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Fairytales for a Practical Princess - 2008-11-30
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5:24 a.m. - 2003-04-23
LO has given me the courage to write this with her own admission about the bitter herbs we sometimes feed ourselves despite our intentions to keep our heads high and our outlook positive. (storyoflo.diaryland.com) Thanks, LO. You want to know why I love my husband? Why I love him like a dorky schoolgirl? Love him with violin music swelling and grand passionate cymbals crashing, the soaring soundtrack of every Cinemascope romance? I’ll tell you why. Because for all his dopey male cluelessness, when it comes down to what’s REALLY important, he gets it. He gets me. And being understood like that is bliss. It’s the safest feeling in the world. Growing up as I had, a stranger in my own family, forever a ‘weirdo’, an oddball, the one the others cocked their heads sideways and looked at as if I’d dropped in from Mars, to be so understood is Heaven. Today we went out to do more house shopping. Sexy stuff like wood filler and sanding grit. We went to Lowes. While we were there we toured the garden dept and I showed him the rhododendron I’d like to put in after we get rid of the nasty car scratching bushes. We debated the merits of buying the pricier, but much bigger 8’ tall pear trees versus the wee waist high saplings. We shared a laugh over these wacky bushes that were nailed flat against snow fence pickets and wondered why anyone would want a two-dimensional bush. Once inside we continued to nod and agree over stuff. The faux tin ceiling tiles for the foyer. What color to paint the bedroom. I had researched lawn tractors and he listened while I showed him the models that had the most bang for the buck. And we laughed like hell over this one gaudy one that had a striped umbrella and a cup holder. Was it a lawn mower or a deck chair? By the time we hit the check-out I was wobbling. Mike wanted to go across the street to Sam’s Club and check out the mowers there, was I up for it? Sure. But once inside Sam’s, I knew I had to give it up and use one of the store’s wheelchairs. No fuss, no muss, Mike installed me in one of the manual chairs and wheeled me away, talking a mile a minute. He gloated that he had me now, I HAD to go where he wanted. Mwahahaha. Silly. Oh, it was soul searing to be in a wheelchair! It made me hurt all over. Made my stomach clench up with anger and embarrassment. All the chops I’d gained with my cool sneakers and funky Lisa Loeb glasses were stripped from me and I was a thing, not a babe. Being in the Sam’s Club crip chair has a cool factor of zero. And Mike gets that. He knew I was dying inside. He knows how I am about control and how shaming it is to me to not be able to will myself to stay on my feet. How much I loathe seeing the world from a sitting position. He nattered on exactly as I needed him to. That it was no big deal that he was talking to the back of my head while he pushed. Everything was copasetic and the wheels that mattered were the ones on the lawn tractor, not the ones rolling me around. While we waited for the floor guy to come back with the owner’s manual for the mower so we could get the specs, Mike leered at me and made his usual ribald suggestions. The world at large might look at me in that chair and see me as a sexless invalid, but Mike still saw me as the chick he wanted to prong and he made sure I knew it too. Standing or sitting made no never mind, the position Mike liked me in best was flat on my back. He gave me back my pride. In the car I jacked the volume and sang along with Norman Blake as he mourned his lost love in “You Are My Sunshine”. Again Mike let me keep my dignity and pretended along with me that my tears were for the sad song and not my pain over needing the chair. When I’d cried it all out, he tipped me a wink and went back to discussing lawn mowers and sex. I’m a lucky, lucky girl. ~LA * Red-Wine, while I get your need for freedom, THIS is what being married to your best friend is all about. Love, Mom
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