Travel travails and the mysterious leg

I recently had an opportunity to get out of town and get together with friends.  I was so looking forward to this gathering, but it turned out the travel itself was not without a few trouble spots.

I was working in Tacoma as a faux patient in a nurses' training program the morning I was to leave, and there wasn't time to go home after that, so just drove directly to the Seattle airport.  Sweet Hubby took the train and met me to say good-bye and drive the car home.   I had 3 hours at SeaTac, then a short hop to San Francisco, 5 hours in SFO, then an overnight flight to Baltimore, and 3 hours at the Baltimore airport waiting for the shuttle that would take me into Delaware to meet up with my friends.

It made for a very, very long day/night/day, and I didn't get any sleep on the overnight plane, but I knew what my itinerary was and so had plenty to read and also used the time also to walk and walk and walk and occasionally eat.  SFO, by the way, gets my vote for best airport.  It is roomy, as lots of comfortable places to sit, terrific art installations, and even has yoga rooms, one of which I used to stretch my limbs and rest my mind.

So it all worked out.  I got together with my friends in a big rental home on Fenwick Island, a sweet, touristy town on the DE coast.  I was tired, but feeling fine when I went to bed that night.  However--

The next morning I woke up virtually crippled in one leg.  The back of my left knee, upper calf, and lower thigh were so tight and sore, I could barely straighten that leg, nor put much weight on it.  Besides the pain, which was considerable, I was also plagued by the question of what the heck had happened????  There were no incidents nor accidents during the night.  The couple of times I got up to pee, I was normal, feeling just fine.  What on earth had caused this tightness and soreness?  There was no swelling, no bruising, no wound.  It was the weirdest thing, and the weirdness of it, the mystery, continues to nag me to this day.  

The pain itself began very gradually waning on the second day, and I was able to enjoy being with my friends.  The weather was blustery, so we mostly stayed indoors, laughing, snacking, playing games, talking.  It was an almost perfect four days - except for this stupid leg.

On the trip home, more travel travails.  I was driven back to the Baltimore airport for a short hop to Detroit, there to learn that the plane from Detroit to Seattle was postponed - until the next day.  The airline (which shall be unnamed, since whatever caused the long delay probably wasn't anyone's fault but was due to mechanical issues, or short crew staffing, something like that) did put me and whole lot of other people up in a nice enough hotel for the night, and the plane did get me safely home the next day, so it all turned out all right.  No lost luggage, no COVID, and thank goodness I didn't have to be back for a job interview or wedding or anything.  Now it's all just a fun story.

Now, almost a month later, the pain in my leg is basically a whisper, there but not a problem unless I fold my leg up to kneel or whatever.  I may never know what caused this; don't see the point in going to my doctor because I doubt there's anything he could actually see or find.  But still - what the heck happened?  I guess my body is feeling it's age, but my spirit, ah, my spirit is still young and energetic and still wants to do cartwheels, which makes having to limp around like an old granny quite annoying.

Cool things someone said

It takes a mighty good husband to be better than none. - Amish saying

It's not how old you are, but how you are old. - Anon.

How do we consume in a way that does justice to the lives we take? - Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars. - Gustave Flaubert in Madame Bovary

As one grows older it is more and more necessary to reach out your hand for the sturdy old vines you knew when you were young and let them lead you back to the roots of things that matter. - Lillian Hellman in The Autumn Garden

Are we being good ancestors? - Jennifer Peedom and Robert Macfarlane in the documentary film River

They tried to bury me.  They didn't know that I was a seed. - Sinead O'Connor

The day I stop collecting recipes is the day I'll know that I have finally accepted that I'm not going to live forever. - Granny Owl

Sometimes in life you get eaten by the boa constrictor – in a dark place being squeezed on all sides.  Remember: 1)  It’s not your fault.  2)  All you have to do is hang on, because the snake will eventually shit you out into the light.  - Cynthia Whitcomb

The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others. - Joseph Campbell

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him. -   E.M. Forster in Howard's End

Awareness itself is the primary currency of the human condition, and as such it deserves to be spent carefully. - Andrew Olendzki in Busy Signal

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and close from fear of further pain. - Oriah Mountain Dreamer in The Invitation  

Goofin'

Sweet Hubby and I goof around a lot.  We'll be in the bathroom, for example, flossing our teeth, or in the kitchen preparing dinner, and just crack each other up, with wordplay, cultural references, inside jokes, giving voice to our cat, acting dumb.  Believe it or not, the word "so", said with a particular inflection, can send us both into paroxysms of laughter.  We laugh a lot in each other's company.

I wonder if all couples play like this.  I hope so.  I would love to think that we are an example, not an exception.  But thinking about this makes me realize that I don't know, none of us knows, what people are like in their most private, unself-conscious moments.  I can't imagine any of the couples I know using silly voices or making weird sounds and laugh laugh laughing.  Everybody besides us seems too mature for that.  But maybe we seem too mature for it as well, when we're in the public eye.

This curiosity I have about what other people are like hits me when I'm driving, passing other cars, wondering "Where are they all going?  And why?  And how do they feel about it?  What's on their minds right now?  Are they wondering about me?"  Sweet Hubby and I sometimes make the observation that for other people, we are just background players, just atmosphere for their lives the way they are for ours, but that for themselves, their lives are as full as for them as ours are for us.  Do they giggle and chuckle with their loved ones?  Do they speak in strange voices or burst into made-up songs or suddenly start dancing for no reason?  I hope so.  All that goofiness sure makes the world a happier place for me. 

Have I the right?

I know that there are some people who believe we choose, or chose, when and where and into what family to be born.   It would be reassuring to believe that.  It would be lovely to believe that I had something to do with the good fortune of my birth, as though I had earned the right to elevated circumstances, or was smart enough to choose better than most unborn souls seem to.

That's an idea that must be taken on faith, on pure belief, because it can't be proved and there is no evidence.  I don't believe it, reassuring as it would be to think my good fortune is deserved.

I know that I am no more at fault for being born healthy and white in the 20th century in the United States to a family that revered education and loved one another utterly, than another person is for being born a female in Saudi Arabia, a country which stills women's voices and allows them no freedoms.  I can't think she chose that for herself.

So what do I do with all this good fortune?