April 11, 2007
Last Monday was a “Set Aside Day”. These are times that Charles has so named because they are taken out of our routine pattern and include adventures out of the ordinary. We were in Denver under a beautiful sky in wonderful temperatures and with good friends. We drove into the mountains to have lunch, and in the evening our friends took us as their guests to the NBA Basketball Game at the Pepsi Center. The Denver Nuggets were playing the Los Angeles Lakers before a crowd of about 19,500 people. There were so many amazing things about this event – the assumption seemed to be that the general attention span would be around 10 seconds so there was constant sound and movement in the vast space. For one example, from a catwalk near the ceiling, T shirts were randomly parachuted down into the masses of people, with one carrying a free ticket to fly on Frontier Airlines. And so it went – the crowd dynamic was a huge, rumbling thing drawn together by loud pulsing music much of the time, and instructions on huge screens in the center of the arena led the people in cheers and roars at certain times during the game. There were cheerleaders and dancers and at the half, a woman on a very, very tall unicycle balanced while tossing bowls with her right leg upward to land on top of her head. It appeared to be an extraordinary feat and everyone rewarded her with ooohs and aaaahs.
A particularly riveting event of the evening was the appearance of a group of older women calling themselves the “Silver Hotties” who came out and gathered in a formation in the center of the floor as the younger women had earlier, and proceeded to do a routine to loud music, shaking their various body parts and flinging and swirling gray hair about. It was not really a sight to write home about, and I was taken by two thoughts. One was looking at the beautiful and buff female dancers, scantily clad with generous cleavages and long hair as they sat on the side observing their elders and wondering if any of them would think that one day they too would try to relive something long past and gone. The other thought was imaging reaching a certain age and one morning standing in front of the mirror, smoothing the eyebrows, putting on the lipstick, tossing back the gray hair, standing sideways, hand on hip and looking just so. Then, having reached the conclusion that by golly, I’ve still got it, going to the telephone and arranging an audition with the Silver Hotties with hopes of dancing right into belated fame and glory. It did make me smile.
Today the blood reported that my white cells are still on a trek downward, and I will need to delay a planned Friday morning cataract operation as well as begin to wash the hands and take precautions because I am immunity challenged again. I will resume Neupogen injections to see if the blood can improve a bit and after five days another blood draw will direct what happens next. I try not to think very deeply about this because it becomes a fearful thing – rather, I continue the conversations with God and hope for the best.
(Next entry: April 16)