Windfall

There is an old fruit tree on my property, planted when my youngest was born, which has grown too tall for me to reach, yet it is laden with fruit. I am not good with ladders (I probably have mentioned here someplace that I have both lupus and fibromyalgia, and get a touch of vertigo from time to time when I am unwell because of these things, so I don't do ladders). Anyway, the tree is in a place where it's hard to access the fruit, until I began to see windfall apples in the brush around it, like red-streaked Easter eggs. I learned to collect the windfalls quickly, in the morning and evening, before anything had a chance to get at them. A quick wash, and they are perfectly nice (they fall into clean brush and leaves anyway, not the ground). Then, I had a brilliant idea and shook the tree just a little (it's still fairly thin trunkwise, as fruit trees tend to be for awhile). And there was a rain of apples, falling like a bounty from heaven, their fallings cushioned. So, now there's a bowlful of perfect, clean apples, a free gift.

Someone recently asked me why I don't blog about having lupus and fibro. The truth is, this blog is the one place I feel I don't have to focus on either of them, for my daily life is spent dealing with them so often, and my two chronic illnesses are the direct reason it has taken me seven-plus years to write my book. Plus, though I don't mind people letting me know about alternative treatments, I find that the two things that directly have helped me are following my doctor's orders (I was fortunate to find a good rheumatologist who supports alternative treatments that work for me such as acupuncture as well as a sound medical program, and I have a good medical team here in Santa Cruz), and following his directives about exercise and weight loss. I find that exercise is the ONLY way to the pain and fatigue associated with fibromyalgia especially, no matter how much it hurts to get going (and believe me, if you have it, you know exactly what I am talking about).

Plus, I have no desire to chronicle for the public's eye the yuckier details of having a chronic illness like lupus--mouth and scalp sores like a Biblical plague, for example, and the latest fun, blurred vision from time to time, etc. What I do is just keep going, gauge each day as it is, and try to enjoy life no matter what. I guess that's the heart of life, in some ways--taking whatever joys come, like a gift of windfalls on a summer morning.