A Bit Of A Trauma At The Time, But In Perspective?

This morning in Florida it is dark, rainy and thundery and I don’t mind a bit. It’s very early and I am writing this lying in bed. Out of the window, assorted powerboats lie moored side by side near docks in a small, river harbor. My friend, Margaret and I are in Vero Beach.

I have to keep adjusting myself because my tailbone hurts. The meds have worn off overnight. The day before leaving for FL I had lunch with a friend and when we were finished, I slid off the slippery banquette at the Village Bagel Shop and because the seat ended before the edge of the table, and because I was still talking to Alice and looking at her, I went straight to the floor.

I flew here with a sore coccyx and after two days Margaret and I went to Corey’s Pharmacy and stood in the little alcove marked, Consultation, where Mrs. Corey, a short, brown-haired, late middle-aged woman, swiftly appeared and asked how she could help.

It was truly a consultation. “How did it happen?” She asked. “Where exactly is the pain? What, if anything, have you been taking for it?” (I was clutching a new bottle of ibuprofen, having used up the little I had brought with me.)

And then: “I want you to go to my favorite doctor at the Walk In clinic off the 17^th Street bridge. Dr. Olleneck. He will take good care of you. I really like him. You may need to have your back X rayed and Vero Diagnostics is right near his office.”

I am standing there, nodding dumbly while Margaret, clever woman, is writing down directions.

Yikes! There is really something wrong with me?

It turns out there is. The “very nice” doctor visit and an X ray later, and I have a fractured coccyx, which makes sitting a bit grim-even with the script ibuprofen I am now taking three times per day, but, hurrah! There is nothing that needs to be done about it except for my mustering a patient tolerance of the eight weeks healing time the fracture demands. I can walk, trot, and canter; I just can’t sit.

 Here’s what I now know. If you are going to hurt yourself, Vero Beach, Florida, is the place to do it. From Mrs. Corey of Corey’s Pharmacy to Dr. Olleneck at the Walk In, to the efficient and speedy X ray technician, I was kindly taken care of in every way. When I went to buy the special cushion to sit on I walked into the world of senior citizen—and other—rehab possibilities.  

The very sympathetic woman who waited on me also suggested a wrap-around heating pad. “You are going to LOVE this!” she sparkled. And then some roll on stuff called Bio Freeze which I haven’t tried yet. “I’m not trying to sell you stuff,“ she assured me. “These are products I know will help you”

And they do.

Now for the uncomfortable eight weeks to pass: I am already counting.

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But this from Nigeria? Can you imagine this life? (The NY Times on February 6, 2015)

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — They came in the dead of night, their faces covered, riding on motorcycles and in pickup trucks, shouting “Allahu akbar” and firing their weapons.

“They started with the shootings; then came the beheadings,” said Hussaini M. Bukar, 25, who fled after Boko Haram fighters stormed his town in northern Nigeria. “They said, ‘Where are the unbelievers among you?’ ”

Women and girls were systematically imprisoned in houses, held until Boko Haram extracted the ones it had chosen for “marriage” or other purposes.

“They were parking” — imprisoning — “young girls and small, small children, parking them in the big houses,” said Bawa Safiya Umar, 45, whose 17-year-old son was killed when her town fell under Boko Haram’s control. “They parked 450 girls in four houses.”

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The above makes a sore coccyx a complete joke!

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Oh Lord, we are one world with one God and yet look at what we do in Your name. Forgive us when we imprison others in our rigid concepts and help us to create peace with one another.

Who Are You Spying On?

It seems these days that everyone is spying on someone. It’s just the way things are.

Chinese military officials are charged with hacking American corporations. They deny the allegations, describing cyber attacks as a universal problem and, in their defense, citing “examples of National Security Agency, (N.S.A.) spying on corporations around the world.” (The New York Times, May 20, 2014)

Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, accuses America of eavesdropping on her cellphone and calls our President to ask for an explanation of our surveillance practices against Germany. President Obama denies the telephone monitoring.

Edward Snowden, rightly or wrongly, puts his life on the line to let the world know about the all-inclusive, extensive surveillance practices of the N.S.A.

“I don’t want public attention,” Snowden tells a Guardian reporter, “because I don’t want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing.” (the Guardian, June, 2013.)

At this point, the U. S. is scrambling, “to distinguish between economic and security surveillance,” according to Attorney General, Eric Holder. (the Guardian, May, 2014)

The consensus seems to be that every country is spying on every other country in every way possible, 24/7. The current American stance is that it is “out of bounds to use state-run intelligence assets to seek commercial advantage.” (The New York Times, May19, 2014) We are doing some hasty and fancy footwork in our attempts to define “legal” spying.

Anyone who watches television with any regularity is aware of the video surveillance prevalent in our cities. We can be seen and found. What we buy online or almost anywhere is recorded for posterity. Our credit card information is totally available and whomever we call on our cellphones can easily be discovered. By those who know how to do such things, all our emails can be accessed.

A year ago my bank---who shall not be named—lost all of my information in cyberspace. They sent me a letter of apology and a year’s free identity theft protection.

Is all this worth pondering?  I think so.

Recently I decided to Google myself. Because I wrote for The Fairfield Citizen News for many years, I knew there would be references to articles written, where I live--that sort of thing. Now this blog is listed as well. That’s fine.

But when I was offered an opportunity to register for a program that would reveal my “criminal record” I blanched. My criminal record? Help! Do you suppose that means that the ticket I got two weeks ago for parking in the church lot when I went to New York is recorded and available for anyone to see?

Is there nothing sacred?  

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Thoughts and Prayers

Once again our prayers are with the Nigerian people who lost loved ones in the recent blood bath in the central Nigerian city of Jos, where, at the count two days ago, 118 were killed and 45 wounded.  We pray for peace in Nigeria.

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Thank you all who read Life Opening Up! Your attention and your responses keep me inspired to write.

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I Would Go Mad

I can’t get past the militant Islamist abduction of 276— the latest count—of the young girls in Nigeria.

As an interfaith minister I am compelled to try to understand other faiths and other cultures. I have been struggling. I have read the Koran and I know that women are seen and treated differently than we are in countries of Judeo/Christian heritage.

At the same time, I also know that in no way would all Islamists support such an horrific action as that abduction any more than all pro-life Christians would burn down a Planned Parenthood clinic that offered abortion counseling and procedures or murder a doctor that served at such a clinic.

I keep picturing my daughter at ten years old: the soft, plump skin of her face not yet molded to the bones, her body still untouched by puberty, her eyes, the innocent clear blue of a summer day.  What if she had been abducted? What if she were to be sold into slavery as the wife/possession of some man in all likelihood, twenty or more years older?

And what if I lived in a country that, at least to all appearances, did nothing about it?

What if, when commanded to appear by the president of my country, I was unable to get to the southern capital city because there were no flights and/or I was too poor to get there any other way but on foot, which would take days and therefore—even if I was willing, and I would be---to walk until my feet bled clear to my ankles, I still couldn’t make it in time for the official gathering of the mothers?

What if I asked a friend who lived in the capital city to represent me, to plead for government action to save my daughter and, instead of being allowed to speak, she was arrested for impersonation?

I would go mad.

Nigeria, Nigeria! You are a people from an ancient, soulful land. What has become of you?

Letting Go: Not So Easy

At lunch on Friday, a friend and I talked about my latest blog, Captivated by a Classic.

She told me she had enjoyed the story of Lassie and her trials. Her attention, however, was particularly captured by the place in the story where the old people, who had nurtured the wounded dog, fallen in love with her and hoped to keep her, had come to the painful understanding that now that Lassie was on four feet again, they needed to let her go.

“I know you were writing about the hero’s journey, but this was the part that got to me,” my friend said, “because it is where we are in our family right now.”

Her oldest daughter will graduate from college this month and has lined up a job and an apartment with friends in a distant city. Their other two daughters have nearly finished college and have internships away from home this summer.

“Over and over again,” my friend went on, “I have to remind myself that our daughters are up and running, have places to go and personal purposes and dreams, some of which are still unknown. I have to let them go,” she said, solemnly. “And my job now is to find ways to fill the emptiness in my life that I sometimes feel.”

She shook her head, smiling wistfully as she reached for the huge chocolate chip cookie that we were sharing. “So promise me,” she said, laughing and biting into the cookie, “that if I start taking on the form of the Pillsbury dough boy, you will have an intervention!”

Did anyone else have a similar take on that part of the story?

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Thoughts and Prayers

We pray that the 200 young girls recently abducted in Nigeria will be found soon. We hold their families in our hearts.

We pray for peace in Ukraine.

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Blog Notes

For those of you who are subscribers to this blog on email and have not been receiving it, I apologize for the glitch. My blog guru took a shot a fixing it last week to the end that on Saturday I believe subscribers suffered from a blog tsunami, receiving three blogs at once. I am hoping that today’s post will fly through cyberspace and successfully land on your email doorstep all by itself.