Folli's recuperation

It was APS, today was, at Folli’s door. Adult Protective Services, APS, if you somehow – and this seems prohibitively unlikely so why should we dwell on it? – come from a place where our wide world isn’t shoved down into acronyms. But before them had come HPD. Yesterday. And before that, on other days, before APS and HPD, there’d been nurses, case managers and case workers, friends and family (distant) and neighbors, HOA representatives, evangelizers and traveling salesmen of dubious and probably fictitious wares, plaintiffs pursuing land claims based on ancient deeds from long-forgotten kings, and cable tv repairmen.

All of them. Even the cable tv repairmen, which is a real-life thing and whom we’re not making up.

O! To answer the door was, for Folli, an ambition, an achievement, and an adventure. We had watched him – closely, constantly – ever since his untimely return, and we knew. We knew his habits intimately, may we run out of adverbs if we’re lying. Almost all days, he was and all he was was a head upon a bed, like his grandfather before him, until spurred to greater – or lesser – action by an intrusion of the doorbell, a beating at the door.

You know, even cable tv repairmen want to get back to their childhood imagination.

Folli’s was right where he’d left it, long ago, on his way out the door, in those thoughtless days when each of us – yes, you – is eager, panting, bursting to leave the leavings of childhood behind. The green grass grew thicker in that part of Folli’s parent’s back yard.  

“Recuperate” is a gorgeous word, to us. In form, it is pleasing to the eye on the page and balances the oft-used and more rarely-used letters perfectly. In substance, it is a signifier of growth and rebirth, going so far as to contain “cup” – the very picture of health and replenishment – within it.

Folli’s recuperation, to the extent he did recuperate – happened at his late parents’ house and cracked the ground over where he’d buried his imagination in 1991. And light erupted up from the crack, reflecting off the Temixoch storm clouds in red and amber, echoes and memories of green and extinct shades of orange. And the Recursivites, with their accordioned bodies, fading away down the crack in the earth, Folli remembered them well from his youth and now, in his decrepitude, they guarded from prying eyes the crack of his imagination.

Front door: “Good morning, Mister Folli! We’re here on a wellness check. Could I get you to open the door?”

“No.” As a matter of fact, “No,” Folli said from atop his living room hospital bed, on which he was recuperating. He knew. We knew. If he’d let her in, she’d have been carrying a shovel, probably, her ruse already forgotten in her rush to skip on by the cancer patient for the back yard.

Breathe. Write. Crush up those pills for your stomach tube, Folli. Breathe. Read. Pour your dinner down into your stomach and then begin again.

And the house changed, back to the house of his childhood, before his family had added the back room and lowered all the ceilings, and it kept right on going. Arabesques on the wallpaper wriggled and deepened, grew tentacles and revealed cities, tribes, and monsters. And an oak tree rose up in the kitchen and a six-point buck rumbled by his hospital bed. Outside of time now, the beatings on the front door became a memory, for us, and maybe for Folli.

Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that strange? Folli’s recuperation went on…

Comments

  1. I am so glad you are able to breathe, crush pills, eat, and write. Please keep doing all those things. As a child, I was once very ill and spent several feverish days in and out of consciousness and dreaming. The wall paper on one side of the room appeared to me exactly as you described. The other wall was wood paneled and looked like a mosh pit of ghastly expressioned faces. Hope You're Feeling Better and reCUPerating.
    beej in CO

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    1. This is only SORT OF my story. I mean, i took my story and put it through the blender. MY parents aren't dead, APS has not been to my house, etc.

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  2. Another Harry post! Must be a good day, in that case. Please don't run out of adverbs, lying or no. Kinda reminds me of Feynman trying to explain photons to his dad by referencing his (I think) niece saying that her "word bag" had run out of a certain word, so she couldn't say it any more...

    -Doug in Oakland

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    1. It took me several days to write this. It's the most complicated piece I've written since I got sick.

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  3. The last time I had a fever I saw faces in the bathroom floor tiles....I can still see them..I may be permanently damaged. Good to see you have found enough energy to share your world with us...may you continue to improve.

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    1. Thank you. Given my current limitations, this wasn't easy to write, but I don't want to turn this blog into a chronicle of my illness. I need to do other things with it. Like this story.

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  4. So happy to have one of your surrealistic stories again, Harry! Your creativity will help to heal you too. Hugs and best wishes as always!

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    1. Thanks. I was, if anything, relieved to get something like this down. I can still write!
      Has a Bruno Schulz feel to it, which works for me!

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  5. Being able to craft complex ideas into a story is one of the first signs of, We're getting better!" I'm so glad you able to this already. I bet it feels like it's taking forever (if not, I'm going to head your way and smack you because it's not fair--I still feel like it's taking me forever, lol). Keep on keeping on, sir. And you'll see how soon enough, you'll be ingesting things though your mouth (mostly).

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    1. Hi, Magaly. I've been reading a lot of good books while lying here, and that probably helps. But I'm working on it and, when I get back out of the hospital (I'm back for the time being), just being home is a huge plus.

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  6. Happy to read you Harry! Creativity helps us heal! Helps the soul! Keeping going Harry! Big Hugs!

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    1. Awwww, thanks. Yeah, I have found that writing, listening to music (including my hospital bed dancing), and preparing meals for my parents all help me. Those things keep me moving without thinking about the fact I'm moving.

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  7. For weeks after I returned home from my last hospital stay in December my dreams were intensely weird and unsettling. My doctor told me recuperation was a long physical process but he never said anything about what it does to a person mentally. Take care and rest.

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    1. Yeah, there's a lot they don't tell you, isn't there?

      I'm back in at the moment, but should be going home again by the end of the week. Baby steps.

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  8. Well . you're alive. I was beginning to wonder.

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    1. I am alive, Blobby. But apparently that was not a forgone conclusion back in March. I'm doing my best to get as far back to how things were as I can.

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  9. I wrote a response but it disappeared. I'm glad you're well enough to write. I've had a tough month and couldn't find desire to write.

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    1. Hope things come together for you, Bill. I sort of forced myself to write, an now that I've managed it, I might lay off for a while. Things are weird.

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  10. Patience surpasses science, or so say the French (they say it "Patience passe science.") - I know that there will be hard days, great days and other days. But time passes. Hang in there, and other assorted cliches.

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    1. Thanks. I am more fortunate than Folli is in the story insofar as my family is alive and are a big help to me. Oh, and no one has called adult protective services. I walked without a walker today. Things are weird.

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  11. Glad to read your posts again, Harry. It had been a little while since I heard from you. Take care and keep up the great writing.

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    1. I'm trying! I'm moving a little more slowly than usual, but gradually, I'm getting back to a place where I can function. Nearly.

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  12. Hugs. It's the best thing I have to offer. Not enough? More hugs.

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    1. I'm taking what I can get right now. People offer prayers - something that at another time might trigger a debate - and I accept them wholehertedly.

      Something is working.

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