Message in a Mayfly

Friday I crawled out of bed around 8:00, fixed myself a cup of coffee and ambled out to the back patio to enjoy the unseasonably cool morning. As soon as I exited the garage, I saw the ski boat hitched behind the Tahoe. Carl had been up and productive for a couple of hours.

With caffeinated excitement Carl asked, "Do you wanna go to the lake?"

I had not had my caffeine quota, so I merely grunted. I really didn't want to go. I hadn't been feeling well due to an abscessed tooth and was still leery of lake fun since I had a strange tingling sensation in my fingers after jumping in the lake on my birthday. Actually, tingling doesn't adequately describe the phenomenon. It felt like twin lightning bolts struck my shoulders, zig zagged past my elbows and built up energy in my hands before exploding through my fingertips, leaving hundreds of prickling electrodes pulsing in my fingertips. Yeah, like that.

I returned inside without making a decision and played on my laptop, all the while feeling more and more sorry for myself. I can be pretty fatalistic in my imagination when I allow it. Next time I get in the lake, I'll probably be paralyzed. Or Everyone else is going to have fun and I'm going to be left out more and more. Or I'm probably going to need to be in a care home before I'm fifty. Better yet, Maybe I'll die before I'm fifty. Like I said, fatalistic.

The beast arthritis had stolen my physical abilities, but was I really going to roll over and give it my spirit as well? Was I going to live my fatalistically few remaining years in the Valley of What If?

No!

Though arthritis constrained me, Someone gifted me with a husband who seems to have made it his mission to compensate for that, to literally lift me up when I have fallen and place me on safe ground. If I would only get up off my scaredy-pants covered butt, Carl would ensure that I had fun. So I put off my fears, put on my swim suit, grabbed my camera and left for the lake.

Man, am I ever glad I went. If I had stayed home, I would have missed this.






This was the first time any of our girls have gotten up on skis. Woohoo!

I also would have missed the moment when we parked the boat in the sand near the beach and Carl noticed hundreds of mayflies hanging on the tree limbs above us. He located a long stick and reached it up to shake the branches. Mayflies fluttered around us like the petals in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that merged and swirled to take the form of a messenger. Some flew away, some landed on us and the boat and some fell to the water where dozens of perch surfaced to eat them in a feeding frenzy. A few mayflies were able to take flight after landing on the water; but most that attempted to fly from the water remained trapped on its surface. I gently lifted a nearby mayfly from the water and placed it in the relative safety of the boat where it struggled to fly but remained constrained by saturation.

When I looked up, my husband smiled at me. I would have to abandon my little mayfly. But in that moment I fully comprehended the truth that Carl would not leave me.