Tag: pain

Empty rabbit hole

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At too yellow

Where I am at is not where anyone else wants to be. I find myself in an empty rabbit hole, running around in circles and never finding my way out. The only way out is up. Reaching up for the ladder that is just out of touch. Being too short to touch the bottom rung, then I will need to jump. Jumping up to grasp what is just beyound reach. My attempts to be anything but the rabbit that I once was leaves me exhausted,. No one wants to pretend at life. The whole idea is that Halloween costume party might just exist everyday for some…

At this point in my existence, I am at covering up who I am now by who I once was. Learning to deal with the change in my abilities to navigate the normal life that everyone else still lives has left me faking the smile. Pretending to be okay in my rabbit hole. The world goes on. The people around me have left. The others have their daily interactions with others. I have a rabbit hole.

Pushed over a cliff. That’s me. Sitting on a ledge with a large rock wall just before me. Open the door for me and push me first. The anxiety and the fear that surfaces from the unknown because of my eyes inablity to adjust to the change form outside to inside or from inside to outside. Might as well push me over a cliff. Who pushes a blind person first? Lots of people don’t understand. This anxiety from new and the constant flow of people in a group setting, continues to set me face value with a rock wall in front of me. Finding the face level of an outstretched hand is like asking me to go first. This anxiety of meeing new people or new situations has left me sitting out on a ledge with a rock wall in front of me and a deep cavern heading off in all directions.

Chasing a bunny tail around in circles. That is me. The less one goes to experience new, the more life is just chasing the owner’s tail. Round and round the sun travels. Round and round the familiar circles go. Yet with the blindness that comes my way, the circle grow smaller. The never ending expansion of one’s life and experiences, has now reversed direction. Until all that remains is the beginning of the line. And now all the bunny does is chase his own tail. Not a very fun day actually.

Socially deprived dogs will develop anxiety or elements of acting surprised at every thing that happens. Whether it is the door bell, the phone ringing, or a neighborhood child that cries out, a dog that has not been exposed to lots of experiences will overreact. Never mind the dog, my days are now turning into the socially deprived mutt-hood. Without the proper training and constant repetition of social skills, they become lost. Empty days in the country turn the hermit into an angry mutt. This is not the me that I want to be. The country bumpkin I used to be longs for sitting on the busy corner of a street and do some good old people watching.

An empty planterbox sitting in front of the parked car reminds me once again where I am at. The days that coming home to the pretty plants adorning the parked vessels are so long ago in the past. Filling the boxes so that someone else can park there and enjoy the view as they arrive… Nope. My life is that empty planter box. I do not take that vessel to wherever I so chose. Filling the boxes just reminds me that I no longer have the choice to go away and return to an enjoyable view. It is not an enjoyable view when it is all that I ever see.

Open the door to a brick wall that stands in front of me. Outside my daily empty rabbit hole there is a brick wall. Seeing a future ahead is getting harder and harder. I do not see a future without the view of delapitating buildings around me. Living on an acreage where things are just left to fall apart, reminds me that my eyesight is failing. It is very depressing to imagine a future filled with the view of buildings crumbling. While others leave and do not see the crumbling status, who wants to imagine this view as the last days of their eyesight. I do not want to just watch buildings crumble, while my eyesight fails me. These images will be burned in my brain. I want to watch things being taken care of. I want to see neighbors fixing their roofs. I want to see people planting their gardens.

Lacking social skills is attributed to children who do not slpend time with peers. No one understands the value of an active life more than sn inactive life. Not having peers or people to go do things with has left me empty and lacking in social skills. I still know how to ask someone else all the right questions, but having no experience outside of my rabbit hole makes me an empty person to be with. Therefore, no one comes

Gas tank on empty usually gives a driver a little red flag or red signal on the dashboard. When I look in the mirror agter the same empty start to each day, I see a signal eep in my soul that the gas tank is on empty.

Not many days ago, I found myself tired of not having expressed anything about myself to for so long a period of time around a group of people, that when I finally did, there was an audible “shushing” that escaped someone next to me. The feelings that followed the experience were undeniably awful. Everyone has feelings, and when left to never express those feelings eventually they ooze outward. Being shushed in the midst of the expressing left me collaping into

Too yellow

Who would tell a dandelion she is too yellow? Lots of people do this very thing every day. Telling the dandelion not to shine so bright in the sea of green grass. Telling the expressive soul not to be soo loud, or the nonconformist to be more like everyone else around them. I begin to wonder what the world would be like without Picasso, Rembrandt, Mozart, or Debussy. What would the new world have looked like without Columbus, or Sacagawea, or Madison? Why do we shush the abortion debate, the political issues, or the holocaust? Will there even be any history in the history books? Maybe dandelions are just yellow. Not too yellow.

Just yellow. Not too expressive. Not too passionate. Not too wordy. Not too loud. Not too boisterous. Not to excitable. Not too Impressive. Not too intimidating. Not too dramatic. Not too bright. Not too dreamy. Not too hopeful. Not too flamboyant. Not too artistic. Not too creative. Not too inventive. Not too different. Just yellow.

Winter gives way to spring

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New rainy day projects

The past two weeks were full of research for me. watching appropriate videos of poetry conferences, to news blurbs, to crochet patterns. Some of what I watched was memorable. Some a desperate wish to forget!

Lately my favorite past time is hats, mittens, and turtle scarves to perfection. The hat is a new stitch patter using the moss stitch or the single crochet beanie. There are nearly ten made already. The first few were made with leftover scraps. The set above was made with one skein of BrightStripes from my Grandmother’s favorite durable Red Heart brand. I had to borrow form another skein to complete the mitten thumb. The fingerless pattern is also another new pattern for me. The wrist is the sock stitch and the hand is with the knit stitch for crochet. I am pretty pleased with my ability to watch netflix at the same time as crochet.

Butterflies

My work on the new pattern study found me trying some new things with it. Now that the pattern is learned perhaps there will be another shawl in my future. This pattern study is in the spider stitch family. Because the body of the critter is gathered after a few passes of the hook and yarn. It does look rather odd until the body is made. I love it though. There are other versions: pineapple, ladybug, dragonfly, the spider of course and this butterfly.

First I tried some washcloths with the butterfly pattern and then got down to business and made some others. Talking to my sister and all of her flood problems, she teased that it would take an awful lot of dishcloths to sop up all the expected water. Thank goodness for me I do not have a basement and I could spend the storm days teaching the dog a new game.

Find tug!

Honey did pretty good with the mud, water, snow, sleet, stay on the high ground path that I tried to teach her. Three days apparently is her limit to good behavior. Today when the sun came out after three days cooped up in the house, she looks like muddy moe! What a mess. As soon as the laundry is all done, I’ll find the towels and give her a bath. No more find tug-of-war rope toy today. At least until that dog is cleaned up.

Another prayer shawl

With no home yet for the previous prayer shalw, guilt sinks in as I picked out the next yarns. Keeping the creative juices flowing is a must though, right? So here are a few of the projects that have been keeping me busy.

Winter lost to spring in our neck of the woods. The flooding has been pretty devastating in our area. I have a sister and brothers in the blizzard zone for the week. My mother and other sister in the flood zone. And my poor son-in-law was stranded in no travel zone and unable to work for a whole day., Weather can wreck havoc on all kinds of plans. My friend in another flood area went with the flow to practice her kayak moves! Sometimes it is hard to find the humor in such a mess, but we must.

A few of my conversations have led to good news on my “After” project. I hope to get another post prepared on that line soon. For now keeping up with the yarn stash is my plan as I listen to others memoirs, books based on the authors own experiences. These types of books are given me lots of inspiration right now.

So much for our blizzard we just got rain, lots of rain.

Prepare for the worst and all that remains is mud. The day it was a blizzard for half my family I prepared for an early come home day with my husband. But all that it did here was rain. He did not come home early. The roast was done at two in the afternoon and so I ate supper then. On top of the miserable rain and flooding for so many, my cat hitched a ride with him to work and so he had to stop and pick her up before coming home. Silly girl. I don’t know if she’ll ever learn to stay away from the heat of the warm engine. She is such a “car-pet.” Bother the silly thing.

So far spring brings me a hand full of facial tissues. My nose is in deep rebellion to the change of seasons. Is everyone allergic to the season that they are born into? Mine is spring and sorrow proceeds my birthday by many fashions. Most of my depressed mood is a result of my oppressed immune system. I love spring. I hate mold, rainy mildewy, sniffly air. Kachoo! Winter gives way to spring once again.

Now for that shower for my mutt.

When I

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Feel

Inadequate.

When I feel inadequate

When others point out blunders

When uncultured praises rubbish attempts

When someone sees a crumb

When planks feel like boulders

When feelings are numb and sting

When emptiness drums loudly

When tethers fall or fray

When painful moments color all worlds grey

When perfection outweighs awkwardly graceless

When intelligence wrestles tongue tied blubbering

When I feel inadequate

I

Just

Want

To

Quit

Four paws-minus one

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Hop-along–Cassidy

We have a three legged critter for a few days. I was so worried I made Dad take her to the urgent pet care. It’s just a bad sprain. She’s suppose to rest for three days and take her anti-inflammatory meds at bedtime.

Honestly it hasn’t slowed her down much. She’s just not jumping three feet in the air now. Haha. She’s a little more “clingy” than usual, so we’ll use the opportunity to teach her the word ‘heel.’

When life asks for a pause, how do we take it?

“What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.” Ecclesiastes‬ ‭1:15‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Each year as the New Year comes around, January brings with it the bitter winds of winter that demand a different lifestyle. For some people this month is for puzzle solving. For some people it’s a month of catching up on all the episodes of an old favorite television show. For others it’s a chance to read books while laying under layers of blankets. For me, it’s a variety of things.

Reading is not as easily done anymore with the lack of giant print books. One of these days i might actually get that library app on the iPad and read some old books that I enjoyed. But I do have a favorite Bible reading schedule that returns to mind this time of year. There are several reading schedules that are quite simple to remember. Here they are:

Ecclesiastes has twelve chapters. One for each month of the year. It’s easy to remember what month number it is, if you read the first chapter of this book near the first day of the month. Each chapter is full of wisdom and great things to contemplate.

Proverbs has 31 chapters. These can be read in succession with each day of the month. So even if you miss a day of reading, picking the chapter for the day, eventually you will read all the chapters at least a few times throughout the year. It is also packed full of wisdom and common sense.

Psalms has a little more complicated reading pattern. This may require a bit of math! Reading a chapter each day, there are 150 chapters, so it will take five months to complete the book. Or you can read five each day just jumping through the books in multiples of five for the day. Another way is as follows: today is the 20th, read chapters 20, 50, 80, 110, and 140. The 25th day would be five additions of thirty. It’s not too hard. I make a cheat sheet marker of 150 and just cross off the already read.

Gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I try to read them by seasons as follows:

winter is for Mark, because it’s the shortest and daylight is short. Spring is for John because I love his account of the Easter Resurrection story. Summer is for Matthew. And Fall is for Luke because I want to read his account of the nativity several times before the holidays.

There are many different reading schedules for the sciptures. Some people use apps or a 365 Bible. I just really enjoy being creative with my reading patters.

While hop-along (the dog) and I spend the days in a more restful mode, I also like to inventory my yarn piles. But on a nice day, i don’t neglect to get some fresh air. So it was a pleasant surprise to find a ball of thread out in the yard while I marched to and fro picking up sticks and other debris. I decided at that point that my puppy was a thief. The thread was none the worse for it’s trip in the elements. I threw away about a yard of the outer strand. Must be time to work on a doily again, I thought.

My crooked nose cannot be straightened. And the above verse came to mind shortly after I began vainly studying my new look. The swelling has finally abetted, and now the sinuses are trying to discover the new breathing tube! Apparently I have begun sawing the logs through the night. I even woke myself up the other morning.

When something is missing it simply cannot be counted. And though i inventoried my yarn supply and pulled out some projects to finish, I hadn’t even missed the ball of yarn the little thief took. Kind of makes me wonder what else she has stolen. We are well aware that she ate the roll of stamps shortly before Christmas. There were only two left to count that remained stuck to her paw. We have really no idea how many stamps that she ate, fo the lacking cannot be counted!

Four paws minus one, makes our eight month old doodle a bit of a silly noodle right now. Watching her hop isn’t easy, but it’s kind of hard not to laugh when she “acts” like life is misery. She had no sympathy for my broken nose. I took her to the urgent care for a sprained paw but wouldn’t go to the urgent care for my broken nose. Go figure that one out.

Eighteen

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Teach us to number our days

Anyone remember the year they were eighteen?  Not really.  I do remember it as the birthday that my mother forgot and that my dad gave me a birthday card with just his name on it.  Granted as the spring of my junior year in high school, I was rather busy and wasn’t home much that day.  But reminiscing about that year wasn’t my plan for this journal entry.

Follows seventeen of course. Eighteen that is, follows seventeen  Obviously.  But each year it seems many gather for the New Years celebrations as if just by chance the clock won’t keep ticking and the next number needs to be encouraged on it’s way.  I usually just go to bed.  God seems to be in control of numbers.  He’s got a whole book for then in the Bible!

Goals.  New Years goals.  Changing, rolling over a new leaf.  I usually do that.  Misplace them.  Then wonder what happened to the past twelve months.  Sometimes I recap them in a Charistmas letter.  That’s kind of fun.  Not this year.

Honey broke my nose.

I repeat.  Honey broke my nose.

One week ago while playing frisbee with her “hyper pet” red one, she jumped up and my nose collided with hers.  Not good.  

I didn’t talk to her for a whole day.  It hurt.

The only word she heard for two days straight was DOWN!

So since the glasses still hurt the noggin, the Christmas letters are still in the box, the letters have not been read by me, and there issn’t much that can be done without the spectacles.  

I’ve been cleaning house.apperently one can still see dirt without glasses on!

So while I sat crocheting a large hook afghan, I began making my New Years resolutions.  

The first was to write a blog each week. 52.  There are fifty two weeks in a year.  To date I have only written that many in the last two years.  This is a lofty goal for me.  But maybe they will be shorter.

There are other goals, but I don’t want to bore you.

For now, I will keep cleaning up my stashes of clutter.  I will continue to let my crooked nose grow back together.  And hopefully I haven’t just done a “Pinocchio” and lied about my plans for the year eighteen.

On hold

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When life hands you a pause button

“Stop the world, I want to get off!”

Well, okay maybe it’s more like “stop the bus, I wanna get back on.”  But right now the reality is that no one knows the spirit of a mans own troubles except that man himself. Perhaps God is the only one who will ever understand the depth of another’s soul. 

When I collapsed in a heap on the floor after finding the puppy gate, there was no doubt something was broken. Inability to move is very suffocating. When the chiropractor invited my husband to peek at the X-ray and left me sitting, it was as if someone handed me a pause button. 

Not really. The pause button in life comes in many forms. A father with a broken hip? A company moving locations, a loved one with cancer, and the loss of a dream. The pause button happens for the most unassuming. Others seem to go right on with life. Children continue to grow up. Traffic still flows on the interstate. The news on the radio resumes it’s unbelievable coverage of protests and crazy people. 

The disasters continue to happen amd yet the defiant spirits rage on against the sovereign will of God. They attempt to erase history or pillage flood damaged neighborhoods. How do we take that pause button and sit for six weeks while bones heal?  The pause button of pain that includes three years of chemotherapy. Or perhaps it’s not really a pause button at all. 

And in the middle of ones break from normal daily activities, someone asks a question from their own fast moving train and the pause button gets accidently placed on fast forward. The mind cannot find a response. As if I am put on hold with the whole world on the other end of the receiver going about life with no clue the “hold-button” has been set in my life. 

I have been recovering from a fractured rib and a bruised rib. The pain at times drive me to the pain management box. At times it asked me to just do nothing. All my life I have been a doer. I have never sat amd watched television without something in my hands.  Crochet has been my do nothing. When the bruised muscles on my right side required me to sit and rest, leaving my crochet baskets on the opposite side of the room became the only option. 

Watching television wasn’t something I grew up doing. We were a family of readers. My father read, books, newspapers, field and stream magazines. My mother sewed and generally kept our home spotless. My sisters and I all learned piano, worked at odd jobs, did homework, and babysat the neighborhood children. Never mind that those children’s parents were either at work, at the bar or at the volunteer fire meeting-which in our small town was at the bar. 

There were occasional TV watching. We would go to a neighbors house and watch a required tv show for school. We also watched the classics at the holidays. Sound of music-anyone!  So when my phone has the worlds favorite movie app uploaded, I had the constant choice of watching my pause button.  

Pause to take out the dog. Pause to answer a text message. Pause to answer the phone call. Pause to lunch, bathroom or go get the mail. Pause. 

The final reality hit me hard the other day. No matter what pause button is handed to us, we are never really allowed to fully rest. Our final resting place is not here. Though life gives us a prolonged Sabbath rest, or sabbatical the rest of the world around us will march on. 

The pause button can only be experienced by the one who receives it. There is no choice. The is no control over the plans that we make. We have the pause button only for it’s appointed time. Six weeks to heal the bones. Three months to enjoy the summer. Three years to visit with doctors and nurses. Two weeks to house sit a patent. Whatever time the pause button is handed to a person whether it is definrd or not that time will not be given back. There is no rewind in life. 

There is no rewind. There is play, there is fast forward. There is pause, and there is stop. A sure end for everyone. We all have the inevitable end. But there is no rewind.  

Yet while the world marches on seemingly oblivious God has taught me one lesson these weeks. 

“Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭27:14‬ ‭NKJV‬‬ http://bible.com/114/psa.27.14.nkjv

While I sit in this side of my own plans and to do lists, God is , God is doing, and God is here. Whether I can feel Him or not, I do have the choice to believe He is both able to heal and to help me through this time of waiting. 

From head to toe and now ribs, oh no!

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The daily surprise of RP

Everyone loves surprises, right? Well if you are talking about birthdays or gifts of course. If you are considering accidents and natural disasters NO!  

Living with retinitis pigmentosa involves an element of surprise that for the most part includes chaos and a lot of spilled milk!  The first body parts to suffer are the toes and the head. Unless the person with RP wears  steel- toe boots there’s a sure factor that there will be some broken toes.  

The funniest broken toe problem that I had was when I grabbed to left shoes to wear at church and didn’t check them until church. On top of that we were headed to take our eight year old to camp after that. So it was a Kmart stop on the way to Des Moines for a pair of flip-flops so that little toe could be free to be fat as it pleased! I remember walking through Kmart barefooted and wondering if they would kick us out!

RP loves foreheads, faces and noses. The greetings to those unsuspecting places can occur daily when one is tired. The not so funniest moment for me was when the teeter totter kissed me right between the eyes!  The whack could be heard throughout the whole acreage.  I had picked up a snake and was going to scarce my husband with it when the end of the see-saw bit me pretty hard. I flew back and landed on my back knocking the breath out of me. Should have been on video. We could have won with that one!  I broke my nose that time.  

Kitchen cabinets should roll up like roll-top desks. Who ever decided hinges were a universal cabinet feature did not have RP.  Every time we moved to a new house I learned by the school of hard-knocks about the cabinet doors. When will we ever learn to shut those doors right away?  If you have RP and live with someone that does not-the kitchen can be a war-zone of dishwasher doors and such. I have a permanent dent in one shin from the dishwasher door.  Uffda!

I use to claim that I never broke any bones. Well it just wasn’t as noticeable. The toe or the nose doesn’t get a cast for your friends to sign. My sister broke her arm going down the slide as a child. I remember helping her get dressed. That was the era of girls shirts that buttoned in back. Really we had to help each other before the casted arm. Not sure why I remember it especially as a casted arm thing. 

My grandmother was the first family member to have the degenerative eyesight. I don’t remember that she ever broke anything until her age related osteoporosis began to affect her life.  However I have an uncle with the disease that broke his leg during his career from a stair step fall. It was a pretty bad break.  The story helped me to be quite cautious of stairways. His hanging back two steps behind other walking companions has kept him from further accidents. He has not adopted a trusty walking-cane yet. Never understood why. 

My father also inherited the disease. His numerous broken bones began quite early in his twenties. But his cowboy behavior was the beginning of many woes. The more dangerous approach for him has been using a cane, a GPS device and walking in an old community with various pitfalls and oddball curbs. His favorite saying is “Concrete doesn’t give!” (Meaning budge, move, or dent.) Bones are no match for concrete. The hard cement wins every time.  We are all a little glad his GPS will not hold a charge anymore. The hospital doesn’t need anymore of his hard earned money. 

So how did this rib-thing happen anyhow? I was headed back to bed when the doggie gate I had placed in front of the door greeted me and the rug under my left foot slipped backwards. My ribs hit the gate with full hug force.  The blow took away my breathe and the rest is history that I don’t want to repeat. Needless to say, I have already planned to give the gates away. My memory doesn’t serve me any better than my eyesight, so tripping triumphs can’t exist in my home anymore!  

The puppy that caused me to think that I needed the gates in the first place has been spending more time outdoors. She may have learned something about compassion from the whole experience. Gentle, and sit NEXT to me are now part of our vocabulary. 

Those eyes! Usually what people say when looking at a gorgeous baby. Or blue eyes that are deep pools of water. Well, for those of us with RP those eyes are sometimes not very helpful. So getting a dog that will truly be a “watch” dog is a great goal of mine. Teaching “those eyes” to be my eyes might just break me-literally!  I sure hope we can learn from our mistakes and keep my home a safe-zone from now on.  

Brick walls

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When God slams a door

Everyone always said that when God shuts a door, somewhere He opens a window. That is really just a line from the film Sound of Music. It’s not a bible verse.  It is repeated by the Christian world so much we tend to believe it. 

Perhaps God slams the door in our face and there is no window in the room. There is only darkness. Then just for no reason He builds a brick wall outside the door so that if we try to open it, we find a concussion to greet us.   RP often makes me feel like I am all alone in a crowd that will not let the door be closed. 

Darkness that closes in and attempts to claim our soul. Inspire  of songs   like “there is sunshine in my soul today” ringing in our ears, this darkness lurks like a lone wolf ready to gobble up every bit of sunshine.  The pain that engulfs my heart at this hour is so overwhelming.  The door is shut on the days when my eyesight allowed me to read music and play piano at the same time.  

The death of this ability leads me into a very dark room. 

The last Sunday that I was asked and foolishly attempted to read the hymnal and play piano was a very dark day for me. The realization that what once had been a “piece of cake” was now completely impossible has given rise to a deep cavern of anguish and fear. 

What is it like to go blind?

What is it like to give up what was once loved?

What is it like for things once easy to die? Is this death or divorce? Have my eyes divorced themselves from my brain and my fingers? There are days this overwhelming death of past ability completely engulfs me and shuts down my whole factory of operations.  

The death of my ability to shop was far easier to give up. I always hated going shopping anyhow. The grocery store to a tunnel visioned blind person is a nightmare. I could look for items for hours only to be pointed to the item right in front of me. I never enjoyed shopping. It’s difficulty rendered that doslikable years before the grocery section just made me cold and feel helpless. Might as well put me in the child’s seat in the cart, for all the help I am. 

But giving up music?

I remember the last few times I played for church choir. The song was The Revelations Anthem. The piano writing on the piece is amazing. But trying to help the choir with their parts and read all four lines while plunking out their notes…  that was nightmarish and led me to tears numerous occasions I was only thankful that God had somehow given me the ability to begin memorizing music. I had wanted that ability back in college but failed miserably and even flunked my piano jury because of brick wall brain!  

I still love that choir anthem and do not attempt to play it. It would be to devastating to my memory of when I was able. 

The hymnal brick wall is so…  I just wish I had another word besides death to describe this horrible feeling that slams into my chest. The tunnel vision does not allow me to focus on more that one note at a time. Hymnals are written in chord progressions that are common to multiple voice choir pieces. Imagine switching from reading the bass line to the soprano in lightening speed. The good eye does this automatically. Now put a straight jacket on a prisoner and tell her to beat the best boxer in the ring.  Impossible. My hands have been put in a straight jacket and I am blindfolded and I don’t even see the other boxer!  My eyes that once read all the choir lines and the piano (something like a conductors score) now can barely make out the alto line. 

And then I get lost. 

Once as a child I was in a department store in Bismarck Noth Dakota and sat under a clothing rack only to discover that my mother had wandered away. I hadn’t wandered away, mind you-she had! I distinctly remember the department store’s “man-hand” leading me back to my mother. 

I am lost. Without my ability to read piano music the panic sets in and there is no gentle hand to lead me back to my mother  this time. My mother-love of music is dead. 

I have no choice.  My eyes are continuing to fail me. The door has been closed. The brick wall has been built. The panic is still there. The loss is deep and wrenching. 

I ache for my love of piano.  In my own home I may sit and attempt to read a melody line and learn an old song new again. But in the ears of all others. No. 

My eyes continue to steal my joy from my fingers. If I close my eyes and just play. The memory takes over. Sometimes. Not  often enough. 

Another one bites the dust. That’s not a cool song anymore. It is cruel. Painful reality. 

I miss my ability to read and play piano without fear, without that lost feeling, without struggle, without crashing through the notes, without thus painful brick wall that ever casts such a dark shadow through the very tiny crack that is left in the gap of the door.  When others look at a tunnel they see the light at the end. I don’t. I see the narrowing end of this tunnel-like view of the keyboard as it is. The end of the keyboard. My view comes from the narrow end and fuzzes out at the wide end into nothing. The end.

It’s hard to enjoy this black and white world of music while my ability slowly fades into a muddy grey.. The light grows dimmer. The shadow lengthens. The door creaks slowly but surely towards the frame for a final slam.  And on the other side the brick wall is being built.  

And don’t tell me I shouldn’t be depressed. Death is never easy. No matter what kind it is. The death of my gift of music isn’t blossoming into something beautiful. It is a train wreck at the end of a dark tunnel. 

This is RP. 

Inside outside

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“therefore encourage one another with these words.” I Thessalonians 4:18

Whether or not the weather cooperates is usually how outside gardens survive.  Farming and springtime become a constant weather watch in our neighborhood. There’s always the few who do things no matter what. But the seeds never lie. Frost that kills the cherry blossoms means one less pie. 

The other day I made it out to the gee-oh house just before the rain came pouring down.  “Guess I’ll be here for a little while or get soaked on the trek back to the shoe-box house.”  We spent the previous weekend re-sealing the joints and the polycarbonate glazing with more weather proof materials. So this week will be a test to see if we finally found the answer to the leakages.  Wind and rain, ice and water find their way through cracks of any size. Hopefully by the time we finish the outside–we’ll have an inside that is outside!

Finding therapy that works for our ailments can sometimes be more challenging than we expect. For some acupuncture helps.  Others turn to the essential oils.  Still others release, toxicity through sweating via sauna or excercise. I chose to go to my greenhouse. Sunshine provides me a tropical zone right in my own green field.

Suffering from pain and insomnia creates a cycle of physical pain that must have a checkpoint. I have full understanding that there are drugs-medicines that can aid my troubles.  A number of years ago though my husband decided to reward my once upon a time motherhood  nap time reading to my children by purchasing me an MP3 bible.  

When I was just nursing my firstborn child, my mother handed me a tiny Gideon New Testament. So I began reading to my children. When my second daughter arrived I had learned to balance my full scriptures award Bible from my own childhood on my arm and hand .  In that way I was able to read through the Bible and continue my own rapid reading schedule during her toddlerhood. It was during that timeframe that she claims I read through numbers and chronicle just to get her to fall asleep.  It was admittedly more successful than my later attempts to read Chronicles of Narnia for their bedtime story reading.  However, we all believe that Lennea’s abilities in remembering names might be gifted by God to her simply from these nursery days.  

My grandmother, the girls’ great-grandmother had a gifted memory also.  She could remember dates and birthdays like no one else! Although she did not pass this incredible memory on to me, her love for dried fruit has nevertheless been passed on.  Therefore when I studied the geodesic greenhouse and understood that I could host up to two tropical fruit trees in its space, I began begging for a fig tree.

Perhaps I wanted one so much because it’s delicate nature is one that I can really relate to. My temperature intolerance has led me speak out loud that I’m allergic to the cold.  It’s icy winds feel like knives slicing through my skin.  Because the anesthesia that they used on my first caesarian did not function as expected I can say with full clarity that I know what it feels like to have knives slice through my skin. It was traumatic. 

Recently we had a family meal with some extended family members.  During the meal my little nephew began his frequented mealtime temper tantrum.  Following this occasion we discussed the child’s feelings as “delicate.”  This reminded us of a classic psychologist’s movie Inside out  We recommend it for children and family’s who struggle with verbal expressions of feelings.  Learning to communicate at an early age one’s self-awareness is so important. 

It is in that spirit of self-preservation that I am sharing this with my readers. Sleepless nights are the trials of many that I know personally.  Whether turning to medicine, natural therapies, or prayer and Scrupture–know that this battle for sleep and adequate rest is not just yours alone.  Pain is part of this world we exist in and most likely will not  be conquered during this life. Finding hope in small things and in the bigger picture can help.  In the end it’s my faith in Christ and our eternal home that keeps me going.   

My crochet grandmother’s favorite book in the Bible was Thessalonians’s.  She had many verses underlined in the two part letter. This one after the description of  our future hope and home is one of my favorites.  Chapter four verse eighteen-

“Therefore encourage one another with these words.”