A change in the weather - and me

 

   It’s raining today.  It rained hard last night, and it rained pretty much all weekend. 

   I say good and that it’s about time.  I hope it keeps raining.  I hope we have another year like last year, when it rained an unusual amount, an extraordinary amount here in Southern California. 

   It feels really odd to be saying this. 

   For most of my life, I had mixed feelings at best about rain.  I knew that we needed the rain, and I enjoyed the cooler weather that usually came with rain, but it is very inconvenient to be out in the rain in a wheelchair.  For years, I would have a big rain poncho draped over me and my wheelchair and thought nothing of zipping all over town in my wheelchair in the rain come Hell or sometimes high water (but not too high, as I learned when water got into the motors and I got stuck a few times). I sometimes looked like a big tomato cruising along.  Or perhaps I was like the guy I saw one very rainy New Year’s Day as I was leaving Santa Cruz who was standing along the road in a nice bright poncho and no shoes.  (I once did something like this when I was in my teens or twenties and ended up with a lousy cold.  Maybe the Santa Cruz dude learned a similar lesson or – sadly more likely – maybe he needed help and hopefully got it).

   After a long while, when I was in my fifties, I got tired of going out like a madman in the rain, and the rain became even more of a bother.  Now it meant I couldn’t go out on my own, without getting a ride in my van, and I hated it.  I literally cursed it. 

   Even when I was okay with good out in the rain in my chair, I preferred it when it wasn’t raining and I didn’t have to deal with a big, bulky, wet poncho, steamy glasses, etc. Rain was a pain.  I guess this was a primary reason I felt lucky to live in SoCal. 

   But things changed – Boy! Did they! – after I had spinal surgery almost seven years ago.  It is now harder for me to get out.  It takes more work and energy and is often a chore, even when I want to.  So now, it’s nice when there’s an excuse, like the rain, and I don’t feel bad or angry about not going out, like I’m missing out (unless I have to and go in my van). Who knew I would one day be grateful for the rain for making it okay to be lazy!

Happy New You Year - and Merry Christmas!

 

   Happy New Year! 

   Yes, it is a new year.  A new year has begun.  So, Happy New Year! 

   But, also, Merry Christmas!  Because Christmas isn’t over. 

   Yes, that’s right.  Christmas isn’t over. 

   In England and Mexico and most other countries, Christmas only starts on Christmas.  Remember the 12 Days of Christmas.  Remember Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.  Christmas Day is actually the first day of Christmas.  Christmas actually goes on until Twelfth Night – January 6 – Epiphany, Three Kings Day in Mexico, when the three magi are said to arrive at the manger with their gifts for the baby Jesus.  In some countries, like Italy, gifts aren’t exchanged until January 6.

   It’s really unfortunate that, here in the U.S, January 6 is now associated with a very different, upsetting event. 

   That’s not the only unfortunate thing about Christmas in America. Here, as soon as Christmas Day is over, on the 26^th, all or many of the lights and the trees and the decorations start to be taken down, no more Christmas music is heard, there are no more Christmas specials on T.V.  It’s right back to business as usual.  When I was growing up, it was unusual that my family kept the tree up until New Year’s Day or just after (but no later).     

   Another childhood memory: when we were once watching the Rose Parade on T.V on New Year’s Day, and one of the marching bands was playing a Christmas song, I asked my mom why they were playing that song now that Christmas was over, and she reminded me that Christmas wasn’t over.  After all, we were still singing carols at mass, and people there were still saying, “Merry Christmas” which I also found curious for some years (yes, I was brought up Catholic).    

   And when we lived in London for a year, there were no Christmas specials on T.V until Christmas Eve, and then they were on until New Year’s Day (here, there are loads of specials aired before Christmas and then none or hardly any after Christmas). There was also no newspaper for three days, including Boxing Day, which drove my dad nuts – but that’s another story. 

   Anyway, I do find it unfortunate that we Americans are so eager to be done with Christmas, to pack it in.  It makes me sad and also a little nuts. 

   I get it that some people, maybe many people, are sick of all the buying and wrapping, all the clutter and busy-ness, the endless carols and old Christmas songs playing over and over everywhere.  Yes, take down the Santas and the snowmen. 

   But what about the lights, the lights the shine out and make the cold nights a bit less dark and perhaps a bit warmer, reminding us of the comfort and joy, the peace and goodwill that Christmastime is all about, supposedly?  Are we really tired of the colorful lights that brighten the dark and cheer us up in this bleak, dreary season?  Why does everyone rush to take them down, pack them away?

   Perhaps, after everyone has gone on a spending spree on gifts and feasts, the lights along with all the decorations and the all the songs playing aren’t useful anymore.  Perhaps, here, in this country where everything ends up being geared toward money and, most importantly, the spending of money, the songs and the decorations and the lights and the T.V specials aren’t needed anymore. 

   Unfortunate, sad, crazy-making indeed. A balm that I have come up with is, after taking my Christmas tree out, hanging a string of colored lights above the alcove framing the bay windows in my living room.  The lights are especially nice to have on during grey and/or wet days, and I leave them up until daylight saving time or shortly thereafter, depending on the weather.    

·         *  *

   Perhaps one reason why I don’t want Christmas to end, or the lights to go down this year in particular – and why I haven’t posted in so long - is that the last two and a half months have been a hell of sorts.  In my last blog back at least that long ago, I wrote about getting a pressure sore on my bottom and that I hoped it wouldn’t get that bad. 

   Well, it turned out I was hoping for too much. The sore got to be pretty bad – not nearly as bad as the massive one I got after my spinal surgery almost seven years ago, but it got bad enough, deep enough for the doctor to sternly tell me to lay down as much as possible, if not all the time. (When a doctor is stern, you know it’s serious, and you listen and obey.)

   So, that’s essentially what I’ve been doing since mid-October – laying down, except for meals, doctor’s appointments and a few events (like seeing Anita Hill speak at Pomona College). I won’t lie: it has been devastating. It has been super hard, Hell, like I said.  Not only has it taken me back to the year after my spinal surgery, when I was bed-ridden, making me all the more aware of being disabled.  It came during my favorite time of year, with the cooling weather, the unique light that comes in October and November and all the Fall colors. On top of this, I watched concert after concert, presentation after presentation go by and having to miss them. I feel like I’ve been robbed. All this has been devastating, like I said. At least I’ve been at home and not in a nursing home, like I feared and like the doctor seemed to threaten when he was stern and said that “more drastic measures” would have to be taken if I didn’t stay off my bottom. 

   The sore is much better now – the doctor is happy – but it’s still there.  I’m getting up more, for concerts, shopping, Quaker meeting, doing a bit of writing (like this, a little at a time), but I’m still lying down for a good part of the day.  This is still a pain, in both ways.  Pressure sores can take a long time to heal, sometimes plateauing at one stage, but I’ve been making good progress and hope to be back to business as usual, including posting more here before too long. Getting up more now may well be delaying the healing, but, as long as I don’t regress, I think this is vital for my sanity and to keep me from being completely in the dumps. 

   Is it any wonder that, this time in particular, I want Christmas, or at least its lights and hope, to go on for a bit longer. 

   What’s more, I’ve ended up with not having internet since early last week. To my surprise, and some horror, as one who didn’t venture onto the internet for years (for fear it would take over my life, as I heard and read reports of) and who continued to pay bills with checks and use snail-mail for years, etc, I have come to use and rely on the internet for a whole range of things.  Not only do I use it for e-mail, paying bills and the like, I rely on it to listen to the radio, read the Los Angeles Times and watch television (I no longer pay for a T.V service - I’ve come to really like watching what I want when I want to watch it and to watch it without commercials!). So, other than getting up to write this in spurts and watching a few shows one of my attendants knew how to download onto my tablet using his phone and recently using the slow and spotty hotspots on my attendants’ phone, I was lying down with no radio to listen to and no television to watch.

   Talk about disabling!  Talk about devastating!