The past couple of weeks have been pretty tough. The second phase of the protocol is different, but no less abusive or difficult than the first. I have developed some type of GI tract issues that keep me nauseous all the time,and sometimes make me twitch like Chuck Berry with St. Vitus' Dance. The nausea makes eating harder, so I am back down to the lower to mid 140s. I am a bad patient who has taken far too frigging long to learn to eat slowly and in tiny amounts and then allow the food to settle before forging ahead.
But you know what? All that is whining. I was on a rolling bed outside the radiology department in the ER at 1am the other day waiting to get a chest x Ray. In the bed across from me was a little girl, with a pacifier in her mouth and a young mother just barely holding onto the terror standing next to her. As I left my x Ray, I could hear the girl crying. Then a brief pause, and I heard either the mother or nurse explaining something to the little girl.
And then the smallest voice in the world said "ok." She murmured that she'd try in the most plaintive, courageous way. Her mother and or the nurse had obviously told her that she had to lie still or something or the x Ray wouldn't work. And this brave, tiny thing, this sliver of a human, sniffled up her tears, looked them in the eye, and said ok.
What is my fear and pain compared to that? I'll tell you: goddam little.
It is important to keep a positive outlook, while also important to stay realistic. I have had a bad few weeks, and I have let myself slump into them a little. And I shouldn't allow that. Yes, it is ok to be down, to be sad, to need some time to weep or fear or rail against it all. But that cannot be the main highway of my life.
I have been riding the bike more. I have been getting more comfortable with the dry heaves. I have watched my numbers grow back to an almost regular level before the second half of this phase started. There are good things in the bad things. I have to know that; always know it.
And so, without further ado, I present you with a Brief and Terribly Incomplete List of Really Wonderful Shit:
1. Canine Face-surfing Intermission:
Our dog, Lugnut, passed away about a year and a half ago, but was and is responsible for a huge percentage of the joy in our lives.
Lugnut liked to face-surf. This genius way of passing time and traversing carpets or lawns consists of getting a bit of a running start, maybe two steps, and then letting his front legs literally collapse beneath him, slamming his cheek and muzzle down into the carpet or grass. His back legs never stop moving, and he plows his schnoz along the ground, driving his back legs like a motor, tail whirling madly with delight.
He usually ends a run across the carpet or lawn by kicking his back legs out so that his muscular body whumps the ground and he can twist and wriggle onto his back, teeth bared in happiness, tongue gravity-yanked out the side of his mouth and flopping merrily on the ground next to his eye.
Then: Intermission.
He just freezes. It is as if the joy of a good face-surf is almost too much to bear, like 'how can life be so good and generous that I am able to rip my face across the carpet whenever I want? Can this glory be real?'
In order for his dog brain to run through these thoughts of a just and loving world, nothing else can be happening. So he stops.
Pin legs straight in the air, taut pit bull body torqued slightly from his last wriggle, one earn hanging open and the other draped across his face, he freezes, just a ball of potential energy, black fur, and rawhide breath.
The whole world stops with him. It is his prayer, his tithe, his acknowledgment of life's great glory.
One second, maybe three. Frozen In place on the ground, one back leg lolling
Slightly to the side.
And then it is over, and he has leaped to his feet, spun around, and is preparing for the next pass. Seeking that joy and knowing he will find it.
2. Nectarines
3. Mob-rules harmony.
Though this happens with any number of genres or bands, I will use Iron Maiden. One of their biggest hits, 'Aces High,' has a moment near the end where the lead singer takes his voice to it's highest place. The second half of the last time he says 'high' is a triumphant screaming wail at the thrill of music.
And, when you go to a concert, you and fifteen thousand or so of your closest friends are invited to sing along, to stretch your throat muscles and reach for that same impossibly high-note with him.
And you do.
At the crucial moment, Bruce Dickinson rips the mic away from his own mouth and points it at you, the mob. You know it is coming, many of you have been trying to control your breathing since the last verse because you wanted to get it right.
And when fifteen thousand fans all reach for that same lofty perch on the treble clef, an amazing thing happens: they get there.
Despite the fact that it is almost scientifically impossible for you all to be anywhere near the actual note, the fact that you are all wailing together, spread out over the floor and seats of a hockey arena or amphitheater, and the final product, aided by the lead singer hitting the note as he should, is a tsunami of guttural falsetto and adrenalized roaring that, in the aggregate, combine to BE the note you all sought.
In screaming together, in socialist howling, you achieve the impossible. You are all, for that one glorious second, the lead singer of the band. A smashing cloud of sound rises above the stage, the fans, the lights and the lasers, and becomes an aural manifestation of the power of music, the communal dream made real. You are rock and roll.
4. The smell of hot pavement after the first wash of rain.
5. If I am on the couch, convalescing (which, I have learned comes from the Latin for 'watching Tour de France Coverage on DVR'), and N is in the bed, working, we can pretty much see each other down the hall whenever we look. And there are many many times when we look up in time to see the other looking up just then, too.
No words needed. Maybe a small wave, maybe the frozen stance of a head not running away, maybe just two seconds out of a day.
And then we're back to whatever were were doing, but stronger.
So there you have it: a bunch of good stuff.
