"WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE ICE CREAM?"

So I’m going to tell you my little story, and give you a link to one of my favorite stories.  I want to you watch it, with lots of tissues.  Don’t be afraid.  Just do it.  You know, cuz your allergies might act up--happens to GingerMan, like when we watch ST II Wrath of Khan.

THIS week, I got Noro virus. Tuesday, Hoooorah.  Which officially makes GingerMan the best partner ever, as Wednesday night was spent in the ER, after which I was deposited at home, still nauseous and disgusting and by then wanting to cry, at midnight.  Midnight.  At which time GingerMan goes right back out to the 24-hour Understaffed, Overworked, Manned by Angels Walgreens Pharmacy.  Mid. Night.  Goeth the man who still has not eaten, after a full day at work, after working from home the day before to make sure I didn’t die falling over or something.  (BTW-While we were gone, MaryKay Carol dropped off Clorox Cleaner with Bleach-proven to kill the virus, and Jedi Jasmin made Chicken Ginger Broth, proven to kill everything evil and fill your world with rainbows.)

He turns in the prescription for what the ER nurse described as the anti-nausea “Miracle Drug.”  He waits, with a bag of Doritos and some trail mix in the car for another hour or so.  Then he comes home, pills me, eats and then asks if I’m good so he can go to bed.

I was lying at the precise angle that prevented me from yakking, and garnering all my reserves to not cry and said yes go to bed.  The meds took hold in the night and I actually slept for 4 hours. Still on the sofa, but with my shirt on.  Oh, patented system--and you don’t want the explanation.  But still...

So I am improving.  By Thursday night I ate some yogurt and GM could turn the TV on without turning me green.  Friday, Day 4, was TOAST DAY!  One whole plain piece!  Life is improving from there, and now GingerMan is turning his attention to his annual Spring Migration to Ireland.

I like me some time alone. I watch movies and cook Dinner for One with impunity.  I knit, I read, I go out with friends, and I can say what is usually applicable to my life--I am never really bored. I do it well. Better than he does, but I’m not bragging, because honestly--very, very honestly, I have a paranoid inner anxiety that maybe it means he loves me more and I can just get right along.

Except for my even deeper inner anxiety that he will die on a trip.  It grinds into me, burrows further down the farther in advance he plans.  Something will happen and the very one person in the world I have loved more than things, more than places, more than any other person, more than breathing, will be gone.  In 2002, when we were going to try on my wedding gown, my mom asked if I had been in love with my first (insert any ol’ words you like here) spouse and I said no, without having to consider.  Because I didn’t have a clue what the concept even was.  After GingerMan and I met, I forgot what life had been before, at Warp Factor 9.  Twelve years later it is possible to remember times and events, but no sense of living without him.  I have an ice-cold fear in my heart and soul that I could never get along without him.

I’d stick it somehow.  It occurred to me recently that I have finally accrued a bit of mileage, a bit of experience and some small portion of confidence.  I’ll fall right the fuck apart, but, well, what the hell do you want?

I’ve watched this particular short film many times.  It was featured on PBS as part of a nationwide story-telling project, shown at the end of features, and Danny and Annie remind me of us (link here JIK:  http://youtu.be/WNfvuJr9164). A schlub (me) and a catch (GM), and how a rag-tag duo found happiness until the end.  And then dealt with the end.  I know all of this sounds maudlin and macabre, but I’m an atheist and a realist and like to just deal with the scary shit.  I have lifelong severe anxiety about loss and loneliness and this film has really served as a training video, of sorts.  Whenever GM heads for the airport, the cold, black fear grips me, and then I think of Danny and Annie.  

Our affairs are in order.  We say “I Love You” so many times in one day you’d think we wouldn’t hear it but we do.  One night I wrote “I Love You” on little sticky-notes and stuck them in a heart shape on the counter around his morning cereal bowl and juice glass.  I was sick on Valentine's Day so he drove 40 miles round trip to get the flowers he’d sent to my job, even though I’d get them the next day.  Sometimes he picks up some Pretzel M&M’s (TM) at the grocery store just to see me giggle. 

“...She lights up my life when she says at night would you like a little ice cream...”

We each think JEEEEZUZ I was never good enough to catch you!  But that can only possibly be true one way and we’re each sure it’s the other way so we’ve reached détente and just swap pandas and “discuss” what to watch on TV during dinner.

Well, come to think of it, you don’t really have to watch it, but please do anyway, Danny and Annie are lovely people, with a lot to say about love and living.  Doesn’t apply solely to partners, there’s a lot of us in Friend Webs out here, and you know we’d be there with you in the ER at midnight when you need us, and definitely, definitely tell you to eat more ice cream--

--it’s medicine.  And Love.

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