Tea With Me: 21st August, 2023 Monday
So Dream Kite drifted way beyond my grasp last night, but the Pack left me to sleep.
So some of you have asked about what my “Lung Rabies” is. LOL. Well, in my early registration of the latest plague Nature threw at the Human Race (she does this, has done it throughout our existence on her land), I had fear like we all did. What will this mean? How will I fare in this wave? What can I touch? What can’t I touch? Can I hug? And all the bad information and all the denying information. All the crazy theories about it.
And I wanted to move to Santa Fe. From Oregon. Sell my house and move.
I would not let this stop me, No. And I didn’t.
Nicknames. My family culture has within its many lovely quirks, an insistence to rename people, places, objects, experiences, etc. Some of these titlings are fond and some are not.
One example of this titling tendency was about that the pool sweep in my parents’ pool was dubbed Oswald. It was an animated machine with a floating head and long air jet tendrils designed (this was the 70’s) to move the detritis that fell in the Connecticut pool surrounded my desiduous trees, to the filter trap. Oswald was Octopus like and constantly moving. It was impossible for our obsessively imaginative tribe not to name this machine creature such a presence in the pool. So Oswald was born.
One Saturday afternoon Oswald stilled. My father who liked to assume as a man, he had the ability to fix any household technical dysfunction, decided he would fix Oswald. His Saturday project began.
And of course, although a brilliant corporate lawyer managing a global law practice for a corporate giant Monday through Friday, his technical knowledge was, shall we say, short of the mark for remedying Oswald’s static state.
By Sunday morning, his efforts had not mobilised Oswald and his frustration (which I can imagine was on top of the volcano of work related frustraations at snafus he was responsible for unsnarling Mon-Fri) won.
My Mama very cautiously suggested calling “The Pool Man”. My Papa received this suggestion early Sunday morning with a harumpf. My Mama subtely opened her adrees book to the Pool Man’s page and left it next to the phone on the phone desk in the room nearest to the pool.
My father was a Big Guy. He was a good man who kept control of his emotions. But the little domestic snafus in my Mama’s randomly chaotic kingdom, our home, could ignite the eveready bomb pile of his business problems frustrations. He couldn’t let it go at work so periodically, on his hours off at home, our domestic chaos in which he found such lovely distraction ususally, would inspire a steam release.
We would all feel this coming and make ourselves scarce, waiting for the whistle signaling that the relieving release in the form of a short angry utterance of condemnation about whatever the source was at the time had come and then he’d be fine.
So by Sunday afternoon, we, who were scattered in other parts of the house having made ourselves scarce, heard my father come in to the room with the phone where my Mama had placed the “Pool Guy’s” number. We could hear him pick up the phone, dial a number. Someone had answered and a conversation ensued.
My Papa’s side of this conversation…well we couldn’t quite hear what he was saying. Given the my Papa’s voice was getting a little louder in each response to whatever the Pool Guy was offering Pool Guy, it was clear Pool Guy wasn’t getting it.
And then we heard the key to why the Pool Guy might have been a bit lost.
My Papa, Captain of Industry, gifted with an oh so eloquent grasp of the vast English language, was telling the Pool Guy, “BUT OSWALD ISN’T WORKING!!!”
My Papa had spent ten minutes on the phone with the Pool Guy who may not have had English as his first language, saying Oswald instead of the pool sweep.
We in our various hiding places around the house, lost it.
One of my favorite childhood memories.
So when Covid hit, it was instinct for me to rename the thing. For me, “Lung Rabies” lessened my fear.
Three years, a move, a guts remodel on a lovely Santa Fe home, five vaccines, Husband’s hip replacement, we had not had it. Then whammo.
So for those of you who read these, I had Covid starting July 29th. And indeed it hit my lungs. Lung Rabies it is, at least for me.
Tea was black, creamed, and manukaed. No Matcha for me. Spent most of yesterday coping with caffiene overdose.
Ta.
Tea With Me 