And Life Keeps Happening

Thank you very much to all of you, well wishers, for the e-mail you sent, the calls, text messages, and the comments from Mike and Mayo on this site and Karla all the way from Melbourne. I am truly touched. It is inspiring to realize that I actually have more than just two friends on this planet ha ha! Again, maraming salamat...

The arm is recovering; the tendon, repaired. But the plastic surgeons, both very young and up front about things, said that although they are optimistic, they offer no guarantees that my arm will regain 100 percent of its normal function. I'll take that; there is no other choice. It sounds so zen, doesn't it, this pronouncement? Well, I didn't really react that way initially. It was a more dramatic, more tearful questioning of what luck has dished out, delivered in elevated decibels.

"But doctor, there are so many things I still want to do like rock climb, learn to fence, and pick up my golf clubs again. I was just way laid by raising the children. You have to get me fixed!"

He answered ever so calmly, "Way laid by raising children? You never stop raising your children." He then turned pensive and added, "Price you pay for the life you choose..."

To which we simultaneously remarked, "Al Pacino, Godfather III." He said yeah; I said yeah and explained further, "he said it to Andy Garcia's Vincent Corleone character in the Corleone house in Sicily." Yeah, yeah. Then we were both quiet.

So life goes on...I'm all stitched up and all seems well. The only problem was they didn't give me pain killers. The first three days post-op are now committed to memory as a blazing inferno of pain--glad that's over with.

Now the focus is on breaking the psychological barrier of not being able to do what I have been doing for all of my adult life. The path of least resistance leads to anger and frustration and it takes much effort to just let go. I've had to learn to do most everything with the left hand: eating, brushing teeth, showering--everything! I feel so dependent, it kills me. I've been so used to doing things by and for myself, quietly, alone in a corner, unseen and undisturbed. I can't even open a pack of splenda for my coffee, it kills! As if that weren't enough, it now takes me double the time to complete the simplest of tasks.

When I look in the mirror now, I spook myself out because I have become a bruha--can't brush my hair properly. My naturally thick eyebrows have merged into a unibrow (maybe I should say wall to wall carpeting to be closer to the truth) because I can't pluck them. But the silver lining is I have a handy excuse for not wearing make-up, which I really detest.

A friend said that the accident was probably heaven's way of giving me a respite from "slaving away" (the intention was sweet but what a cruel thought). See, this is the first time we've travelled without a yaya upon my insistence because I knew that the children were ready to do things on their own. So I've done all the chores with what the children can manage in terms of help--cooking two meals a day, washing dishes and pots and pans after each meal, cleaning bathrooms, doing floors, doing laundry for seven people including hand washing delicates, spray starching and putting stays on shirts, giving Mouse baths, marketing--everything. I had established a system, which ran on a tight schedule and was actually enjoying it. Okay, I bitched every once in a while but the independence was liberating. The down side was I hadn't read a book in two months, hadn't written anything substantial.

I have a new found respect for working mothers who are able to juggle career and family without
hired help because I now know first hand that it is impossible!!! With my arm out of commission, it is each man to himself at home, everyone and everything stinks and the place is a mess.

Still, I am grateful for many many things and look forward to each day hopeful that the arm will keep improving. My faith tells me that there is much more to life than a clean house and fresh-smelling laundry.

The cliche goes "Onto each one's life some rain must fall," this is my tropical depression.