Christmas: CFIDS/Fibro/Redneck Style

This year, it seems I'm in a "redneck" mood for thanks.  Having lived in our town for over 30 years, I use the word affectionately, not to mention that in some ways, our entire family has become at the very least a "country" family, if not a "redneck" one.  ("Redneck," "country"; you say potato, I say potato!)

Each year, one way or another, there's a new Christmas album underneath my tree; they've ranged from Elvis to Andrea Bochelli.  It's my daughter who notices which song or singer I'd been attracted to each Christmas season.  

Now, as a full-fledged CFIDS/ME/CFS and fibro-mite, I'm rather slow on the uptake.  It was about the 15th time that my daughter had gifted me a Christmas album that I realized the Christmas album had become a tradition between the two of us.  (OK, I may exaggerate: I might have caught on at about year 10!)  Not noticing this for so long, however, may pretty much land me smack into the middle of the "bad mom" category since at one time, one of her Facebook quotes was, "A day without music is like a night without the stars." Or something like that.  Techno-genius I'm not and I can't find the quote now - of course. <shrug>

Like most families, we have our little, as well as silly, as well as big, Christmas traditions. OK, so perhaps other families don't usually include a mom on Christmas morning who couldn't manage a bath in the last few days, nor get her makeup or hair done - a crying shame because it's REALLY needed - and it's why this mom stays out of most Christmas photos.  Like many families, if not most, we have our bumps that go on during the night and I don't mean Santa landing in the chimney. (Was that comment just a bit too corny?)  But we have great traditions as well - or so I try to tell myself.  (Hang in here, folks. There is a story and a point here, a picture of our life as well as the ME/CFS and fibro factor!  And ER visits! Promise!  Read on, my brave lovelies!) 

For the last 28 years - or thereabouts - we've bought our Christmas trees from a certain tree farm run by "Granma". (Here comes a CFS/fibro tip: try to get your tree delivered if you can't handle going out.)  Granma had to have been 80 years old when we first "discovered" her.  Or perhaps we felt as if she were 80 since hubs and I were still in our early 30's.  When the kids were growing up - and even in adulthood when they've been around - we'd all head out in August or September and go up and down the hills looking for a suitable Christmas tree, always a blue spruce.

When the perfect tree was found - and yes, after more than a few arguments along the way, none of which were ever tree-related - we'd tag it with our name and come December 10 (our preferred date) the tree would be delivered to our house, already mounted in the stand.  Understand the "we" part started to not include me after a few years, but that's OK since I'm not one who has ever loved walking up hills and down into dales. (Flashbacks of my many summers in 1-2 months-long camps and way too many hikes!  Help!  Agh!)  As for the years when we couldn't do the tree hunt?  Well, granma had about 10-years worth of trees she had a eye on for our family. 

This year, however, insurance got the best of Granma's place and they couldn't deliver their trees to their customers' homes.  So hubs and daughter had to get the tree themselves, driving up the steep hills during a snow fall.  Hearing them try to lug the thing into the house, as well as "place" it, made me "run" back to my bat cave: I really wasn't up for the keystone cops routine.  And my hands were itching: oh boy...I sooo wanted to do the job but couldn't.  (Lordy!  I so hope that this getting-of-Christmas-trees-on-our-own doesn't become a tradition!  We're too old to start now.) 

The TV stations started revving up for the holidays and (too) many specials were on, when not too long ago the TV happened to be turned to the Country Music Awards. I semi-heard a funny song as it was ending and hit "record" and then ignored the show, going alone with whatever I was doing.  But a few days later I found the guys singing the song who'd caught my ear. I'd never heard of "Duck Dynasty" and still have not learned anything about them.... Pretend there's a transition here, please.  My brain is blanking!

I find the hardest part of Christmas to be not just that I can't cook and bake like I used to. Like so many of you, I literally cooked and baked for at least a week before Christmas Eve (Russian/Ukie foods and traditions) and Christmas Day (American/Catholic/West/Italian foods and traditions) in order to get everything ready for those two dinners.  But what's been harder to take?  Gone are the days when the entire family would be home for Christmas. 

Somehow we always "officially" started our Christmas season by stringing the lights to Elvis' Christmas album. And it's always Elvis, to the point where I've forgotten how many times we've had to replace the album because of wear.  By the time "Blue Christmas" and "I'll Be Home For Christmas" came on, I'd start to dance with the boys, camping it up, no matter how much they "hated" it.  And trust me, there were years where they hated it alright, but played along.  The one year, however, I forgot to put on the album and started stringing lights without first dancing with the boys?  They were outraged and hurt. Typical, right?

But getting back to this year and being in some sort of redneck karma, debt and gratitude.  With ER visit #1 of these last couple months, I had to drive myself to the hospital.  Getting out of the car was tricky not only because I had the mother of migraines, but the parking space was too small, combined with lugging out my bag and cane.  I stumbled against the trunk of the car and was righting myself when a guy came running over, yelling to his two women friends that "this nyice laady fell!  We need a wheelchair!"  I kept trying to reassure him that I was OK, but he insisted on half-carrying me to the ER, demanding a wheelchair and that I be seen immediately.  No one was going to argue with my knight-in-redneck armor.  Thank God!

Then with the ER visit #3 and the pancreatitis, I had to take a cab home.

Understand, you really don't want to take a cab in our town and, to be truthful, I was nervous.  After all, the one time I'd taken a cab, it felt like the tiny circus car where clown after clown keeps getting out and the audience wonders how so many people can fit in the tiny car.  Well, I was the 6th person in that cab - yes, that's sixth - and the only one not smoking! 

Hallelujah, this time I lucked out in being solo in the cab.  And the best part was that my cabbie was so nice, especially appreciated after the treatment by the ER staff.  (See the unbelievable "attitude/bully," which, hard to believe, is not the pancreatitis one.)  He was just so mellow and yet got the message across that if I wanted to talk, that was OK, if I wanted silence, that was OK as well.  That day I really needed someone who thought I was, sick, sane and not a drug seeker.  (Because really, they were the insane ones, practically accusing me of being a drug seeker when my blood work clearly showed pancreatitis!)  When I later told my daughter about the "knight" and how the man had practically carried me into the ER, she said, "Yep, mom.  Rednecks are the best!  They're REAL!"  Real nice and mannered in my book, which goes a long way.  

And so my Christmas song for the year: Hairy Christmas.  (I think that those on mobile devices need to hit the highlighted link to see the video.)

"So hunt you down a Christmas tree/
Thank God mama's cooking is free/
Round up your redneck family...."

How perfect?  A hunted-down Christmas tree is a tradition.  OK, so it's daddy's cooking that's free these days, but I'm in there somewhere too - or so I hope.  And we're going to round up as many redneck family members as possible - hoping that I can manage Christmas at the dining room table and not in my bed....all while hoping that next Christmas we'll have more Redneck family members to be rounded up. <wink, wink!>  In the meanwhile, enjoy my Christmas-song-for-this-year performance! 

As always, I hope everyone's doing their very best - only better!  Ciao and paka.


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Music and Overcoming the Hypersensitivity?

Between songs, we'd do skits at the Saturday bonfires.

I absolutely love music and (warning: here it comes, yet another lament!) I hate the fact that because of this DD, I've not been able to listen to much music for the last twenty years.

I've always had an interesting relationship with music, an inherited trait as my grandfather was always the choirmaster in whatever church he ever attended.   I get so carried away by the music that usually I never even hear the words, no matter how much I try to force myself to put the music into the background in order to bring forth the lyrics.  Oh, I'm not a complete lost cause: if need be, I can sing the sounds and then as I listen to those sounds I realize, with a bit of effort, that those sounds are words which have meaning.  But getting me there, I assure you, is quite the effort.  I realized Rod Stewart was actually singing ABOUT and TO Maggie Mae a few months ago, only forty years too late!  Yes, I'm odd, as I've often admitted here on this blog.  Go figure!

Yet, due to the curse of CFIDS/ME/fibro, music is also a double-edged sword for me.  It's because of my intense love of music that nothing, perhaps, stirs me in life the way music does.  Even my sense of smell, which my nose is rather famous for, is not nearly as strong as my reaction to music.

And thus the conundrum: if I allow myself to listen to music, the effect is so strong that my whole body, along with mind and spirit, goes into the beauty of every single note, every single beat, every single sound. Furthermore, like just about every other person on this planet, in the deep recesses of my mind, certain music  - and/or songs - trickles forth the memories of the era of that music, a very overwhelming experience for those of us trying to combat the symptoms and problems of CFIDS/ME/fibro.   Even sleep, many hours later, can, and often is, affected.

I so very strongly sense what was going on at the time a song came out that I have to be careful with my music.  It's almost a drug, I daresay, because it pushes, and pushes, and pushes and you go for the entire ride until suddenly you simply crash, as if coming down from some sort of mania.  I almost have a mini-relapse or mini-nervous break down.  It never fails to surprise me that I have this incredible reaction to music and even after all these decades of this blasted illness, I still need to constantly make a choice: is the music worth the price paid?  Let's just say that this is such an obvious "thing" in my life that on those occasions that I DO get into a car, even the kids won't allow music to be played: they don't want to see me pay the price later on - although the cringing experience of hearing mom singing along is probably a factor too!

But how I've missed music in my life.  I am so angry that another pleasurable activity has been taken away from me for the most part.  And I DO I resent that I can't turn on the car radio (for all those long and frequent trips that I so often take: not!)

However, thanks to YouTube I discovered, quite by accident, Russian and Ukrainian contemporary pop music and artists, not to mention the old-time Russian, pre-Soviet songs we sang each of my thirteen years of going to summer camp.  We'd have quite a nice bonfire midweek and then a huge one on Saturday nights.  The memories, I know in this case, are not nearly as fun as the moments actually were - the reverse of how we usually think of times gone by.

At first I listened to songs I knew, though very much ignored the whole Soviet Army singing - not a favorite sound with me, though not an easy thing to do as that "sound" rather dominates the music scene we hear of Russia here in the West.   As I became less frightened by my iPad - after all, nothing blew up in my face, a not insignificant concern on my part - I began to branch out and listen to other singers and songs, first for their campiness, I admit, but then for their own merit. (For an appreciation of how "miraculous" that is, in and of itself, see here.)

So, what kind of music DO I now listen to?  Again, we so often become out mother's daughters.  Alas, now, no longer able to handle contemporary American music, I've found, however, that the new Russian music does something for my soul.  Perhaps it helps to heal because I recognize the main music combinations as having a distinctive Russian sound, the sound of my lullabies and then my youth.

Who really knows why I feel so much better after hearing some contemporary Russian music, like the cheezy kind of Filipp Kirkorov (my guilty pleasure), a bit of DDT's protest songs (so much better than Bob Dylan or anyone who ever sang old Bob's songs save, perhaps, Peter, Paul and Mary), Elena Vayenga's rather "interesting" style, the complete "diva-ness" of Alla Pugacheva or the sublime yet hypnotic simplicity of Igor Krutoy?  My ability to handle, as well as actually thrive, from this music may actually be due to a cocoon I lived in for such a huge portion of my growing-up years.  Perhaps this music reminds me of innocent years when the possibility of the world blowing up loomed near but something I was totally oblivious to since we didn't have a TV, nor did our parents want to scar us for life with each turn of the dangerous international problems posed during the height of the Cold War.  Ah, the days before 24/7 news on cable. 

I only know that for some reason Russian and Ukrainian songs do resonate with me, which is fine by me because I've found some sort of music which I can still occasionally enjoy.  And when I know I need to fall asleep since it's been a couple of days since sleep, I'll put an  earphone into one ear and listen to the music on my iPod or iPad so I can fall asleep as I drift off to memories of Russian Orthodox summer camp.

So, do you have any music that tends to heal you?  Is there music out there for you that's even better than a pint of Ben and Jerry's?  Are you able to still enjoy music?  I'd love to hear your reaction.

And in the meantime, I hope everyone is feeling as good as can be - only better!  Ciao and paka.