Magnet

It's been going on for weeks, and there is no apparent event or immediate source, and the symptoms are vague, but as a descriptor, heartache will suffice.  What worries me is a feeling, natural to an intuitive person, that maybe the fearful, achey sense of things amounts to a premonition.  Marlou describes a similar pain always at the back of our days.  And it's disturbingly pervasive, and it's bittersweet.  Our battles, when they come, don't seem to obsess us quite as much or last quite as long.  We are not quite sure how long anything will last, how long we will last as a couple, alive on this earth.  Thus, the ache.

I attribute the current onset of painful foreboding to Marlou's medical cycle.  It's time for another PET scan, the quarterly cancer report card.  Is it A's or C's or F's?  Will Marlou have to reenroll in Driver Ed?  Plans are on hold, but emotions aren't.  It's poignant every minute.  Whatever it is could be an intimation of doom.  Or the natural deepening that comes with a prolonged emotional challenge.  No one can absorb things all at once.

Sometimes I can't absorb them at all.  Marlou and I are hungry for distraction.  Diversion is the better word.  I want to be diverted.  From Kennedy to Newark.  From Oakland to San Jose.  I want to land in a different place.  Our plasma TV, glowing and expansive can take us into some pretty shallow waters.  But I don't mind the deep sea.  Anything that challenges and illuminates or laughs from the depths.  I'm willing to watch.  Critics Picks, Film Awards, The 100 Best All-Time Movies, none of this helps, most is unreliable.  Never mind what Netflix recommends.  Marlou and I are finding our own way.  Not all the time, but often together.  In a general way, the contemporary, in films or books or almost anything, disappoints me these days.  These days seem particularly finite.  Things that have been around for thousands and hundreds of thousands of days, those are the things I prefer.

The odd thing is that this emotional state may be entirely independent of Marlou's real medical circumstance.  In fact, I have the sense that her next PET scan will give her high marks, an A+ in cancer minimization.  Successful chemical combat.  It's not the news or the fear of the news.  It's the old.  The experience of life in the balance, health as tentative, the future uncertain and possibly brief, it's been getting old.  While I am getting old.  I can't tell if I'm getting worn out like a battery or worn down like a mountain.  The latter would be good.  Things getting reduced to sea level, ground down, rich mineral veins exposed.  All at low altitude.

It's time to think outside the box, I occasionally tell myself.  I've had problems with a magnetic switch on the outside of my van that controls the deployment and stashing away of my wheelchair lift.  The thing has been repaired three times, and the latter was not the charm.  So it seemed to me a sort of illumination when, bouncing down the Menlo Park sidewalks the other day, it came to me.  Don't fix the magnetic switch -- fix the magnetic magnet.  

Dammit if Menlo Park Hardware doesn't have a selection of magnets.  The shop occupies a fairly small space, but every displayable inch contains something useful.  Stoppers for our sink.  Portulaca for our garden.  New keys.  Garbage bags.  Pitchforks.  And, yes, for a mere six bucks, one macho iron-grabber of a magnet.

At home, I freed the magnet from its shrink wrap and brought the thing outside to perform its magic on the van switch.  Sure enough, even in proximity to the switch, inches away, something clicked on.  Just as something had clicked in my brain, rolling down the sidewalk.  Now, to make the van's electrical controls click off, just bring the magnet close.  Well, bring it closer.  Do it again.  Maybe hit the van with your palm, then apply the magnet.  Well, maybe give up.  Because the problem isn't the magnet, it seems.  Or the magnetic switch, replaced three times by a puzzled repair guy.  The problem is...unknown.

I've got technological friends with mathematical backgrounds who probably have a thoroughly logical explanation for the van and its misbehavior.  Such explanations make my eyes glaze over.  At best, I mistrust them.  Technical understanding of my van doesn't seem to help.  What ails my car is not understood, apparently not curable, and the workaround -- a weak magnet and a strong kick -- will, for the moment, suffice.

Marlou's cancer and her chemotherapy rebound may defy understanding, but there are certain things we know.  The two of us have never been closer.  Part of this is spatial.  The new sofa allows us to comfortably sit together.  I admit that it took me a while to try this, to make it a habit to plop myself on the sofa instead of the electromechanical leg-raising wonder of a recliner armchair that arrived with the rest of the new furniture.  Maybe there's some boyish tropism that reacts to closeness with mother-wants-me-to-do-this-therefore-I-won't stubbornness.  Or there's this other thing.  But I can now put my arm around Marlou, cuddle side-by-side and share in the plasma screen amusement, moment by moment.  It's the poignancy and bittersweet feeling, the heartache, that comes in these moments.  At times, it seems too much to bear.  At times, it seems that this is life, and all roads have led to this moment.