Salt Shakers

There is somewhere time to think about pain. There is a stoic place in the somewhere that says pain makes you stronger. I don’t have total agreement with this postulation because there is no definition involved. Physical, emotional, spiritual, cultural, national pain all manifest in ways that may be strengthening but many just hurt.

Over the past several months I have experienced physical pain that presents itself in various guises, from a sharp wrenching burn to a crouching clandestine discomfort that drags everything to the edge of thought and emotion. This one doesn’t strengthen and in fact it does the opposite.

It reminds me of visiting my aunt Maimie’s house. She lived with her daughter Helen and a small particularly annoying miniature dog that at some times, to me, seemed to be indistinguishable from the multitude of collectibles unevenly distributed in veritable every vacant space. The pre-visit parental admonition was “don’t break anything.” most particularly the dog and most surely the salt shakers. The collectibles were salt shakers that had, over the years, been painstakingly called together by my aunt and cousin into a sea of porcelain and pewter, all of it quite valuable and most certainly most fragile.

I should say a word here about my natural tendency. Though probably not inherited, it was every bit as apparent from an early age and has become more refined over time. Things around me like to fall off shelves, get caught on clothing, jump in front of my feet, move over head and behind elbows and generally make a nuisance of themselves by smashing to pieces on some conveniently located hard surface. I’m a “klutz”, a “shla’meal.” So in the shaker museum with its pint sized purveyor of calamity I sat on the edge of anticipation, not anticipation of “if” but of “when.”

This discomfort is the same feeling. I am consistently anticipating the smash of sensation that will capture every focus of my life. This pain is tiring. It adds neither strength nor wisdom. It has no lesson to leave no moral to reveal. It is malicious, nasty, and disconcerting. I would like to leave it to its watchful purpose and go home now.