Tag Archives for Travel

InkTober 2017: Day 4 – Underwater

I’m not the strongest swimmer. But I love swimming in open waters, preferably saltwater. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to swim in saltwater in an idyllic tropical setting. My Pain Specialists gave me the all-clear to travel with the hope that a different environment without the stresses and reminders of my daily life might be therapeutic. My family and friends hoped for the same, but also wanted me to have fun and get back to enjoying life the way I used to.

Unfortunately, contrary to the hopes of my doctors, family, and friends whom, I believe, all hoped that any time spent in tropical climes could have magical effects on my health; I didn’t have many improvements. In fact, the repeated force of large slapping waves pounding against my body as I walked out into the surf made my skin, lower abdomen, and lower limbs hurt. To avoid this I had to wade far enough out until the water covered my body up to my chin and I could tread water. But, being me, that wasn’t enough to satisfy the longing I’d had to play in open water.

My eagerness to plunge my body below the surface to escape the waves and lose myself in underwater play was not well thought out. As I cut through the water with my arms then arched my back and kicked my legs to propel my body forward and deeper below the surface my back and legs gave me a sharp warning. Swimming, even in the buoyancy of saltwater, can cause me more pain. Moreover, the hard kicking I had to do to bring myself back to the water’s surface and closer to the sandy shore forced me to use more energy within seconds than I used to get to the beach.

After learning this lesson, the time I spent in the water was more laidback. I floated on top of the water allowing the energy of the waves to move my body. When I used my own kinetic energy, I did slow backstrokes or treaded water so my head could bob above water. Then I spent hours sitting on the warm sand laughing and talking to my friend F with whom I had traveled. Although I would have liked to do more underwater exploring, I don’t have a single regret about that trip. If I did, it would be that it wasn’t longer.

 

Farmhouse Mirage

The first evening we were at the farm I looked out the sitting room window toward the barn and I thought there was an animal perched on a cement block beside the barn.

I was told it was my imagination and that it might help if I put my glasses on. In defiance and determined to prove my friend wrong – and in spite of my pain – I put on my rubber boots and coat and walked out into the damp beginning of a rainfall. I gingerly found a safe path down a small slope in the back yard, squeezed myself through the narrow space between the fence and the chained gate dividing the yard from the field and limped my way over to the barn.

What I found sitting on the cement block was not an animal (dead or alive). It was a pile of rocks that appeared to have been arranged to look like an animal. I supposed it was intended to scare off any more turkey vultures from taking up residence in the barn.

After seeing this, I limped back to the fence, squeezed my way through the narrow space between the gate and much more slowly found my footing back up the sloped mound in the back yard. By then it was raining big, heavy raindrops. Each drop that landed on the top of my head felt enormous. With the rain coming down I crossed the back deck and walked through the sitting room door. I was greeted by the questioning eyes of my friend: was it an animal or are you seeing things? I did not satisfy her with a response.

I was seeing things. I am seeing things. Things that are there and things that may never be. I’ve reached a point where I can accept that my condition – and the chronic pain it has caused – is not temporary. Months ago I was certain that my reluctant surgeon was going to perform surgery that would repair my health and end my pain. But that’s not going to happen. At best my congenital condition – which at this point is a working diagnosis – will be repaired but the repair will give rise to serious complications. And the pain I now live with every day will remain and by all accounts may get worse.

So, there may not have been an animal by the barn, but I was willing to take action to find out what was out there. The determination that made me get up and walk out into the damp evening is what I’ve depended on my whole life to carry me through difficult situations. And it’s the same quality that continues to hold me together as I live through this illness.

 

Santana – Mirage (with lyrics) – Borboletta 1974

Farmhouse Infestation

One night at the farm I fell asleep watching the silhouette of ladybugs move across the screen of my laptop. The two insects flew and crawled in criss-cross paths from the top to the bottom of the lit screen and hypnotized me into slumber. It is safe to assume that when my laptop powered down and the light went out the ladybugs returned to their regular haunts behind the curtains covering the window above my head because I woke the next morning to a gentle buzz coming from that direction. When I finally sat up in bed I was surprised to see about more than a dozen ladybugs flying, crawling, and on their backs in the space between the recessed window and curtains.

I watched them for a while. Some flew a short distance then landed on the curtains and started inching their way over the soft white waves of fabric that probably seemed like an endless sea to them. I grabbed my smartphone from the night table and tried to take a picture of a tiny ladybug as she crawled up the curtain. But the zoom couldn’t focus on her tiny moving body. Then because I got too close she started to open her wings as if anticipating a danger she might have to flee. I backed away.

Determined to get a picture I opened the curtains to get access to her siblings that were moving purposefully along the window sill. I took a shot of one of them – I think the zoom captured enough of her details. Then I lay back in bed and watched a few more of the black-dotted, red bodies move across the curtains a little while longer before moving my sore body out of bed to go downstairs to take my late morning mixture of medications.

Farmhouse Infestation Ladybug

Farmhouse Infestation Ladybug

I cautiously navigated my way down the stairs and found everyone in the sitting room. When I recounted my ladybug tale I learned that there were more of them downstairs and in other rooms of the house. After a brief chat my friend that was hosting the farmhouse getaway turned on a shop-vac to continue vacuuming up another kind of infestation: cluster flies. At any time of the year there are dozens of flies trapped on flypaper that is taped to the inside of all the windows of the house. Those flies that don’t stay stuck to the flypaper die shortly after and fall to their deaths on the window sills, between the panes of the windows, and in hidden corners

Later in the day my friend explained that these infestations are the result of a few things: her farm is a working farm with almost 100 acres of land that gets fertilized with manure to grow grain for animal feed. The fertilized fields attract a variety of bugs and animals – bears have been known to come down from nearby hills. The house itself is about 100 years old and there are crevices that have developed between the baseboards and the walls and floors into which the flies and other bugs lay their eggs. These eggs are able to survive in the safety of the crevices and then hatch to produce this mass of bugs.

I reread that last sentence and realized it makes it sound as if there was a swarm of bugs flying through the house. That is never the case. It’s just easy to notice the intermittent buzzing and their bodies darting around the rooms. And it’s easy to see the flies that have the misfortune of landing on the transparent flypaper on the windows or all the bugs that have come to rest on the window sills.

Bugs aside, I enjoy visiting this farm. I’m getting used to the flies, but I would prefer infestations of red-winged ladybugs because anything that can draw my attention away from my pain for a while is a welcome distraction.

Phish – Farmhouse