OUT OF LEFT FIELD: Genuine joy can find you in the strangest places
By Kyra Hoggan
I have a story to tell that is in no way newsworthy, but still worth the telling, I think.
Back in spring/early summer, an illness struck me hard. It took away the use of my hands, left me unable to walk for a while, wiped out significant portions my memory. It’s called peripheral neuropathy, but for me, it wasn’t peripheral, it was my whole body and parts of my mind (memory). The pain was truly unspeakable.
Thanks to wonderful doctors and nurses, family and friends, I am on the mend. My hands are still numb, but now I can feed myself again, cook, wash dishes, etc. Getting to drive again was a joy I cannot express. You can’t really understand the enormity of that until you can’t get to the grocery store to buy yourself food. Hunger sucks.
I used to be able to type 70 -100 words per minute, depending on the day, and churn out really clean copy – no spelling, grammatical or punctuation errors. Now, I can type about 10 words per minute, and I have to go back and correct at least three of them. A skill upon which I based a great deal of my sense of self was all-of-a-sudden gone. Even now, writing is a slow, laborious and physically painful process for me. But I still managed to get a lot of important news out into the world. I’m really proud of what I achieved in the throes of life-altering disability.
Now to the point of my story: yesterday, BOTH of my computers crapped out. Not having access to my sites started to send me into a panic spiral, and the only reason I didn’t utterly lose my stuff was that I reminded myself just how bad things can get, and that the world wouldn’t end if I couldn’t get the news out in a timely manner.
But I was still panicking.
So I called my neighbor, who is an IT whiz and a dear, dear friend, and he said he’d come over after work and have a look at my computers.
Which gave me a new kind of panic. Having him see the state of my house, given months and months of my inability to do much of anything, completely freaked me out. So I frantically looked around to assess the most egregious of my housekeeping failures.
“I can dust,” I thought. Then looked around and realized I didn’t have that kind of time (It’s super bad, lol), and looked for the second-most egregious mess.
Paperwork. I had papers strewn across every surface, piles and piles of papers, papers, papers everywhere. So I gathered them all up in my arms (at least a square foot, and not all tidy-like, they were every which way). I’m standing there with an armload of papers trying to figure out what to do with them. I looked around. Closets? Full. Cabinets? Full. Stuff them under the couch? No room. What to do?
DO NOT JUDGE ME FOR WHAT I DID NEXT, just laugh with me, if you will (insert smiley-face here).
On a related note, my son is coming over tonight for the duck I promised to cook him.
This is a new problem, because my oven is stuffed to the gills with over a square foot of paper work. Just all shoved in there willy-nilly. DON’T JUDGE, it was the only thing I could think of. LOL.
It was actually a gift, because it forced me to deal with things that had heretofore overwhelmed me. I put the pile of papers on the part of my floor with the most space, and sorted them into piles: Garbage. To be filed for income tax purposes. More garbage. Coupons I will never, ever use, but have not yet expired, and the pack-rat force in me is strong, so I MUST keep them until they expire. Requiring urgent attention (disconnection notices and such). Things that are important but can wait. Things to be filed for reasons other than tax purposes. Of course, more garbage. Things that make me happy. Yes, I actually have a file labelled ‘things that make me happy’. Christmas cards, recipes I may never cook, but that someone loved me enough to sit down and write for me, letters from readers.
Which FINALLY brings me to my point.
There was a letter there, in all that chaos, from a reader. She and her husband have been following my Out of Left Field column since back in Grand Forks 20 years ago, and she was asking why I haven’t written in such a long time. She was concerned for me.
“We miss your voice,” she wrote.
That one sentence made my heart so full.
It’s hard to do this job and not feel, sometimes, like you’re just quacking into the void.
But the reality is, every sentence has the power to change someone’s life, just like that one sentence changed mine, and it is my honour and my privilege that I get to write many and often, and for thousands of readers.
All of the pain and chaos and confusion and hilarious idiocy that led me to read that one sentence from a stranger, “We miss your voice,” … all of it was worth it.
Joy isn’t always where you look for it. Sometimes, it finds you when you least expect it. And maybe I’ll buy Devon McDonalds and cook the duck another day.
For now, I am content with my messy house and readers who think what I have to say matters. Joy is a choice I make every day. You are the reason the choice is so easy. Thank you for hearing me.
