Hop on Your Tooties and Fly

“Hop on your tooties and fly!”  Mom screeched, finally at the end of her endurance with our badgering.  She had been spending the quiet Saturday afternoon stretched across her bed with a dime-store novel, but my older sister and I were bored.  We had interrupted Mom periodically throughout the afternoon with requests to be driven to our third cousins’ house to play. What started with, “Mom…Mom…Mom,” escalated to, “Mother…Momma…Mommy,” and climaxed with, “Mother Marie!...,” which snapped Mom’s last nerve.  Taking her exclamation as permission, the next move was for us to figure out how to get six miles up the highway to take advantage of our liberty.

            We were fourth and sixth graders and it was the early 1970s.  Six miles on a highway wasn’t a Mount Everest challenge, but it did present opportunities for adventure.  We mused for a few minutes about our mode of transportation.  If we walked, we would be wasting precious play time just getting to our cousins’ farm.   We would have to take our bicycles, we reasoned, and since Mom had told us to hop on our tooties, she must have meant our bikes.  We headed out to the yard to mount up and ride, just to discover that one of the bikes had a flat tire, and although we could ride double on the other bike for short distances, it wouldn’t work for our marathon trek.  This setback only slowed us for a moment before we decided that Mom must have implied permission for us to use whatever conveyance we could find: there was always one bike in working order.

            Dad’s bike had a banana seat, and since we were acting under Mom’s authority, we figured that we shouldn’t have to ask his permission.  Besides, he was busy working in the automotive garage next door and would not appreciate being interrupted.   So we hopped on Dad’s shiny chrome bicycle, which he had meticulously rebuilt from an old discarded frame and finished out with a metallic-flaked red banana seat.  It was a real show-stopping bicycle, worthy of any small-town parade trophy. 

            The journey was not bad for me.  Being the younger sister, I rode on the back with my sister pedaling the entire way.  She was the instigator of many childhood schemes, so of course she was in charge of getting us to our destination.  While we rode, we mused about whether or not we would get into trouble for our adventure, always concluding that, “Mom told us to do it," punctuated by my sister’s occasional complaining that she was doing all the work…as usual. 

            We really surprised our cousins when we showed up by ourselves, and their parents shook their heads and chuckled at our adventure.  We assured them that, yes, our parents knew where we were, and since we didn’t have a phone at home then, as far as we were concerned we were free for the afternoon. 

            We roamed the farm and generally acted like kids without a care in the world.  As dusk approached and we were still hanging around, our cousins’ father suggested that they take us home.  Realizing our fun was over, and enjoying one final leg of our adventure, we piled into the back of his pickup truck with our bike. 

            Before we got to the highway, a mile or so down the dirt road, the pickup slowed and drew even with another vehicle.  It was Mom and Dad coming to get us.  A hot sense of dread flooded through me.  All at once, I realized that I was going to be in trouble.  The only previous time that Dad had gone looking for me ended with a spanking that made sitting uncomfortable for several days. 

            After the adults chatted for a few minutes, we proceeded, watching as Dad turned the car around and followed us home.  Driving down the highway we schemed how we would stay out of trouble.  We were pretty sure that Dad wouldn’t spank us in front of our cousins, and their parents, who were his cousin and her husband.  Maybe if the adults had a fun evening Dad would forget that we’d stolen his bike and he had to come find us. 

            When we got home we went back to the bedrooms and continued to laugh and play with our cousins, including our other sister who had not been part of our escapade.  Famous for staying up talking late into the night, it was no surprise that we extended our visit for hours.  Finally, our cousins were summoned to go home, which meant that the hour of reckoning had arrived for us. 

            The two of us adventurers schemed about how we would hop in bed and feign sleep so Dad wouldn’t punish us.  Meanwhile, our oldest sister smirked, sure that Dad wasn’t going to let a little sleep deter him from meting out justice in order to keep us on the straight and narrow path.  Quickly saying goodbyes instead of the usual three-stage farewell ritual, we threw off our clothes, ducked into our pajamas and huddled in bed.  We then waited breathlessly for Mom and Dad to come back into the house. 

            We listened attentively as Mom and Dad locked up the house and turned out lights.  Still quaking under the covers, we heard them go to bed.  Had gotten away with our adventure, or was Dad just postponing our spanking until morning?  I tossed and turned all night long, afraid that Dad would wake up and remember that we had earned a spanking.  The morning came and Mom woke us up to get ready for church.  Would Dad spank us before church?  Nothing was said as we went through the Sunday morning routines.  Sitting in church I concluded that Dad hadn't wanted the church ladies to know he'd spanked us, so he was waiting until we got home to administer his correction.  Dreading the seemingly inevitable punishment, I remained on edge until after Sunday dinner.  Amazingly, nothing was ever said about the incident--ever.  I don’t recall Mom ever telling us to hop on our tooties and fly before the memorable trip to our cousins’ house, but I can assure you that she never said it again…at least not to us!

Accepting What Is

Saturday morning I started out on positive note.  Life was good...all things considered.  As I sat on the porch with my morning coffee and dogs at my feet I planned my second blog post full of wisdom I have acquired from observing our four English Springer Spaniels.  Then I logged onto Facebook to catch up with the happenings of my friends and family and learned that a dear friend had passed away in the night.

I was wracked with sobs that disturbed all of my four-legged kids as I tried to come to terms with what I thought was such an unfair thing to happen, while I tried to keep from damaging my four incisions that were still at a vulnerable stage of healing.  Finally settling down to a whimper that resembled a canine whine, I reasoned through the loss of my friend.

The last time I saw Kathy was about three weeks before her surgery to remove a pre-cancerous cyst from her pancreas.  She was obviously disturbed about her medical condition and anxious about the upcoming surgery.  I verbally reassured her, keeping quiet about my own impending surgery to remove my right kidney that had a tumor.  We were relatively certain the tumor was a carcinoma, but my prognosis was good:  the tumor was totally contained in the kidney, so removal of the kidney equalled total cure, with no chemo or radiation therapy indicated.  Although I didn't say anything, I am ashamed to say that my thoughts were along the line that removal of a pre-cancerous cyst is small potatoes next to loss of a cancerous organ.  Furthermore, I had been working on embracing what is, without stewing over what isn't.  I came across a quote from George Macdonald, 19th century minister, who said, "You have a disagreeablee duty to do at twelve o'clock.  Do not blacken nine and ten and eleven, and all between, with the color of twelve."  These became words to live by for me and since the occasion of our meeting was a farewell party, I didn't want to dwell on what I was trying to not think of at all.

Both  surgeries went well.  I woke up with palsy of my right radial nerve, basically rendering my right hand a dead appendage at the end of an arm with limited function, but with a good prognosis:  the nerve WILL repair itself with time.  I found out on Friday, Kathy's 53rd birthday, that she was still in the hospital.  She had suffered infections after her surgery and had been in and out of ICU for three weeks.  That night she passed away, but not before relating to a mutual friend that everything was according to God's timing.  The surgery that was supposed to keep her from developing cancer in eight to nine years, in the end, took her life. 

This series of events rocked me to the core.  I often remark that it is what it is and it can't be what it's not.  It seems rather too pragmatic at times, but it makes much of life easier to bear, even to the point of waking up from abdominal surgery with a paralyzed arm.  But my brain just couldn't wrap around something that seemed viscerally wrong.  I had been resigned to whatever was my outcome prior to my surgery.  I was prepared for the possibility of things going poorly.  But I wasn't prepared to lose my dear friend, whom we laid to rest yesterday.  As I watched the slide show that attempted to summarize Kathy's life with my palsied hand on my lap, surrounded by friends who loved her just as much as I did, I HAD to come to terms with what is.  Kathy is gone.  I can't change that fact, as much as I'd like.  And I still have work to do to return to a functional capacity.  Life is what it is, that's true, but it's also what we make of it, and my goal today is to embrace today, because it is.

End of Procrastination

I've been told repeatedly that I must have a blog, and I've been meaning to...really!  As a writer, it's supposed to be one of the most important parts of my platform.  So while I've been procrastinating about blogging (as well as sending items off to potential publishers), life has been going on around me, as is it's tendency.  But it's time for the rubber to meet the road, as the saying goes, even though I am currently one handed due to a pinched nerve...a long story for another day.

Having never blogged  before I chose to just jump in where I am, handicap and all, and hope that this initial post will at least get me past the hurdle of blank page paralysis.  After all, with a post that says practically nothing, it should all get better from here!