After the Stroke Read Free Page B

wheelbarrow, fertilizer and put lime around some of the clematis—but when she got here—such a help!—I was done in as though after a full day of outdoor work. It is so frustrating!
    However, Tamas actually walked out and lay down by Maggie in his old place under the maple tree. He has been so lame I was in despair yesterday. So maybe spring weather will give him a lift! And me, too.

Tuesday, April 15
    Maggie Vaughan overnight—she comes like Ceres bearing baskets of goodies—applesauce, cookies, thin calves liver, fresh eggs from the farm—cooked our supper although I made an eggplant dish earlier as a vegetable. The thin calves liver was delicious, and for dessert homemade strawberry ice cream, the best I have ever tasted! I feel so cherished and shielded when she is here—and before she left she had even brushed Tamas who did need it. I have felt so badly to neglect the dear thing as I have done for lack of energy.
    Pierrot played some mild games with her before supper but never showed off one of his wild hurricanes—as he is apt to do early in the morning—instead, slept from five to six nuzzling into my arm.
    All this homey peace broken into, of course, by the horrendous news of our bombing of Tripoli and “punishing” Qaddafi by killing at least one hundred civilians and rousing the Arab world against us. What has this outrageous deed of childish reprisal done for us? I feel humiliated, ashamed. Now we shall wait for Qaddafi’s revenge—then what? Another bombing? More innocent dead? No wonder our allies are dubious. I am unable to say more or even to think. A black day.

Wednesday, April 16
    Expecting cold rain and wind, we are given another golden morning—but I got overtired yesterday. It was so good to see Janice and have a bowl of her superior fish chowder again and to hear about her exhausting interview yesterday, but we were both too tired really and I was in bed by seven-thirty, then couldn’t sleep, too aware at night of what is going on under my skin—fingers of my right hand go numb—my whole head itches, anxiety—another stroke? Absurd, of course.
    The good news is that Dr. Chayka has agreed to take me off Lanoxin—and I hope in a few days to feel well after three and one-half months of discomfort all day long. The drained feeling in my head is altogether other, the effect of the stroke. But it would be wonderful to enjoy meals, and Scotch—and not feel quite as sick. It has been depleting. I’ll see Dr. Petrovich, the heart specialist, on May second—and Janice meanwhile will monitor my pulse—(it may start to race without Lanoxin).
    Youth, it occurs to me, has to do with not being aware of one’s body, whereas old age is often a matter of consciously overcoming some misery or other inside the body. One is acutely aware of it.
    I simply never thought about this until the stroke—even when all my teeth had to be removed last year! So I have been lucky. But I see now that the stroke has made me take a leap into old age instead of approaching it gradually.
    The kitten is so perfectly at ease inside his body that it is a joy to contemplate him, sometimes lying on his back with back legs stretched straight out and front legs stretched straight over his head. Such ease!

Friday, April 18
    Yesterday, off Lanoxin and expecting to feel better, I felt so ill I could do nothing but lie around and wait for things to change inside my body. So it was especially moving to find a letter about As We Are Now in the mail that spoke to me with force.
    The writer, Kathleen Daly, S.N.D., wrote in bed with the flu where she suddenly remembered an experience she had had as a nurse’s aide in a nursing home in 1982–1984—and what the novel had meant. She says:
    The relationship you describe between the main character and Mrs. Close had so much likeness to a relationship I experienced that I always find comfort in