A Shot In The Arm
Actually it was more like three shots in one arm. But as of last Friday, I am officially vaccinated! The first shot was fine. By the second, my arm hurt and the injection was much more noticeable. By the third, when the doctor said, “you might feel a slight burning sensation”, my arm felt like dead lead.
I spent the weekend recuperating between work and chores, relieved to have the fearful process of shots out of the way. I have a prescription for more antibiotic/malaria medication than I have ever had a prescription for anything in my life. Four months of a daily pill with side effects including photo sensitivity (that will be wonderful in Southeast Asia and Kenya; I am going to invest seriously in SPF as high as it goes).
The entire experience is becoming more real with each day and with each frightening item crossed off the list of seemingly endless to do’s in order to leave my life for four months, and to travel to five countries on two separate continents. The other night as I finally unplugged the computer and relaxed, I realized between my work and other obligations I will only have one more Sunday night in my apartment. This realization drove it all home how close this is really getting. I was sad for a moment because this house has been such a wonderful sanctuary for me all of these years and the time seems to be going so fast. But it also made me realize how fast any sense of time can go – a month of travel, a few months in California, a month of volunteering in Africa and before I know it, that too will have slipped through from fear into reality and then to memory and then to part of the fiber that makes me who I am as a person.
There are such floods of feelings to leave your life behind even if it is only for a few months; but then again there are such monsoons of emotions just going through life that we too often don’t notice or give space and time to properly acknowledge. The feeling of fear dissipates and leaves excitement only to be overtaken by the myriad of emotions we can’t imagine. I feel such relief to have completed something that felt so daunting before, and nervous for everything I have yet to experience.
And as each new blast of cold and storm of snow hits the streets of New York (these seem constant in recent days), I remember in one month I will be in a hot, humid, crazy new place, and I might even miss the snow then. Each time this thought bubbles up, it gives me this moment to think that if this isn’t the greatest lesson in “this too shall pass,” I don’t know what is. And asI lose gloves in cabs and buy new pairs, I remind myself to remember this cold for the good and bad, because on a steamy night I might feel the slightest bit of relief in the fact that it is out there. It also has shown me the lesson to take with me along the trip that no matter how daunting or overwhelming not only shall this pass, but I might even be able to put it in context and a time line. This too shall pass and my arm while still slightly bruised, doesn’t hurt the way it did last Saturday when I had to take a taxi home with my groceries, too tired and sore to carry them. My nights in a house I have come to know and rely on will in less than a month slip into memory and a place of recalled dreams. Just as all things in life this too shall pass, it may come back up time and again and I may not be able to quell all my fears with a meditation of snow on one side of the planet and sweltering heat on the other, but it has given me perspective in a way I have never been able to see it so clearly before.
Love,
Ramona