“At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough, and what might seem a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.” ~ Lemoney Snicket
Sunday morning dawned not with its usual slothful inertia, but with the same flurry of activity that had swarmed around me since he’d been admitted to Cedars Sinai late Saturday night. An endless stream of texts and phone calls double-teamed me, rendering me all at once distracted, informed, comforted, and overwhelmed.
In a nutshell, after a week of spiking fevers, some as high as 102.6 degrees, at the urging of our indispensable doctor friend, Jeff, Raphael had finally agreed to stop under-reacting, and “Just go to the damn emergency room!” Thursday he’d been put on a pretty gnarly antibiotic but not much had improved. Come to find out, the bacteria that had spent the week ravaging his immune system was antibiotic-resistant. Cue the BIG GUNS. A drug so strong it took seven doctors to reach consensus to even prescribe it. It had to be given as an IV drip and his blood and urine had to be monitored. Around the clock. For at least the first three days of the nine-day treatment.
So much for the quickie emergency room visit we both believed would chew up maybe two hours of his Saturday afternoon.
Clearly, we are two of the most clueless Pollyanna’s you’d ever have the misfortune to know. We also believe ice cream is good for you, dogs understand English, and the truth will always prevail. When you look up the word naive in the dictionary you see a picture of the two us, accompanied by the sound of uproarious laughter.
Anyhow, it was all so unexpected and laden with fuckery that by Sunday morning I was feeling a bit…unmoored. So, you ask, what do I do when I feel like that?
Buy donuts.
Into Ralph’s I marched, wallet and keys in hand. Laser focused as I strode down the aisle, past the produce, past the dairy section, looking for…what was I looking for? Head down, reading a text that was attempting to explain something unexplainable to anyone without a medical degree, I suddenly remembered why I was there—donuts. Pivoting in place, I swung a hasty 180— promptly knocking over a free standing display of Peet’s coffee that only a few seconds before had been loitering there, minding its own business. Shit, shit, shit, shit! Laying on its side, its guts spilled everywhere, it shamed me as I bent over to pick up all the bags of Peet’s.
Get your head in the game, Janet! It sneered.
Get off your phone!
Slow down!
Pay attention!
You’re acting like the sky is falling, Chicken Little.
He’s fine!
That’s when I noticed the additional set of hands helping me pick up the mess on aisle five.
“Oh, thank you, I’m so clumsy,” I said, just assuming the hands belonged to a store employee.
I could not have been more wrong.
Down on my knees, my hands filled with Peet’s, I looked up and smiled directly into the face of—a scary clown.
SERIOUSLY! A SCARY CLOWN!
There we were, ten thirty on a Sunday morning, and a woman over six feet tall, wearing a bright orange wig, her face painted like the joker, was helping me pick up coffee!
Me: dropping the coffee—Holy shit! You’re a scary clown!
SC: I am.
Me: Well, thank you…scary clown…for…wait…how are you a scary clown?
SC: smiling through painted black tears— Because sometimes scary clowns are there when you need ‘em.
MIC DROP
Scooping up the remaining bags of coffee, my brain surged into overdrive. How…why…what…huh?
Satisfied that the Peet’s coffee display would live to sell another bag, I brushed myself off and looked around only to watch the back of scary clown leave aisle five. “Thanks again!” I yelled, muttering the rest under my breath, “…freakin’ Sunday morning scary clown.
I think we can all agree, my life is absurd.
A random series of magical realities strung together like gumdrops, embellishing the Christmas tree that masquerades as my life.
Super deep universal truths delivered by scary clowns in supermarkets are absurd.
An antibiotic resistant bacteria that plays hide and seek for a week is absurd!
So is hospital food and compression socks and showers with non-existent water pressure.
So is fear. Fear is absurd.
It’s all a fucking clown show my friends—but it’s my life.
Carry on,
Xox JB
