It would be erroneous to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.
Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.
–Khaled Hosseini/The Kite Runner
By the time I post this, I’ll be going into my 3rd day without a voice. I assume that it’s very temporary, but I’ve got to say that it’s kind of weird. I move my mouth, but no words come out. I just pantomimed my way through a DHL delivery. I answered the phone, which was not the brightest move I’ve ever made. At least it’s not permanent.
Well. I guess i assume it isn’t permanent. It it is, I would have to deal with it, eh?
I’ve been Googling for medical advice and have stumbled upon several tales of people who lost their voices and never got them back. Very cheery. There are at least a few people who probably wouldn’t mind if that happened to me. Of course, they’re probably also wishing that I’d lose my writing fingers. I’m sorry to tell them that permanent voice loss is quite rare, so that odds are that at some point in the relatively near future I’ll be able to speak again. So, the estimated time to having a voice again is a few days to never.
In the mean time, I guess I will just have another Popsicle.
Or maybe I should escalate to ice cream.
As treatment, I just bought tickets to Cabo. That ought to perk me right up!
When I’m sick, there are a few things I always like to do right off the bat: whine, and complain.
When I’m tired of whining and complaining, which is (I think) fairly soon, I like to think of all the things that are good about being sick. No, really. I’m not kidding. Yes, sometimes I really am that much of a Pollyanna. I just wear a sarcastic bitch outer shell. Hush.
What could possibly be good about being home sick?
Well.
There’s being thankful that you didn’t get too sick to go to the football game, so you got to see your fabulous friends and family. And also being thankful that you will probably be well before the next game.
Being able to drink hot tea with all the honey you want without worrying about the caffeine keeping you up all night. You’ll be up coughing all night anyway, so who the fuck cares about the caffeine. Put some whiskey in that tea if the cough gets too bad. Oh shoot. I’m out of honey. Well, sugar works too.
Bonus about drinking hot tea: I love my red cast iron teapot with the dragon on it.
If you have a sore throat, you can eat a lot of popsicles.
Spending the day on the couch under a fuzzy blanket reading simple minded books or watching simple minded television because you’re all addled by cold medicine. Tomorrow I may read something really brainy like one of the Oz books. Or something Sookie Stackhouse-ish.
Plus you can wear pajamas all day if you want. No one cares what you wear when you’re sick. Yes, I do still put on black eyeliner.
When you have a bad cough, you can run the hot shower all day and tell people it’s for your lungs. That is partially true. Really, though, it’s just about the super hot showers.
When you are sick, you can enjoy the not-entirely-unpleasant feeling of being addled by cold medicine. Hey, sometimes finding the silver lining is kind of a stretch.
You can also get away with not keeping anything in the house clean. For one thing, you are sick. You can’t clean. For another, no one will come and visit because you are sick. That means, no one but the people who live with you will ever see it.
Being happy that I have a job that can live without me for a day or two if I have Black Lung and laryngitis. And health insurance in case I need to go to the doctor and beg for codeine.
Brief note regarding the quote from my Mom. Yes, she really said that. In her defense, no one in our house had been sleeping because I had my annual Very Bad Cough. The VBC would traditionally last for a few weeks. At the time, we were all in the car driving up to Gramma’s house for a holiday meal. Trapped in a car with me and my plague cough, she finally cracked. My cough should be patented as a weapon. It’s kind of like living with a tubercular seal with croup. It’s bad. Bad enough to keep the whole house awake. Bad enough that my Grampa would dope me up with tea and bourbon to knock me out for at least a few hours so everyone else could sleep. Bad enough that when I got sick once while staying at a B&B at the coast, I went down to breakfast to find the all of the other guests discussing how awful it was that someone had kept everyone on 2 floors awake with their incessant coughing. I don’t stay at B&Bs any more. Give me that anonymity of a hotel.
If you think I’m exaggerating, just ask my Mom and brother! There isn’t, as far as I can tell, a silver lining to my cough.
It just makes me wish I had a silver lining for my lungs.
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.
–Gilda Radner
If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.
–Leo Tolstoy/Anna Karenina
Perfect? Is there ever such a thing?
I believe that there are a lot of perfect things. There’s a catch, though–they’re ephemeral, and they sneak up on you. Maybe if they’re so temporary they aren’t truly perfect, or maybe they’re perfect precisely because they don’t last. I prefer to think that there are perfect moments. A lot of them. It’s hard to catch all of them.
What do I think is perfect?
Falling in love for the first time. The first warm Spring day. The way the sunlight looks when it streams through Fall leaves. Listening to a baby laughing. Getting into a freshly made bed when you’re exhausted. Drinking a really good cup of coffee while looking out at the ocean. Firelight reflecting off the face of someone you love. Having someone get your obscure book reference and not only laugh, but feed one back to you. When your co-workers tell you they completely failed to maintain your usual high standards of sarcasm while you were on vacation, but they tried because they missed you. Seeing a friend unexpectedly. First kisses. Cold water when you are really thirsty. The way it feels when someone brushes your hair out of their eyes because they want to see you better. The 2 seconds when all the laundry is washed and put away and there are no dirty clothes left. Laughing until your stomach hurts. Getting to the last page of a wonderful book and the ending is exactly right.
Things that are transcendent. Things that are beautiful. Things that are only fleeting moments. Part of our normal lives. All over the place. Every day.
Things that are perfect.
But you have to be looking. Not looking for perfection, but just being open to seeing it when it sneaks by.
