“Right after I landed, I could feel the weight of my lips and tongue, and I had to change how I was talking. I hadn’t realized that I’d learned to talk with a weightless tongue.” –Astronaut Chris Hadfield
I haven’t written since January. I’ve spent my time, instead, on family missions. I’ve been sleeping in hotels and guest bedrooms, living for weeks in exactly two pairs of jeans, six t-shirts, one bra (I wasn’t thinking), bedroom slippers passing for shoes, and a big blue cardigan/invisibility cloak. I built makeshift nests in airports, nursing homes, hospital rooms; and feathered them with cell phone, laptop, kindle, extension cord, chargers, journal, kleenex, water, coffee, nonfat yogurt, pretzels with hummus, wint-o-green lifesavers, bubblegum. I came to know the most comfortable chairs, the quietest alcoves, the most convenient electrical outlets, the closest bathrooms. (I also learned to hold out between bathroom visits, because they entailed the complete disassembly of my nests, every time. Even as it was, five or six times every day I found myself rewinding my extension cord, re-stowing my cell phone, laptop, kindle, etc., into my Mary Poppins carpetbag and hauling it with me thither and yon. For otherwise, who knew? My whole life might get hauled away by mistake.)
I’m back now, pulled home again by love and gravity. Like Chris Hadfield (who was the first Canadian in outer space, I’ll have you know), I feel a sudden new weight in my lips and tongue. I hope you’ll forgive me, for a while, as I re-learn to talk.
As ever,
NJC
is this anything 
It’s good to hear from you, in any form, but I’m sorry this winter has forced you into such an unpleasant situation.
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Thanks so much, sweetie. Not “unpleasant,” though–very very rich and warm and poignant (all my favorite adjectives!). Spent three weeks in New York with my 91-year-old mom-in-law, so starkly beautiful in her dementia. (I love hanging out with senile people. Also little kids, dogs, the disabled and the dying. They’re interesting because they’re honest, you know? Not a trace of subterfuge left in [some of] them–I find that so luxurious.)
Then I spent four weeks in Colorado, helping out, hanging out, while my sister and brother (Lori and Jim) had kidney transplant surgeries (she gave him one of hers). I was supposed to be taking care of Lori afterwards–my sister Deb had already sent her the bicycle horn with which she was to rouse me from the guest room when she needed her daily breakfast-in-bed. It’s usually a harder recovery for the donor than for the recipient, and Lori was especially vulnerable because narcotic medications nauseate her so much that she’d much rather suffer the pain itself instead, sufficing with everyday tylenol, which she can tolerate. So, oh, how she suffered through those first post-op days. And how gracefully she endured it. What heroes I have in my family!
Then, after four days, L0ri felt good again, got released that Friday and went home with her husband. Meanwhile, Jim–who had been so very very cheerful and feeling great, right after the operation (tears come as I remember that afternoon, Jim’s hospital room overflowing with blissful, ephemeral relief)–Jim had to have emergency surgery the first night to remove a blood clot in the new kidney. And after that the question was, did the kidney survive, and later, ok, so it survived but will it ever “kick in”? Just one of their cliches–we went from “We’re not out of the woods yet” to “We are cautiously optimistic” to “Now we just need it to kick in.”
So they kept him in the hospital for three more weeks, during which he had two more surgeries to address internal bleeding (coz now they were overdosing him on blood thinners–in order, I guess, to make up for the ones they should have given him that first night, before he got the blood clot?). So I stuck around with him every day, sleeping at my brother Chris and his partner Marla’s house, but making sure to be at the hospital every morning by nine, when a clown-car’s worth of doctors made their daily rounds.
They released him, at last, but he’s not really out of the woods. The kidney still hasn’t kicked in the way it’s supposed to–though we’ve been assured, via charts and numbers and ultrasound pictures, that it IS working, that perhaps it only needs time to heal…
Meanwhile, I’m back in Butte again, at least for now, and editing the book–oh, how I missed writing, these past couple of months! And the process is going surprisingly well. (Naturally, this makes me very self-suspicious.)
Sorry for this longwinded note. I do this sort of rambling every day, you know, but usually in my diary, as a warmup to ‘writing-for-real.’ But today I felt like rambling to you. You’re the only “follower”–such a dreadful word; I much prefer “disciple”–of my blog whom I actually know personally. So far as I know, no other friend, nor anyone in my family, has ever read my little ‘compendium,’ or even known it exists. I simply don’t tell anyone about it. I think I must be waiting for the book to be “finished”–I don’t know. I’m not keen on self-advertisement.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re here, Gotcha, my dear friend. Thanks for caring about me. lovelovelove, Nancy
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“I love hanging out with senile people. Also little kids, dogs, the disabled and the dying. They’re interesting because they’re honest, you know?” The older I get, the more I remember that I will be a member of that last category sooner or later. Perhaps I should start practicing…
So glad to hear Lori and Jim made it through their ordeal, so sorry to hear the outcome is still uncertain.
Congratulations on finishing your edit! It’s been an honor to witness your book’s emergence, to participate in a tiny way… something like a long-distance doula.
And I’m so pleased to be the recipient of your ramble! I’ve held this window open for days, rereading it and basking in the warm, rambly glow of your kind words. I guess I was waiting for inspiration to strike so I could write a witty and clever response, but perhaps your post on writing technique spurred the realization that I’m going to have to knit my own wit out of thin air or else risk not responding at all, so here it is.
love^3 right back atcha, dear Uncanny! xoxo
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