True, it restricted your ability to
interact with your fellow humans. Sure, that was the point, in terms
of bad guys. But it also meant you weren't enjoying physical touches
from the ladies, or your other friends for that matter. You also were
at the mercy of the people who kept you from falling over and who
helped work the crane to get you up on your horse, which probably
hated you and wished you'd get your fat butt off of him.
And speaking of falling over... if you
did, you were screwed. I mean, falling on your knees was bad enough
simply because of the effort it took to return your seat to an
upright position. But if you fell on your back? Authorities might as
well come and draw the white chalk “corpse” outline around your
body.
I guess it wasn't so bad when you were
in jousting tournaments and such. There were do-overs and second
chances galore. If you were on your back, things could be halted
while they got the crane out and hoisted you back up, if that's what
you wanted. If you took a bad enough beating, you could simply be
dragged off by your feet and fixed up to fight another day.
Yeah. So all that physical protection
had its moments, but it didn't really do much for the important part,
did it. Your heart and your emotions were wide open to assault and it
didn't take the medieval equivalent of a can opener to get at your
vital spot.
I got to thinking about this when our
cat Kenzie got sick over the holiday weekend. Almost two years to the
day after I found out I was sick, it became apparent something was
seriously wrong with this pet who had become so dear to us.
Two years of carefully constructed top
to bottom and side to side armor shattered in no time. This time, I
did ask why us? Why did this wonderful, warm little animal have to be
sick? Isn't it enough that Sheri has type one diabetes? That I have
an incurable form of cancer? That it was less than a year since we
recovered enough hope after the loss of our beloved cat Samantha to
try again to allow a third into our daily struggles? Evidently not,
brothers and sisters. Evidently not.
Being a holiday weekend, we needed to
travel about an hour to have her seen on an emergency basis. The
hospital wasn't sure what was up, but gave her fluids and anti-nausea
medicine and sent her home to see if that did the trick. It didn't.
I've been feeling pretty sick myself
lately, so it fell to Sheri to drive even further to an emergency
facility in Portland, by herself. Friends may well have been willing
to go with her, but she needed to do this on her own.
The news got worse. Evidently Kenzie
had been born with incomplete small intestines. That was OK, it
seems, until they sort of telescoped into themselves and a portion of
them became damaged enough that she had to have 16 inches removed.
She stopped breathing during the operation and it was great work by
the vet staff to bring her back.
Will she be OK? Will she be able to
come home? We do not know. We call down there multiple times a day
and, so far, she has been showing progress; small but consistent.
Sheri and I have taken the hope and faith we were using for my
cancer, and shifted it to Kenzie and her care. We could probably
divide it up between us; there should be enough to go around. But
frankly, it doesn't feel that way just now. We've managed with what
we've been dealt, and I think we've managed pretty well. But this
just seems like “piling on.” I know it's not, and I know Sheri
and I will be back to being “strong” and “brave” and all
that, but right now? Right now I don't have the energy for it, and
I'm not sure Sheri does either, but you'd have to ask her yourself.
Speaking of Sheri, let me tell you two
things about this latest assault on our family; things that may make
clearer my claim that, despite my own health issues, I feel
incredibly fortunate, like the you-know-what on earth (hint- Lou
Gehrig).
When she had to take Kenzie to the
first vet, an hour away, it was on one of the hottest days of the
summer. One of our cars has air conditioning, but a manual
transmission. The other has windows and is an automatic. Sheri
decided to take the automatic because her gear shifting isn't as
smooth as she would like it to be and she didn't want to keep
jostling Kenzie while shifting gears. It meant she was going to be
hot and uncomfortable, but there was no hesitation. She could direct
air to keep Kenzie cool and she would just deal with her own
discomfort.
The second thing involved a call to the
vet after we were told that Kenzie was improving and was at least
slightly responsive. Sheri asked the vet: “If you put your phone on
speaker and put it next to her, do you think she would know we were
talking to her and telling her how much we loved her?” It seems to
me that someone like that should get an extra layer of protection
over their heart if they're going to give it in love so freely.
Doesn't seem to work that way, though.
So, here we are trying to regroup and
give life another finger in the eye, rather than vice versa. And it
seems that we're managing to get it done. We aren't going to be
beaten, not if love has anything to do with it. Three points make a
triangle and everyone knows a triangle is one of earth's toughest
structures.
There are a variety of versions of
the story that gives this blog its name. The pony is the constant in
all of them. A man is on his way to a party when he comes across a
young boy shoveling ass over tea kettle at an enormous mountain of
manure. The man asks the child if he wouldn't rather go with him to
the party than shovel all that poop. The kid says, “No way man.
With all that poop... there must be a pony in there somewhere
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