Taking away the pain

You know how, when you're little and your stomach hurts or your throat itches or your head aches, your mom or dad will say, "Oh I wish I could have that instead of you"?

I never really understood that until A. My son was born and B. I saw my dad grimmacing in pain.

Dad has had way more than his share of ailments lately. A bad knee, congestive heart failure, a broken back. He has spent many more nights in hospitals and a rehab facility than he has his own home, in his own bed. Not a person previously known for his patience, Dad doesn't complain. Instead, he makes certain he knows the name of each medical professional (and there are a lot) who enters his room, and he thanks them when they leave.

When one of us pops our head into his room, his face lights up. He thanks us when we remember to bring him the newspaper. He appreciates every Schlotzsky's sandwich we bring him, every Starbucks drink, every milkshake -- even though he can hardly muster up an appetite for a bite, or for more than a tiny sip or two.


So when I went into the hospital room yesterday and his eyes hardly showed a glimmer, I knew he felt awful. When I called him last night from the car, he said as much: "Honey, I feel terrible." I had to hold my breath and keep quiet for a second so he wouldn't hear the sob that almost slipped out of my throat.

"Oh, Daddy," I said. "I wish I could have that pain instead of you, even just for a little while to give you a break."

"Aw, honey," he said. "It's going to be fine. The doctor said I'm healing; it's just going to hurt for awhile. I'm going to watch the World Series now, and besides, it's almost time for my pain pill."

I told him I had a morning interview, and that I'd stop by afterward. He said he was looking forward to something from Starbucks.

I got to the hospital around 9 today, just as my sisters and mom were arriving. I brought him oatmeal and a pumpkin latte. He had a few sips and ate more than half the oatmeal, something he hasn't felt like doing in weeks.

When the nurse came in, he turned around her name tag so he could read who she was. After the two orderlies straightened him up in bed, he asked them theirs, and thanked them too. 

I told him I needed to leave, and bent down to kiss the top of his head.

"Love you," he said, as he always does when he says goodbye.

"Love you too, Daddy," I said. I walked out the front door and into the October sunshine, happy for its warmth and beauty, but still fairy-tale wishing he could be there -- even for five minutes -- instead of me.

Getting lost in the moment

On any given weekend, the plaza in Santa Fe is bustling. Local artists come in from the pueblos, spreading blankets and setting up tables to display what they've crafted during the previous week.

Once a year, the Santa Fe Indian Festival overshadows this ritual. Artists from around the country work all year in hopes of being selected to display and to sell. They fill 600 booths in the plaza, as well as in blocks and blocks surrounding.

Their names are storybook sweet, as tantalizing as their talent: Daniel Sunshine, America Meredith, Aaron Brokeshoulder, Charlene Laughing. You whisper them to yourself, just to hear how the names sound aloud, how they feel on your tongue.

Wending through the streets and between booths, you find trios of women -- friends since forever, you can just tell, and wager they still refer to each other as "girls" -- wearing flowing skirts and broad-rimmed straw hats. 

You watch as couples call each other over to inspect potential purchases. You stand shoulder-to-shoulder with turquoise-and silver- bedecked women whose hair is the color of tow-headed toddlers, their skin the hue of a Coppertone bottle, their faces textured like the un-ironed blouses that hang in my closet.

Men with tanned legs and brown sandals, their white hair pulled into ponytails, inspect black pottery vases or stand in line for Navaho fried bread. Females in the crowd try on silver bracelets, gently waving their wrists to make sure they've chosen the right size.

Others ask artists for a mirror to see how the shape of the swirly silver earrings looks against their faces. Couples photograph each other standing by the smiling jewelry maker or weaver or potter who sold them the piece of art they'll always remember this trip by. 

The artists have come from Alaska, Utah, upstate New York. Some of the estimated 100,000 visitors walked a few blocks to get here; others flew from California or Florida or London as they do every year. Some, like us, happened into today because a few days earlier, a gallery owner mentioned in passing the spectacular nature of this weekend.

We began our wanderings together, the three of us moving from booth to booth. Then as one of us stopped to look at a piece that caught our eye, the others moseyed on. We'd catch up, reconvene, and the rotation would change.

At one point, though, I missed my turn. I was admiring a strand of serpentine, its discs the colors of the candy necklaces I'd wear around my neck and nibble when I was a little girl. I set it back on its velvet tray, and when I turned around, all I saw were strangers.

Getting lost can be a good thing. You can get lost in your passion, or lost in a person -- which sometimes (at least in that early, sharp-intake-of-breath stage) is one and the same. You can get lost in your thoughts, lost in your work. You can get lost in your pursuit of a goal attainable, or one forever beyond your grasp.  

Yet my thoughts weren't so dreamy when I looked around and felt swept up in this sea of strangers. Quite honestly, I felt a little bit -- oh, not frightened exactly, just uncomfortable, akin in a way to finding yourself alone on a mountain trail when you thought for certain your sisters were right behind (or in front of) you. Or being the last person waiting for your suitcase long after the plane has landed. 

I walked around the booths for a few minutes, pretending to be perfectly at ease. I struck up a conversation with two women who were amused at my funny-looking barefoot-running shoes. I called my best friend in Washington, D.C., and my sister Susan in Dallas, leaving voice-mail messages when they didn't answer.

I sent text messages to the friends I'd been with only moments before. Finally (though probably hardly any time had passed) I saw them. I felt a little stupid, but mostly I felt relieved. We walked around some more, picking up business cards from the artists whose work we liked.

The next day, we went back to the festival. We bought a few things we'd seen the morning before, and a few we hadn't. We shared a dish of chocolate ice cream as we walked around. I had a delightful time. When I thought about the previous day, I wondered (as you do in broad daylight after a terrifying dream in the dark of night) how I possibly could have felt so disjointed, so lost.

But I had felt that way. Though I'd prefer to think otherwise, I probably will again. Maybe next time, though, I'll take a deep breath and gather my gumption. I'll shake my wrist gently, getting a bit lost in how the silver bracelet catches the sun, and how cool and sweet it feels on my skin.

Being reminded

You don't really notice the able-bodied people at the park. They walk quickly or they jog; they play baseball or kick soccer balls or careen down the slide.

Like summer heat and wayward tennis balls, they're just kind of a given. A nice one yes; seeing others outside conjures up a bit of camaraderie, of unification, a we're-all-in-this-together feeling.

It's the other people, those for whom moving is a bit of a struggle, that you find yourself noticing, and you find yourself rooting for. I crossed paths with two this morning.

The first was a man I first noticed almost a year ago. Though he still uses metal polio-type crutches, he's now alone. He no longer relies on his wife by his side, nor on his teen-age son or daughter behind him, each ready to stop his fall if he stumbles, or if a rubber-tip crutch gets caught on the sidewalk.

When I saw him today, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved button-down shirt, I said hello, then left the park for my run. By the time I returned 20 minutes later, he'd progressed almost two-thirds of the way around, one boldly cautious step at a time.

A block closer to home, I saw another man making his way with a walker, his back so bent he had to raise his head to smile at me and say hello. But he did smile, and he did say hello, and he did keep going.

Yes, it is skin-searing hot today. Yes, I started my run too late, when the coveted early-morning shade was barely mottled shadows on the sidewalk. Yes, I ran a mile less than what I had planned.

But these men reminded me of what I forget all too often: I have two legs that work, and a stalwart heart that keeps a steady beat. I have a cap to ward the sun from my face, and sunscreen to keep my bare shoulders from burning. I have cold water in a bottle, and a towel to wipe the sweat from my face. I have energy to go, and (mostly) good sense to stop.

As I walked that last block, I glanced at the sidewalk and saw it dotted with green pecans. Tiny and inedible, maybe on another day I wouldn't have given them much thought. But today I saw them as something affirming: Hopeful precursors of autumn.

Flying high

The word "volley," I just learned, comes from the middle-French word volee, meaning "to fly."

This definition -- admittedly, a bit of a head-slap for the mother of a live-it-breathe-it volleyball player -- was refined, repeated and reiterated in Austin the first week of July. That's when my Charlie's team, High Intensity 16s, and hundreds more played their hearts out in this event. 

  

More than balls flew. So did bodies, scores, spirits. They were lifted and they were pummeled, raised and thrown, tossed and crushed and lifted again. Everything these teams -- from as far away as Hawaii and Canada -- had learned, practiced, strived and sweated buckets for came down to these days.

The jaw-droppingly defined calves of these kids, their arms powerful propellers, bore witness to a work ethic shared, one surpassed only by a hungry desire to be there.

In backpacks under team benches, I could almost see Charlie's plastic bottles, two filled with Gatorade and one with water; his energy bars and almonds; the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich he asked me every day of practice to make for him.

I could picture these players I didn't know by name, but knew just the same, gathering gear for a variation on High Intensity's practices: Two hours four days a week, four hours on Sundays. I saw them at thousands of kitchen tables, eating late after-practice dinners, telling their moms about the drills, collapsing on their couches in front of TV sets, a bag of ice held on a sore muscle, or on a scraped knee. 

By the time each practice rolled around, the previous day's difficulties were all but forgotten and the kids were ready to play again. By the time the boys arrived in Austin, nothing mattered but the games. The first ones began each day at 8 a.m.; the last, 12 hours later.

From Saturday through Tuesday, we family members yelled, we whistled, we did a modified wave. We watched our boys show grace in victory, dignity in defeat. We marveled at how the tide can turn, at the intricacies of momentum, and the beauty of having it on your side.

On the tournament's last day, during the third game of the set that would determine whether our team would go home or play again, one mom turned to me. "I get so worked up over this when I'm here," she said. "Then I get back home with everything else going on and I wonder how I could get so caught up it."

One look around the massive convention center, though, and we both knew. How could we not get caught up, seeing balls soar through the air like numbered spheres at a bingo night, hearing whistles of refs and spectators, smelling the passionate hunger to win?

In front of us, behind us, surrounding us were boys who had put in countless hours of practice to be in this exact place at this exact time. These kids, who for four days gave everything they had, were reaching even deeper inside themselves -- just for the privilege of playing one more match, one more game, one minute more. Of doing what they believed they were born to do: Fly. Higher than even their dreams dared them.

Springing to action

As soon as my neighbor opens his front door and walks out to his truck, he'll see my surprise: Flowers. Gerbera daisies, to be exact. A dozen of them, with more to come, planted in the bed that divides our respective driveways.

Longer ago than I care to admit, Alex gave me money to buy -- something! anything! to fill that sunny space. It's a perfectly nice strip of dirt that would look perfectly nicer with some sort of color. Meanwhile, he doctored the soil, did some digging, plus installed a sprinkler system down the middle of the bed. (He's a former engineer and can do that sort of thing).

Since then, we've met periodically meet as we've gotten out of our cars. I've renewed my promise to plant; he says no rush. A few days ago, he offered me more money.

"No no," I said. "I haven't even started to spend what you already gave me."

Alex put his wallet back in his pocket. "When you need some, you let me know."

On this oh-so-beautiful spring day, happily remembering where I had put his money, I pulled it out and went to Home Depot. I walked around and around the garden area and decided on the daisies. I didn't buy too many; I know from being slightly familiar with myself all these years that buying many more would not be a good idea. They would A. Overwhelm me and B. End up dying in their plastic cocoons instead of thriving in dirt.

I smiled as lugged the plants from my car, felt almost giddy while planting them. I put the pots in the recycle bag in the garage, then went back out front. I am sitting on the porch now, awaiting and excited about Alex's reaction to my promise fulfilled.


True, those dozen red and yellow daisies I planted take up barely one-eighth of the strip of dirt between Alex's and my driveway. But I'm still pretty tickled. After all, we do what we can to bring color, to bring beauty, to bring flowers into our lives. Sometimes it happens all at once, but more often, I suspect, it happens as it did for me today: One leaf, one petal, one satisfying scoop of dirt at a time.