By Linda Albert
(Page 1 of 2)
A year ago, my husband was contemplating a surgery that
would involve the implanting of a tiny electrode in his
brain. If successful, it would mitigate against his
Parkinson’s symptoms, allow him to take less medicine,
lessen his side effects and give him more independence and
quality of life. The surgery took place on September
26th and for 10 amazing days he seemed like a new man.
And then, in a flash, his colon decided to twist and
everything fell apart. First the brain surgery.
Then colon surgery. Followed by hernia surgery. And
finally, three months ago, total hip replacement surgery,
all in less than nine months’ time.
All this week, I have found myself singing a line from
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in my mind.
“A something of something, a flash of light, my golden coat
flew out of sight. The world is plunged in darkness.
I am all alone.” It drives me crazy that I can’t
remember the words to the two “somethings.” A clash of
drums, maybe. But do drums actually clash? Cymbals
yes. But drums? I’m close, I think, but I don’t quite
have it. It can’t be thunder because the beat would be
off. I search frantically through my CDs and tapes,
sure I have the show among my belongings, but it’s not
there. And did the world turn dark or did it more
dramatically plunge?
It’s as though, if I can get the precise lyrics, I will be
able to solve the mystery of this particular musical message
and why it won’t stop singing in my head. I throw myself
upon the mercy of Google and am able to find a site with
lyrics, but only the first two lines of each song are played
as a tease to the listener who will then be compelled to buy
the CD. I am too impatient and penurious to wait
before starting to write. At least I’m reminded that
the song is entitled “Any Dream Will Do,” and that the
lining of the coat of many colors, according to the Andrew
Lloyd Weber version, is silver. I don’t know if I ever
focused on that before, even though I had the happy
experience of being the stage director for two productions
of “Joseph” in my distant past and think I should be
familiar with the details.
Without an answer, I try to write a poem instead about the
turtle excavation last Friday night to which I brought my
daughter and 10-year-old grandson who were visiting from
Boston. I am struck by the woman dressed entirely in
white who dons the same kind of rubber gloves worn by the
nurses in the hospital and the paid caregivers at home when
they tend to my husband’s bodily functions. From my
perspective, she is surprisingly heedless of the knees of
her white pants when she kneels on the beach; yet, like a
surgical nurse, she carefully lays out, in lines she has
drawn in the sand, the 80 rubbery, ping-pong ball sized
unfertilized eggs and 15 hatched shells the male volunteer
brings up from the nest. It is a disappointing night
and very unusual. There are no live baby turtles in
need of rescue down at the bottom. And usually the
numbers would be reversed: 80 hatched who have hopefully
made it into the sea, though many would have been eaten
already by predators (such are the odds of turtle survival)
and 15 unfertilized.
I think my poem might be interesting if I can round it out
by telling how when I return home to relieve the caregiver,
there is no crowd of fascinated observers encircling us, no
group of volunteers passionate to save us, and when my
husband needs help in the bathroom, it seems pointless to
use gloves. “I do not use the gloves” would be a
wonderful last line for my poem; I’m convinced of it, but
I’m not clear about what to say before that, so the poem
turns out as barren as the turtle nest and never gets out of
the hole it is in, much less into the creative ocean or off
the mundane ground.
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