A Red Balloon

We are celebrating our birthday today.  Woke up early this morning and decided to have a chocolate cupcake (one without icing) and a mug of coffee before going back to sleep.  Littles are talking inside.  They want a red balloon.  That doesn't sound like too much to ask.  A lot of pleasure from a simple thing.   They want to get their stuffed animals out and tie ribbons around their necks.

Yesterday Ray and Chris returned from shopping with ingredients for cupcake baking and two presents cheerfully wrapped in poinsetta paper.  
"Happy Birthday to Us!  Happy Birthday to Us "  the kids-of-us were excited.  In the kitchen, Ray was making fajitas and feeding Gia the Italian Greyhound bits of chicken.  Gia was zooming around, not at all interested in curling up in my lap.  Not with so many good smells in the kitchen.  Ray and Chris made the cupcakes together,  taking turns with the hand mixer.   Watching from my chair with my foot up, I was admiring their forearm muscles, as they took turns beating the butter, sugar, and chocolate together.  Then Chris was frosting the cupcakes, getting fancy, squeezing the icing from a plastic bag.

For dinner we had fajitas, cupcakes, and watched one of my presents: The Wizard of Earthsea.  Gia finally settled down once the food was put away.  Ray put her on my lap, I covered her with a baby blanket, she did her groaning thing and fell asleep.  I opened my other present, an Upwords game, we pulled a card table over my splinted leg, and played until bedtime.

Sally has taught us to check and make sure that the littles are experiencing some of the joy.  It's important for the littles need to know that we are safe now, and that we are loved.

Littles just popped to the surface, excitedly talking.  Jo is typing for them.
"Ray and Chris made cupcakes for us, with icing.  Gia wanted one but she couldn't because she's a dog.  But she got chicken.  We have a happy birthday this year.  The body is all grown-up but that's ok because nobody is hurting us now.  We're going to play games for our birthday.  Good games.  Not the bad kind.  We're going to have cupcakes.  And maybe a red balloon."

Coffee and a cupcake tasted good. I'll eat something sensible later.  But now I think it's time to get  a bit more sleep.   It was after one by the time we got to bed last night, and we woke up at 5:30.  We'll finish our morning sleep on the sofa.  The bugs-in-space quilt is waiting.  The cat just curled up on our wheelchair to take a nap.  She has the right idea.
Bye for now,
Sara and Jo

Wrapping up with a Quilt

Quilts mean comfort.  When we were very young, still in our crib, we would touch the edge of our satin quilt to comfort ourselves.  We learned how to dissociate into fabric, going between the threads.

Now we have a comfort quilt, so well-loved that it is threadbare on the edges.  We call it the "Bugs in Space" quilt because we made it of fabrics with brightly colored bugs, clouds, and planets.  When our son was eight years old he chose the fabrics and gave them to us as a present.

Lately we've been comforting ourselves with quilts.  On the sofa we snuggle under the Bugs in Space quilt.  Back on our bed, we've been sleeping under our little's quilt, the one made with bright-colored elephant, flower, and banana fabrics.

And the past couple of weeks, we've spent hundreds of hours shopping for quilts online.   I know we're shopping for comfort.  But there are some kinds of comfort we can't buy.  Our littles wish for something that they will never have: a quilt made by someone (outside of their body) who loves them.  And so they look at quilts online and pretend.

Limping along

Our littles would like to be in a younger body, but here we are.  We are 57, almost 58 years old; we have a birthday later this month. Sally, our therapist, reminds us that our body has carried us through a lot.  Our body survived childhood.  Our body has enabled us to do every good thing in life that we have done.    Our body deserves kindness and love.

Sometimes in therapy a little will pop to the surface and tell Sally "This body is wrong."
It's hard to feel like you're eight years old and stuck in a grown-up body that can't sit on the floor or run.

We had flat feet.  Back problems and menopause made them worse.  Our posterior tibial tendons stretched and tore.  Our feet and ankles collapsed, and we could hardly walk.  After a couple years of trying to get better with physical therapy, we had surgery.  Seven weeks ago we had our right foot and ankle fixed.  We went through two plaster splints, and then a purple cast.  Our foot and ankle have been healing, and yesterday the purple cast was cut off.  X-rays showed that the bone and tendon attachments are healed.  Now we are wearing a velcro-attached inflatable walking boot.  We can't walk yet.  We are still using our motorized wheelchair.  After a year of physical therapy, our right foot and ankle should be good.  Then we'll have our left foot and ankle fixed.

When our ankles hurt, it brings back memories of being tied by our ankles.  We have been having flashbacks of being hung by our ankles.  Ankle pain means helplessness.  Ankle pain means being tied with our arms and legs spread-eagled.  Ankle pain means our body torn up the middle, slammed again and again.  Ankle pain means betrayal.  As our ankle heals, we have a chance to heal other things.