Lucky

This morning I read more from Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring.

As I read about the overuse of pesticides in the 1950s, I thought, I guess our yard is a good example of native growth. I'm glad Hubby pulls weeds and uses homemade weed killer.

Hubby's weed killer is a homemade mix of vinegar and salt and Dawn. Hubby seldom treats or weeds the lawn itself; he mainly treats the mulched areas. I thought, A plant is only a weed because a body doesn't want that plant to grow where its growing. Our lawn doesn't contain just grass, and we kind of like it that way. Unless I start comparing. Phew on that!

Images came to mind of the pristine neighborhood in which two dachshunds and I had walked for five days last week. The lawns are perfect. All green. All grass. No weeds. Mowed in reverse diagonal angles to make an eye-pleasing pattern. Many of the yards have backyard fences. The fences are all the same black wrought iron. Probably one of the many neighborhood homeowners' agreements.

For five days, about 30 minutes each day between noon and 2PM, the only people I saw outside the homes were:

1) construction workers building another beautiful, large home. The dried, red mud for a yard which spread onto the public sidewalk didn't match its neighboring lawns and sidewalk. But that will be remedied in the weeks to come.
2) lawn maintenance crews standing on their mowers keeping the area surrounding the local pond with its adjacent tennis and volleyball courts pristine, diagonally mowing so as not to disrupt the blanket of green that stretches between houses.
3) a home-maintenance crew doing some power pressure cleaning to a concrete driveway that, appeared to me, didn't need cleaning. But maybe there had been a spill or something that I couldn't detect with my eyes.
4) a young woman walking two active dogs who were pulling and barking a bit as they saw myself with the two dachshunds who had me in tow. I figure she was another dog walker, like me. Except she wasn't wearing hand-wrist braces, wasn't using a trekking pole to walk, wasn't consistently pushing sliding glasses back up her nose to their proper-seeing position, and didn't have her two dogs' leashes attached to a waste band so she could be hands free. Because of the all the dogs' excitements, we non-verbally knew to keep our two sets of dogs from getting to close to each other.

It felt kind of eerie as I noticed this day after day for five days in a row. I thought, Where are the people? I guess they are held up in their homes, or at work. I wonder how busy it is on the weekends? Do people come out to play? And maybe the purpose of all this is too look at it?

The whole scene had a sterile feel. 

Back to Carson's book. I continued to read. The subject of bees came up and I thought, I'd like to have some bee hives some day.

Images came to mind of our backyard the way I would like it to be including a couple raised-bed gardens and beehives at the back of the yard next to the woods. Images transformed into a moving picture in my head - myself in the yard, working the garden and the hives, moving like a normal abled-body moves. The sun was shining. I could smell the soil and feel the sweat. It felt good to work, in my movie.

The imaginary movie was interrupted by current reality as I thought, Yeah, like I'll ever be able to do that. I can barely do laundry.

I felt the feeling I've felt many times. A feeling of the permanence of my current condition, that I'll never get well or at least well enough to ever live the imaginary movies that go through my head. A reality I do not want to accept as long-term, so I deny the permanency.

And then I remembered, You used to think the same about asthma. You used to dream of running like a deer in the woods, able to move and breathe freely. And then you'd interrupt the dream with reality. But...that dream came true at least on the breathing end. You seldom think about the asthma anymore. You've breathed freely for almost 18 years now. 

And now, as I have just written this, I think of an elderly man and wife whom I met at Mabry Mill along the Blue Ridge Parkway last week. I was walkering with my walker along the paved, meandering paths at the Mill. One of my best friends was attached by a leash. My friend is a blind dog, one of my abled-differently comrades.

Along in our conversation about where we were from, family, dogs, etc., the wife gently and kindly and respectfully inquired if I had MS. I responded that I did not and gave a brief account of my story. The man responded, "You're lucky, you know? I mean that you can still walk."

We chatted a bit more and ended our conversation about where they were headed after Mabry Mill.

As I walkered away with my pet friend, I was smiling and thinking, He's right, you know. I am lucky.

My blind friend as we walker the Greenway.