Enough already

Andre Dubus has a book out called "Meditations from a movable chair." It is one of the most beautiful, true and scorchingly sad books I have ever read. When I read it, it makes me want to cry and cry and cry and laugh, too, all at once.

My favorite essay is "Liv Ullmann in Spring." He begins with this paragraph:
In my sixth spring after becoming crippled, I learned this: as each season ends, I suffer again the loss of what I used to look forward to in the season that is coming. It took a long time to learn, because these feelings are not caused by images: I do not, as summer ends, imagine hunting in the woods in the fall, then feel sad. Spring may come with snow, and I may be shut in for days because there is ice on the driveway up my hill, and I may know only that. But my body knows that in summer it will not be walking with children on the beach, or running into the surf. For days or weeks, I feel close to crying and I am afraid, as though something real and bad is likely to happen very soon ...

I am in my ninth spring of full-time wheelchair use, my 20th or so of disability, and this is still not something I remember ... until I have been drowning in sadness for days and there is no apparent reason. Then it occurs to me, as it did today, "you think you are longing for summer fun that doesn't involve wheels?"

But this time something real and bad did happen, well several somethings.

In addition to reminding me about summer, Memorial Day also kicked off some bad allergies, which are causing me to sneeze. Every sneeze cuts a deeper hole into my tongue. I probably won't bite through it, but never say never, right?

And I fell today in the bathroom at work and got wedged between the stall wall and the toilet with the big metal toilet paper holder blocking my exit to the front. I was laughing so as not to cry, also because I found funny the thought of someone coming in and seeing my pasty legs under the stall door. When someone did come in, though, it became much less funny, and I got up as fasat as possible.

And finally, I got some really crappy news about my horseback riding.

I just think that if God were cool, he or she would once in a while say, "OK, you know what, enough. Go pick on someone else."