To take for granted. To go back to what was likely the original wording 'to take as granted.' More so: to assume something is a gift.
But 'granted.' That word implies that there is still some power above ones own doing the granting. It is not 'to take for birthright' or 'to tale as found money' or anything. But 'granted.'
Probably, etymologically, it comes from old English (like 'Ye Olde Sandwiche Shoppe' which is usually near a check-cashing place) and the granter was a lord of a manor or king or some other such putz--putz being used as a term of art here.
So I will not address it as such, because the things I am--and have been--taking for granted are not the domain of any one person, place, or thing (or animal, vegetable, or mineral, for that fact). They are just aspects of life.
Sunset. We live in Manhattan. West side. I have it on good authority that the sun sets pretty much every day. So every day we get a sunset. And from this proximity to the river, this divot of water before the slow rise of Jersey, we get some good ones.
There was a tire fire in Jersey, almost straight across from us, a couple years ago. Horrid for the environment, but thankfully nobody hurt, and the sky. My god, the sky. Come eight o'clock that summer night, the sun was a bloodshot egg yolk falling slowly through black snakes and orange haze, back-lit contrails above Newark Airport like the silver spikes in a Geisha's hair, and the show just kept shifting, changing, slowly dying as the orb dipped and burned into the backscape of hills farther off and the plainness of the darkness that followed was so much more thrilling for the light show that had receded it.
Like Krakatoa, or that more recent volcano in the Philippines a few years back--they told us they were disasters, but the sunsets would be great, for months, years even, until the dust the earth barfed settled on the outside of her skin.
And here I am, 'assuming something is s gift' or 'taking it for granted.'
However you slice it, I'm not doing my stillpoint in this turning world much justice by letting the good things roll off me when the bad things seem so eager to stick these days.
Like remission: Officially--unless the Drs are lying like cheap rugs--I don't actually have leukemia anymore, and haven't since the end of May or early June. All this abuse is medicine--spoonful of sugar my ass. Very soon--even later today, maybe--I will get another hole drilled in my butt and we'll see where we stand in terms of residua disease. But until the core sample of my ass comes back saying something different, the assumption is that I don't have it, and this abusive year of nauseated, hairless weakness, is really just an extremely out-of-proportion capful of Robitussin.
It is hard to take that one for granted: there's so much evidence of the disease--even if most of it is residual damage--that I rarely, if ever, stare in the mirror and think "They got it. We're fighting, but they got it" It would be like te people you see standing in front of the matchsticks that were their homes, clutching snot-nosed, terrified babies and wearing whatever they slept in and saying 'at least we're all still alive." I mean, I believe them, but they don't look all that pumped, you know? It isn't like saying that makes them happy, it just maybe sops up some of the sad like white toast does to a runny egg.
Like my family. For a while, and based almost certainly on old anglo-saxon American pre-set sensibility, I had a hard time calling it that because it was just me and her and, when he was alive, our dog Lugnut. But each person goes out and makes a family. I am a man with a family: her name is N. I have filial generations arrayed around me, some living and some dead, and I in no way mean to devalue any of them. But when you say 'well I sure hope my family gets through this crisis' or something you usually mean the nuclear unit in the same house you're in.
So that's me and N. I was raised by a good couple of families, and then N and I made the choice to become one. And that means more than sharing the rent and snuggling. I will raise my hand first and highest when the teacher asks 'and who has made mistakes building this family,' but hopefully each whoops was followed by an 'oh, I get it.' And onward and upward as she teaches me and I teach her and we spend more and more time on a couch, legs touching, moved by the same poignant line from Poirot on PBS or snarfing pasta out our nose at the same dogs-trip-fat-women montage on America's Funniest Home Videos.
But we're forging a life, slip up and triumphs, cancer and sinus infections, clean sheets and small dances in the hallway.
And I'll take that shit for granted the second it gets a little scary. And I should be frigging ashamed of myself. And I am. And so I do it a bit less. And so things progress. And maybe, when they hole-punch my pelvis, they will have gotten better still.
I guess what I am saying, mainly to myself but you're more than welcome to listen in, is that this huge wet blanket of a disease and its treatment are not only NOT excuses to let everything else slide, they are times that DEMAND a higher level of attention to everything.
Because of the payoff.
Think about it.
If I--or you, but I'm really only thinking about myself here--can work on being a better man. Can see the world as it is and appreciate it thusly and without prejudice or disappointment that it isn't otherwise. Can tread water in the applesauce. While the Medical establishment strips the cells from within me with a flesh-eating Drano they've spent years developing leaving me weak and nauseated and drugged and weeping and lost and wobbly on my pins and headrushed when I stand and wistful about acrobatic feats of strength like trotting up a flight of fucking stairs...
If I can, in the middle of that omelet, NOT take things for granted.
Well then, hell, how far ahead of the game am I when I get better?
Huh? How far?
There may be thunderstorms tonight, but I'm checking for a sunset. Just in case.
