Riding the waves

I've always loved the ocean, and felt a connection to it.  I don't know why.  We live in an area that's about as far from seaside as you can get:  in a desert.  Any salt water is nearly four hours away.  Maybe it was the trip to Seaside, OR when I was a little girl that did it.  Or reading in books that there was another world out there besides our own sagebrush-studded, monochromatic one.  Whatever the genesis, the few times I've been able to make it to the ocean as an adult I've felt like I've finally come home.  I think most people feel a kinship with the ocean.  The marketers know this.  They sell relaxation tapes with quiet piano music and the soothing sounds of the surf.  There's just something about all that salt water that touches a place deep inside human beings.  Is it our 80% water composition, calling out to its counterpart, yearning to reconnect?

Maybe its the waves that seem so familiar, rushing in and then receding, in crests and troughs.  Life moves that way as well.  Perhaps we are governed by the same moon as the tide, pulling and pushing us this way and that in succession.

Yesterday afternoon we hit the trough of the wave.  In the morning, B complained about a popcorn hull stuck in his teeth.  He had been worrying at it all the night before, making his gums bleed trying to get it back out.  I had a bad feeling then.  By midafternoon, the gum was swollen and abscessed.  By evening, he was running a fever, and he was in pain.  I should mention that he's been on gabapentin for the past several months, trying to combat the leftover chronic headache from the meningitis he had earlier this year, so there's really nothing besides ibuprofen that he can take for the pain.  Thank heavens, later that night it ruptured and eased the pressure somewhat, but this morning he's feverish and yucky feeling, and scheduled to see the dentist for some antibiotics.

I feel fortunate that the dentist was able to see him this morning as an emergency, but I'm leery about the antibiotic course.  This same time a couple of years ago began the same way and ended in c. diff, which took months to recover from.  To say that I'm nervous is an understatement.  He's started on the heavy duty probiotics and some echinacea just in case.

Ironically enough, we're both on the disabled list.  I have a painful cyst that we are waiting to go away, and it hobbles my day and the things I can do.  He's still got the tinnitus, which was really bad last night as well and drives him insane.  And now the infected tooth.  I held him this morning as he wandered around looking sad, watching me get ready to go to work.  I told him "This is the trough.  Soon enough we will crest again."  And it's true.  It seems to be cyclical.  It just seems like there is so much at once time that we have to deal with. 

I read other people's stories, and I see that their lives operate the same way.  Life will go along for a while and you think "Well, this is okay.  I can deal with this, and maybe I can even get some enjoyment out of it as we go."  And then, out of what seems like nowhere, the car dies, someone gets sick, you get laid off, people fight, a bill gets missed.  Something.  Everything.  All at once.  People feel like Job.  What it really is is your trough.  The simple key is that you have to get through it to get to the other side.  The pendulum always swings back.  That's the thing to remember.  And it works both ways.  The pendulum always swings back, so if it's really good, look ahead so that you can be prepared.  If it's really bad, have faith and hope, because the sunshine is behind the cloud, even when you can't see it.

We will hang in there.  This too shall pass.  And in a couple of weeks, we will have all the kids at home to visit.  Out of the troughs, and into the crests.  This little boat shall not sink.