by Vanessa Galligan
vanessagalligan@sbcglobal.net

The AOL weather forecast for tomorrow -- Thursday -- says “Areas of fog early. Partly cloudy. High 81 F. Winds ssw at 5 to 10 mph.” It claims the chance of rain for tomorrow is 20 percent.

The ATT/Yahoo forecast also says “Areas of fog early. Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 81 F. Winds ssw at 5 to 10 mph.” But it gives no odds on the chance of rain.

Does this mean there actually will be some sun tomorrow? We’ve been practically sunless for more than two weeks. Every day it’s been cloudy. Every day there’s been some rain.

I haven’t been to Lighthouse Point in three weeks. Three weeks! In June!

I’m feeling hemmed in. The atmospheric pressure on my sinuses and my brain pan, not to mention my spirit, increases by the day. My spirit sags. My body falters. My resistance to the anxieties of life weakens.

Of course, there have been many other pressures and psychic assaults on my nervous system besides the rain. My 94-year-old mother is requiring more of my attention. Two weeks ago, she suffered a brain seizure, called a TIA, and spent a day in the hospital emergency room and a night in the hospital.

I was the person in the middle of it all, naturally, driving her to the doctor and then to the emergency room, and then spending hours with her at the hospital. She was released the next day, after a CT scan and an MRI turned up no evidence of a stroke or other arterial irregularities.

She was released with more or less a clean bill of health. All she was advised to do was take a full-strength aspirin every day instead of her regular ‘baby’ aspirin.

Then I took her back to the doctor this past Monday and she checked out more or less fine, although her blood pressure was up. The doctor prescribed a stronger blood pressure pill.

Nevertheless, my mother feels fragile and sometimes weak and woozy. So do I.

Today I met for an hour and a half with my mother and the manager of a homecare service. We arranged for a person to visit my mother at home twice a week for three hours each visit. If that works out, we may increase the visits to three days a week, although that remains to be seen.

I have to take her back to her regular doctor next month and then to a stroke specialist in August for a follow-up to her TIA moment.

All of this is wearing me down, so that my own physical state is struggling. I too have a life that demands my full attention with all the stress and strain that goes with it.

And I am no spring chicken. I no longer have the resilience or the stamina of a 40-year-old. I cannot carry two lives on my back.

So these have been hard times. Sitting for two hours a day outside, next to the sea at Lighthouse Point, would go a long way toward calming my nerves and soothing my over-stressed mind and body.

But all this rain has prevented that.

And I can’t go to the Lighthouse on weekends, even if the sun comes out, which it threatens to do this Saturday.

Weekends are when the crowds cluster around my seaside idyll. And the last thing I need are noisy, clambering, flesh-grilling groups of weekend yahoos contaminating sea sounds with their screechy kids and their hip-hopping stereos.

I feel landlocked right now, even though the sea lies at my feet.

But I tell myself things will get better. The rain will stop and the sun will shine on weekdays. Kurt, Ernie and I will once again settle under our tree on the little knoll 90 feet from the tide line.

No one will be near. The ssw winds will be gentle. The salt air will smell like ambrosia. The boats and ships will pass. The tides will slide in and out. The gulls will fly. The mocking birds and flickers will pose on nearby branches. I will study the land-and-seascape through my binoculars. I will photograph special moments with my new Canon SX10-IS. I will take notes.

I will sink into a calm, nourishing rapture.

And I will say ‘thank you’ to whatever forces and circumstance have brought me to this spot.

And I will be glad that I am not in Tehran, bleeding to death in the street.