July 21,
2013
They are well
into their 80’s, at my best guess. She had on a petite pale salmon suit, delicate
unique accessories looped around her ears, matching bracelet graced her
snap-like-a-twig wrist, and the chunky necklace mostly complimented the inevitable
mass of wrinkles. He sported a button-down with vertical stripes and bared no
jewels, a stark contrast to his beauty. They have been in relationship for four
years and live apart, happily, or so he suggested. The optimistic couple met at
a dance so he recommended I take ballroom lessons to meet my future mate. When
I declared things must have certainly changed regarding partnerships, since the
time he was a young man, he told me of his barber, who is pregnant and living with
her boyfriend. I barked back, “Well, it could very well have been a woman
partnered with another woman and having a baby-“anything” goes now!” He just
chuckled and agreed with me, which caused her to pay attention to our
conversation.
I
appreciated the fact that the elders were interested in visiting with me, and
hearing of my adventures in Brasil. Still wearing my infamous plastic boot and
it is a fall-back conversation-starter. The guy was expressing his concern
about the healthcare system in South America, though suspecting it could be just
as perilous in some parts of the United States. Of course I was
afraid, I assured them, when asked about my accident and subsequent hospital
stay, yet I had to be positively convinced surgery was the best option at that
time, and in that particular place.
Revisiting
my harrowing experience is always precarious for me because I can Beam right Up
to that gurney, lie prone in the busy hallway, awaiting the operation,
accompanied by my friends Trepidation and Consternation, tears streaming down
my face, loading up my ears. I cannot be responsible for my reactions to questions,
once I spiral back to the hospital in Registro. Makes for a Vincent Price tale
in a chair, in the middle of a room, in a church basement.
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