I want to apologize for the absence of last month’s show. It was an unfortunate collision between vacation times at the station and my inadvertent and frequent visits to the local hospital. We’re hoping that was a one-time occurrence. Crossing fingers.
This month is a whole difference circumstance in a whole different world – and wasn’t supposed to happen at all. I was supposed to be at home recuperating from the last in a round of health scares, finding something to be thankful for while sitting with my lip out, pouting over the vicissitudes of fate.
But am I?
No!
Instead, I am lounging just off the water on a deck facing the back side of Dauphin Island, on the still, so far, Gulf of Mexico.
No, really.
It was a trip I had planned for months. I’d been invited by old and dear friends. I’d paid for the rental, planned the route, made all kinds of small arrangements.
And then I’d get sick. Then I’d replan. Re-schedule. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That part had been going on for months. And then this last round seemed to have capped the deal, a literal ping pong between hospital, blizzard, rehab, home for just a few hours, and hospital again...
But then Juliet arrived, just for a visit. And in the course of putting me back together, she began asking questions. Embarrassing questions like, “Why can’t you go to the Island?”
“Well, oxygen.”
“But if you had oxygen?”
“I don’t know, I’m still really weak.”
“Yeah, but if you had help?”
“Yeah, but who’s gonna do that? It’s two weeks.”
“Two weeks on Dauphin Island? Sounds like fun to me!” she said.
I said, “I can’t imagine my doctor would ever okay that.”
“Well, we could ask,” she said.
So last Friday, I went to my doctor for my follow-up appointment after the last hospital visit, and I asked him.
“Do you think there is any way I could still go on the trip I’d planned to Dauphin Island next week?”
And instead of the “Absolutely not!” I’d been expecting, he said, “Well, of course you can. Take all the right precautions, of course, But why not? It would probably do you good.”
So here we are, safe if not sound, enjoying bright sunshine and a crisp breeze on a little spit of sand weighed down too many houses waiting quietly for the next hurricane to blow them away so they can all be built again. And I appear to be healing, although how one heals from being old, I’m not really sure. No matter. We soldier on, safe in the knowledge that somehow this motley army, consisting of a telehealthing osteopath, a semi-retired psych-nurse, a fully retired RVing veterinarian, an itinerant massage school administrator, a wandering storyteller, Jane of all fix-its and our two best boys – an elderly golden named Artie, who worries, and a three-legged chihuahua named Pez, who, despite his missing leg, struggles to remain relevant.
So we’re all good. The sun still shines on Dauphin Island. The women still sing their spirit songs from the mounds, and the shrimp are plentiful. By the ides of this March, I’ll be back in these Ozarks hills, cooking up my next installment.
