This post is written with love to and solidarity with Heather Ann Brauer
We spent another weekend up at the farm, this time for Charli’s tenth birthday. Charli is one wild piece of moonlight, and Dave and I could barely keep up with the birthday party itinerary that Charles and Sarah had put together. There were presents and cake, a piñata, painting, a water balloon fight, slacklining and games of flashlight tag and Cherokee-Iroquois. After dark the forest was filled with flashing LED balloons and streamers, the kids covered us all in glow in the dark body paint, held spiting gold sparklers and roman candles, and long after I crawled into the tent, Charles let off a whole fireworks show.
Do you think we’ll be able to pull something off like this for our kid?
David asked me at one point, genuine concern in his voice.
No flippin way
- I told him.
We’re hiring Sarah and Charles to throw our kid’s birthday parties.
Along with our Boone friends, Erich and Melanie camped out with us that night along with Rosie the dog, who has seizures. Erich suffered from acute Lyme disease this past summer but he’s getting much better. As for me, I’ve finally reached the two week on/ two week off portion of my treatment. I’m only one week in and I’m nervous about going a whole fourteen days without medicine, my immune system is very wobbly right now, like a fawn. But I can’t be on this regiment forever, I have to start weaning off the killers at some point.
This protocol is composed of extra heavy antibiotics. and after eight months of treatment my stomach has officially gone on strike. I’m on a diet of mush, just like a baby. I’m eating rice overcooked in bone broth and lentils overcooked in bone broth. Bone broth better be all it’s cracked up to be because I’m putting a lot of stock in it. (THAT PUN! YES! Yonton that was for you.)
From up at the farm, you can see a view of Roan Mountain and miles of rolling Appalachian on either side. On Saturday there were storms stretching across those mountains, with big silver showers of rain and strikes of hot, quiet lightning. Through big patches in the storms, the sunset glowed rose gold.
We burned old Christmas trees and Erich played the guitar. Erich is an incredible guitar player. This time he had babies crawling on him, and the babies were playing egg shakers and were so entranced by the music that they acted stoned out of their gourds. Maybe that’s what it's like to be a baby- you hear or see or feel something that pleases you and it makes you instantly stoned. Man. If only.
I was knocked flat with a migraine after the sun went down, but it was still a lovely evening. I just brought my pillow and blanket down to the fire and lay there, absorbing all of the nice things and people through my ears, and to be honest it was great to have an excuse not to play freeze tag. Those ten year olds swear that they’ll play by the rules but they never do.
David later told me that it was hard for him to see me down for the count, again, but it wasn’t so bad for me. I’m not saying you get used to pain, the whole point of pain is that you don’t adapt to it, but once you can scrape clean a few layers of fear, guilt and disappointment and you’re left with straight physical discomfort, it’s not terrible. As long as the kids didn’t blow their whistles near my head I was totally content to lie by the fire with my friends all around me.
I anticipate perfect health sometime in the future, but right now I’m still recovering and I never expect to feel well. When I do feel well, and there are hours and days that go by when I do, it comes as such a welcome luxury. It’s like preparing for sleeping out under a damp and overcast sky and getting a meteor shower and a warm breeze instead.
I explained this to Dave and he explained that while he was relieved to hear it, he just couldn’t understand reaching that level of acceptance.
When you’re not given a choice, it’s incredible what you can learn to accept.
Huxley barked the whole night through and that big tent filled with girls never stopped shrieking with exhausted laughter, but I finally managed to coax myself to sleep with reading and trazadone, and another summer weekend up at the farm drew to a smoke and star-filled close.
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