out looking for a new friendship, it's just not worth the bother.  So the friends of all my life become more and more precious to me.  They are the friends with whom you have verbal shorthand, where a word or two evokes a whole part of your life that you shared.  Char can say "I thought of Michele" and we both immediately are in the same place.

Those friends are becoming fewer and farther apart and I cherish the ones I have, Char at the top of the list.  Even if we both are so depressed about the world.  I decided that what we must do is not concentrate on what we have no power to change, but to find something where we can feel we are doing good in the world and that will have to sustain us.

When we parted, I drove to See's Candy in Vacaville and picked up a box of chocolates for my mother's birthday.  She's been 98 for four days and I hadn't seen her yet.  I stopped off at home to get Walt, who wanted to come with me, and we went to Atria.

She was thrilled to see me and wondered how long I'd been in town -- I really don't know who she thought I was.  We visited about an hour, I guess.

The most depressing thing, I guess, is that I imagined at at this age, we would sit back and reminisce about the old days.  But my mother can't remember old minutes, much less old days.  You can't remember the time Aunt Barb stripped at the family reunion or picking blackberries on grandma's farm, or talk about anybody in the family because she has no memory.

Then you realize that YOU are the only one with those memories and that is very lonely.


 


My sister died 45 years ago today.  I know my mother doesn't remember that.

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