To The Lions

To The Lions

So it goes, every morning. The lions of the body's losses. I keep tossing myself into their den. Because my options? Well, I like those less.

You see, I'm sick. Over the last 10 years, I've had two miscarriages and two serious blood clots. I suffer from multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome and an impressive range of food and pollen allergies. My thyroid, insulin, and progesterone levels all require help to regulate themselves. I'm double jointed, which as I age has been less exciting than it was when I was younger, as now it means it's easier for everything to simply fall, painfully, out of alignment. Twice a year, I go in for an alternative-therapy immunology treatment that requires me to live in the kitchen and its adjacent half-bath, all scrubbed out as a surgical clean room. And there's no "special diet" quite like this one: lamb and yams. With a side of purified water. For four days. Anxiety, depression, insomnia, those other lions, are regular visitors.

I'm 40 years old, and as I tell myself regularly, too young for this level of physical maintenance. But I keep getting up. I keep patiently sorting through the how-am-I-today interior dialogue. I eat well. I exercise. I spend quality time with my family and our furry companions. I work when I'm able and I'm grateful daily that my family's financial stability doesn't depend on my income. But it does depend on me keeping myself out of the hospital and all my conditions under sufficient maintenance so as not to require additional pricey medications and treatments. Proof positive that I'm fighting the good fight? I'm typing this at a treadmill desk.

Proof positive that I'm losing? At least in the short term? I woke up soaked in my own urine this morning. For the first time ever, some combination of the blood thinners for the active clot and the various meds for the yeast allergy/infection I'm struggling with left me unable to respond to a lifetime a of hard-wired training.

Not my favorite way to wake my husband, start the day, or end a night in which I'd only gotten 4.5 hours of sleep. But I'm down here, in the office, recommitting to a fuller writing practice by checking in here before prepare the tax information on my writing and editing service for my accountant and then roll into checking our household budget outlays for the remainder of the month. Somewhere in there I need to wake my homeschool child, get her something to eat, and review our joint agenda for the day, which will involve a lot of cleaning, straightening, and decoration.

Our annual Chocolate Party is Saturday night, we always hold it in celebration of Valentine's Day. Decadent desserts, alcohol, a house of friends and children. Though this year I'm gritting my teeth, as all I will be enjoying is a couple mugs of chocolate tea. Really, it's a thing, toasted cocoa nibs, boiled with a little mint extract. Not exactly the food of the gods, but enough to stave off most of the cravings most of the time.

Are you sick of me yet? That awful lion breath, the furling snarl getting tiresome? Join the club. I'm usually able to turn this all into a comedy act. It's how I get by. The sheer ridiculousness of having a body makes for great material. Especially a body like mine.

But, probably owning to the dampened spirits accorded by my urine-soaked waking, I've only given you the downside. The health stuff that lolls across the savannah of our household life like a mangy, belching king.

There is a lioness as well. What all the health stuff should tell you is that I'm sensitive. Not delicate, for sure, or it would all have finished me off a while ago, but able to register subtle changes, interior and exterior, and respond.

Not bad equipment if properly employed. Road tar may be able to knock me out a thirty paces, but I know when the lilacs are going to bloom well before they do. I can determine exactly what a soup needs a soupcon more of, almost without effort. I know when the milk will go bad, when the child is teetering at the edge of something, when the husband is covering his own infirmities. I sniff them out.

I watch for changes in our aquarium, where one fish is struggling with the transition into our household more than the others. Among our furry friends, one, again who is ailing, though the causes of her pain aren't are clear. When I work, I prowl client documents, looking for the weak creatures to cut from the herd.

And most constant of all, the vigil over my own body, ailing as it is, the awareness of its pleasures, ultimately keener than its pains. The hot water of the tub and its intoxicating citrus salts. The yogic stretch and carnal touch. All heightened, a compensation of that greater awareness. All the lioness's private reserve.