Help

The morning mirror reveals that I have a face, recently I read a book, and why the two must combine to be a Facebook is anyone's guess.  Not that I'm complaining.  An old friend discovered my blog on the Internet...a revealing statement that a more tech-savvy person would find redundant...and now I'm on Facebook too.  The significance of this still eludes me.  I stumble around the site and still cannot quite comprehend its functionality.  In particular, I have not been able to send a message to anyone.  Well, not quite.  I wrote on some's wall.  Intimates of Facebook will recognize this wall writing as significant.  I don't yet.  That's because I can't find my own wall scrawl, or whatever it is.  For the time being, I've kind of given up.

But not entirely.  Giving up is a particularly bad idea these days.  This morning I found Marlou in bed little too long, slouched to one side and looking rather wan.  It's time to pay a visit to the clinic, I said.  Marlou said she couldn't manage my anxiety.  The housekeeper came.  I disappeared into my office.  Marlou disappeared altogether, probably upstairs.  I went out for lunch.

The refrigerator is bursting with food, but at times I simply have to get out.  The upstairs eatery at our local supermarket provides a predictable, if dull, selection of salads, soups and espresso drinks.  But not today.  The soup was gone.  The salads were as familiar as my bathroom sink.  I rolled downstairs to buy some sushi, headed upstairs to order a double latte, and sat at a small table fiddling with my purchase.  No one knows why soy sauce is packed in military-grade plasticized aluminum foil.  The packet itself easily slips between my neurologically compromised fingers.  Never mind, for Petra, counter person at the supermarket eatery, would come by in moments bearing a steaming latte.  I would ask her to open this thing.  Except that with closer examination, the slit on the side of the package became apparent, and with it, a path forward.  I gripped one side of the soy sauce packet with my teeth, the other with my fingers, and let rip.  A little squeeze produced a big result.  Soy sauce spurted.  Mission accomplished.

I must confess a certain disappointment.  Part of the restaurant experience, even a quasi-self-service one like our supermarket's lunch bar, involves service.  I like being cared for.  And in moments of strain, with Marlou and I lost in our separate pain, a waitress' help will do.  Unless I genuinely don't need help.  And in that case, to quote Billie Holiday, God bless the child who's got his own.

Fact is, Marlou is going to be able to do less and less for me.  It's been nice, these years of help getting on my socks in the morning.  But this era is coming to an end.  Which doesn't mean that love is coming to an end.  But the medium of exchange will be more direct.  In the more than two years Marlou has had cancer, I've gotten used to doing things for her.  I know she's tiring of the help or the need for help, but either way, it doesn't matter.  Love is love, help is help, and God bless the child.