Sometime after midnight last night, my brain became stuck in this round of ukulele-centric thoughts. It was ukuklele, ukulele, ukulele for about two hours straight.
I am not sure what brought it on. It might be the Paliinode's talk of banjos lately that got me thinking about my own experience with stringed instruments, or maybe it was some masochistic drive to peer back in on the overarching suburban malaise that coloured my elementary school years. Whatever it was, I remembered that we took ukulele in grade four music class, and I secretly wanted one for my very own with a hardshell case and a guitar pick.
Every kid in elementary school learned to play the ukulele, which makes me think that I wasn't giving my drippy music teacher enough credit at the time. Anybody that can stand to listen to 32 nine-year-olds weakly strumming "Octopus's Garden" on 32 barely tuned ukuleles for months on end has found the good drugs.
We also played "Country Roads", "This Land Is Your Land", and "Delta Dawn", but we managed to devolve the lyrics of those songs into tasteless shadows of their former selves. Someone had picked up some dirty lyrics to "Delta Dawn" that only the most corrupted among us understood, but still we snickered while we sang the part about a porcelain penis with our heads ducked below our music stands. We all knew what penis meant, and that shit was high comedy.
Just as nearly anything can be, given the right twist, I figured that the ukulele could be cool. I actually really like them: they're nice and portable, they're not that expensive, and it could be another creative outlet for me. I have ways to get out my written, visual, and crafty creativities, but not my musical side, and the ukulele is quiet enough to keep the neighbours from registering complaints with the landlord.
Last night, after I'd mentioned the ukulele several times in a row in the tone of an infatuated 14-year-old, the Palinode asked me, "What would you do with a ukulele?" I said, "I would write haunting yet beautiful works."
Even though I am close to dead broke, am recently unemployed, and have to wrangle the trickling stream of income I once wrung out of my recently borked iBook — (Apple? Think sponsorship. Let's talk.) — I found myself cruising through eBay and found a couple of pretty dashing and cheap-as-borscht ukuleles to dream about.
Yep. I headed straight for the sparkles and the fancy paint job numbers, because when you dream, you should dream big, people.
My first musical composition, once I've crocheted my way into building up a ukulele fund, is going to be an ode to a cat what sticks his feet on his owner's eyelids at 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday and then completely ignores her when she opens her eyes. It will be called "Ode to a Bastard Cat, Son of a Homeless Whore".
I have been thinking lately about how our life was at this time in 2007. The Palinode had a severely herniated disk between his L4 and L5, was relying on Dilaudid just to roll out of bed in the morning, and stood bent at a right angle, his upper body perpendicular to the ground, when he walked. He leaned heavily on a cheap cane we picked up at a drug store.
Our bed was moved into the living room so that we could both walk a straight line to the bathroom and take in the summer sun through the bay window. I regularly joked that we lived like we were 85 but secretly found our state of affairs pathetic and unreasonable.
The memory that keeps coming back to me is of me standing in the kitchen and reaching for a glass in the cupboard. The Palinode was thirsty but too bent to be able to reach it for himself, despite their being kept on the first shelf. I stood there for several minutes, shielding my tears from his line of vision with a cupboard door.
I hated that he could not reach the cups. I hated that it hurt me to get one for him. I hated seeing the pained grimace that had become a more and more permanent fixture on his face. I hated that the visibility of his injury meant that it was the only thing anybody every talked to me about anymore when they weren't asking about my cancer. I wanted to be able to make the Palinode straight and strong again. I wanted to be able to take a crap without screaming for Jesus. I wanted to smooth the furrows from his brow and be able to hold him without making him wince. I wanted the first things I reached for in my bedside table not to be surgical tape and morphine derivatives.
I look at us now two years later, and I am amazed at how things have changed. I knew then that our respective conditions were not permanent and that we would once again live like the thirty-somethings we really were, but too often the small things overwhelmed me: the glasses of water, the prescriptions to fill, the boredom of long hours when I lacked the concentration to read but was unable to sleep. Part of me felt like we would hang in that tedious and agonizing stasis forever, that we had already been there forever. In my weaker moments, I believed we were marked for tragedy.
And now we are here. We are cancer free and standing tall. One year after we had been fixed up by several doctors and teams of nurses, I think we were still in recovery from those many months we lived as mock 85-year-olds, but now that we are reaching our series of two-year anniversaries marking our recoveries, I realize how lucky I am to have found such a person with which to live this life.
When life pretty much dragged us out back and took its brass knuckles to us, we took care of each other. We didn't fight when the strain of pain and loss lapped us around the apartment. We were as gentle as we could manage through all our concerns. I look back and think What if we'd lost one of us?, and I look in his eyes now and know how much of a gift we've been given to still be here together. There is a softness around his edges when he looks at me, a knowing about me, and I can only hope my own face lays bare the same.
Two years ago today, I lost my uterus to some cells gone wrong. Today, as the past telescopes away into infinity, I am finally able to see how free from disabilizing pain, how alive we are. I may have lost a major organ, but I am whole, and he may have a leg still recovering sensation with each new bit of nerve regrowth, but he is whole.
There should be a name for this, some word for the pairs of us that manage to come through the fire refined, because I am beginning to think that the legacy of those two years is no longer a roving sadness and an isolation of spirit. There has been a quiet refinement, the bittersweet gift of trials by fire, and we are whole.
I am terrified of highway driving no matter what kind of weather or what time of day, so I spent the entire four hours on the way to the lake with my eyes glued to the road. I have this strong suspicion that if I nod off or read or knit that the driver will suddenly lose all sense and careen off the road or a deer will hurl itself into the windshield or an oncoming car will jump the yellow line and make us one with its grillwork, as though the act of one Schmutzie looking will save lives.
Do you want to know something, though? No one has died under my watch except for approximately eight fish, two snails, a hamster, and a cat. People, though, thrive under my looking. My looking stops people from being dead. I AM NOT UNLIKE A GOD.
My looking managed to keep everyone safe until we arrived at the lake, which, strangely, had a massive, manicured lawn that stretched down to the water. That seemed very un-lake-like, but I went with it.
While other people with the magical ability to sleep took naps, I wandered around in the forest
and stuck my camera dangerously close to some waves.
And then there was the wedding!
We all gathered together on a hill at the base of which the bride and groom were married. I managed to snap a few good photos just before the ceremony, but I didn't get any good ones of the actual deed, because this stocky guy with a buzz cut kept jumping up in front of my camera. I would look through my viewfinder, start to press the button, and, POP!, there was the back of his head taking up a full third of my frame. I ended up scoring a few lovely shots of the back of Buzz Cut's head and the groom, the back of Buzz Cut's head and half the bride, and the back of Buzz Cut's head and the marriage commissioner's butt.
We spent the rest of the weekend drinking and laughing and being swarmed by the hungriest and most persistent mosqitoes I've seen in years. Ladies who wore dresses that weekend wound up with thighs that would make even an 1800's syphilitic whore shudder. After Bite became a hot commodity.
An interesting thing I always note when I'm in a forest is that I feel like I'm really breathing. The air is fresh and clear, and I am compelled to draw it deep into my lungs. In the city, I tend to breathe shallowly out of only the upper end of my lungs like I am stuck in a mild, ongoing panic attack.
All that breathing has a strange effect on my brain. I end up feeling every single emotion deep down in the depths of my being and have to take breaks in the woods to squeeze out a few tears. I waffled between extremes of feeling joy in my friendships to feeling absolutely sure that I was barely tolerated by all and sundry. The forest, she brings out the crazy.
There was enough laughter and fun, though, to keep me from racing off into the trees disguised as a bellowing sleeping bag.
This dishcloth bugged me for most of Saturday. It lay on this path ALL DAY LONG. The part of me that obsesses over inane details just could not let this one go. It stood out like a forest fire. Who's was it? Who dropped it? Why didn't they notice that they'd dropped it? Should I pick it up and take it to the hall?
See? The forest + Schmutzie = CRAZY. It's a good thing that we were only there for less than two full days.
Sunday was about drowning everything from a restaurant's buffet in gravy and relaxing in hammocks before we hit the highway for another round of Schmutzie's Looking Saves Everybody's Lives.
On the way home, I spotted this Bowler camper, which reminded me of a dream I used to have. I LOVE Bowler campers, and I had this dream of travelling across North America, living out of a Bowler, and writing about my experiences and the people I met along the way. In reality, I think I'd prefer substituting the Bowler with motel rooms and also documenting North America's motels along the way, because dragging a Bowler behind me on the highway would likely be crazy stress-inducing, plus I would have to deal with one of those camper toilets. Human waste is très gross.
2. Joy in the absurd when I stood at the top of a waterfall and yelled "Portuguese makes me angry!" (The Palinode is learning Portuguese right now and insists on speaking it to me sometimes without translation.)
3. Fireworks so bright that I could see the smoke dissipating against the sky
On the weekend, I sneaked out of the cabin while everyone was taking naps after spending the night in their cups. I pushed my way through some trees and tall grass until I found myself on a narrow strip of beach.
Small waves lapped the shore. I lay on my belly across some damp moss, watching the waves rush up the sand to my nose.
And then, WHAMO! At least that's the best onomatopoeic equivalent to what ran through my brain when a wave of unexpected size nearly doused my camera lens. Thankfully, it didn't.
Also, when you lie down on moss between tall grass and a lake, you will find beetles and other critters for hours afterwards crawling in your hair, out of your pockets, and stuck to your nipple underneath your bra.
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