Coughing up old memories

I’m sorry but I have been oddly sick. Two Monday mornings ago I woke up feeling — I don’t know if I felt the flu coming on or it was a surprise attack of the deepest blues. I couldn’t get out of bed. My whole body ached but I didn’t feel feverish. This discomfort was set to the music of horrendous coughing that I felt tearing at my lungs. Or maybe ripping my soul apart, into little shreds and throwing bits of purple soul to the winds to be carried up to heaven or down to he...  I should stop writing this way.

I took to my bed armed with all sorts of cough medicine and anti-allergy pills to put me to sleep. Or I watched TV, settled in my comfortable chair-for-two that I bought in San Francisco when I lived there in the ’80s, that’s been reupholstered a few times from the dazzling red it originally was to white and now finally to fading tangerine. I wanted it in bright yellow but they did not have that color in stock.  They only had tangerine. It works anyway. I love to watch TV from there, my head on the left and my legs hanging over the other side — very comfortable position for siesta.

 I watched white-haired Ted Danson on CSI. He is still so cute. I saw him first on Cheers. I lived in San Francisco then. He was attractive in the ’80s when I was in my 40s and he’s still attractive now more than 30 years later. Where have all the years gone?  Someone inside my head says, you came back, went back to work at McCann then... and as I begin to tick off my activities since 1988, I fall asleep.

 I guess that’s what life is like for a sick old lady. Before I was sick I wanted something new in my now very boring life. I wanted a new look. I went to Ness Astilla, who gave me a whole new funky style.  My hair is still lopsided, short one side, longer on the other, but now I have gold streaks in my hair. Ness says he loves to cut my hair because I let him do what he wants. It looks really good but when I wake up after a restless night, hair in the back of my head stands up and I look like a rooster. A coughing rooster, that’s what I am these days when I’m sick and don’t feel like combing my hair. It’s just fine standing up. At least it’s a part of me that’s upright.

I am not seriously sick, just seriously coughing. I have friends who have this cough too, who have taken two weeks to heal. I think it comes with the change in the weather. It is genuinely annoying, that’s what Rose said, when her cough finally left. Mine is still here, an overstaying visitor. I didn’t go to my yoga class, a class I love, because I went to a party the night before, one of two parties I go to every year, and had a real gin martini, my friend Cesar’s best gift to the world. But maybe I mixed it up with my cough capsules so I felt bad the next day, the day of my yoga class.

 But I still felt the need to exercise so I went to The Sunshine Place to do my chair dancing. You know much has to be said about chair dancing. Most women think it’s nothing, no exercise at all because it looks so easy. You’re sitting down. Your arms move with the teacher’s. Your legs move separately. But you’re sitting down. I’ve been doing it for a year and everyone says I’ve slimmed down. It’s the only exercise I did where when I got up my pants were wet with sweat. It is an excellent exercise.

 Last Saturday I attended my favorite new exercise class called Indak. It is a stand-up dance class with a Latin flavor. I discovered I love Latin dances.  My ex-husband, who I married when I was 18 and he was 28, was one of the best Latin dancers around. He tried to teach me but we always ended up fighting because I would get all flustered dancing with him.  Fifty-five years later — today — I realize I learned, remember and love the steps.  Now I miss Dance Time with Chito, the TV program with Chito Feliciano. Now I could do a mean Latin number with Chito himself but he and his program are sadly both long gone.

 Life makes you sick occasionally but accidentally rewinds many, many years, making you realize that it’s not bad being old. You have so many memories that make you gasp. Omigod, that was 55 or 35 or 25 years ago! And I, who cannot remember what I did last night, can remember them vividly!

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