Perspective
Last week, Son and I bought a box of chocolates for a girl in his music class whose mother was very sick. I dropped him off at music school and he had the box of chocolates, a little note he’d written, and roses he’d picked. He put it all in a plastic bag because he didn’t want to embarrass her, or himself. He was going to wait for a private moment (not easy at a music school).
But she wasn’t there that day because her mother had died. When I found out, I wept for this daughter and mother who I don’t know, and my sorrow seemed somehow presumptuous.
The roses went into the rubbish and the chocolates into the refrigerator.
I just dropped Son off at music school so he can accompany the rest of the class to the funeral this morning.
Perspective.
What happened to my roll?
If it were my stomach roll, this would all be fine.
If it were my ham and salad roll that Son stole from me after I stole it from him, this would all be fine.
It’s my blogroll! I spent hours copy/pasting urls to this and somehow, yesterday, when I tried to link the love story blog to this blog, everyone just rolled away.
Very sorry – I will begin again – grrrr!
Olala!
Ola is the little gosling turning the ‘wrong’ way in the picture below – ha! If you have seen previous posts, you will know that Godfrey, our godfather gander has been trying, for nearly a year now, to whip these babies into shape. Ola not only defies him, she ignores him!
See! This Ola and her sister Seli (both pseudonymed afer Mandy’s first borns).
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Cramps
I have, from time to time over the years, had leg cramps during the night and I must have inherited this from my grandmother because I remember that, when we all went to the beach, she wouldn’t go into deep water in case she got a cramp. If your legs cramp while you are swimming in deep water, you can easily drown.
If you have never had a leg cramp in the night, you are lucky, but, if you have, you will know that, in order to alleviate the pain, you have to jump out of bed and walk around until it goes away. You take some magnesium, or a bit of salt, and you are okay.
One of Anthony’s medications has a cramp side-effect. He told me the other day, with a bit of a chuckle, because he remembered my leaping out of bed to walk/run the cramp away. It used to make us both laugh because my antics were rather slapstick.
I still get the leg cramps at night and now, so does Anthony. But the difference is that he cannot leap out of his bed and I wonder how many other elderly people in nursing homes across the world, and over time, have experienced the excruciating pain of leg cramps and had to suffer silently.
Luckily, my loud, vociferous Anthony has begun to ring the bell for the nurses. A lot! Good on him.
Pleasure versus pain
How interesting! I just sussed out the recent statistics for this blog (something I don’t usually do – really!) and found that pain is much more popular than pleasure. I don’t have these two pps as categories in this blog, but it is obvious that more people want to read about sad stuff than happy stuff.
Why?
I do understand this because, when I was teaching Creative Writing at the local university, I used to talk to the students about this writing conundrum (this was before my husband got so sick), and this is what they came up with at the time:
- when you read about other shit, yours doesn’t seem so bad;
- happy stories are dead boring;
- yes, but tragedy always has comedy too;
- why can’t I just gutspill onto the page?
- because Julie said you need to restrain yourself a bit more
- what a load of crap!
- one painful sentence is worth it
- fuck pleasure – let”s do this!
I miss those students and their wisdoms.
And I would like to know why pain is so pleasurable – over to you…..
Why?
Photo courtesy of Shaam Burley
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