Finally

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Finally, I seem to have gotten a foot in the door at a nearby specialty clinic. I don't have an appointment yet, but at least I've finally finagled a referral and got my records over there, so an actual appointment for the initial consult should be in the pipeline.

The first thing I want from them is a light-weight, fold-up wheelchair that I can heave in and out of the trunk by myself, so I can start going back to bird fairs and bird walks and outdoor markets and PetSmart. So many places and activities require lots and lots of standing and walking but don't provide wheelchairs for patrons with disabilities, and I don't want to have to always rely on taking someone with me to help--or not be able to go at all, which is how it's been lately.

I have no need to pull a Boeing 757 anywhere with it, and have no idea why anyone would. But there you go. At least now I know I could if I wanted to.

Last night I dreamed I had just received my new, first wheelchair and was out for a trial run with some friends.

When one is disabled, one dreams about it in various ways--sometimes I dream I'm no longer disabled, or at least I dream I'm doing things that I can't do in my waking life, like dance or jog. Other times I dream it's gotten worse, sometimes I just dream about it as it is, and sometimes it doesn't figure in my dreams one way or the other.

This was my first "wheelchair dream" ever, which I think is significant. That I was focused on my renewed mobility and was getting a kick out of my new toy I think is a good omen. Increasing reliance on my cane was hard at first. I suspect this transition is going to be different, attitude-wise.

This chair was the luxury sport model, upholstered in butter-soft leather and a little faster than I was comfortable with at first. In my dream, I ricocheted off a wall making a turn, and it tipped me back a bit which was also taking some getting used to. And being a sport model, there was no trunk space: I had no place to put anything other than in my lap: When I get mine, I want saddle-bags or something.

When I was a kid you would still see in long-term inpatient units those old wooden wheelchairs which really were like chairs on wheels--sort of the forerunners of the powerchair, I guess (which is what I want next, for work, but that is another post for another day). Those old chairs had adjustable recliner backs: Funny what you "remember" in your dreams after 50 years!

Anyway, in this dream, my friends kept wanting to do things for me that I needed to learn how to do myself, like getting through doors, and there were obstacles like the decorative vanity, placed too close to the handicap-stall door in a public waiting room, that my friends wanted to shove over for me. But all in all, it was cool. My friends meant well, backed off when I asked them to, and didn't laugh when I hit the wall.

Just push the joystick, and whoosh--away I go!

 Simply,

Lessons from Genealogy, #2-#4

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#2. Family myths are often just that.

My grandparents on my mother's side always bragged about their Confederate war heroes. I never found any. I found one guy who started his own cavalry unit, then fell off his horse and died during a parade--before they ever left home. Lots of slave owners--nothing to brag about there--but no heroes.

For the longest time, the most interesting people I'd found on her side were these wonderful old lesbians who ran a farm together deep in the Virginia countryside in the 1800s. Sometimes truth is better than fiction.

My dad's dad always bragged about his Revolutionary war ancestors and how they got all these gobs of land for their service. The only one I found was a supplier, never a troop. And he did get land, but it was land confiscated from his Royalist neighbors.

#3. Sometimes family myths are truer than you might think.
 
Mom's mom always told us grandkids we were descended from French kings. We used to joke that, more likely, we were related through palace concubinage.

Once when I was a kid my Dad drove me through some little eye-blink of a town in Appalachia in the wee hours of the morning and pointed to this crumbling, dark, old house and said, "That is where your Grandmother is from!" And sure enough, initially all I found was some runaway Huguenots. French? Sure. Royalty? Not hardly. And over on the fringes, I found a couple of poor Portuguese who came here because there was nothing for them in Portugal. So I thought, well, that is that. No French kings. She made it all up.

In the South, back in the 1800s, "tracing"--and they used that word loosely--your lineage was a Big Thing. Most families, outside of Virginia, were dirt poor and always had been. Most people saw Southerners as backward and indolent. So it was nice to be able to say, 'Oh, our family descends from Charlemagne'. This had a little extra punch when everybody was all into chivalry and reading too many Waverly novels. It was such a big thing that there are books still in print on family lines that are "guaranteed" to trace back to Charlemagne. I had pretty much written my grandmother's fairy tales off to that sort of thing.

But to my amazement, I eventually found that one line of her family indeed does lead straight back not to French royalty, per se, but through a bunch of English royalty back to a pretty impressive line of Normans and Poitevins. . . all the way to Charlemagne himself.

I wish she were alive to see it.

#4. Sometimes there are complete and total surprises.

Dad's mom never talked about her ancestry. Her dad was illegitimate, a matter of considerable shame at the time, and she grew up poor. Yet that's where the Confederate heroes were--her paternal grandfather and her great uncles fought in that war from its start to its finish.

Simply,

Lessons from Genealogy

#1. European royalty used to (inter)breed like mink. Once you link up to one royal person, you discover that you are related to everybody who was anybody. Sometimes twice.

Simply,

The Alibi

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So my son tells his room-mate George that he needs to borrow George's car so he can meet me for breakfast this morning.

This is a patent lie, as Simply, Jr. and I had no plans for any such thing.

Nor were we likely to: In the first place, I rarely eat breakfast out. The nature of my disability is such that I need to eat first thing--meaning before I do anything else, including shower, dress, and drive somewhere.

In the second place, Simply, Jr. left the house at approximately 7:00 a.m. for this supposed breakfast, and the nature of my disability is such that I am not bloody likely to be up and about at that hour on a Saturday. I reach the weekend pretty well wore out, and don't set my alarm on a Saturday (or Sunday either, for that matter) for anything of less likely historical significance than the second invasion of Normandy. I would, if I were doing this breakfast out thing at all, tell Simply, Jr. that I would call him when I awoke, and we'd make plans then.

So I am sitting in the bird room minding my own business when I get a text from George, looking for his car, which has by this point been gone three hours and some change. He is not happy to learn that I have not seen my son all morning. He is angry that he has been lied to. I, on the other hand, while disappointed, am not surprised that I have been used as an alibi. It is probably not the first time, and won't be the last: My son has been an accomplished liar almost as long as he has been able to speak. Even as a young sprat, he could look Mr. Simply and me in the eye and tell us a whopper so convincing that he would have us questioning our own grip on reality.

I figured that, assuming he hadn't either wrecked the car or got arrested (again), that he would turn up eventually with a perfectly reasonable explanation. Which he did, seven hours after he'd left home.

Wonder what he's been up to?

Simply,

To Spring

My first--and probably last--crocus popped up this weekend, which got me to thinking about Spring and about the passage of time. I planted dozens of them in the woods out back of the house over a quarter of a century ago, and every Spring, like clockwork, they'd bloom among the leaves and the pinestraw and the little wild strawberries. But over the years they've been trampled by dogs and a kid, or eaten by squirrels and chipmunks, until I really didn't think there were any left. This little fella was a pleasant surprise Saturday morning.

I have photos from one Easter in the late '80s that shows we used to have a green lawn out back, too (but see kid, dogs, above), and a half a dozen flowering dogwood. Then Simply, Jr. grew up, four of the dogs went over the Rainbow Bridge, and anthracnose got the dogwoods.

Out front, we had this spectacular cherry tree that every Spring was a mass of pink blooms that seemed almost bigger than our little house. I once looked out my window to see it filled with Cedar Waxwings passing the petals to each other to eat like so much pink cotton candy. I remember when that tree arrived, so young and small it fit in the backseat of a car. We barely got it in the ground before a thunderstorm rolled in, and because we forgot to stake it, the wind tilted it a bit, and it has remained just a little off center ever since.

The person who gave us the tree and the person who helped us plant it that day are both dead, one of cancer and one of a heart attack. And after nearly 30 years the tree, too, has begun to die. The state extension people came out and said it was a fungus in the soil and that there was nothing we could do. Each Spring its blooms have gotten more sparse until this year it probably won't flower at all, for the first time in our life together at this house. Although it will break my heart to do it, we'll most likely have to cut it down this summer.

So much changes in 25 years. For one thing, Mr. Simply has gone bald. The daffodils my grandmother gave us to plant in the garden of our new home have gotten too old to bloom any more. And since those crocuses went in the ground, two dear friends and neighbors have gone in the ground, too, as have Dad's parents, Mr. Simply's parents, and my sister-in-law.

And we're getting older as well. This morning I noticed for the first time that I was shuffling--shuffling!--down the hall to the kitchen.

I eventually got my joints unlocked, though, and headed off to work. I had to stop the car halfway down the block to wait for a pair of cardinals having sex in the middle of the road.

So here's to Spring. . . and to the passage of time. As the old joke goes, beats hell out of the alternative.

Simply,

Funk

Image by albyper via Flickr

I have been in a deep brown funk for months.

And then, all of a sudden, in the course of just 24 hours, it lifted.

Simply,

I got dem cosmic opera blues (hosted by Gioachino Rossini)

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I was depressed this afternoon. Or maybe not depressed, more like sad/mad/grieving. All I wanted to do was listen to opera and cry. So I did. Listen to opera that is. Never did cry, except when I read a sad story in Crip Zen. Didn't cry, but did have a panic attack when I was reading about how "they" have destroyed Warm Springs. I was afraid I was having a heart attack. Then I was afraid it was some awful new PPS.

Whatever. The opera thing worked. I feel human again.

Here's what I think was the matter: I'm tired. Tired of being alone in this. Guilty for being a burden. Angry that my husband won't take better care of me/us.  Scared, because the truth is, he can't do any better than he is. He's sick, too. Hell, while we're on this, I feel guilty and sad and frustrated that I can't take better care of him.

Depressed that I can't afford to hire somebody to clean and shop and cook. Angry that this ever happened to me in the first place. Angry that it's suddenly getting dramatically worse. Sad. Missing the things I can't do any more, even just since last summer. Missing my dog. Missing my best friend. Missing Paul Newman. Missing Luciano Pavarotti, for God's sake. 

I finished up with the overture from The Barber of Seville and I feel fine now.

Simply,