Home Sick

Okay.

What gives? I'm still sick.

I got a little better by last Monday, had a pretty good Tuesday, started feeling bad again Wednesday, floated through Thursday, woke up Friday, thought "Oh, no, I'm still sick! I can't call in again." Went to work. Got sent home by Wiz at 1500.

"You're going home at 1500." He tells me.

"I don't need to. My voice sounds a lot worse than I feel. It's just laryngitis."

"The float is coming at 1500. I'll be in MRI. Give report and go."

It is good to have someone who knows you well. I really needed to go home. I felt like hell. But I would never have requested to go home. The only way to get me out of there was to arrange for my replacement and pack me up and out.

I went home. Lilly wanted to go to a movie. I thought, "what's the harm? I'm on call, officially, not sick." So we went to see Happy Go Lucky. Lilly liked it a lot, but I didn't. For some reason, I walked out sad. I thought the driving instructor was way too disturbing. It's funny, because I've had almost the same exchange with someone in my life. Angry, screaming, offended by my good humor. I've had the same strange conversations with street people.

I had so much fun being YOUNG ME, I am always surprised at how much I do not want Lilly to be anything at all like YOUNG ME. "You know," I tell Lilly, "after she saw him stalking her apartment, she should never have gone in the car with him after that."
"I know, Mom."
"And you know, you must never get some place lonely with a homeless person, like she does. Never."
"I know, Mom."
All those walks at 3am on Mary Street in Coconut Grove or on the South Side of Chicago, or under bridges, or through steam tunnels, deserted churches, the lovely mystic wild lonely parts of cities. Singing sea shanties at the top of my lungs.
But maybe, by being this careful, I've starved Lilly, somehow. Maybe she needs to get wild to get a little fatter?
What was great about the movie is that it really reinforced for both of us what we already knew, that we create our own reality. Here's Lilly, starving herself in the midst of plenty--what sort of artificial reality is that? The world is really what you make it. It can be a trap, filled with rules and games, or a playground. I mean, for the average, middle class person living in a country not being plagued by war or famine. I.e. For us.

Here's my secret strange worry. Have you ever read any of the books by Carlos Castaneda? There's this teaching by Don Juan that humans are these egg-shaped energy fields, but that the people who have had children have a hole in the middle. Carlos goes back, reconnects with his daughter, and steals his energy back.

But I always wonder--how could you do that to your kid? And sometimes I wonder if I've accidentally done that to mine. I mean, I look so young and I have so much energy (well, not today) and the music and the writing--maybe I'm not supposed to have this much? Maybe Lilly is starving herself because I've somehow, psychically taken something essential from her?

That's my 1/2 hour