Writing with Rox WEEKLY—What is the title of your summer?

Today in Wednesday Writers, we happened upon (as we Wednesday Writers tend to do: happen upon) this prompt.

Here are a (paraphrased) few, given my memory these days, which could prompt another title for my summer: "When Spinal Stenosis Steals Your Memory":

"Hobbling Around in Paris"

"In Hindsight, it was Pretty Nice"

"Hurry Up and Wait"

"Disappointment"

and a few I wish I could remember that went something like

Blank Blank about Gardening
Something Something about kids and outside in nature
Something sparkly about traveling....

all loaded with delicious prompts and a heck of a lot of fun besides. Thank you Wednesday Writers, which you would think, after all these years, might deserve a better title like the "Wednesday Wacko Writers" at the very least.

Anyway, try the summer titles prompt. It's juicy. Like a good orange. Like summer.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY- Thank you Mom

While waiting for my transforaminal epidural spinal injection, a  woman wheeled herself to the back of the waiting room single handedly, cell phone pressed to her ear with the other hand. "Hello Mama? I'm about to get a procedure done and I was wondering if you might want to pray with me before I go in."

They must have had a bad connection.

"Hello Mama? I was wondering if you...I'm about to have a procedure done and wondered if you would pray with me before I go in."

The woman wasn't much older than me. I heard her trying to explain her procedure,  what was going on, something with her digestion. There would be tubes. I wondered where her mother was and pictured her somewhere far, far away, maybe on a farm.  

And then they called my name and I gave a little wave. She walked over, helped me gather my crutches, my stuff because these days that's what it takes. 

 "And this is my mom," I said, "she's here all the way from California. Can she come in with me? Please?" 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—The irony of lyrical words

Foraminal

Claudication 

Neurogenic

aren't they pretty, oh so pretty?

lumbar
stenosis
epidural
neurologist

it' not what they mean, but how they sound: delicious

laminectomy 
laminectimous 
laminectar

if only their melody could raise the bamboo trees

nurse its kindling back to reaching

neurogenic stenosis
pool
limp
nerve block
neurogenic
surgery
fusion
neurology
Mayo
vertigo (oh, that's super poetic and a cool kind of pretty)

add them up and they make a song, make a village

                  and my leg will rise again

wake up Maggie, wake up



What are your favorite lyrical words that mean something uh oh?

Still here, very here

Though my identity is on hiatus: I can't walk, drive, do yoga, bike, swim, run out of a rain storm, play Frisbee with my boy...

so much of who I am is of the body

and after all these years of coming back into my body, coming home,

I'm ready to leave it again

even though

my writing mind, my voice of experience, is still here

very here

reminding me over and over again that, hey,

 this is the real moment of your memoir

this is what they really write memoirs about

the memoirs you devour and think will never happen to you

but look, here it is happening to you too and are

you going to face it like a writer or an innocent?

a yogi or a plum?