My recent travels have helped me remember that plumbing technology is advancing. Have you noticed that toilet tanks keep shrinking? Yet they're getting more powerful. The one I just visited is the only one I know (yet) that you have to brace for a recoil when you fire/flush it. I have to wonder how the plumbing copes with supersonic...uh, toilet water.
The science behind it is pretty obvious but something only low-flow toilets demanded. Air is compressed in a chamber in the tank by the flow of water from the fill valve. Open another valve to flush and boom! you have just fired water down a sewer pipe. I wonder what would happen if the air tank ever failed. It could have life-threatening implications.
Tonight, my 3 year-old daughter and I had a candid discussion about going to the bathroom and it was amazing how honest and frank she was about things. She was completely unaware of how such conversations hardly ever take place (outside of a doctor's office, anyway). It was a way for us to relate and understand how some things are the same whether you're 3, 33 or 93. My kids need to know that I understand that just like adults, they have challenges too. For them, every challenge is bigger than the first. Every obstacle is higher, wider or just plain out of reach. They can't wait to be 4, 5, 12 or 16, when all their problems will disappear.
It seems like every day, whether we're children or adults, we're always thinking about tomorrow, or next year. Few and far between are the moments when we get the chance to really just enjoy the now. We are always looking ahead or behind. I think that heaven will be so unlike that. We will move from moment to moment, enjoying each to the fullest. There won't be any daytimers, any calendars or schedules. The objectives and to-do lists will be relics of an era when things like that were considered important.
Being disabled has taught me some about living life in the moment. My fibromyalgia prevents me from making commitments by and large. Seldom do I find myself living life on a timetable like I used to do all the time in my former line of work. That was all about planning and steps and accomplishments. Now I am simply looking for a few good hours, a couple of good days to produce some work. Yet, I'm not always able to do that. It seems like my to-do list has been replaced by a way of life that is beyond my control, for the most part. Instead, I simply go from moment to moment, mindful of what needs to happen but in a place where I must have a forced patience with an unwilling tool--my body.
Maybe, in a way, I'm back to some of my daughter's challenges and frustrations. It seems like she wants to do certain things and then, strangely, she's forced to do something else, like get in the car and go to the store. Entire hours of her day vanish at the whim of someone who doesn't communicate the day's agenda in advance. Likewise, my body takes me down with little warning. I can feel it getting worse and I feel like saying--just like my daughter, "No! NO! I wanted to do this! Why can't I do this?" Yet it has to be the way my body says. Maybe I'm in this place for a reason, and maybe it's not just for my own benefit. I sure hope so.
No comments:
Post a Comment