To Klutz, Or Not to Klutz

My friend from high school, Jacque, used to tell me I was a klutz.  It's true.  I have always had a tendency to trip if there is something in the way of my feet.  I spilled a Pepsi on her parents' brand new carpet in their brand new house.  Once, in P.E. I actually made a basket.  Unfortunately, it was on the wrong end of the court, so, even though I was a track girl, and a bat girl (more on that later) I think it's safe to say, I've never been athletic.

In my early thirties, my doctor sent me to the Mayo Clinic to figure out why I had daily migraines, visual disturbances and my own personal earthquakes, etc. We wanted to know why my klutziness seemed to be increasing.

So the uberneurologists did many tests.  They stuck me in a tube that sounded much like being in a washing machine.  I found it strangely relaxing.  They told me to hold completely still, while a thingamabob circled my head making noises I've never heard outside an alien space ship.  They put me in a completely dark room, told me to keep my eyes open and then turned on lights strobing at various frequencies.  Ha!  I'll bet they regretted that one.  I thought that was was going to be my least favorite one, but nooooooooo, there were even less fun tests to come.

They did one absolutely essential test which involved them sticking needles in various muscles and sticking receptors so many inches away from the needle, then they shot electricity through the needle and a machine measured how long it took me to scream.  No kidding!  I couldn't make this stuff up!

And spinal taps.  Yes, plural.  Gotta love those.

Back in those days I had hair on my head.  But somehow or other they stuck somewhere around 127 electrodes to my scalp and then did all sorts of things to me.  Sometimes, they even wanted me to sleep with those wires all over my head and three people staring at me through a window.

By the time I was done answering thousands of questions, demonstrating my walking ability - heal to toe, sideways, backwards, etc., being stuck in tubes, stuck with needles, and generally stuck, I was eager to get the results.

They told me I had neuropathy which is sort of like saying "You have headaches and are a klutz who doesn't see very well."   Oh, and I had several dispersed white spots on my brain indicative of MS.

Well, shit.

Jacque said, "Well, you've always been a klutz."

The treatment options weren't all that fun.  I took steroids for a while which made me look nine months pregnant and evil.  The other available options didn't sound any more fun.

I decided to not mention the diagnosis, because frankly, I didn't like it.

Since then, I've been to a few other neurologists.  They repeated the same tests and strangely came up with varying diagnoses.  Yes you do, no you don't, maybe you do.  "You can take this drug that might slow the course of the disease, but the side effects can be a bit disconcerting. . . . "   They recommended I have my brain scanned now and again again to see how many new spots they can see.  

How ridiculous is that?  Why do I care how many spots or where they are? If they can't make the symptoms go away without replacing them with worse symptoms, I see no reason to frequent their establishments
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But lately the falling swarms seem to come more often and last longer. And falling isn't nearly as funny as it used to be.  My arms jerk about in their own spontaneous dances more often and lately I've been having those visual things that start with a little squiggly that grows until everything is squiggly and you can't see what you're looking at, only stuff on the sides of what you're looking at.  I didn't say it well, but it's a common enough thing.  It's just that it's been happening 3 or so times per week and lasting an hour or so
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Oh, and then there's there is this memory thing.  Mine has big holes.  Year sized holes and little tiny holes.
 
Anyway, I'm to the point where I'm considering actually seeing if there is such a thing as a neurologist with a personality who isn't addicted to cruel and unusual tests.  Maybe.  We'll see.

Circle

Six years ago, a very big old oak tree in my front yard fell over.  I came home from work on Friday and the tree was lying between our house and our next door neighbor's house.  It fell in exactly the place where it would do the least harm.

My husband's new car was parked under the big branches of the tree, and at first glance we figured the car was a goner.  The only damage to things other than the tree itself were the very corner of the overhang of our garage roof and a plastic pond that was awaiting installation.  After taking pictures from every angle and having the insurance agent do the same, some branches were cut and gently lifted off the car, which had not one scratch.  The branches fell and gently kissed the car, but didn't harm it in any way.

I loved that tree. I mourned the shade it had given my house and the homes it gave to gazillions of other lives. I cried for days.  Most people didn't understand, but that tree was a friend of mine.  It was the Eastern corner of my four cornered shade bed.

The tree people came and cleaned up the driveway, surveyed the other minimal damage, and while I sat on the lateral trunk of the tree, crying, I gave these big, emotionless men with chainsaws specific instructions.  I really couldn't have cared any less that they thought I was crazy.

I told them I wanted the trunk and large branches cut into two foot sections, that I wanted the mulch piled on the side of my lot, and that I wanted the rootball left as it was.  It took several tellings.  I considered drawing pictures for them, but eventually they did as I instructed.

The corner of the garage overhang was easily fixed, the pond was replaced, and I actually think the insurance company was happy.  Go figure.

Brian, a friend visiting from England, and I rolled some of the larger bits of trunk down the hill to the back yard to begin building the wall for the pond area.  It was quite a sight, I'm sure watching the two of us "mature" people trying to keep control of big rolling logs.

Some of the smaller logs became Faerie Henge.

Others became a wall to begin to level out a shade bed and the mulch had more uses than pickle jars at Heinz.

I chipped away on several of the biggest pieces - the ones too big for me to move - as they softened with the help of beetles, ants, and weather, using the resulting mulch in various gardens.  I hollowed out a few logs one year and planted petunias in them.  As the logs became lighter and smaller, I moved them around, arranged them in shapes that pleased me (and I think them) and gave the neighbors with green velvet lawns something to discuss over dinner.

But the root ball, which became the Eastern corner of the shade bed stayed in place.  A couple of years it held a birdbath.  It often was home to chipmunks and a favorite perch for squirrels who would sit and stare at my front door demanding that I refill the bird feeders.

This spring I leaned against it and found that it was very soft in places.  I brought out my hatchet and spade, expecting to get some buckets of mulch for my newly created paths.  And I did get lots of mulch.  I also got a huge bonus!  I got buckets of black, fine, moist, fructuous dirt.  It was the most beautiful dirt I've seen since I left Illinois.

All the while I was chopping and digging around the root ball, I was thinking of Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree and thinking about what he got wrong - or at least what I had always interpreted wrongly.

This tree, at first glance appears to be down to a knobby bit of root ball and some whittled away, rotten branches making exotic yard art and temporary borders for paths in the gardens.  And if that's all it was, it would be far more than enough.

But this tree has done more to turn this pre-brick, orange clay that passes for dirt here, into something gorgeous to this Illinois transplant.  There is now some dirt in which earthworms thrive and plants grow.  I'm not saying they grow as well as in Illinois dirt, but you know, this tree and I aren't done yet.

I don't look like I did when I was 17. All my cells have been replaced.  And when I "die" I will still be.  Just like the tree.  We really never go away.  We are severed from what we were, but we don't disappear.

  

Adventures, adventures, adventures.  It's turtles all the way down.  I'm so very sad.  And I am grateful.

Amputated

It's been a tough day for me. Easter. Holiday. James made a gorgeous dinner for Jan and I, which he worked on all day. I wish I hadn't had a breakdown in the middle of it.
I worked outside in the front gardens all afternoon, but I really didn't accomplish much. Rearranged some paths, transplanted things.
I had a very short conversation with Bump, who was understandably busy. It hadn't occurred to me to send the kids' Easter cards or Easter gifts or to color any eggs. It didn't even cross my mind. I will not win Nana of the year.
I wish I could get the hang of this holiday thing. To me they seem to be over-commercialized, over-stressed, over-sugared opportunities for disappointment. I thought I was catching on at Christmas, but I was wrong. Disappointment.
I hope I sleep less than 19 hours today as I did last night. One should at least feel energized after that, don't you think?
Less than 19 days until we bury Mom's ashes next to Papa's grave in Carthage, Illinois. We will be grieving not only our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, friends, neighbors, but we will also be grieving the place. Many places, many memories. And between Mom's funerals, Bean died. She was a one of a kind friend/person/talent.
And every death is every death.
As someone wiser than I put it, when close family member dies, it's not as if we lost her. That person didn't just go away. They are amputated from us. We are not who we were.
James doesn't know what's going on with me. I've no way to explain it.
It's taken so long for me to write, which is a bit weird, since I have so much to say. I have emotions like sediment on the bottom of the pond. Every time they start to settle something stirs them all up again and the water gets too murky.
I'm grateful that I'm trying to write now.

Straight Furrows

I have been remembering lately when I was a very small child and I asked my dad what direction "Straight" was.  I wanted him to point it out.  It wasn't so easy, and to tell the truth, I've never been good at directions.

But today, after seven years of enriching the orange, pre-brick soil in my front yard with mulched leaves and wood and compost, I tilled and found brown dirt.  It wasn't the black, magic soil of Central Illinois, but it wasn't orange - not even auburn.  It was fructeous, full of earthworms just waking up.  Into a plot of mostly sunny soil, about 20' X 8',  I tilled a few bushels of mulched leaves and a couple of buckets of fine wood mulch, and a couple of buckets of the magic stuff produced by the upturned root ball of the oak tree that fell over several years back.

Into this amazing mixture, I dropped seeds and transplanted some shrubs.  I only worked two hours, because I'm very aware that too much fun in the gardens one day keeps me from moving the next day.  

I tilled horizontally, then vertically, then diagonally.  I watched the bits of green chickweed and grass combine with the shreds of leaves and wood and clay, becoming even better, richer, more luscious soil.  I had to stop a few times to pick up handfulls of this magical stuff and smell it.  I had to take off my gloves and feel it.  The bits had to die to one life to become the next and it was beautiful.

It is beautiful.

And I realized I had tilled straight, no matter what direction.

I haven't had much of a green thumb since moving here to the South, where everything is supposed to grow happily.  I have tried to make Central Illinois gardens in South Carolina clay.  Earth is a bit wiser than I.  More forgiving and more stubborn.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the seeds I planted and the shrubs I transplanted today actually grow and thrive.

I Don't Think I'm Doing This Right

Mom's funeral was Sunday.  Well, the first one, anyway.  We'll have a graveside service mid-April in Illinois.  I think that's a 15 hour drive.  I want to drive to take stuff back for my kids, but who knows how that will all work out.

I'm home now, which is where I've wanted to be for a while.  I have a bunch of stuff from Mom's in my studio.  Everything is packed in here so it won't take up room in the rest of the house.

I'm pretty sure I'm not feeling the way I'm supposed to feel, and even as I say that, the therapist in me is saying something like, "There is no 'right' way to feel grief, blah, blah, blah."  And what I'm mostly hearing is the "Blah, blah, blah."

After the funeral - actually, after my eulogy was delivered - I felt nothing more than relief and eagerness to get the apartment cleaned out and things back to "normal," whatever the heck that is. Now I feel a lot of things.  I feel a fairly strong sadness, but I really can't say why.  I think I'm sad because I don't feel sad enough.  I don't feel sad about the right things.

I don't feel as if I just lost my Mom.  I felt that way the first time my mother asked me my name.  I've had about a year to feel sad about that.

I feel pretty angry.  I'm angry because things didn't go as I thought they would at the very end.  I wasn't there.  I wasn't there in the last days while she was sick, though I could have been.  I didn't know she was sick.  When she didn't answer her phone, I thought she was just gadding about.

I stayed with Mom for a week here, two weeks there, before she moved to the assisted living apartment.  There was a time at which I got pissy with everyone and that was the last of the regular calls and emails from some extended family, and actually that was just fine with me.   I got pissy with Mom's "Special Friend," and that was the end of our friendly relationship.  And that, too, was just fine with me.   I'm angry with those people, with the people who didn't call me when Mom was sick, and, of course, mostly with myself.

And so, of course, I feel guilty.  It's nothing new when it comes to her.  I've felt guilty about her most of my life.  That's honest, and I know it doesn't make me sound particularly nice.  I'm not particularly nice.  I should have called the front desk and asked about Mom after two missed phone calls.

I feel tired.  A soul-deep, weariness.  I want to climb into my bed and stay there for a week or so.  Maybe a year.  Maybe forever.