The Smell of Risotto

My husband has been battling Lyme Disease and it's damage for almost five years now. The thing that often gets buried in our memories, both for him and myself, is during that time I also had Lyme disease. From diagnosis to ending treatment my experience lasted one year. It's a blur of a year. I remember a friend hiring another friend to clean the house, friends bringing over freezer meals, coordinating carpools from my computer and phone so my kids were taken care, friends helping weed gardens, friends coming over to sit with me and help with my youngest kid, and spending a lot of time in bed watching Netflix. I tried doing things and then would quit. I remember cancelled plans, letting people down. It was a humiliating year, and a wonderful year.

Because you can't experience the happiness of rebuilding your life if it was never taken away.

One day, as I was recovering I made risotto. Risotto is fussy to make. It takes time and needs some babysitting. I was standing over my stove, caught a whiff of the squash, onion and garlic and started to cry. I had forgotten that I enjoyed standing over a stove. I had forgotten what it felt like to be able to stand in my kitchen and cook my own food. I also cried in my car after going back to the gym for the first time. I cried when I realized I was able to go to the dance studio with my daughter and interact with people instead of having someone drop her off. Bit by bit, I've been allowed to engage in little pieces of my life again. And by "engage" I mean "cry." The crying is a new thing I picked up over the past five years. I don't mind it, but it is very different from who I was.

My tiny battle with Lyme gave me a small taste of the hell my husband has gone through. Unfortunately his battle isn't over. Take my one year experience and multiply it by a million.

And yet, you can't experience the happiness of rebuilding your life if it was never taken away.

I daydream about the day I can write about all of this in the past tense. So does he. I think that day will come, and sometimes he thinks so too. In the meantime we will cry, laugh and wake up each day and try again.