5/19/04 - An Ode to Slow

Okay, I woke up in such terrible shape this morning I've only been able to get up on feet since 2pm this afternoon.
This is the worst part of FM: when you feel 'okay' and are having a 'good' day (say, pain at about 3 - 4 on the 10 scale), you look around and think 'oh, my, I have so many things that MUST get done today, while I'm able'... Even at your best effort, you're lucky to get to 2 laundry loads of the 5 waiting, all the dishes washed save for the dinner plates, coffee mugs and pots and pans (plan to do them tomorrow, even though you know it'll be more like a few days) and maybe the front yard mowed (forget weeding--it just doesn't happen anymore)....

So the next two or three days are spent in a fog and haze of pain and stiffness, pain hitting 7 - 8, some fever and overheating spells, nausea and a terrible gnashing headache that all the Imitrex or Butabital can't touch.
I make little lists on those 'down days' -- lists that I try to break tasks down into small parts that can be done, a little bit at a time, daily, so I can better conserve my limited strength. But even though it sounds good (Monday - wash coffee mugs and silverware, do 1 load of laundry, dust bricabrac and wall pictures; Tuesday - wash glasses and cereal bowls, fold and put yesterday's laundry away, vacuum living room; Wednesday - mow front yard and water flowers, wash dinner plates and coffee mugs; Thursday - you get the idea), it just doesn't implement well...
...especially if I'm under a migraine for four days and almost everything gets put on hold (Nash calls them the 'paper plate nights'). So I wind up doing 'emergency' chores: wash 2 plates, 2 bowls, 2 sets of silverware and a glass and mug each ... wash 3 or four pair of jeans, underwear and shirts for Nash ...

When I was growing up, I remember Mom was always tired at the end of the day, and my Dad (an Air Force seargent who worked on the electrical systems of jets and test planes in Edwards AFB) would come home and yell at Mom: "Where's Supper? I want supper on the table at 5:30 every night, not 6:30!" (or 4:45... that happened a couple of times and was pretty bizarre).... "What did you do all day? This house is a mess!" (it wasn't... my Mom was quite neat, but Dad would tell her to 'clean up this house' if even a couple magazines were on the sofa instead of their magazine rack).
Anyway, Mom usually wound up crying. She'd be in the kitchen trying to be angry at Dad (instead of sad), banging her fist on the counter a couple times, clanging a pan on the stove or slamming a cupboard door shut so he'd know she was mad....

I think it was about the time I was nine or ten that I started helping Mom in the kitchen (instead of lamming out the back door to play), mostly stirring and stuff like that. She showed me how to snap green beans, and rinse limas, so sometimes I jumped at the chance to do that for her. She tried showing me how to peel apples and potatoes with a paring knife several times, but I stubbornly used that nifty gadget, the potato peeler, on both, instead. Still do, to this day...

It seemed my Mom was always working, always cooking, cleaning up after supper, doing dishes, sweeping... and hanging just washed laundry on the clothesline in the backyard to dry. Back then, in the late 60's, Mom really tried pressing Dad to get us a dryer, as they were cheaper, and almost everyone had one by then.
Dad put up a second clothesline...

I helped Mom with hanging the clothes on the lines. We did this even through winter, because in the Mojave Desert in California, it never really got so cold we couldn't. But Spring and Summer was best. How many people know how wonderful it feels to hang wet laundry on a backyard clothesline?
...a cold, damp sheet flapping against your face and arms on a hot morning, reaching into the clothespin bag from where it hung on the bobbing line for another old, squeaky pin - pinning the sheet, smoothing wrinkles from its damp drape -- then scooting the bag up the line some more as you repeat the process till the whole sheet has been hung in a long fold over the clothesline...

We'd go out later in the afternoon, and it was my job to take clothes from my Mom as she took them down from the line. Again, the pins squeaked and creaked as she did so, clacking as she dropped them with her right hand into the clothespin bag as she went, her left hand laying the crisp, sun-warmed dresses, washcloths, towels, jeans and Dad's numerous olive-green fatigues across my waiting arms. I'd run a heaping armful over to the big basket at the end of the clothesline, moving it up a little as I went along... Everything smelled like grass, sunshine and sky, and you could still feel the heat of the desert wind in them even after they had all been brought inside to the dining room table, where I tried helping Mom fold things before she shooed me off, told me to go play.

I know my Dad worked hard, and life had never been easy for him.
But even as a child, I (and my 1 year younger sister) worried about Mom. She seemed so frail, always feeling 'fainty' and having to sit down. Hot days were worse on her than anything else, but she would still do the laundry, dishes and housework till she was ready to drop. We had no air-conditioning back then (we couldn't afford it), just one old metal fan Mom and Dad had bought when they were newlyweds in 1956, and that was always in a window in the living room, blowing out instead of in. In the desert, humidifiers helped to cool things down a little (we called them 'water coolers'), but I know my Mom suffered terribly from the heat...and this a girl born and raised in the Deep South of Lafayette, Alabama. Or maybe it was all the work she had to do as a housewife and mother of four kids.

I often wonder that my mother didn't have Fibromyalgia all that time (it's said to run in families), but Doctors just didn't know what to call it. It was unheard of for a housewife to shirk her duties 'just because she felt a little tired', so Dad was especially hard on her when he came home and found Mom sitting down, fanning herself, or, worse, that she had been lying down on the sofa for a bit after a 'fainty' spell...
Mom always tried to explain that she hadn't been feeling well, and that she had 'always been slow'... I often wonder that she hadn't used the word 'slow' when in fact she was actually stiff, and sore, most of the time, even as a young woman.

No, I have not digressed, although it may seem that way at first glance...

I think my main observations this afternoon have come about because I was just outside, from 2:30 to 3:30 on this hot, humid afternoon, attempting to mow as much of the yard as I could. The rain we've had the past few days made it grow incredibly fast...
Afterwards, I came inside, and had to sit down with a cold glass of iced tea, and admit I felt 'fainty'.
And admit that, now, the dishes will not get touched tonight.
As I write this, I can feel the sweat that drenched me only an hour ago finally drying in the cool (air-conditioned) half-dimness of this little room I call an office, and can finally catch my breath a little better; but, from my hips down, all is trembling weakness, and I know I am done for the day. Again.

My son just walked in from school a few minutes ago, and I've allowed him to watch cartoons in the living room a few minutes while I get to a stopping point here. He knows I will tell him to get on his homework as soon as I'm able to hobble from here to there, but he also knows he's safe for spell.

Because I'm going to be 'slow' this afternoon...