2003-05-30 - 1:56 p.m.
Today�s entry is a collaboration for On Display. This month�s topic is �fresh start.�
THE GO-GO GIRL IS GONE-GONE
The go-go girl is gone-gone. Oh, the spirit is still there and she�s likely to reappear. It�s the body that�s weak. The go-go girl disappeared at approximately 7:00 last night, just half an hour before she fell into bed. Unfortunately, she was at the grocery store when she disappeared. Luckily, Mr. Philately was with her.
I dislike limitations. I particularly dislike my limitations. Amazingly, I do not have many limitations. As a young adult, when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I thought that I would. More than that, I assumed that I would. But now, approximately 25 years later, I can do almost anything I want. Sure, sometimes, I have weird tingling sensations in odd places. Occasionally, I limp. I have had episodes (technically called �exacerbations�) in which my vision was distorted. But I make very few concessions to illness.
Except when, all of a sudden, my feet each weigh a ton and my eyelids weigh even more than that. Except when plan A, plan B, and plan C are of no avail and collapsing is the only option left. Except when promises to take a teen driving, to make dinner, and to sew elastics on ballet slippers might as well be promises to climb Mt. Everest, to lasso the moon, or to resurrect the dead.
Mr. Philately would say that my collapses are really not very surprising, even without the MS. He might point out that I was in trial on Tuesday, had a school board expulsion hearing go past midnight on Tuesday night, was at work early on Wednesday morning because the pile on my desk was worse than usual, judged a mock trial for the high school in the afternoon, went to a middle school fine arts concert Wednesday night, was back at work early on Thursday, and had a complex evidentiary hearing in court on Thursday afternoon. He would point out that my schedule would have been tough for anyone. He also would (and did) point out that I did not collapse until the items on my list could be finished either by someone else or at another time.
My first impulse is to quote my teenage daughters at him. I could shrug and say, �You don�t understand.� But that would be immature. Worse, it would be wrong. Mr. Philately, like all of us, has limitations of his own and, in his often quiet way, he has not much more patience with his than I have with mine.
But I do not really change, I just become temporarily cowed. So today I will take it easy. I will do a little sewing, a little reading, and a lot of sitting around. Tomorrow, I will not tackle the garden and might even play a video game with Day-Hay. And the go-go girl will be gone-gone.
At least until next week, when she�ll get a fresh start.
LAST YEAR: Wearing the Sandwich Board
TWO YEARS AGO: The Art of the Impossible
Phoning It In
Creativity
Laundering Money
Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down
The Perfect Gift
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
