Step by step and breath and
by breath
It’s a trail of doubt.
-
Danny
Schmidt, Know Thy Place
Stubbornness is underrated as
a survival skill. I was too stubborn to die recently. I don’t want to die here.
I may not know my place, but I know this isn't it.
I’ve always been better at knowing what my place is not. I know it by
heart, but also by seasonal allergies to pollen-producing flowers that know So Cal’s climate is
not their place. Such floras however, are very comfortable after 20 inches of
winter rain here in this corner of Zone 9. The pollen on the skylight is
thicker than ash from a nearby wildfire. It looks like yellow snow. My nose
hasn’t stopped running since things started blooming.
Examples: Forsythia that I
haven’t seen since I was in my 20s. Lilacs so profuse that people trim them
with hedge clippers to keep the blooms from pulling the branches into
sidewalks. The plum and cherry trees lining the streets leave puddles of lovely
pink and white snow blowing in the curbs. Camellias drop their rusty fist-sized
flowers that gradually dry and turn a pink-brown color to complement the
puddles of cherry blossoms. My flowering quince bloomed itself out before I could
cut any blooms. I think that’s dogwood blooming now. There is lily of the
valley beneath my font porch. M’s red azaleas are shouting down the softer pink
ones. I saw a ceanothus so covered with
blooms that I barely recognized it, having only seen thirsty
southern-Californian relatives struggling to be a pale imitation of a syringa.
Lilacs remind me of K who
would buy me a bunch every March from up the mountain in Alpine. In my opinion,
every perfume ever made from lilacs has failed. Even the essential oil is too
sweet and cloying. But the fragrance of a real lilac is something that evokes
the purest innocence of childhood. I have no doubt that the first time I
smelled a lilac, it was in the hand of my mother and it smelled like love.
I’m going to another place.
I’m going sometime in the next two or three months. I’m reinventing myself. Again.
Before I leave here, I’m
having another heart ablation, a few expensive microdermabrasion treatments
from an aesthetician, and I’m stocking up on my medications in preparation for
yet another adventure in switching health insurance which is related to but
slightly more important than finding another health care provider and totally
more intimidating. I’ll also get another
haircut before I leave this hip urban town.
I ran out of an important
prescription for a few days but finally managed to set up a mail order
prescription plan that enables me to never again enter the doors of the Rite
Aid down the street where it took an average – not hyperbole: a freaking
AVERAGE - of 3 trips to the pharmacy to
refill each of my five prescriptions. That means for the one time I got a prescription on the first try, I gave up on another one after the 4th try. A more incompetent pharmacy would be hard
to find, even with my luck. When I couldn’t get my blood-thinning
stroke-preventing meds recently (4 tries), I went home and contacted my
prescription plan provider and they walked me through the mail order enrollment
process. It took one 30 minute call to be saved from Rite Aid and certain death
by another stroke.
Meanwhile, I am enjoying the smell of
fresh lilacs picked from the bush in the tiny communal garden between my house
and the mailbox. I have to go outside and plant two tiny mail-order lilacs in
the front yard. Then I will get mail and
pick fresh lilacs and smell them while I drink my decaf latte and have homemade
corn chowder for lunch.
Then, when the Spring flowers
are done, I will move to a new latitude and longitude. I can always come back next Spring. I’ll
bring Benadryl and stock up on legal medications while I’m in town. Maybe get a
haircut.
