Gathering Dust?

I have avoided the computer because I didn’t want my fingers to betray me. I am tried of writing about me and my physical condition ... of feeling as if I am whining.

Last night one of the young men that I admire, but haven’t seen in a month or so, came to visit my grandson and before he left he came and sat with me for a bit.

“How are you?”

And it all spilled out. My frustration, my anxiety, and the on-going condition of my condition.

“Well, at least you’ve kept your good spirits.”

What good spirits? I didn’t know that I had any of those left. What the heck did he see that I don’t feel? Yesterday Scott commented that it had been a long time since he had heard me laugh my “special brand of belly laughter”. Obviously he doesn’t see the ‘good spirits’. I don’t think John sees any ‘good spirits’ either. He claims it was an accident, but the water hose, at maximum water output, mysteriously fell out of his hands and danced it’s way to the open door where I was sitting trying to get a bit of a breeze. The beagle, that hates water, was sitting at my feet. It’s bad enough when a dancing water hose attacks a ‘no spirits’ woman sitting in a wheelchair, but it attacked the water hating beagle too. We got soaked ... and we were in the house minding our own ‘spirit-less‘ business! John is still claiming that he didn’t mean for it to happen, but the beagle and I don’t believe him. The beagle has yet to forgive him, I’m still deciding if I’m ever going too.

Maybe the ‘good spirits’ fairies sprinkled spirit dust on me for the few moments that I talked to the young man. Whatever it was that he saw his words did start me thinking. It has felt as if life has gone a bit wacky this spring. My friend Scott’s awful accident, and the terrible pain I have had to watch him suffer. My son’s once-upon-a-time love, that ‘I’ still love dearly, and her phone call that she has an inoperable brain tumor. The telephone calls from the cardiologist that said I have to submit myself for a test on the very same day and hour that my granddaughter will be graduating from middle school. The sudden event of panic attacks ... I am supposed to be the strong one, why in hell am I all of a sudden having panic attacks. The doctor says it’s understandable ... I have been through too much. I still find them unacceptable! They don’t care; they slam into me anyway. A long discussion I had with my granddaughter about her mother and the things that she had to endure when she was a child. Why didn’t I know she was suffering? And last, but not least the doctors. The cardiologist wont release me, he has tests he wants me to undergo, but cardiologist are very busy and I have had polio so all the tests need to be done at the hospital which takes a month or two to schedule. My blood tests indicate that my liver is under attack, therefore there must still be a gallstone wandering around in my body somewhere. And then there are the gallbladder attacks that wait in the wings for their chance to take me to the floor.

“Do you still write in a journal?”

“No I don’t want to sit there and write and whine. That’s not what my journal is about. But I have been thinking about going on and writing something about my father’s family.

“Is it a good story?”

“Well, my father’s sister’s son had a torrid affair with my father’s brother’s wife. The wife was in her 40’s and the son was in his 20’s. It’s kind of an interesting story.

“Write it, write it. I want to read that one!”

So this morning I got up and gave the situation some serious thought, and decided that I could probably get on this computer and write the family story and you’d all get a chuckle or a shock or two and I could slip out before any of you knew that I was going on a search for more of that fairy dust that one of my favorite young men claimed that he saw on me yesterday.