A Gnarled Bit of Wood

        I have the wonderful opportunity to be able to serve as a volunteer at a local hospital, a few hours, once a week.  This week, volunteering was exhausting, but always nice to get out and do it. While there, I had a couple of really interesting conversations, with some odd sorts of realizations!

        One of these conversations was with an older man, who had a very twisted, gnarled, cane/stick with a hand-crafted handle, that someone had made for him, and we had quite a chat about that; we compared "my friend Watson", which is also a wooden "branch" kind of cane, but much simpler, to his.  His was his pride and joy, as he beamed telling me how many compliments he gets with it, and told me I must get plenty with mine, too!  (Not quite as many, I'm sure.)

        The second was a woman older than he, who also had a hand-carved, wooden cane, beautifully tooled all the way from the handle to the tip, made by a friend of hers who was going blind and losing his ability to make them.  Hers happens to be one of his last, and she treasures it with every footstep!  She was amazed at how I could have bought mine in a common store, because she thought it was so lovely and had never seen them anywhere!

        If either knew of the other, beautifully-hand-carved one I have at home, they would have marveled all the more, but I don't take that wonderful gift from a friend of mine out and about.  However, if I end up a fine cane collector, I would be very much amused!

        However, this woman had me smiling the most as she stayed chatting for half an hour, and talked about aging, and how slow aging of the skin is often a bonus to EDS, which often amuses me because people often think I'm 10 years younger than I am, to which she agreed, and I've no complaints!  We then discussed our physical conditions, and our other med routines and such, and we had so much in common, I could only laugh as she was astonished that she had "so much less to battle," and then she blessed my heart.  "Well at least you have the secret to looking younger!" Hah!

        You know, perspective on life's gifts and challenges changes when you are so unusual there is no longer any way you can possibly blend into the crowd.  You can either embrace the gifts and challenges, or fight against them.  Of all my life's gifts, an easy team of champions and many, simple circumstances were not among them, so I just do what I can with the gifts I do have, and allow the challenges and circumstances to shape me as they will, much like those markings in those gnarled, carved shafts of wood, each a kind of wound which will make of me something only Life will show, eventually.

        I'm not a fan of pain of any kind, but if you have no other choice, you might as well allow it to make something beautiful and worthwhile of your life, hmm?  And if it makes of me something strong and useful in some way, all the better.  I find the idea of myself nor my experience never having mattered to be much more painful.

        I just found it interesting, and thought perhaps someone else might, too.  If so, consider it my gift to you.

        Better days ahead, my friends!