Patching The Jalopy

Ep 28 Feminist Writer Peggy Orenstein One Year Podcast Anniversary!

Patching The Jalopy

As I pull up to the starting line for my next lap around the sun, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we’re supposed to start each day feeling gratitude. You know, not take the little things for granted.

That has gotten much easier as I’ve gotten older; not because I’ve attained some deep inner peace, but because literally every one of my body parts has stopped working properly for some period of time in the past five years.

For instance, I wake up most mornings and think with delight, I CAN SEE! Not in an enlightened, I have a vision for myself today and I’m gonna journal it kind of way, but because last summer I had persistent and severe dry eye, which manifested in such red eyes that I was barely able to read road signs, let alone books or computer screens. You don’t even want to know how much driving I did by squint in 2017, friends.

As the ministrations of an ophthalmologist and a Chinese herbalist and what I’m pretty sure was a placebo “eye wash” treatment slowly took hold, I found a way to keep my perspective. I realized that most days I either could see, but was a horror to look at what with the red eye. Or the red eye would abate, but everything in my vision was fuzzy again. The trick was to figure out which kind of day I was having, and embrace it. One day was, Yeah, you’re shuddering when you see how red my eyes are, but at least I can see you do it! And the next, I can’t read the menu, but at least none of my dining partners will ask if I’ve been crying all afternoon.

The eye problems finally abated over the winter, which was when my lower back started hurting. Was it from too much time at my desk? Not enough stretching? Did I need new shoes? (Do I ever not?) I consulted with my friend Dawn the physical therapist, the one who, centimeter by painful centimeter, stretched my Frozen Shoulder back to life four years ago. Never has the ability to fasten your own bra seemed as valuable as the day you realize you can’t.

As she’d done with the shoulder, Dawn came through with the back stretches, and once again I can sit my office chair for long stretches to work. So that’s when my stomach decided to hog the spotlight, through a sequence of cramps and gurgling that sounds like a really bangin’ DJ loop, but in Hell. I didn’t even go to the doctor’s office – with my mom moving into Assisted Living this month, I know a stress stomachache when I meet one. Not much to do but pop Tums and think with wistfulness of those days of yesteryear when I had a quiet stomach and didn’t have to cough loudly and flagrantly to cover my stomach shame in every public setting in which I find myself.

So as this birthday approaches, I marvel at how when my body worked flawlessly, I never gave it a second thought. But here I am ready to throw a tickertape parade for what is, to crib a phrase from my mother-in-law, a patched jalopy.

From the bottom of the feet where plantar fasciitis once required a regimen of frozen ice bottle rolling and Dansko clogs, to the knee that gets wonky if I don’t bend it at exactly the right angle, to the fingers that sometimes get dermatitis from wearing rings, to the formerly frozen shoulder, and right on up to the eyes with which I can see to type this, I feel grateful that everything, right now, is mostly working like it’s supposed to.

At least until the the smoke from the copious birthday candles sets off an asthma attack.

Happy Birthday to me…Lord Huron released their latest album, Vide Noir, during my birthday month. Can’t wait to see them in June!