Alive

Well, friends, I spent the week practically dead – having been overtaken by a nightmare-ish stomach flu. Sitting in an upright position for the first time in four days, I take notice of sights and sounds like they’re here for the first time. The blue couch is vivid and shocking – like it dropped out of a blue heaven somewhere while I was sleeping. And the flowers in the vase strike a pose so alive it seems they might spring up at any moment and start dancing the Can-can across the kitchen table, like little orange show girls. My tired eyes follow a moth as it flutters about like it owns the kitchen – so fast, its wings! So slow am I still. In the laptop screen, I can make out a darkened reflection of myself. And, friends, it is some straight-up comedy – as in, God help me if anybody stops by the house right now: they’d be like: Oh, sorry, I was looking for Shannon. Is she home? For starters, the reflection reveals a mass of knotted hair gathered at the top of my head, like a ballet bun gone natural disaster -- like a small hurricane. Then, if we focus on the right side of my reflected head, greasy strands of hair jet right out into space, like skewers, refusing to fall all the way out of the once-upon-a-time-bun. Moving to the left side, an entire section of my fallen hair is matted together as though it were an object, a still life, if you will – like a giant papaya. Add to this that my skin is positively yellow (I saw it for myself in the mirror this morning) and my lips, a pasty, pale lavender sort of hue, and you have a condition none of us wishes to find ourselves in.

I glance down at my attire. I seem to be wearing a long, beige, gown-like shirt, now stretched beyond recognition, layered over some inside out sweat pants that are gathered above my knees. Detecting an odor somewhere, I lift a section of the shirt up to my nose and sniff at it: utterly foul: like I’m rotting. How long I've been wearing this little get-up, I honestly don’t recall – three? Four days? None of it registers. Such is the disorientation of being sick.

Besides being totally miserable, falling ill can be such a perplexing experience. One minute, you’re out feeding your tomato plants and sweeping the magnolia leaves off of the deck, tra-la-la –ing about, feeling all fabulous in your blue jeans, whipping up summertime marinades, enjoying Japanese Maple tree shadows on the back fence, making sweet haiku in your head; and then, there you are – out of nowhere – with your cheek suctioned to the bathroom tile, in this surreal universe of bodily horror, wondering how you will ever get up off the floor – or if; wondering when, how and why you arrived here in the current state of isolated agony.

This time around, having my life abruptly consumed by the flu was slightly more perplexing than usual, being that I was literally vacationing in Las Vegas just hours before it struck. Seriously, can you believe this madness? One minute, I am in Vegas with the love of my life (sans kids) fondue-ing about, dipping my relaxed, healthy body in and out of European pools, sipping Mojitos poolside, chewing sugar cane sticks on lounge chairs beneath an enormous and vividly blue, desert sky, elongating my limbs in the Jacuzzi, sweating out toxins in the spa’s Eucalyptus steam room, savoring the best sushi of my life – only to board the plane back to San Francisco with the first signs of the flu.

It's rather jarring to move from a state of such concentrated pleasure to one of such concentrated pain! By the following morning of the flight home, I was wrapped in ten thousand blankets, shivering to the core, then sweating, then shivering – lost in the maddening ways of a fever. And as if throwing up in my bedroom wastebasket wasn't miserable enough, (I’ll be brief here) it was a flu that felt the need to come out both ends. I was consumed with the worst body aches on God's green earth; body aches so severe it hurt to blink. Every square inch of me was sore to the slightest touch. Poor Chad tried to administer some comfort with a sweet hand to the shoulder, only to be swatted away, as though he were a wasp (sorry, Love). Apparently, when Chad went off to church without me, our kind friends all passed on get well hugs; Chad’s response was: Shannon’s not taking hugs right now. It’s true – I most certainly wasn't. And I would betray the fury of my flu if I failed to mention the barbaric pounding that occurred at the crown of my head each time I attempted to reposition myself even the slightest bit, like, say, to wash down a Vicodin (the pill of mercy) with a few sips of water.

Do you ever get those thoughts when you’re sick, that because the misery is so over the top, you think, this can’t be just a flu; it’s got to be something much more serious — like maybe what you have is Lyme disease, after all? And that really, right now – though nobody knows it – you’re actually dying a slow death right in your own bed? You see headlines: Castro Valley Mother Dies Mysterious Tragic Death: thought she had the flu, but really she had __________ (fill in the blank with the most rare and awful disease you can imagine – or just invent one, like I do).

Part II

The days in Vegas seem as distant as my childhood tricycle now; the memory of pleasure gone, like an elusive rainbow kite lost in the sky – which is not the worst of my concerns. The worst is the part where it’s been seven days and I still feel like a school bus ran over me in the night. Like this is how you might feel when they body-cast you at the hospital. And they might as well – body cast me, that is. Chad went back to work and the only energy I managed to exert all day was swatting a few flies with the kitchen towel – which left me dizzy and breathless. I can’t quite turn my head to the left or right and I find it nearly impossible to climb the stairs in our house, what with my knee and ankle joints collapsing in sword-like spasms. What ever happened to the 24-hour flu?

The lawn-mowing sounds in the neighborhood haunt me: neighbors are out and about, performing the tasks of their lives. The cars cruise down the block, perhaps headed to the farmer’s market; perhaps returning with bouquets of the season’s finest leeks, nesting in the crooks of their arms. The image of leeks conjures longing – the longing to live again; to slice and sauté vegetables; to thrive; to participate in it all! Tonight, my girl friends will be sipping Southern sweet tea, nibbling on fried green tomatoes and hush puppies – all without me. Yep, the world goes on without you when you’re sick. I ache thinking of all of the summertime things I'd like be doing with my kids – like making mosaic garden stones for the vegetable beds; like having more of those fabulous family dance parties, where our living room gets converted into a night club and the five of us are shaking our hips silly to the tune of Boom Boom Pow. I want to swim, hike, barbecue….eat! Hell, I’m even excited to unpack the suitcases, which are still parked in the entry way like fat, lazy cats.

Will I ever get back to the land of the living? The question floats out into the atmosphere and circles back in a strange, figurative dance of the mind. Is this how it feels to age? Is this how the ninety-somethings of the world feel? The terminally ill? All of the laid-up people of the world? Isolated; and removed from the infinite possibilities of life? A wave of compassion washes over me, which makes me feel alive again, if just a little. A small fire lights up in my woebegone heart: and I feel …is it grateful? Yes, grateful to be alive. And as I move beyond the irrational fear that I somehow have Lyme disease or Rheumatoid Arthritis, rather than the flu, for just a moment, I glimpse my life again. I can imagine being back in my blue jeans, my bare feet on the sun-baked cement, removing dead heads from the geraniums, making lemonade with my children. A tiny speck of hope blinks before me, like a firefly in a cave; hope that my health and livelihood will return to me, albeit, at some mysterious appointed time.

Summer evening is falling now; the sun disappears from its usual spot on the sofa. The day feels positively empty, pointless. I did nothing. In a moment of sheer will power, I stand myself up, and feeling eight times my weight, shuffle out to the backyard. The poor Virgin Mary is lying on her side in the flowerbeds. I haven’t the strength to lift her. My eyes wander the length of the herb beds, so lime-green and healthy. I choose randomly, and lean over the lemon verbena plant, rubbing its leaves between my fingers. I inhale the scent. And again – deeply. The tart, intoxicating, fragrance whispers a secret into the summer air: you are alive. It turns out, I did do something today; I survived.