 |
| This is a bench in the Library Terrace Garden within the San Francisco Botanical Garden |
I've struggled with this acceptance for most of my adult life- to bloom where I was planted. I've never liked where I was "planted" but after awhile, like after 40 years, I've sort of accepted that I'll never live where I wanted to live. Now my sister is so sick that I cannot leave her. I know what I need to do, I need to go out there and start making a flower bed on the side of the house and putting in the plants I want over there for the butterflies and the birds.
Monday, I did an exercise at the gym where I had to lie back on a hard bench for weight lifters and lift some utterly puny weights over my head and to the side. By the time that was over, I couldn't get my back to obey ANY command to sit it up. It was exactly like those commands were not to my own back muscles. NO information was being exchanged, not even as to the location of the the torso. I couldn't get any feed back from my torso. The exact same thing happened after the bone scan. The bone scan itself went well, except for having to lie flat on my back and with my new knee twisted in, slightly. Then I couldn't sit back up without help. The back and the knee are still telling me about all of that today. Something is very weird.
However, nothing ever happens without a person learning from it, or being given an insight into problems others might be having along the same lines. I now have a pretty good idea of what my sister goes through when she tries to get her body to move when she is frozen; she may just be walking along, and, suddenly, she can not move. Dystonia makes her back arch and her legs stay frozen in place. She can not WILL them to move. I really understand now what she is talking about. She is seeing her doctor soon. I'm not seeing mine. What could I say? Sympathy symptoms for my sister? She has all my sympathy already.
I'm resting tomorrow and knitting and reading. The Laundry, you know all the stuff that piles up when days are hacked to bits.
Ahhh, what a deep post...and somehow absolutely speaks to me..maybe not physically, but figuratively. So much so that I need to email you privately. Loved the bench with the little flower coming through. I think you are right in the idea to build a flower bed..consenstrating on what is good in life no matter what.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts, PJ. I know many families who going through this, and it's hard.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I think a butterfly bush flower bed will be good therapy for me. Just laying out the pattern with stakes and a string for a starter, in the cool mornings or evenings, has to be beneficial. I'm going to put some sort of small water feature that's shaded too, as water is desperately needed in the hot months by the birds, but butterflies sometimes drink from one designed for them, too.
Something to look forward to is good for the heart.