Some days feel like we are clinging to driftwood just doing what we can to keep our heads above water.
Management’s appointment with the neurologist went as well as could be expected; the good news, no tumors found in the MRI, the bad, the palsy is likely permanent. she has been struggling with the growing realization that her eye won’t really close properly and that her smile will remain crooked like a door swinging from a broken hinge but to hear someone with 20+ years of medical training tell you that you’ll need to stock up on straws and eye drops leaves you feeling a little less than deflated. Just a little. She is taking it better than I had hoped, rolling with the punches and sliding into acquiescence.
School is the other burden. With all that has been heaped upon Management in terms of emotional and physical wreckage, logging into classes and staying on top of homework has not been much of a priority. Not wanting to see her drown this semester and trash her 3.9 GPA I’ve been pitching in, tackling her assignments and making sure that the reading gets done and her work is posted. Cheating? Technically, but I’m seeing it as a grey area, though her school likely wouldn’t. She has been through enough already and helping her get back on the academic horse is the least I can do. We are reading the books together and discussing them, I’m just the one drafting her answers and submitting them. If I have to carry her, I will. No matter what. I know she can do the work, she just needs help right now.
Yet there is this feeling of guilt about an itch working its way up the back of my skull like a spider balanced on long, thread-like legs. When I sit in the car looking down the driveway I imagine myself speeding past tollbooths driving ever more southward. Review mirrors broken and discarded, the only direction is forward. As the keys turn in the ignition I jerk back, my palms soaking in the cold of the steering wheel as I slowly make my way out into the street and head for work. It isn’t that I want to leave, to flee my responsibilities, I just want a chance to lay them down and walk around for a little. To bask in a moment where none of this worry exists.
Time to pick things up and keep moving.
Sorry to hear about your wife’s diagnosis…OTOH as you say it could have been worse. I know you will both be taking comfort in your healthy baby. Get your joy where you can.
You’re right, Gabs does have this uncanny knack for taking the edge off things, especially when they feel like things couldn’t get lower. She is such a sweetheart.
hey man - there’s lots of perspectives you can gravitate to, but there’s only a few worth realizing. from what i’ve gathered, jenn has a tremendous spirit, gabriella is an entire inspiration - and you, my man, are one freak of a caring person. add a little of life’s joy and the three of you are cause for the world to recognize its own wonder.
clink.
chas