Some days I could get up and ready for school just like my siblings…no problems. Other days getting ready for school was a slow and daunting task and sometimes I thought it was almost impossible to accomplish. I used to say that I wished I could ask for an oil can like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz…a squirt here…a squirt there and all better. But…that was making believe. On the mornings when getting up and getting out the door to school were at best horrific, my mom did everything to make me feel better physically and mentally and to get my swollen stiff as a board  joints moving.
    Mom and I would get up at 4:00 AM and I remember resenting my siblings for getting to sleep an extra 3 hours. My dad was still in bed at this UNGodly hour and he got up with the roosters. So…Mom and I must have been getting up with the night owls. Mom not only had to get up earlier than she wanted but she had to listen to me complain about how unfair life was for me and blah blah blah.  She, for the most part, Ok…maybe for the first half-hour…showed me empathy and then the rest of the time my complaining would just make her angry. I would then have to hear how my life wasn’t so bad and how there were many kids who were worse off than me…some children didn’t have arms or legs and suffered with cancer. Many times I thought, but never said it out loud as I preferred not having my eyeballs slapped out of their sockets, “Yes, but now there are artificial limbs that look realistic and the kids with cancer either get cured or die neither of which I had to look forward to.” I didn’t believe any of those mean or hateful thoughts; I was just in agony cold and tired.
    When I finally made it in to the living room, I would lie on the couch and Mom would put hot soaks on all my joints. She would drench towels in scalding hot water, ring the towels out, and then wrapped them around every sore joint and then she would wrap a white trash bag around the towel to keep the heat in. She was putting her already overworked hands in scalding water just to bring me a small amount of relief. I remember watching her burn her hands and it was then that I would realize I didn’t have it so bad.
    The hot soaks stayed on for 20 minutes and then Mom would take them off. “Do you feel better?” She asked. I would lie and say yes.  The hot soaks did help limber me up, but the pain was still as strong and piercing in every joint and I mean every joint. I can best describe the pain as being slowly cut from the inside out with a hot sharp knife and the whipped cream with a cherry on top was that the pain was accompanied by high fevers, redness, swelling and stiffness. I was also very tired and to walk from our living room to the kitchen for a “good” breakfast took all the energy I could muster up.
    After I ate breakfast, Mom would make sure my sisters were up and then she would get my little brother up so that he could get ready for school. Because I had sat down and ate I had stiffened up again, so I had about 40 minutes to try and get my body to where I could get on the school bus when it arrived at 7:40 AM. The truth is sometimes I walked up those bus steps and other times I watched it pull away while I stood at the door like a child with her nose pushed up against the candy store window.
    Mom tried her very best to make sure that I was able to go to school, but some days my body didn’t want to start working until about 10:00 AM or later. I may have lost sleep and sometimes it seems so in vain, but so did Mom. I cherish those mornings now and hold those memories ever close to my heart. I saw my mom work hard to try and eleviate my pain…to make me feel better. Those cold dark mornings were our time. Oh, and I did get ready…ready for life. I knew that I was going to fight and if I got knocked down, well…I would just get back up and dust myself off.  I’ve had to brush the dirt off my bottom more times than I can count, but I’ve never hit the ground to stay down for the count.