Peach pie

Today I woke up in pain.  My post-op drains did not only have to stay in my body longer than I hoped, but they are draining out more fluid. So the drains are uncomfortable but I do not want to take my good friend VICODIN as while it helps a little with my pain,  it also makes me notice the dust bunnies in the corners and the toothpaste left in the sink.  Georgia's slobber on the couch makes me want to vomit and I do not even want to step inside my teenager's bathroom to find the devastating mess there! After taking two Vicodin in one day last week, I blocked Dave from my phone for forgetting to buy me MIRALAX. I did not even need it, I just wanted it in case.  In fact, my time on the Vicodin has brought back every trespass, every wrong that has ever crossed my threshold.  Vicodin makes my cup not just half empty, but really just leaves speckles of precipitation in the bottom of that glass AND makes me worry embedded in those small molecules is probably poison. 

SO I did what I do anytime I can't figure out what else to do. I went outside! I took Fluffy, the beautiful white dog that everyone wants to adopt as a buffer.  I felt like crap, looked worse with my drains hanging like a pendulum underneath my shirt, but by-darn I had a beautiful, white dog with a saucy gait! Sure enough, I got smiles and hellos at every turn. EXCEPT for the big dogs. Fluffy does not like big dogs so then when we passed one I had to pick her up and whisper sweet nothings in her ear. Same thing with construction workers. Fluffy thinks they are up to no good, or maybe she's worried they are digging up bones or money she's buried( yes, she does that, but only one dollar bills). whatever reason, when Fluffy sees a mastiff or a hard-hat, she loses control and acts like me on Vicodin.  Maybe we are a good pair. 

Pulling back into the garage after our walk I start to feel a little better.  The Tylenol has helped with my pain. I am still slightly paranoid, but seeing Georgia's slobber when I come back to the house doesn't automatically increase my heart rate.  My mind drifts back to the book I've been listening to at night to fall asleep.  In between REM cycles or nocturia(nightly pee rituals), I have picked up bits and pieces of the story of the Mormon, LDS, pioneers crossing the plains.  I am listening to Saints Volume II. Guess what!  Those folks did not like camping every day! Most were not used to sleeping in covered wagons or walking twenty miles a day.  There were fights in the camps. There were fights in the church. I do not know why I always forget that these were sometimes city folk or immigrants that were not acclimated to camping or dusty trails.  Listening to their stories has helped me during this whole COVID quarantine, and this whole screwy looting and plundering thing.  Last night I listened to the tragedy that happened at the sweetwater river in Wyoming where many pioneers lost their lives to bad weather.  Many years ago my daughter and I last minute went on a pioneer trek with our stake to the Sweet water river in Wyoming.  Unfortunately,  I caught a little stomach bug and my daughter was reacting to a new anti-convulsant medication.  She was even having trouble tying her shoes.  We made quite a pair pulling our handcart! When we reached camp for the night our tent also kept blowing over until and I finally found a great spot by the fence where the wind was not so bad.  It took me several hours to talk to my daughter, who still did not feel good,  into leaving the tent and meeting with the others outside. The very first thing that happened is we saw a six-foot rattlesnake at the opening of our tent trying to get inside!  Yes, by many accounts our trip was an utter failure...except for one thing. During the second day, we stopped our handcart at the bottom of a sandy embankment with the rest of the women. Because my daughter and I had joined the trek last minute we had not researched as others had done to recognize this as the "women's pull".  All I knew is I was starting to feel a little weak, my daughter was not well either and I watched all the guys climb this steep hill without helping us with all our gear! I turned to my neighbor and said, "What in the heck is going on! Where did all the guys go?" 

"Oh, this is the women's pull?"

"The what????" I instantly felt my inner feminist bristle as she tried to explain to me to honor the many women who had had to pull carts by themselves in the pioneer days, we were going to reenact the same thing. Well, I got really, really mad.  

"Uh, whose bright idea was this? Am I setting the right example for my daughter by pulling a cart with everyone's stuff while the men just watch the sand fill my shoes and petticoats?" 

"Suddenly, my neighbor got really quiet. And then she started crying. She said, "Nicole, my son is up there watching me. And the past 18 months you know I have been alone while his dad has been in prison. I am going to push our cart and he is going to be watching me do it. Because that is what I have been doing anyways."

I had no comeback. I had not one thing to say but thought of the wonderful example this woman was to me. Of her family and of sticking together through thick and thin.  We decided we would help each other with our carts. Just like back home across our backyards we helped each other.  She had made me delicious peach pies and I had given her some of my extra tomatoes.  We talked while we were in our gardens or while we were chasing kids. So...I was not going to leave my neighbor in a lurch.   About halfway up my neighbor yelled back from her front position at the cart, "Nicole, you can stop pushing so hard. I don't think I can go that fast". It was then I told her that I was barely pushing at all... I was about ready to ask her not to pull so hard as I was not keeping up. After we got to the top we marveled that we had had "help" from an unknown source.  One skeptic called it adrenaline and another laughingly called it BIG WHEELS, but for my neighbor and I, we will never forget the women's pull and the time we felt help from a source bigger than ourselves.  

I don't know how long I'm going to have weird post-op drains.  I don't know how long this COVID thing is going to go on or if our economy will ever be the same. I already do not like how it is dividing people and making some murder, loot, and rob!  I worry about socially isolating my kids and  I worry about their friends and about their education.  There are many things I cannot control!  All I can do at times like this is remember how I've been helped in the past and how others have been helped in the past.  I can remember how the pioneers who went before me gave their all; even their lives so I can have the gospel in my life today as a source of comfort!  Maybe, today, I'll even meet my new neighbor.  I'll take over a peach pie as a buffer and inquire about her tomatoes.

#womenarestrong