Tuesday, July 1, 2014

I Really Don't Know What I'm Talking About Today But When Did I Ever?

Was taking my walk this morning, was in spitting distance of the Post Office where I always go in and check the mail before I walk that last block home, and ran into a neighbor. I hadn't seen him for quite a while and it turns out that he's been down at Shands, which is the nearest teaching hospital, for treatment for leukemia since December. And as these things go, he wanted (needed?) to tell me the whole story, the chemo, the stem cell transplants, the remarkable way his body has responded, his hair loss, the radiation he had back when he had his brain tumor.

I don't really know this man at all. I mean, I know him enough to say hey when I walk if he's out in his yard or on a walk of his own. I certainly had no idea he'd ever had a brain tumor. But what do you do? You stand there and you listen and you nod and murmur encouragements and so forth until he's finished his story because it is his story and he's seventy-one and he got to go to a family reunion in Louisiana a few weeks ago and he was so glad of that. He's lost not only his hair but seventy-five pounds but he doesn't want to buy new clothes because he's going to fatten up again (his words) and his hair is coming back.

Lloyd is a strange little village and somehow all of us who live here feel that we have a bond, even if we don't really know each other, even if we don't even like each other that much. Doesn't matter. Here we are, we are neighbors, whether we are teachers or mechanics or retired military or staunch Republican Baptists or old hippies or black or white or young or old.
We look out for each other in some way. We stop and listen to the stories and we all have stories.

I am glad of this.

And so it is Tuesday, the first day of July, my birthday month. I am going to take a shower and go to town and shop for groceries. We are out of orange juice and bananas and so it must be done. Yesterday I broke the last blender gasket we had and immediately ordered some online. No smoothies until those arrive and I hope they arrive quickly. It seems absolutely ridiculous to me that Bed, Bath and Beyond which sells every stupid made-in-China bullshit gimmicky product does not sell blender gaskets even though they sell the blenders.
There is a great deal of stuff I don't understand and that becomes more apparent each and every day but one thing I do understand is that I am lucky to be living where I live, where we stop and talk, where we can tell our stories and listen to the stories of others, where we are, in some small ways at least, watched out for.

All right. This made me laugh.





And for a completely different video but with some of the same themes, I offer you this.





I love it, love it, love it.

I hope you do too.


7 comments:

  1. The older ladies are amazing! I do love it! We need to see far more images normalizing the spectrum of women's bodies.

    I could hardly survive a day without smoothies, either. I just had my blueberry almond butter one. Mmm hmm.

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  2. Loved that older ladies video! I'm so glad the Boomers are teaching the world that older ladies haven't lost any hotness or value at all!

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  3. That eggplant looks so fresh. I love eggplant.

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  4. I love your new masthead photo -- it's so perfectly summer. I really enjoyed that video and wish I could just join in with those ladies and let it all hang out. I probably hate my own body self-loathing more than I hate the overweight part. Oy.

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  5. It's always slightly uncomfortable when someone you don't really know launches into an incredibly personal medical account. I've had it happen too. I think sometimes people just need to unburden themselves of all that trauma. You know?

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  6. Ms. Vesuvius- Aren't those ladies gorgeous? Damn, those blender gaskets better get here quick.

    Lunar Lass- Well, there is no substitute for youth and that's just biology but we older women are well-seasoned and can be quite tasty which may sound a bit indelicate but so what?

    A- I do too. Mr. Moon not so much.

    Elizabeth- I hear you. And why? Why are we like that? We are such enlightened beings!

    Steve Reed- That's exactly what it felt like. He needed to talk and as a fellow human being, I needed to let him.

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