To Stretching, to What Stretches Us

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I was in the desert alone the first time it happened.

So this is how I go out, I thought (hyperbolically, but still).

The day had been long. I was famished. The aroma of sauteing onions and garlic filling Ruby the van was enough to make me swoon.

I was maybe two bites in when the pain came. I heaved, knocking the pan’s glass lid to the desert floor on my way out the door and heard it shatter behind me as I bent forward, hands to knees, thinking what an inglorious ending this would be.

A handful of minutes that felt like ages later, I sat on a log, stunned, under stars. A great-horned owl called.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

Silence for a long moment. Then, “Who-who-who whoooo whooo.”

“I don’t think I’m super stressed,” I said.

Heartburn, I decided in the morning, a bit chagrined at how shaken I’d been.

By the time I’d flown north for the summer on Ruby’s rubber wings, I wasn’t so sure.

My GP was. I didn’t yet know she was growing frustrated with the clinic. I hadn’t yet received a form letter telling me to find a new primary care provider. I thought she was having a bad day. I thought I was being silly.

And it didn’t happen all that often. And I’d learned to slow my breath before eating. And to chew thoroughly and take tiny bites and sort of catch my swallow by surprise.

I’m a person who’s quite often caught up: Just one more mile, and peak summited! Just one more hour, and epiphany will surely burst from fingertips to page! Just one more task, and the to-do list will be smashed! So ravenous by mealtime is not an unfamiliar state. I also love good food. So salivating isn’t either. Neither goes well with slow.

The worst was when it happened in a restaurant. A just-a-moment gesture while jumping from the table sans eye contact doesn’t read as let-me-just-go-powder-my-nose-bats-eyes playful no matter how much I want it to.

About a year ago, the pain in my major joints I’d been chalking up to bad ergonomics, overuse, and age eclipsed the abilities of OTC pain medication. With attempts to find a new PCP, calls to get into (any) specialist, and an alarming deterioration of my ambulation forefront, difficulty swallowing barely made the list of concerns.

It wasn’t until my rheumatologist raised concerns about a second autoimmune disease this summer (by then I’d been diagnosed with AS), noting this one would involve the esophagus, that I went, Oh.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Refer me to a gastroenterologist.”

I’ve no memory of my post-procedure conversation with the surgeon. My sister explained later. “Your esophagus was so closed she couldn’t put the scope through to do the second biopsy.” To avoid damage, reopening needed to happen slowly, so I’d need a second stretch in a month or so.

A third came in December.

Waiting to be wheeled in for a stretch

My morning stroll today ended with me moving toward sun rays and fog and frost. Everything—tree, house, car, cat—mere hint behind gauze and gossamer.

At my back, the park where I walked is home for at least a handful of people. Today, warm in coat and hat and gloves, puffing steamy clouds toward pink nose, I’d seen only belongings, a curled blue sleeping bag powdered white with cold, a tattered pack, a stuffed plastic garbage sack, some of its contents strewn on the grass.

How dawn and silence can gentle a place, a time (the kind that was) never ceases to touch me. It’s true of birds and squirrels too. And laughter and kindness. And time (the kind that moves).

Charlie

A year ago, I posted a story on a stranger who offered me anything I had need for in his junk yard, telling me he knew what it was to be down and out. It was part of a collection on the kindness of strangers. I sent it to some 200 of you. Since then, 1,000 more of you have welcomed me into your inboxes.

How your words and grace, in comments and private messages and in your own posts, have helped make this past year of changes expansive will always stay with me.

Back from my walk, I flipped on the fire. On the lounge by the window, I stretched my arms over my head. I arched my back. I wriggled my toes. I sighed in delight. “Not long ago, I couldn’t do that,” I told Charlie, my new friend, a jumping spider with pumpkin-colored markings. (You can read about Charlie’s namesake in Bryan Pfieffer’s “A Leap of Faith.”)

None of my docs knows why the inflammation moved to my esophagus. It’s not what they feared. Still, it’ll have to be stretched again, they say, no predictions when.

Isn’t that exactly like life?

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Thank you for reading, for liking, for commenting, for restacking. You’re helping this post expand its reach.

For the comments: In what ways have you been stretched recently?

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Hints of what we’re moving toward

Coming up on the Rolling Desk

• More pieces on living and thinking outside the box, including an interview with a man whose reaction to a heart attack, well, let’s just say will surprise you

• A trip to the US southern border with Mexico to meet people standing alongside those in need, like this interview with Stacy Moore on “Growing Sagebrush in Prison”

• A stopover in Thailand for the next installation of the kindness of strangers collection

• More stories on the power of wonder, like this piece on when a plateau tilted, and water carved, and wind joined in

• More reflections on connection, even across “built-in rifts,” as in “Disagree Strongly”

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For 5 more days, just $25 gets you an entire year of posts! That’s less than 50 cents a post. (Plus the archive of 100+ posts.)