Another Visit

A few days ago I visited my friend in Caldwell. The one I knew so well. We had our children together, you might say. We sang together and went places together. She was my daughter's piano teacher. But all that was years ago.

That day, Tuesday, we spent three hours together and talked. Mostly about her and her condition/situation. I don't know what to call it. She has no hesitation in talking about it, seems to want to talk about it.

She has dementia or maybe early Alzheimer's. They go together.

Actually, she seems pretty good. Still has a sense of humor, still looks good. And when I asked her to play the piano for me, she did it. That is good. She does not play the way she used to, but I don't know how much she has practiced. Not enough, she said.

I don't sing the way I used to. But I never practice.

Some Chopin, some Rachmaninof. That's what she has been practicing.

She played Chopin. I was very happy to hear it, even with the occasional--"oh I'm just going to skip that part"--a gap or two and one time just lost. That moment when she was lost followed immediately upon a section she was playing beautifully and it was clear that she was really lost in the music, which was wonderful to see and hear. Then she became aware and simply couldn't find her place on the page.

She made a couple of apologies. But I thought it was great, great that she can still play.

We walked around the block--she and her husband walk four miles every day--and around the yard and ate the peaches she had cut up for us. Home grown peaches.

Fruit trees and raspberries and strawberries and a wonderful garden. Her husband takes care of all that, she says. He takes good care of her, too, she says.

Yes, she repeats herself. So do I. So do a lot of people. She does it more, I suppose you'd say.

She can't always come up with someone's name. Neither can I. But the names she struggled with were names of family members, so it is worse, I guess is the word.

She has lost her self-confidence--she used to have a lot. But it is natural she is unsure because she knows what is happening to her. She says there are gaps in her memory. She'd like to fill them. And I see some anger, too. I believe I would be angry.

It has been three days since I was there, and I have thought I should write something about it, but that has been very hard to do.

Well, here it is. At least it's recorded, so to speak.

I have remembered something she wrote to me years ago. "You and I are friends, and friends are rare." We are still friends.

You Try It

This is something I have had fun with. And I include one of the several little things I wrote using words someone else gave me. It's called Bouts-Rimes. (Probably should be an accent on that e, but oh well.)

The words mean rhymed ends. It's a challenging game, really, and an exercise in writing something with an imposed poetic structure. Someone makes up the rhymed ending words for a fourteen line poem and gives the words to someone else to use in writing the poem. The original rhyme scheme was that of a Shakespearean Sonnet: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. That's the scheme I have always used.

You can create poems with meaning or nonsense poems using this form. The stranger the list of words, of course, the more challenging the game.

His Last Gift

These mountains she loved were no longer brown.

Cold, grey they stood in the day's fading light.

She was running away, away from his town,

careless of the approaching night.

If hearts truly break, hers was broken.

Tears froze in her eyes. Her lips, stone

like the cold hills, let no word be spoken,

but inside her brain, words were thrown

against walls she was building. "Lift

up your heart, my dear." His words. And under

the words, a smile of deceit--his last gift.

She drove toward the clouds, not hearing their thunder,

wondering why he had said that her kind

would never know love, except in her mind.

Today's stuff

Waste not, want not. You know the saying. Not always true, like today.
I wasted not. Used my going-sour milk to make bread. Good for me. In fact, good girl.

The want not part, it has failed, because I want my bread to taste good,but it doesn't. It seems to taste a lot like sour milk--duh--a taste I've never really liked, so why did I think it would be good in homemade bread?
I don't know.
Too soon old, too late smart. That one is true.

* * *

My neighbors across the street, the young couple, are having new windows installed. As we speak, so to speak. It's an old house, but they have painted it inside and out and are trying to make it look good and be a good home. It's working. I won't mention the lawn or the dandelions.

* * *

My other across-the-street neighbors are gone, maybe for a month. Took their travel van and left. They've been trying to do that for about four years. Dying relatives have stopped them.
Anyway, Jan said I should go over and pick her tomatoes, if I want. I do. They're cherry tomatoes. She also has some nice little roma tomatoes, which I like but not as much.

Jan also said I could water, if I want, while I'm back there. So Monday I did, not that I really wanted to but that it looked like the garden needed water, and I put the hose back the way it was. Today I saw that the hose had been left not the way it was, but I couldn't see that anything had been watered. So I watered again. And so I wonder . . .

Who else is going back there to pick my tomatoes?

* * *

And, oh yeah, as of Monday, my lawn, which had seen no mushrooms, now has two huge swaths of mushrooms, like Johnny Mushroomseed stopped by Sunday night and left his gift. I hate them. There must be at least 112 of them, and they grow bigger by the hour. I hate them. I said that.

Wiki-

How has this recipe today.

How to Bake Root Beer Float Cupcakes

But I'm not interested.

Finally

11.

Here goes.

12.

I am a shingles blister. I have blossomed on your lower lip, but then I don’t need to tell you, do I. In case you’re wondering, I have sisters. (Clever, huh. Blister sisters.) Some have come with me now; some will appear later.

Today I am red and only slightly raised above the surface of your skin. You feel an itchiness and a mild burning sensation where I am. Ha! Wait until tomorrow, the next day, and days on end. I will cause all flesh surrounding me to redden up and burn. Soon your entire lip will feel tingly, almost like numbness, but it will not be numb, believe me. You will have constant pain accompanied by recurrent twinges of pain, although the word twinges doesn’t do justice to the intense pain you will feel—like short electric shocks.

Eventually, I will swell and fill with fluid. Itchiness will increase. In fact, I will itch until you think you cannot live unless you can scratch me. But beware. Scratching will spread the virus, bring more of my sisters, and cause me to grow larger as well. Yes, scratching will prolong and deepen my hold on your skin. And if you scratch, you will scar. Do you hear me? SCAR.

You will not sleep well because of pain. You will not rest well when awake. You will cry for pain medication, for topical medication, for some relief. But nothing you use internally or externally will be anything but transitory.

You will count days and watch them turn into weeks. You will think to be well in a month, but you will be wrong. Four months will find you up and out, but you will not be well, and your affliction will show on your face. I am on your face, and I am powerful. Never forget that.

13.

Get the picture?

Still Shingles

10.

When I wrote these thirteen ways I was not through with the pain part. By now, I pretty much am, but I have to say the left side of my face is tenderer, more susceptible to aches and pains than the right side. Not that you should care, but for the sake of your education about shingles.

I’m trying to figure out how to describe the pain that attends shingles, so you can understand. Actually, what I’d really like is for you to feel the pain. Nothing malevolent there, of course; it’s all in the interest of your education.

Shingles, (Thirteen Ways cont'd. again)

9.

Untreated, and even sometimes treated, shingles do bad damage (not just damage, bad damage) to the nerves. Bell’s Palsy is one complication from shingles, and it causes paralysis, in some people temporarily and in others permanently. Spencer W. Kimball had Bell's Palsy so that one side of his face was paralyzed. Permanently. That’s bad nerve damage.

Many who have shingles suffer residual pain, which means it never quite goes away or that it recurs, also because of nerve damage.

Medical professionals, especially the ones who haven’t had shingles, explain quite glibly that shingles can last a month, three months, a year, but the pain can last several years or forever. Those are just words to them. But when you have shingles and there’s not much you can do about the pain and you think it might last forever, the words begin to sound like a death sentence.