It Just Goes to Show You

“Well you see, Jane, it just goes to show you, it's always something….” Or something like that was the intro to the response of Gilda Radner’s Roseanne Roseannadanna when asked to explain the relevancy of her weekly monologue to Jane Curtin’s news anchor on “Saturday Night Live”. I have not been a regular viewer of the show since that time in the late 70s, which, by the way, has nothing to do with the shows wildly funny energy for close to four decades. It’s just not one of my habits. Like Radner’s other characters, Roseannadanna was “wild and crazy”. And so it can seem with life. Cause and effect? I know it’s there even though at times I’m challenged to figure out this relationship.

My right hand is just about healed from the dog bite I received a week ago. For seven days, I soaked this hand in Betadine solution twice daily, put triple antibiotic ointment on the wounds, and bandaged the hand to keep it clean and protected. During that time, my left hand had to carry the load of any work I tried to do, including the dishes or cleaning the commode or connecting the water hose. With my right hand on the mend, two days ago the pinky finger of my left hand erupted in angry red blisters, the same breaking out that I have experienced periodically on that hand over the last 10 years. My doctor’s PA told me not long after I started experiencing the problem that it was an allergic reaction to something I’m coming into contact with. I guess that would be life, since it seems to happen without apparent provocation. “Just put some hydrocortisone on it,” she advised. How simple, I thought, over the counter hydrocortisone, simple, inexpensive. I have decided it is just another way that stress manifests itself in my life. Dog bite, one week later the recurring breaking out on my life hand, go figure. I’m no doctor.

As I lay in bed at 4:30 this morning, awake really early compared to the previous days on this fall trip to Texas, as I lay awake trying to focus my groggy but pestered brain on giving thanks for this day, this life, I thought about my irritated-feeling left pinky finger. Finally, my feet hit the floor shortly after 5 a.m. and I made my way to the kitchen. Hmm, I guess I’ll go ahead and shower, I thought. Dried off and dressed, I headed toward to the kitchen sink, to the rinsed but not washed dishes from last night’s batch of Texas chili, and the coffee pot that had not been cleaned from yesterday morning. I had put some hydrocortisone on my left pinky and quickly realized that I had now traded a compromised right hand for a compromised left hand. I shook my head in dismay, but I had to smile over life’s crazy, connected ways.

So today, as I make a mark on the list of things to do, I am thankful that a generous rain two days ago has watered my native garden. The first of two batches of laundry is underway. A couple of guys I engaged will be here this morning to load the furniture into the trailer my neighbors are generously providing for the transport of goods and merchandise to my antiques show in two weeks (another thank you). These guys will also man handle some other furniture that I want moved around inside this barn house. My back, compromised over years of lugging around stuff, says thank you. Percolating in the back of my mind, immersing my pinky in dishwater is only one of the things to avoid. My list goes on, but it doesn’t have to be documented.

Today will be a day of moving forward. The laundry will get done. The first push at loading the trailer will be accomplished, and maybe I will begin reviewing stored boxes from previous antiques markets, picking candidates for “another day in the sunshine” at this fall outing. I will use the broom—with both hands. The almost endless list of things that can benefit from the use of both of my hands will amaze me as the day progresses. And just to be nice to myself, I will continue reading the third in the series of Stieg Larsson’s engaging trilogy of crime stoppers in 21st century Stockholm. Ah, it will be a good day. One thing or the other has an upside as well.

It Just Goes to Show You—Normangee, Texas (September 10, 2010)
R. Harold Hollis