Spoiled by Choice, A Love Letter

I am sitting at the table in the back yard. The morning sunshine is warm on my neck. I came out here for the sunshine. I came out here for the clarity. I am sick. I have been a little sick for nearly two weeks. I have been a little more sick for five days. The children have atypical or walking pneumonia, as conferred by the sticky-sounding mycoplasma pneumoniae. It knocked them each out of school for two days. Sonar X10 probably should have slept a third day. They need the weekend. 

I hear birds and the trilling buzz of what I assume are bugs in the grass. I haven’t seen any frogs recently, but there could be frogs out there, I suppose. I hear cars, a few streets away. I think my neighbor is in her back yard too.

I should go to the doctor. I have a low fever. Again. I am fatigued. Partner is worried. He will be disappointed (but probably not surprised) if I don’t go. The only thing the doctor can provide that I am not already doing is antibiotics. I’m not sure I can even be seen today. I may have worried away the opportunity to be seen before Monday. 

I know that I have the stupid pneumonia too.

It is so perfect out here today. A barely stirring breeze counters the almost, but not quite too hot warmth of the sun on my arm. The grapefruits are hanging from the tree in front of me, yellow and dusky with a kiss of pink on some of their shoulders. 

I sit here and believe that this sunshine, this air, that juice inside the thick-to-bursting peel will heal me. Will put the kabash (a new favorite word of the Sonars since I taught it to them the other day) on the mycoplasma pneumoniae that has set up shop in my lungs, its formlessness both exposing it and protecting it from the attack of my body. 

My scientific brain tells me that I need the antibiotics. That I will heal faster, protect my body and my family, and return to strength sooner with them. That they are worth the wait in the dour, germy office (and the copayment and the pharmacy fee).

A stubborn irrationality has taken hold of me. A fierce rejection of what I should do, in spite of myself. 

It feels good to put words on paper. I know that they are flowing out, crowding the page with their insistence. I must live in Paradise. Where I have this luxury, to sit in the warming sun and the balmy breeze, and to choose willfully to reject the antibiotics that others seek with desperation in order to save lives. My life is certainly not at stake today in my stupid, irrational rejection of the trip to the doctor’s office. Will I ever stop being that spoiled brat?

There is a bee searching the grapefruit tree for blossoms that won’t be there for a few months yet. Not until after we pick those hundreds of juicy fruits. There is a ladybug crawling up a leaf. A fly is flitting over the table in front of me, wondering, perhaps, if I have any crumbs to drop.

The timer. Fifteen minutes of sunshine to make sure I am getting my vitamin D. But I think I will sit here a bit longer. The breeze and the bees have shaken the bushes beside me so that I can smell basil. 

The avocado tree has not grown taller for at least two years. But the pomegranate tree that nearly blew down in a summer storm, its roots tipped out of the swampy mud, is reaching up taller, stretching itself up into the seamless blue sky, straining against the ropes we used to tether it back into the ground. 

Mosquitos. In December. Can you believe it? How did I come to this garden with the buzzing chorus and the basil breeze, and the whiff of truck exhaust? What did I do to deserve this time in the sun, where I can reach down and rub my fingers along a chive so the oniony tang sticks to my fingers while I listen to the delivery guys curse the neighbor’s cargo and a mower cut the green December grass?

If I sit very still, I do not notice the tremulousness in my muscles. The fatigue in my body. I do notice the tightening of my lungs as the gas-powered trimmer chugs by on the other side of the back fence, leaving puffs of exhaust and fragments of grass and weeds to float by on my herby breeze. 

Please don’t wrinkle your brow and shake your head at me because I am happier here, on this bench that you built, next to these herbs that you planted, soaking up the medicine of our lives. 

Comments

[Patrick]

Nanowrimo is good for you, Dani. These words are beautiful and eloquent. The sun is also good for you, and if you were able to get any Hatch green chile that would totally fix you all up. I am a big fan of the saying that it is a doctor's job to entertain the patient while the body heals itself.

Hope you all feel better soon!

Lots of love and healing energy from LA.

[Cass]

Hope you all feel better soon, Dani. I echo Patrick's suggestions of spicy food, although my weapons of choice would be Thai curry chicken or wasabi on rice. Love your words, my dear! But don't mess around too long with the bug before seeking attn. so--as my dad used to scare me with--you don't have to go to the hospital and get stuck with needles. ;) xxoo

[Eglentyne]

Fie on your needle threats! I am armed with a citrus! You're both making me hungry. xo