First of all, as I fried an egg and toasted some bread this morning I wondered just how I do it. That's all. It wasn't self-congratulatory. I was just observing in a sort of mindful way how I absorb, think about, deflect and let fly the various emotions that accompany my daily life with Sophie. It's been a difficult morning. Yesterday, I took her to the beloved osteopath who worked on her for nearly an hour. Sophie was quite calm and even fell asleep for most of the visit, but as we walked down the hallway to go back to our car, she gazed off to the right and then collapsed into my arms in a seizure. I lowered her to the floor and knelt beside her as she jerked, cradling her head in my lap. When it was over, I sat down on my butt and just gazed back down the hallway, looking right out of the window at the far end. It was a long, light gaze. In the foreground were the tops of Sophie's pink high-tops, pointing upward, then a line of  pale carpeting and closed doors, symmetry, four-paned window, light, clouds.

We're working on adjusting the dosage of Sophie's cannabis and trying to tinker enough to get some better seizure control. I am actually pretty confident that we'll be able to do it, so when I say that I don't know how I do it, I mean balancing, the tightrope walk, the delicate stepping despite my bulk. Literal and figurative. Clumsy on the ground, the narrowing perspective, exploding out to light.

*For those of you reading War and Peace with me, a chapter a day, please see my friend Criticlasm's fine blog about his own experience doing so (he inspired me to take it on). He wrote a blog years ago about his experience that serves as an excellent compendium. He's also a playwrite and wonderful critic of all things cultural, and you can find a lot of good writing at his other blog. Thank you, B!
Posted by Elizabeth at 11:33 AM Labels: caregiving, mindfulness, perspective, Sophie, stress, tightrope walker, War and Peace Elizabeth Aquino Our New Podcast Who Lives Like This?! Quotes to Live By The Title of this blog What I'm what Bookworm 2018 Words to Live By The Mermaid Bookworm 2017 Bookworm 2016 Mary Oliver

"Be ignited, or be gone."
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