My Body Politic

Climbing the stairs the other night, I had the distinct feeling that I'd somehow gotten a sliver in my cheek. Yeah, that cheek.  In fact, I can still feel the sting, three days later, as I'm typing this, although I've yet to find the culprit.

How, praytell, does a person get a sliver on her butt cheek while walking up the steps?  It's not as though I was crawling up them, blindly lurching towards the second level.  Not yet, at least.

And it's not like my jeans are made out of bamboo, although I understand they are making all kinds of things out of bamboo, whoever they are.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure my mom jeans are made out of rubber bands or some other kind of weird, denim-colored stretchy stuff.  I don't really like to think about it.

So, when I got to the bedroom, left bun a-stinging, I backed up to the closet mirror and took a gander.  I had no idea how tricky it is to get a decent glance at one's backside.   I'm just grateful Mark didn't walk into the room while I was hunched over, peering through my legs at my sobering reflection.

It's possible I cried myself to sleep that night--a snuffling, tiny cry, thank God.

Three months into my 56th year, I seem to be collecting these kinds of humiliating moments, each one hurling me closer to an eventual existential crisis, hilariously played out on an episode of "America's Funniest Home Videos."   And these moments all have one thing in common--my body.

More than once this week, midway through a coughing attack, I peed myself just a bit.

And just this morning, I caught a glimpse of my elbow, with deep, evenly spaced lines stretched across it, like some kind of latitudinal markings on a sea-farer's map, only more depressing.  I was stunned by the sight and wondered how many years it'd been since I'd last looked at my elbows and how long they'd had these horizontal crinkles on them.  And then I wondered how many of those years I'd spent in short sleeves, horrifying those around me who could not avert their eyes in time.

Most mornings now, I spend the last five minutes before heading to work in the bathroom with a flashlight, inspecting my chin hairs, tweezers frantically pruning my own secret garden.  And, with a cynical snort,  I find myself recalling how none of my teenaged brothers could ever grown much of a decent beard, although Steve and Jack did have pretty good mustaches once, and isn't it ironic that their baby sister may end up winning that particular race?

And I almost forgot to mention Mondays--nose-hair trimming day!

Truth be told, the real reason I'm going to retire in a year is because I love the East High library too much to watch it all go to crap, simply because my body has become some sort of State Fair sideshow act and people can't bring themselves to keep watching it.

It's the right thing to do.

Plus, at this rate of decline, I'm not sure I would be able to get to school on time.

Going Through a Prepositional Phase . . .

It's not like I think about the parts of speech all the time, even though I seem to find myself returning to certain nouns and verbs an awful lot.  But I am a nerd of the word, so it makes sense that, on occasion, I let loose my nerdy little brain and ponder the parts a bit.

What's odd is the part of speech I've been considering of late.  Nothing impressive like a proper noun, or scandalous like an irregular verb.  No, my mind has been on prepositions, without which I couldn't have written this sentence.

The tiniest slice of grammatical life, never one to draw attention to itself, the unpresuming preposition, nonetheless, kills in the soft-skills arena.  That's because a preposition is all about relationships.  Its sole job is to inform us of how things interact.  Or don't.  As my friend Julie Schonewise once told me when I was trying to figure out how the heck to teach them to my Freshman English class, it's prepositions that determine what we might do with that garbage can in the middle of the room.

Considering their relational importance, then, I'd argue that our choice of prepositions deserves as much forethought as the adjectives and adverbs we use, even if they are less fun to say.  And, to the observant bystander, we need to realize that the prepositions we choose can say quite a bit about who and what we are in this world.

Are you just passing through or do you plan on staying over for a bit?

If you see a stranger struggling, are you apt to walk by or walk to him?

Do you judge a book by its cover or by what you find between the covers?

Just adding a preposition to a sentence can change everything, as well.  Consider Finn and our daily outings.  When I walk Finn, I'm fulfilling a duty.  When I walk with Finn, though, I'm much more open to my surroundings.  That tiny preposition pre positions me to have a richer experience, to be more present.

Pre-positioning.  Maybe that's the way we should think about prepositions.  Where is it we want to be in the world--what part do we want to play with the people and things we encounter each day?  If we seek to know more of the world, then we should choose prepositions that allow us to interact with it more.  And if something seems particularly poisonous to us, we can use our prepositions to put some space between the two of us.

Small but mighty, it's the prepositions in our lives that often determine how rich those lives will be.

I Am Stuck on Bandaids, . . .

My school-desk drawer.

Back in my journalism days, you could easily determine my state of mind by how many bandaids were on my fingers.  During weeks when both Yearbook and Newspaper had deadlines, invariably, both thumbs were swaddled in beige Johnson & Johnson blankets.  I'm not a thumb sucker so much as I am a thumb fiddler, and deadlines equal stress equal fiddling.

But it's been 2 1/2 years since my last journalism deadline.  Surely, I've broken up with Bandaids by now.

. . . . .yeah, no.  

The past month, especially, has been hard on my thumbs, but I'm too ashamed to cover both at the same time anymore. Instead, I'm more likely to tuck one of the wounded into a pant pocket or behind a book and hope that no one notices.

Boy, would I love to be able to not notice some things right now.

But how does a public-school employee block out yet another school shooting followed by inane suggestions that, in addition to packing my lunch each day, I should also start packing a gun?  How do I ignore legislative bills that underfund public schools while pampering tiny, private ones, and legislators who propose to politicize school boards? And what is there to say about a dunderheaded governor who invites the NRA to convene in our state, just days after 17 people died from a gun in the hands of a broken, white boy?

I feel like Peter, Paul, AND Mary, but:  Where have all the sane people gone?  

Leave it to science and nature to soothe my savage soul. . . .

A faint radio signal reached the earth recently.  Turns out, a cosmic FM station was playing an oldie that all the scientists had been hungry to hear.  And by "oldie" I mean 13.6 billion years old. 

I don't even begin to claim to understand the idea that some things can be heard as a way of being seen, but, still, I am blown away that scientists have just heard the first whisperings of the very first stars.

Equally mind boggling is the realization that, after the Big Bang, it took millions and millions of years for those first stars to form.  There are times when I am certain that a million years have passed since Trump became president, but this latest astronomical news reminds me I am wrong.  And that I have no patience whatsoever.

If millions of years really did pass between the Big Bang and the formation of the first stars, the educator in me asks what there is to learn in this lesson.

I think the most important lesson is that, cosmologically, at least, this past year has been but a speck, if even that.  So I should be willing to hunker down, do the hard work of living, and trust that my work will pay off.  Eventually.

And still I wonder.  In the midst of all this large time, is it strange to say that I am comforted by my insignificance, relieved that my time is but a tiny wisp in the grand scheme of things?

Over and over and over again, I find my balance by turning to the larger world.  This time, though,  my healing comes from a salve that is much older than this very earth that I walk upon.  Its source lives in a whisper that waited millions of years to find its voice.

I say enough with the Bandaids.  Instead, I will hold my mucked-up hands skyward, trusting that, in time, the healing will come.