Titter-tottering

• Hope is the medicine that prevents heart-sickness and the tree that produces life. There is no tonic as potent as the hope that tomorrow will be better; and there is no tree as fruitful as good things desired and expected.

• It gives hope to realize that your difficulties are only the common lot of man; other’s have them, too, and they persevere – so can you!

– Leroy Brownlow, Making The Most of Life

The early a.m. alarm consistently rings, growing intensely louder and louder as my ears hear - my fatigued painfully ill body remains with no reflexes - my shins throbbing and burning with such intense pressure - fearing the potential damage it could do to my soft skin. It’s as if I hadn’t slept for an eminently long decade, eyes are so tightly shut. My hands stiff and ache profoundly feeling the sting through my dainty nail bed. I hold off on moving because the reality in the great efforts lie ahead of the day decreases my pulse. Gingerly I pull back the covers from my head; my arms feeling as though I had been relentlessly lifting 400 pounds for a week; the bending of my elbow’s cry-out, “I’m being pulled apart at the socket.” The sound of the shower being turned on by my daugther in the room next door echoes through my thoughts - I know she needs a well-balanced breakfast and an education, therefore the pain looses the titter and the love of life shifts my body propellently north.

-Jenece Austin