Good Health and Spirits

I wrote a draft of this post last winter when I was having my shoulder remodeled, but it applies again as now I go shopping for a new left hip. I'd rather have a new car, but I've gotten addicted to walking on two legs and want to keep on doing it. I bought a right hip four years ago, and it's running perfectly, so I thought I'd get another one to match.

Every new specialist's office is another chance to reveal your medical history, and it's turned into a different game for me in the last few years. The form starts you off with a soft question:

Do you characterize your health as __excellent __good __ fair __poor ?

Good, of course. Can't you tell? Maybe not totally excellent, but certainly good. I haven't had the flu or a bad cold for years.

Then the questions get specific: When were you hospitalized, when did you have surgery, which of the following dread diseases and /or symptoms have you had? Oh, just shut up already! I was fine until you started to pry and nag, and now you make me look as though I were barely alive. I'm still me and not some kind of invalid on all sorts of medication with a card in my wallet. Well, maybe I take some pills and it's easier to keep them organized in a plastic box with SMTWFS on the top, and maybe I wrote down a list of meds to carry with me so I could answer nosy questions from doctors and nurses ... rats, do you suppose I'm really old and infirm?

Nope. That's the old lady I catch glaring at me from the store window's reflection when I look up without thinking. She's a mess, her face all lined and grumpy. Sometimes she sneaks into the bathroom mirror, too, but I can usually chase her away by holding my head just right and opening my eyes wide. (Or by leaving the light off and not putting on my glasses.)

The woman I feel like is the woman my mother told me about when she was nearly seventy. "I just want you to remember that inside this old woman is an eighteen-year-old!" I think that inside I'm more like thirty, and my spirit doesn't yet have the varicose veins and droopy eyelids that show on the outside. My spirit is smooth-skinned and quick-footed, and can run and dance and wear short skirts and drink a glass of wine without a nap afterward.

But the spirit is living in a body that's ready to go to sleep (there was that glass of wine with supper). So good night.

(P.S. This got published twice -- not really, but when I published the draft that had been sitting around, it came in with last February's date and disappeared instantly into the archive. Writing and learning.)

Ready for Spring

In November and early December before the snows begin, all that was green has turned brown and black. Leaves are gone or shriveled on the stems of plants, and everything has died. Or has it? When I look again at the weeds along the path there are seeds everywhere, waiting to be knocked off the plants and onto the ground to do their miracle when the light and warmth return. In this dark time I wish the same miracle for all of us. Maybe we'll even be able to do it without being knocked around too much. Bless us every one!