Upon this rack

By Cindy Bailey, Waynesburg, Pa.

www.cindyswind.blogspot.com

   On the one hand, I have all the time in the world to think, read, and write, my three all time favorite things to do.

   On the other hand, I spend my day managing pain and trying to avoid further injury to an annoying muscle in my back that got injured, how, only God knows for sure.

   I had no idea that this obscure ligature controls not only everything down to both elbows, but also is now the evil despot controlling my life.

   My chiropractor who is not really an evil despot–contrary to my experiences in her care–but rather a friendly young woman who is not offended that I've never been handled by a person of her profession, despite my "advanced" age.  Nor is she puzzling over the cause of my unfortunate state, like House, the guy who isn't a doctor but plays one on TV and who always solves the oddball disease mysteries, saving the day.

   When I protest that I NEVER have had back problems, she shrugs and says "You're lucky." Which if I could form a fist, might change her luck a little.

   She gingerly comes after me with her man-hands like I go after a room full of public officials who've been oppressing the citizenry, jabbing my back bones into submission with frightening snaps, crackles, and pops, like my poison pen jabs holes in the arrogance of my friendly neighborhood self-serving servants. At least one reader tells me my editorials can be "brutal," a word that could also describe this otherwise nice person who puts me on a rack covered with clean tissue paper for me to drool (and bleed) on as she thrusts her entire weight upon my injuries, with her knee in my back, OK not really....
   After several whacks at me, she one day tells me I'm ready to go upstairs and "see George," otherwise known as Executive Assistant to the Grim Reaper, who dwells in Torture Chamber No. 2. You know, I could never have imaged that I would be seated upon a table with a full grown man who really does jab his knee in my back, while simultaneously folding my person backwards in HALF. He tells me he is "loosening me up." It's more like loosening one of the few marbles I have left. Oh sure, he tries to make me "comfortable," constantly explaining to me what he's doing, but I can't see his face to detect a smirk, yet I'm sure there is one, especially when he regales me with tales of his ex-wife, but I am stretching out this story a little too much. Pun intended.
   Well, I will grudgingly admit that there actually has been some improvement. They're doing the best they can; consider what (who) they have to work with!

   A maverick publisher who until now traveled my rural county far and wide in pursuit of truth (and scalps), my days currently consist of ice packs alternated with a heating pad and hot soaks in the tub, as well as a small,  shocking device meant to electrocute me little by little, I think, not to mention a new $30 gel pillow, $40 strangely curved contraption you sit upon to "improve your posture," and a vat of Advil, which may or may not be responsible for the bursts of euphoria ("I think it's getting better!") interspersed with despair ("What if the rest of my life is like this?")

   Normally a procrastinator who avoids my work until the proportions are epic, I now sit and fret over all the things I could be doing if I was able. I watch the clock ticking and feel that life as I knew it is slipping from me. I think of the hours and days I frittered away shopping, complaining, boob-tubing, gossiping, you name it, when I could have been accomplishing something.

   I have wondered what God is trying to teach me, or if he's trying to teach me anything at all, and if he is, how could I hear it in this state.

   You find yourself taking stock, with an ugly apparition over your shoulder chanting, "It can always get worse." Maybe you should start paring down, dump the 12 zucchinis languishing in the fridge, consider smaller digs, give away nine of your 10 sets of dishes, find a new home for Ned, who is indignant anyhow about being thrown on the floor for stepping an orange-striped paw upon your clavicle.

   You think of the times in your life when perhaps you weren't sympathetic to someone else's pain, either emotional or physical. Of the times someone was nasty or rude to you, and you never for one minute thought that the person might be experiencing their own agony and that you should cut them some slack.

   You think of the people who are this minute living under the tyranny of some sort of pain every day all day–catastrophic illness, loss, or abuse–but who yet have hope, and you feel ashamed.

   And you think of all the things you've been asking from God–maybe just some time to catch your breath, to ponder and reflect and lean not on your own understanding. And now, only because everything has been stripped away and your soul has been laid bare before him, he has given you what you've asked for, and from this fertile ground, whether or not you are healed, will come your harvest.

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.  Psalm 51:17

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The pelican at my elbow

The pelican at my elbow

By Cindy Bailey, Waynesburg, PA

No Thai, Indian or Vietnamese cuisine.
No mini golf or bumper cars.

No tack shops or "upcycled" clothing stores.

No swimsuit shopping!

Beach combing was moderate and I didn't even have to share my unbroken shells with anyone.
No fussing around about applying sunblock or combing out our hair or taking a bath, even if we did spend the day in the water.
No one forgot her underwear. (Annie)
Or had to put up with someone else borrowing hers. (Julie)

We did what we wanted when we wanted to do it. Or not. (Cindy and Bob)

   It was the first beach trip us Old Folk took without any Younger Persons of Interest in tow.

   And the undertow of that fact disoriented us and within an hour of getting in the car, we were thinking maybe it was a bad idea and we should go home and work in the yard and really, all the computers needed updated anyhow.

   I kept thinking of a day on the beach over 15 years ago when Julie, then about eight years old, and I were hoarding shells in buckets. We were having such fun that we didn’t even notice we were being followed, until Bob called out, “Look behind you!” About a foot away were two pelicans that were under the impression that we had seafood in those buckets.

  Time, I was thinking in the car with my now senior citizen husband, is like those pelicans, right at your elbow, trying to rob you of precious things.

   But, we soldiered on, wanting to see how this vacation would all turn out.

   As we gingerly stepped out on the sand that first evening, where all these young parents were working so hard to keep everyone happy so their kids could take these memories along with them into life, I'll admit we felt like beached salmon, used up by our own years of parenting, waiting for the seabirds to pick at our bones, well it wasn't that bad....

   But an experience is what you make it, we said to ourselves, so by the next morning, over second cups of coffee, we resolved to step back, enjoy our freedom and try to see things as they really are and not as recent empty nesters tend to romanticize every little thing.
   We'd see a toddler with her hair standing up on her head and look at each other and say simultaneously, "Annie"! And there was this young dad who had a giant, inflated sea turtle strapped to his back, reminiscent of the alligator Julie spotted and cajoled us into buying in a beach shop once. We figured on "forgetting" it in our motel room so we didn't have to drag it on the plane, but that didn't work out so well. For several years, we always managed to find a way to pack up that green wonder, and Bob dragged the girls around in the water on it–after we exhausted ourselves blowing the doggone thing up. I think that ol' boy (the alligator, not my husband) is still in the cellar somewhere, a shriveled skin, beaten into submission, languishing like me and Bob, among the remnants of two childhoods. But I digress.

   As our beach day wore on, you could see the moms and dads deflating like that alligator, and we were both thinking, "That was fun while it lasted, but it sure was exhausting." And you could see the kids getting crankier as the sun slipped behind the horizon; one dad looked at us with desperation as his little girl sobbed over a pink ball that had floated away unnoticed with the tide. "Some other little girl can play with it," only made her wail louder–the type of memory she will repeat as a teen when she wants to make him feel bad about something. The type of memory you spend your seven precious, expensive vacation days trying to avoid.
   And sitting in our lawn chairs, snoozing and reading (guess who was snoozing), our feet in the tide, an unspoken sigh of relief wafted around us that the day-to-day parenting job had come to a satisfying conclusion at our house, through the grace of God, who watched over us all, including us befuddled parents who still don't have the answers.
   Because we couldn't keep them from hurts and bad influences anymore that we could keep Julie from that nasty jellyfish on Sanabel Island. And we still can't. 

   And so we said private prayers of thanksgiving and saw each other in a renewed light, realizing that without the two of us working every together single day and hour to steer our wobbling craft and bring them up in they way that we thought they should go, it really could have been a ship wreck.

   But on our last day, the nostalgia returned, and wanting to take part of the experience back home with us from the sea shell store, I noticed Rob's eyes got a little glassy. Because most every parent takes their kid in that store to make sure they get to bring home at least a few perfect sea specimens from the area, although they usually want the dried baby octopus for $12.99. Anyhow, by the time he found me in the bookstore, his eyes were shining because he had a present for me: Four carefully wrapped starfish to replace the one I was mourning over from a long ago beach trip. I had put it in the flower bed, and some flat-footed deer stomped around that night and massacred it. 

   And you see why I love him (Bob, not the deer).
   We packed up a little early in search of roads not taken by the masses, discovering a small public beach, where a middle-aged couple sat with books under an umbrella in the town of "Slaughter." Despite it's unfortunate name, the community there devoted itself to rescuing the endangered horseshoe crabs, which had been crushed into fertilizer by the millions as they came to that beach to spawn each spring.  Some 10 years later, the crabs, whose faces you'd think only their mothers could love, now flourish. And somehow all this this care of a creature so formerly unloved touched me.
   Then we hiked to a tiny lighthouse, which still stands inspiring people, though its light went out a generation ago. We found an inlet full of blue crabs and watched them knocking each other off the rocks, just because they were, well, crabby. Fortunately we didn't have to catch any and put them in a Styrofoam cup to take home.
   And truly, there was something liberating about not having to explain why little baby crabs die if you take them from their homes and mothers.

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