I was out in the yard and I saw Maria’s vintage hankies drying on the line and blowing in the wind, a pretty site for me, they will soon be funky and stylish scarves around the neck’s of women and their daughters and grand-daughters. The UPS man came in with a package, and looked at the line and he said, “wow, I’ve never seen a clothesline like that! Are they underpants?” I explained these were vintage, sometimes antique handkerchiefs, artfully designed and put together as scarves.
My wife makes them, I said. Cool, he said, still puzzled, but does she hand the wash out there on the line? “I don’t see any socks or underpants,” he said, “when my wife puts clothes out, there are socks and underpants.” I wondered for a second if he was putting me on, if he had perhaps been reading the blog and was hoping to taunt or bait me, but UPS drivers generally don’t do that, I think the company frowns on it.
Well, I said, my wife is an artist, and she is often cleaning and washing her art, but I don’t think I’ve seen any socks on the clothesline, lately or ever. She doesn’t believe in that, I said, she doesn’t wear socks much or believe in them, and she doubts that anybody needs clean socks every single day. She puts some in the washer once in awhile, every now and then. Not this week, yet.
“Oh,” said the UPS man, “really? I need you to sign for this package, it’s from Apple.” He left rather quickly and I thought he cast me a pitying glance. Well, I mumbled to Red, this is creativity. It blooms all around and she’s probably right, I don’t need clean socks every single day. The UPS guy waved to me as he pulled out of the driveway, and I waved back. Socks on the line? Really?
My life changed somewhat today, another chapter in the long dance with fate and life, another reminder that life has its own plans for us, and our spiritual challenge is not to triumph, but to accept what we are given, to change gracefully and honestly. I met with Karen Bruce, the nurse practitioner who is overseeing my diabetes treatment at the Hoosick Falls Family Health Center, and she went over the blood and glucose diary I have been keeping this month – a book in and of itself, and I knew what she was going to say before she said it. “Hey Jon,” she said, “how do you feel about insulin?”
(I’m mentioning her on the blog in part because she said she couldn’t tell her husband she had met a famous author because of the Hippa Privacy Laws, so now he can read about it himself.) There are, I said, ways around anything. So there I was, I undressed and got an insulin lesson – how to load the needle/pen, how to measure it, set the dose, prepare the spot, inject it. It was close to painless, a tiny needle. I had a feeling this was coming, my medicine brought my numbers down quite a bit, but not far enough. I knew enough about diabetes to see that.
I know that at some point, the aging body needs some help with diabetes, no matter how intense the holistic treatment. Alternative medicine can cure diabetes, it works for many people, it didn’t work for me. So off to the pharmacy, more maneuvers around drug companies and insurance and government regulations. I switched from a local drug store chain – I think I’ll stop patronizing any drug store that sells cigarette’s at the counter – to my local small town pharmacy. Bridget the pharmacist said they close Sundays and most evenings but if I have an emergency I can always call her at home and come in and pick her up at her home, which is nearby, and she’ll come in to help. We talked a bit, discussed insurance options and I came home with bags and pamphlets and 100 needles (where the pharmaceutical money is), a month’s supply of insulin and some more pills. This is what I avoided for six or seven years, this is not where I thought I would be.
I was determined to stay out of this system, I was convinced I could, although there was a part of me that knew better.
I was and am committed to my holistic practitioner but Karen makes a lot of sense to me, she knew I would end up on insulin, she said but she wanted me to get comfortable with it myself. I appreciate that, I like her a lot and trust her a lot. There is much hysteria around diabetes, especially Diabetes 2, doctors and podiatrists and optometrists love to scare people to death about it -you’ll go blind, lose your legs, your head will roll around three times and fall off. The facts seem to be that if you pay attention, control it, consider lifestyle and diet, it can usually be controlled and you can live a very close to normal life for a very long time.
Everything else about me – blood pressure, heart – is good and strong. I am sure there will be a dozen messages on Facebook relaying the horror stories of uncles, brothers, fathers and aunts – people love to tell their struggle stories – and offering all kinds of unwanted advice – but I am good with it. I held this off for a long time, I will deal with this well and thoughtfully. I do not see diabetes as a struggle story, nor do I see my life that way. We all struggle, we all suffer, we all deal with loss and change.
And there is a lot worse news I might have gotten from Karen about my health, people hear worse things all the time, as many of you know. One of the biggest lessons I have learned in my particular wanderings, my healing, is that suffering is never a lonely thing. We all lose dogs, cats, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, even children. No one has a monopoly on challenge, I do not have the right to wave my struggles in front of other people, I tell myself every day that everyone in the world has it worse than I do, and that keeps me from trawling for pity or sympathy, or taking pity on myself.
I let Red out of the car – he was watching me from the window – we went for a short walk. I walked to collect myself before I called Maria, I wanted to get comfortable with this new reality, a diabetic on insulin, I always thought this was others, not me. Now it is a part of who I am, and in the interests of being authentic, it is a part of my story, it belongs on the blog. I am lucky, I thought. Lucky that I am dealing with it, accepting it, treating it. Lucky there are old and true medicines that can help me. Another chapter in the big and never-ending story. I called Maria, and she was upset. She wanted to talk to me about it. We will.
When I was done with the appointment, Karen said I was a good patient and I asked her if I could get a gold star, and she said no, but I could get a sticker. She gave me a Princess Sticker for being a good patient. I asked for a different one and she gave me a SpongeBob Square Pants Sticker instead. I put it up on my computer.
I came across this sweet scene over the weekend, Maria was sitting in the Adirondack chair and Flo spotted her and walked over and looked up and I knew she would end up in Maria’s lap, which she did. Flo loves her new life out of the woodshed, she is a lovebug, retired from her barn cat work. In fact, she rarely sets foot in the barn any longer.
I’ve come to see lately that my sense of well- being and security, my spiritual life, my meaningful life is like a well that runs deep in the center of me. And life, modern life, is constantly draining the well. If I get angry, restless, fearful or confused, then I have learned that I need to replenish the well, to step off the path and fill it up again. There are so many things that drain the well, and I suppose it is different for me.
One is the news, which I rarely watch. Another is the endless stream of messages, questions, notifications, likes that pour endlessly into my computer, my Ipad, my Iphone, all beeping and bonging and buzzing throughout the day. The alarms and alerts and confirmations that come from banks and credit card companies and businesses, all pretending to make my life easier when they continuously complicate it for their own convenience. You have made a payment, a payment is due, there is a flood alert, it is over, Jane likes your photo, Peter shared your post, Emily commented on your comment to George, Jon, did you like the packaging on your bag of biscuits? Every day there a few messages from the angry and the disturbed, from platoons of advice givers, the quick messages so easy to send on the Internet, so hard to think about. There are the alarms, payment alerts, shared and unwanted stories of tragedies, hateful politicians, endless arguments from the left and the right, rapes and murders and abductions, bombings and accidents, the people seeking to make connections that can’t really come to be, the endless stream of weather alerts, health warnings, safety concerns.
Lord, I pray for all the people struggling under this weight, how can they pause to find their center, to ground themselves, when the world is poured into our head every minute, and the boundaries of life have all vanished? Our personal space is violated every minute of every day, often with our compliance, sometimes not. We have no space. And I pray for me, with all of my tools, my therapists, my counselors, it is still hard for me, every day.
The world does not accept my choices, if I don’t want the news, they push it to me. It drains the well. It was once fairly simple to escape these things – turn off the radio, put the paper down, leave the TV off. It is not so easy now, I am sorry for the young, many have never known peace or peace of mind.
I am always working to fill the well up, because when the well drains, there is darkness, impatience, anger and fear, that’s how I know to stop and do a different kind of work, a spiritual work. Maria has a strong instinct about this, when she feels the need, she goes to massage, takes a yoga class, visits the donkeys, makes a beautiful quilt. She has an internal alarm about her well, although she has never called it that, and I am learning to listen to my alarm as well.
I think in worlds past, people replenished themselves spiritually on Sundays, when religion guided and comforted them rather than divided them, or perhaps at dances or visits to friends. But that isn’t enough for me, not in our world. I fill up the well in these ways:
– I become alone. I turn things off.
– I meditate.
– I walk the dogs.
– I find silence. So I can think.
– I visit the animals with Maria, or I sit down and talk with her.
– I listen to music, mostly Gregorian Chants, maybe Van Morrison, Kanye West.
– I go for a walk by myself.
– Sometimes, I do Tai Chi.
– I take my camera and look for a beautiful photo.
– I write on my blog, my voice, the expression of who I was, am and want to be.
– I go to lunch a friend, a healthy person, someone who is glad to see me, who is honest and open.
– I read a book, a novel mostly.
– I herd the sheep with Red, take them to pasture, sit with them while they graze.
– I write a poem. Light a candle. Sit in a chair and close my eyes.
– I go to the barn and kiss Simon on the nose. I talk to him. He listens to me,
his beautiful soulful eyes wide and brown.
– I express my gratitude for the many wonderful things in my life.
– I kiss my wife and hold her close to me, or walk with her hand in hand.
Every day, I think I need to fill the well, perhaps you do too. I know right away when it is empty.
Because then, I am the person I don’t want to be. When the well is full, I am never angry, never in panic, never
in lament about my life.
Every day I ask myself, “Is there water in the well? Do I have to fill it up again?”
I was visiting with Simon this morning, as I do each morning and I saw our shadows on the side of the barn, the sun coming up behind us. I liked this portrait of us together. A shadow portrait.
