(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)
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October 20, 2009
I have the next four days to myself, solitarily if I so desire. I wish I had two weeks.
Last night I drove the two-plus hours to the Greyhound bus station for my husband to catch the bus for the three-plus hours trip south to North Carolina. He wanted to be able to stay up here, in the Virginia mountains near Skyline Drive, but some duties at work called for his attention.
My husband is my hero; in more ways than one. One of those is how he allows me to be me; he allows me to discover me; he allows me to learn and find my own inner strength. I'm thankful we stuck through the tough years; those years of critical mass where movement is inevitably forced. Perhaps forged would be a better term.
Forged. That is how it feels.
Along our drive last night, we spoke about different ideas and relationships. As often is, the conversation was mixed with dry humor; a humor we both enjoy. Sometimes I wish I had a video camera to catch the witty exchanges laced with deep affection. I love him so very much.
Yet, even last night knowing how much I love him, I cried on the way back up the road thinking of my past lover Luke.
Luke. I don't know if Luke and I could have made it through the decades; through my illnesses and my parents. Mom with her bipolar of which she never did acknowledge, though she took various meds for years or decades. I guess they helped; the shock treatments helped, at least in the short run. And my Dad through his quadriplegia. My husband only knew my father in a wheelchair, though Dad had been in Hubby's home of upbringing once when Dad sold their family a set of books.
In the 70s and 80s, Mom was the district manager for Encyclopedia Britannica overseeing sales in western North Carolina. Part of that time was before I-40 cut through the state; we had to drive NC Hwy. 70 from Morganton up the mountains to Asheville and beyond. Mom spent lots of time on the road selling books. Before she sold for Britannica, she sold for Compton's Encyclopedias. She was the number one salesperson in the US for several years in a row with Compton's. Mom could walk in someone's home and be a friend almost instantly; she could sell ice to an Eskimo.
Dad sold Britannica awhile for Mom. So did my brother and I when we got older. In 1983, after I began dating my husband whom I met through The Way, I learned that Dad had sold Hubby's family a set of Britannica back in the 70s. Our families didn't know one another, had never met, and never planned to meet. It was a typical on-the-road-four-hours-away sales call. I happened to meet Hubby almost a decade later and married him. My mother-in-law still has those encyclopedias, becoming relics now with the age of internet. I wonder when a dark ages will fall upon us; a black out of satellites causing internet services to crash spinning the world, so dependent on computers, into chaos?
By the time Hubby met my father, Dad was permanently in a wheelchair. I had asthma as well. So at least my husband knew a little of what came with the territory; though I don't think either of us expected what would ultimately play out. At 25 years old my fatigue was almost unbearable, I'd turn into a pumpkin by 8:00 at night because I couldn't think; I couldn't function. For some unknown reason, I'd throw up in the middle of the night a few nights a week. I remember the blue furry looking spheres that would float in the toilet. I never told anyone about them. At the time I thought they were Theodur pills that grew fuzzies in my belly. Theodur, one of the asthma drug I took for over 12 years. It never did seem to help, much. Theodur, in the caffeine family. Theodur, for which I sat through tests baffling the pulmonary docs because I needed such high doses. It seems my body wouldn't assimilate it. I found out some 20 years later that may have been the case; my mercury levels were so high the mercury may have been blocking receptor sights not allowing certain chemicals access to unlock the cells to do their proper work. But maybe the blue furries weren't from the Theodur because the throwing up ceased before I was finally able to wean off Theodur.
My skin would break out in horrid hives. I recall once when my mother-in-law saw my thighs. She gasped; they were swollen, red, hot, and lumpy with welts. Not a pretty sight; reminded me of alligator skin. I told her it was normal and her eyes got big. I'd relieve the insane itching with ice-cold water, sometimes a hairbrush, and sometimes with steroid cream. Yuck, steroid cream. The hive break outs were similar to the asthma attacks. They'd attack, clear up, and one would never know I had had alligator skin the night before.
The hives were nothing compared to the internal torture of liquid cement in my lungs. Or when my sinuses were completely blocked. Completely blocked, no air passage whatsoever, due to polyps. I had three surgeries three years in a row. I'd have the surgery and then within a month, the polyps would grow again. Those greyish, spongie, alien-like protrusions in my cavities where air was supposed to circulate and process. The medical folks and I would try all we knew, alternatively and conventionally. But the polyps would take over, like some sort of Night Gallery episode. Sometimes I felt like a big piece of DNA mucus. It's a horrible feeling to be drowning in one's own fluids. Other times I felt like an experimental chimp with all the drugs, IVs, breathing tubes, pills, needles, tinctures, syrums, and tests. So many fucking tests. After my third sinus surgery it was 10 years before my fourth one in 1996, a couple weeks after Dad died. He died of congestive heart failure after living as a quadriplegic for over 12 years.
Up until eight months ago, I'd been unable to smell for over twenty-five years, except intermittently when I'd have surgery or certain drugs or a certain medical treatment called Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization. There was one odd time, during which I had an online and phone affair, that I was able to smell for a month; hormones must have kicked in to clear some passages.
Today, this day in October, 2009, I walked in a field. My lungs are clear now and I can smell without heroic medical intervention. It's my first fall in decades to freely bask in the seasonal aromas. I stood in a meadow this day, just stood and inhaled over and over and over. I squatted down close to the ground and breathed in deeply. So many scents, a prism rainbow of delicious melodious fragrance. Satisfying. Fulfilling.
I wonder if others notice how very sweet is the aroma of grass.
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