I have a great friend in my apartment complex. She's only a few years older than I am, but she's a little more banged up. She was in a terrific hot air balloon crash about 10 years ago and they put her back together with metal rods, chewing gum, and band aids. Recently, she has had to give up driving, and I try to invite her to accompany me every time I go shopping because she is generally stranded. She's also not eating properly, has never learned to cook, really, and needs some help with her nutrition.
Going shopping with her is a scream because she wanders off and spends an inordinate amount of time reading all the labels and "pricing" things she is not going to buy that day. She often cannot find things that are right on the shelf in front of her. It takes forever. I am always losing her. The other day I lost her at a new Walmart. I forgot to bring my cell phone, so we couldn't call one another to coordinate our locations in the store. FINALLY, when I met up with her, I had a shopping cart full of things, I was ready to check out, and she had 4 items...but she needed one more. I checked out and waited half an hour for her to appear again.
Today we went to Sprouts market for vegetables, and it was a circus. She was revved up and chattering like a magpie while I, accustomed to proceeding in a leisurely, quiet fashion, was not in the mood. I yelled at her at one point and had to apologize, at which point she told me that it was such a treat to get outside the apartment that she just gets EXCITED. She was enjoying the fun trip. Well, then I felt really crappy. I had gotten mad at her expression of happiness. Sigh.
The young girls at the produce department laughed at the two old biddies behind their hands. I tried to explain to Ruby the fruits and vegetables needed to make a nutritious juice drink using my Jack La Lanne juicer.
Ruby is so scattered she went off on a tangent, taking two produce workers away from their jobs to ask them if the apples were on sale, after I told her they were not. Then she asked if there was a senior discount. They were very patient with her. Meanwhile, I stood there, mortified, holding a bag of carefully selected apples, waiting for her to stop fiddling around. She stood there, yammering to the produce workers, as if engaging them would make a discount appear out of nowhere. Finally, she stopped talking. They politely waited. She stood there. They looked at me. Hysterical. I dragged her away. She argued about the number of apples I had chosen. Everything is like pulling teeth....from a magpie.
Dismayed at the rising cost of food, even in this market that used to be very affordable, I grew anxious about whether or not I would have enough money to purchase the staples I needed: garlic, onions, ginger, leafy veggies, yellow veggies, tofu, mushrooms...and something else I had forgotten. I wondered if I would have enough money for food for the rest of the month. Ruby wandered off to buy a birthday card for her granddaughter, while I continued to toil in the vegetable department. My PTSD kicked in and I lost my concentration. It was so clear in my mind what I needed to get BEFORE I walked into the store, but the increasingly crowded store had made my mind turn to mush on high alert, if you can picture that. I had to collect myself.
After I took a tour of the store and found her, we got to the checkout line, and she didn't have quite enough to pay for her portion, so she gave me what money she had and put aside a selection of items to pay for with her debit card, on which she had $14. The bill was something like $23, however, because she had misread the price of the birthday card she selected which was more than $7! This happens to us all the time. Money is so tight on Social Security income that, when we miscalculate our purchases, we often have to pay from two different methods: a little cash, the remainder from a bank account with the debit card. Sometimes we have to return an item and have it deducted from the bill. Sometimes when she gets the bill, I have to lend her money. Sometimes she lends me money. It does get embarrassing, at times, but today we presented such an entertaining production that the stock clerks and the cashier just smiled at us and endured our bickering and fumbling with extremely good nature.
When we got back to the apartment complex, I drove her as close to her apartment as possible, and she went in and got her little shopping cart, then loaded her stuff into that. I went home and unloaded all of my veggies from my trunk into my kitchen. Ruby came BACK over to my house, and I made a lovely dinner of bagel, cream cheese, tomato and onion. This has become a monthly routine, when I do my major shopping trip. Ruby commented that we had had a really fun day, and I felt badly again that I had gotten so irritable with her. Chronic, unremitting pain makes me grumpy. I could have taken a pain pill, but then I would not have been able to drive. Catch 22.
Most of all, I get disappointed in myself that the God consciousness that is so effortless while alone in my apartment just EVAPORATES when I get stressed and I am bungling my way through errands or other business exchanges.
She went home. I drank a cup of tea, rather HALF a cup of tea, and promptly fell asleep in my recliner despite my cat's efforts to wake me by stomping his 16-pound royal furriness all over me. It is odd to realize that just one shopping trip can now completely wipe me out and keep me aching for days afterwards. I've been disabled for 10 years and I still can't get used to it. It is almost as if I do not believe it, even though I know better than anyone that it is true. I keep trying to do as much as I did when I was 30, and then I'm surprised when it doesn't work out. I pictured a completely different life.
No one anticipates becoming disabled. That's the thing. You get injured in a hot air balloon crash, like Ruby, or you gradually start to get sick, struggle to stay employed, stay above water. You swim and swim until you have to get out of the water or you will drown. You do not have a choice about it. When I finally went on disability, I had been sick for about 10 years, and my finances were completely depleted. One of my old friends, on learning that my disability benefits had been approved, asked me, "If you can't afford to live on the monthly income, why did you retire?" Retire? Ridiculous question.
The able-bodied just don't get it, but Ruby and other disabled people DO know what it is like to desperately try to maintain one's independence and the illusion of normalcy. Both of us dressed to the nines today, with lipstick, jewelry and everything. You'd never know that she was down to her last $14 and I was down to my last $80, even though I just got paid.
This is one reason why I am grateful for people like Ruby in my life. We're in the same boat and we can laugh about our circumstances. We're both religious, so we can also forgive one another our idiosyncrasies and see the humor in them. Best of all, we are each grateful for the blessings we retain, the things that really matter that have nothing to do with how much money one has or how much physical health.
What we have in common, aside from our artistic natures, disability, pain and poverty, is Jesus, and that makes all the difference in the world.
Silver Rose
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