When I started my new job months and months ago, I posted an update here in the Sunshine letting readers know that my days of daily blog articles would be coming to an end. There just wasn’t a way to do it all. I’ve written about missing writing. I’ve labored over not being able to labor on my laptop.
In these days of FaceBook and Twitter, I’ve relinquished myself to one sentence updates about my life’s activities in lieu of lengthy articles. However, I’m a lame tweeter and booker. My “friended” individuals or those who I follow through cyberspace always seem to come up with interesting, funny and engaging status updates. I often have to think before I post mine. Why? Well, what am I going to say?
Kimberly Fabrizio….can’t feel her fingers this morning.
Kimberly Fabrizio…is fanning her burning shins unsuccessfully.
Kimberly Fabrizio…fell down again today, the sixth time in as many weeks.
Kimberly Fabrizio…is worrying about eight hours in the car next weekend.
People don’t want to read those types of status updates. As such, it’s rare that I post my M.S. news or true status on FaceBook (the site I use most to network). I stick to postings about the weather, life in general or I post quotes and thoughts that inspire me.
The hubby was teasing me this weekend about being a Gemini and possessing two, distinct personalities. As we talked about the ‘professional’ me vs. the ‘child-like’ or ‘crazy Kim’ me, I laughed a little. I realized that my Gemini-esque extends into my online life – as if I’m living two, separate lives in cyberspace as well.
Oh well. If one wants to be a Gemini, it’s best to do it up right! Today I’m going to try to bring the two worlds together, introducing one world to the other. We’ll then see what people really want to read about.
If you’ve arrived here from FaceBook or Twitter and if you can’t figure out why my fingers are numb, my legs are burning, my shins and knees are cut and bruised, or why the heck someone would worry about riding in a car, take a spin around the Sunshine side of life. Learn a little about Multiple Sclerosis today. While it’s not a ’status’ anyone really wants to claim, more than 400,000 of your American friends and colleagues suffer from this uncurable, life-altering disease.
I do miss reading your daily posts, laughing till I cried over my morning coffee…however, I also miss just talking to you in general! lol You knew, and told everybody, how busy you were going to be when you got this new job. The thing that makes me smile is knowing you are exactly where you need to be and that you are loving every day…even if you are so busy you can’t blog. I check your status on fb every day, if you had a chance to update it and you are on my home page leaving a shout out. lol And I check back here every so often to see how you and the MS are coming. Love ya!
Hey Kim,
Funny. I did come here by way of Facebook where I’m not so active nor prolific, but am connected to folks. My presence on Twitter is driven mostly by automatic feeds and interacting with those who “talk” to me. Primarily I read your postings on the old-fashioned GoogleReader. However, that you are read and have updated is welcome to see.
Luck O’ the Irish……..I am Gemini also!
The Twins.
As I drive the streets of Erie, PA each spring, I learn how to go forward, while driving around monster potholes, that break out at once as weather improves….. a sort of reverse blessing.
Same for me with horoscopes.
As a Christian, I do not read them.
But as a lover of stars, I am aware as I gaze toward heaven of the groupings, and Who is Who up there. Still, I prefer to stare at the Dipper and the compass provided within.
I visited a newspaper as a child and saw the massive pile of papers fall to the floor, as the desk owner moved papers to the side.
A flurry of picking them up and mixing them in the process, ended with the pile neatly stacked.
But they were horoscopes.
Now, they were totally out of order and the managers said to print them anyway the printer chose.
I thought to myself, “People depend on these words to lead their lives, but the words they read in the next paper have no relationship to them, since they are clearly out of order.
And, how many times was the deck shuffled before they came to that desk?”.
Biblical truths later reinforced my knowledge of the dangers of horoscope life, but as a Gemini, my “twin”, still occasionally glimpses the heavens to read the “Who’s Who” among the galaxy system.
Ancient Druids had some peculiar habits.
They loved to study mist, for it is neither total water nor total air.
They loved to study mistletoe, for it is neither total tree nor total bush.
They loved to study adolescence, for folks like Kerri Elizabeth are neither total child, nor total adult….physically, emotionally, or mentally.
None of these are transistions.
They are actual states of being.
Kerri at 16 is clearly adolescent.
Mistletoe is obvious every Christmas.
And mist can be seen early morn, or toward sunset most days, on rainy times, or by breathing closely on a shiny spoon.
The Druids believed that by looking closely at these things (and many more) one was given the privelege of glimpsing TWO Worlds at once!
It is easy to observe one world of anything anytime. A field of flowers is a field of flowers.
But at one time, it was a handful of seeds.
But it is very rare to be able to glimpse into two worlds at once. That is what made Kerri Elizabeth’s Christmas post on Oboe dying so precious. She was giving all of us who care to look, a glimpse into two worlds simultaneously.
Making the invisible become visible would seem impossible to many people, if you asked them to do so.
Flick a switch on the wall, and darkness becomes light. So too, does electricity reveal itself from the hidden wires within the walls.
The above breathing onto a shiny spoon will allow you to see the invisible breaths you take each moment. Winter in Erie accomplishes the same revelation of your breathing as temps fall.
For those who are looking, for those who seek, making the invisible become visible is relatively easy (and fun).
In the first month of this blog, I wrote of trying to find the color orange, in the living room of a woman who abhors orange and declared it would never be found in her home. I said I could find it, in the very living room we stood if I had the time.
“Be my Guest!”, she challenged.
(I won’t redo all that, but you can read it on an early post here in Comment 1):
http://sunshineandmoonlight.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/on-being-a-redhead/
All of us are more knowledgeable than the Druids,
on mist, and adolescence, and maybe mistletoe, though we use the latter as a whopper of a good excuse to claim a kiss, a sign of love AND SIMULTANEOUSLY, a sign of betrayal…..but betrayal is always hidden in the kiss, while love is always visible in a kiss.
I do not know if the Druids examined the kiss, but I can assure you I have!
But life in two worlds at once is astonishingly common. We are citizens on Earth, and all of us will become Citizens of Heaven, or Hell one day in the twinkling of the eye.
MS folks lead a double life, as Kim noted above in her post.
But those numb fingers for the MS’ers are shared by the Diabetic, as I remember mom saying many times before plunging a needle of insulin into her body. (Yes, MS and needles are very common among many other maladies and people).
And those burning shins?
I don’t think I have MS, but there are times my shins feel like a laser light is burning a hole in the leg, and women in menopause, seem to have this strange thing occurring too.
NOTE: I KNOW men-o-pause is not an issue for me, but diabetes does have a hereditary link that give me as a man, o pause about it.
As one of 12 siblings, we did not have the gizmos of entertainment lushly available to the current kids, but we played games.
“Ring around the rosy,
A pocket full of posies;
ashes, ashes
we all fall down!”
And when we fell, we laughed aloud at it.
No more!
Kim falls down 6 times a day, and each is cause for concern.
When my hearing faded, vertigo replaced it.
To walk all the way down to the basement to do laundry, without falling, is a gamble every time.
I get dizzy at the top of the stairs, and now make it a point of getting my cell phone…..
to do LAUNDRY!
I can not hear someone on the phone (folks text message me). But, if my head hit cement, I would hope to be able to dial —- wait, we don’t dial anymore — I would hope to press 9-1-1 for help.
So it seems that life in two worlds is far more common than any of us thought.
And I have a feeling that anyone who is observant as a Druid at glimpsing two worlds at once as they live two lives simultaneously (I do NOT include the Two Faced here!), is far more alive than those who have no predicament, concern, worry, or dilemma, to enrich their lives by doubling the number of lives they live.
Some are even blessed with three at once.
Why, I have heard of an MS gal, with cancer, working, being a mom, being a daughter, being through remarriage, stepping back up, and raising step kids, changing jobs, dogs, friends, finances, homes, habits, and social networks faster than you can say “Druid”. It exhausts me more than the silence all around me.
Finally, my mom died on her 87th birthday last year, on May 21, 2008. She was visiting Portland, OR at the time and the funeral was delayed until May 29.
I visited the cemetary most days in the past year, but especially May 21, 2009 her first birthday in heaven.
(yes, I sang “Happy Birthday”, wel l l l l l off key)
Again on Memorial Day to visit and remember.
Again on May 29, 2009….recalling the entire day of funeral, eulogy I gave, cemetary, and wake, with surprises awaiting there.
On each visit to the cemetary in recent days, my mind drifts to a column here a tear ago, ….
I mean a year ago……
“Honoring a Woman I Never Met”
by Kim Fabrizio, about my mom.
(It is in archives May 2008)
Silent thank you’s went from an Erie Cemetary to heaven back then, and again in MANY recent days at the cemetary.
A woman with MS wrote it, read no horoscope on what to say…but revealed her heart instead, and sent a silent kiss of comfort to a family she never met.
Kim Fabrizio lives in far more worlds than she knows, and if I was a Druid, I would study her to glimpse them all.
Best regards and blessings,
Danny Lucas
Kimberly!
I did not find you through either of those. I found you through Google Blogger and I am glad I did. I found your writing to be very inspiring. I look forward to reading more.
Sometimes the path we walk invites discovery and revelation to others … at other times the path invites quiet solitude, or serious contemplation, or silent wonderment.
“Life is a journey, not a race” is a phrase that most school children hear again and again … sometimes we don’t find the truth in that until, as adults, the path itself slows us down …
What I like about email, and these blog sites, is that, unlike the interruptive call of a telephone, an immediate answer is not demanded, and not expected, but a thoughtful, reflective, considered response is always welcome, whenever it appears.
I appreciate coming to this site and finding this community… and if I read that you’re tripping, Kim, I know that you’re still moving …
I am happy for you working and the time, I understand. I feel the same as you do about Facebook, etc I much prefer blogging. You are a good writer, So keep on blogging.
It is nice to find the other Kim that has MS.
I hope that despite the new job, you are taking time for yourself. Make sure you find time in your busy schedule to do the things you love. It might mean dropping something with less meaning. If blogging is part of who you are, find the time to fit it in.