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Broken Canes, Mary Poppins and Peter Pan

Posted on by tresswann

Last Monday morning I started off to work.  It was the first time I think in weeks that I was going to work and in a skirt.  No clunky snow shoes.  I had on my regular granny nanny tie shoes.  I was feeling positive.  As I got on the escalator the handle of my cane felt weird.  Hmmm,  I didn’t realize it was jointed.  I use collapsible canes.  And until the last few months didn’t break it out until I was in the last leg of the way home at Penn, then tucked it away on the train so when I stepped out it was safe in my back pack.  That being said I also go with pretty.  Not for me those orthopedic metal looking horrors.   In fact, we argued with my Dad when he started using one for whatever reason, we got him an Irish walking stick.  My first one was black with multi colored butterfly.  This one was dark purple with flowers.    I get to the top of the escalator, stop to adjust backpack and the handle split apart and flew off.    Two men who are on my train picked up the pieces and handed them to me.  OK so I am missing the handle but I still have the stick part, just about the same height, no problem, right?  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  It devastated me to realize that I couldn’t walk in empty space without it.  When did this happen?  I stumbled and staggered to the bus.  Then I had to walk the block to the office.  I held onto a marble barrier.  Didn’t see my friend who sometimes crosses with me.  There is a security guard who watches out for me and he was coming into work and helped me up the steps and into the building.  The building is a city block so I had to prop myself up another 3/4 block to get to my floor and then walk half a block to my desk.  I was shattered.  Being nervous made it so much worse.  During the day at work I don’t use the cane unless I go to another floor.

I recovered a bit and came up with Plan B.  I did realize as soon as it broke that there was no way that I could walk and do my subway usual without it and was going to take a cab.  My stagger into work when I wasn’t fatigued, was horrible.  So I initially thought cab, not happening!

One of my friends volunteered to go down to Duane Reade and get me another cane.  No,  I have a pretty spring one at home. My friend, the receptionist, usually has a golf umbrella.  My thought, it’s the right height with a handle.  My other friend goes to get it.  I call husband who says are you crazy?  I’ll come in with spare cane.

He calls and tells the kids that he pictures me with the umbrella being lifted up and sailing over Grand Central, like Mary Poppins.  Kids haven’t stopped giggling.  And sometimes, he makes me feel like I am being dragged by Mary Poppins when he tries to make me walk faster and longer.  I am skimming above the sidewalk.

And me, I miss being Peter Pan.  Didn’t ya think you could fly like Peter when you were younger?  I did.  I can see and feel it in my mind.  And I want to be Peter again.  I want to be free and soar outside of my body again.  I will figure this out!

Mortality and Other Lovers

Posted on by tresswann

It’s the time and the season I guess.  I used to do leathergoods.  So, I needed to change my wallet and went into my stash and found a cute one.  Over  20 years ago, I had done a line with two guys I was friendly with in Spain.  I had worked with them in my travels.

And yesterday, my mind just couldn’t stay focused on anything for long and I looked at the wallet, smacked my head and said d’uh let me look A up on the Internet.  We had had an affair for some years, before my first marriage and maybe during.  I can’t attest to during but I certainly saw him either just before or just after I was married.  And my policy is to remain friends with everyone and we had for a bit.  Problem A spoke no English except for  ‘allo and “maybe”.  My spoken Spanish is hilarious or silly depending on your view and my written Spanish requires intensive care.  I used to read it really well.  I have the most beautiful  love letters, promising me the sun, the moon and the stars.

Well, he came right up on the Internet and my reading skills have deteriorated a bit through lack of use but I recognized posthumous and memorial.  Ouch, ouch, ouch.  He died this past July.

It’s funny how you know someone and don’t know someone.  He wanted to leave his wife and marry me.    He was a very successful businessman.  I thought about it.  He was a lovely man.  Sort of looked like Michael York.  He had a friend and partner who was married two or three times and the last wife had a terrible time in the village they lived in.  I turned him down, told him he couldn’t afford me.  Village life would  not have worked for me and I would have been shunned.  Madrid is not my favorite European city.  I would have needed Paris on a regular basis and home!

He would call occasionally.  Words are better in person.  I have the most beautiful, beautiful letters.

One day I was listening on the radio to George Thorogood “One Whiskey, One Scotch and One Beer”.  I knew for sure I could never do it.  I felt too American.  There was a part of me he would never be able to understand.

I married someone else (first husband).  No more love letters but he helped me start a business selling his leathergoods. I failed.  No recriminations.  It was a bad period in my life.

And now to find out he too is gone.  Not that much older than me.  The Internet says he was a much bigger deal than I thought or knew.  Goes back to Joebe – what do we really know about each other, even when we are close

Green Smoothies, Montel and Me

Posted on by tresswann

So in my  journey to find out more and redesign a life and a way of eating, of course, there’s Montel Williams.  He has “it”.  When I was first diagnosed someone told me well check out Montel’s stuff as he has it. I looked.  I wasn’t that bad and I couldn’t relate.  I will tell you that right away when  I saw that he exercises an hour a day I couldn’t do it.  I wake up around 4 a.m. as it is.  It was interesting and all that but not for me. But now, I am revisiting “stuff”.  I downloaded a sample of his book to my Kindle.  Oh, this time I relate.  He writes about getting out of bed and holding onto walls.  I take the book out of the library so I could find out more about the green smoothies  and last night Tom asks me  about it and I start to read some of it to him.  And I start to weep.  I almost never, ever cry over this.  It is what it is.  But I am reading aloud how Montel consciously has to say, lift right foot, lift left foot.  Me, too!  My husband says he hears me say that too when he is helping me way