Thursday, August 9, 2012

What's happening now?

I'm recovering from pneumonia. So I have these little bursts of energy during which I feel pretty regular followed by an all-consuming need to lie down and sleep.

E is on a camping trip, which means the adults of the house took the MAX to a grown-up date downtown - walk around, museum, walk around, nice meal, walk around, movie, snack in the park across from the movie theater and then ride the train home again. I was about to say that I'm pretty tired now, considering that's all I did today, but I also: packed a kid for a camping trip, dropped him off with great friends who are taking him camping, went to the grocery store not once but twice, picked up dogs from the kennel way out in the country, biked 3 or 4 miles, ran an errand to the rec center, took a two hour nap, drove to the MAX station and drove back again. So I guess that's kind of a lot.

But I'm not so tired that I don't notice an excellent companion dog when I see one - and there was one on the train on our way downtown. When the woman holding the dog sat down next to me, I asked her where she got him (Santa Rosa, of course). I told her we've looked into that, but the two weeks you have to go down there for training seems like kind of a big time commitment. Also, we have this ten year old, I said - are there kids there?

Oh, yes, she said, lots of kids. If my granddaughter lives to be 5, we might take her down to get one.

As I'm writing this, I have time to pause, to let these words sink in. But as she told them, she was totally matter of fact. If my granddaughter lives to be 5....

Turns out her granddaughter has SMA, the same thing Jeff has, only a more deadly kind. The dog woman repeated what I've heard before - that SMA people have a higher IQ than average. As evidence, she chuckled and told his story.

Once when she was two, my daughter carried her into the store, instead of getting her into a wheelchair, you know. And some lady in the store said "A big girl like that can walk - what are you doing carrying her around?" And my daughter said, "Well actually, she has this neurological condition, so she can't walk." And the lady looked at my granddaughter and said, "If you try real hard, I bet one day you'll be able to walk." And that little two year old looked at her and said "I'm not a walker. I'll never walk. And, lady, you are making me angry!"

After we all laughed a little (but I cried some too) we got off the train, and (after the walking around mentioned above) went to see Moonrise Kingdom, which I am going over to my profile after this to add to my faves list. As movies go, it was pretty much perfect as far as I can tell.

Now, I want to end with a neat little moral here created by the jumble of images of the story from the train of the dying little girl and story in the movie of the persistent, unusual young lovers. I want it to be something about how you can't wait to live your life, because it's not going to happen in the future sometime, but in fact is happening now. I was going to do that, but I'm going to go to sleep again instead. What's happening my life right now? I guess sleep is.

1 comment:

  1. yep, not being able to wait to live your life between the immensities of birth and death . . . even for some sleep, or a lot of it . . . is very good!

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