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Sparkle (0)
Today, my son, 19, returned home from classes at the University of New Orleans, bounded into my bedroom where I was working and said, "So, tomorrow, you'll be over the hill."
I said, "What do you mean? I'm already over the hill." And I laughed.
He said, "Mom, haven't you heard that 50 is the new 40? Everybody knows that the half-way point makes you over the hill."
I grinned, contemplating that in Vacherie, LA, they call my father's people, "The no-die Adams." My father is down the hall, and at 89 -- even after two hip replacement surgeries and having a rod in his left thigh to replace his broken femur -- he still gets on his exercise bike daily at 6:00 p.m.
I snort silently, recalling that my father may be pickled. He used to drink a lot and smoke. He does none of that now. I think of my mother -- all those vitamins she took and how much fruit she ate -- and that she went to the grave in 2008, at the age of 81, with Alzheimer's (ultimately dying from sepsis). I hope I have the genes to run faster than Death.
During the Grammys in January, I tweeted, "Somebody on Twitter just called #Fergie old. What does it say abt our society that someone thinks you're old at 35?"
When I wrote that on January 31, my birthday, February 10, was less than two weeks away. As I write this on February 9, I know that unless the Universe claims me tonight, I'll face down half a century with a twinkle in my eye.
About eight years ago, my skin was coming off in visible fluffs. Whenever I undressed, even simply pulling down pants in the bathroom, dead cells puffed away from my body like clouds of talcum powder. And my lifelong nemesis, Fat, suddenly seemed weary of me.
I was happy to lose weight, 90 pounds, but I hated that the pounds dropped for all the wrong reasons. My hair was falling out, my iron count dipped to the danger range of possibly needing a transfusion and doctors said I'd need a new kidney in 10 years. They said I'd had an episode of acute kidney failure that they could not explain.
With that news, I did two things. First, I panicked and fell into depression that manifested in all kinds of ways that my then-husband couldn't understand. All he seemed to understand was no one was doing his laundry and that he was 45 and unhappy. So, the second thing I did was file for divorce.
By no means did the kidney illness cause the divorce. No, it simply forced me to realize that I had spent the previous 20 years of my life doing nothing I'd ever dreamed I would do, and I was stuck in a life I didn't like. It was then that I turned in full fury to the Internet and began screaming at the world, "Look at me! Hear this ghost!"
And I wrote:
I’ve checked with medical professionals to see if I’m being overly dramatic when I say without a new kidney I will die. Their response, “No, you are not being dramatic.”
Something in a person flips when she knows she not only looks forward to a shorter life, but physical pain. She begins gathering herself unto herself and whatever and whomever will fall away, so be it. She sees life run beside her, the big and the small of it.
Again, I do not write these words to gain sympathies but to place in context how it is that I have come to post snippets of my life, what I call World Wide Wise: Me in Net Vignettes. My life already had the twists and turns of a cheesy movie, but when beset by one health challenge after another, I reflected on that life more intensely. And it did not settle down as the lives of some do when they understand they must rest and recover; it stood up and did the Watusi.
This method of autobiographical net postings (vignettes with links, blogs, poetry, etc.) is how I’ve chosen to frame my life. Most like to tell their lives’ tales in a straight line, on paper, in a flat book. The Internet has profoundly impacted my life, and so, it’s fitting that the Net should be the medium from which I tell my life’s tale. (Revived at WritingJunkie)
I wrote it and then hid
