Jun. 12, 2002 - 21:16 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Now And Then

Good Lord my head hurts so bad and my neck where it joins my shoulders feels as if I have been hit with a sledge hammer. I look over to check beside me in the car and Heather isn't there. Every bad thought of what has happened to her is running in through my panicy mind.

The hurt was present but in my back and wonky leg I realized when I woke up. Probably moved wrong and got in a bad position in my sleep. Funny, the relief I felt of not going through the car accident again almost canceled out the pain. Took a drink of water with a Tylenol, read a little e-mail and drowsily went back to bed.

Those horrible nightmares don't come as often as they did in 1997 but as far as I am concerned they are all too often. They have slacked off and now leave out some of the details my stupid brain has added to what really happened. In my nightmares I no longer look across car to see Heather's headless body.

The accident in 1997 did cause the nightmares I used to have come back again. That was an accident in about 1952 when our little Henry J was hit in the side by a car running a stop sign. Two of my kids had skull fractures and I, a couple of broken ribs and my back more screwed up than it was before. I knew I would heal and that Heather and our oldest son and youngest daughter were okay, but I worried about the two in hospital.

None of those dreams happen with alarming frequency now -- but for the moment before I awake it is again all to real to me.

As I drowsed off to sleep it was with thoughts of things when I was little, canaries. Most every house that had someone home all the time had a cage with one or two canaries in it. Usually doing their canary thing. Some of them were fancy and had a special name ? What was it ? Rollers maybe ? Their song was almost like a triple tongued horn. What a homey, comfortable thing it was to visit somewhere and hear the canaries do their repetitive opera singing.

I remembered the first corduroy's I had, the swip, swip, swip sound they made as the legs rubbed together when I walked. Then I remembered the hated long stockings and knickers (now don't snicker at knickers - they were on the outside) and the sorry effort it was to keep the two things meeting, my stockings would head for my heels and my knickers inch upward. When I got big enough for my head to fit an adult hat my folks bought me a hat just like my Dad's. He taught me to put the crease in it, dent the crown on each side of the crease and how to turn the brim down slightly in front. Putting it on at a slight slant was my contribution to the grand affair, just like my Dad wore his.

I got up, coffeed, ate a bite this morning and read the news paper. More of the same gut bending news as usual plus horrifying pictures of the Hayman Forest Fire.

The antidote the usual thing, reading all the comics even Zippy all of which served as a mood elevator.

Later I found out that Sunshyn is okay, but bored as an active person who is bedridden gets. Did a little get ready spiffing in preparation for Heather's younger brother's visit, he will be here Friday. We didn't have too much to do as we had cleaned pretty extensively after the Oregon part of the clan left.

In my life things go as normal as they can be with the bumps that happen along the way. My shock absorbers are in pretty good shape, body sort of rickety though. In dreams as in real life grim things happen every Now And Then . . . . . . . . .

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