Just About There

So just a mere 24 hours away from the hip surgery and the thing I keep considering is the pain on say, Friday.

Not a big fan of pain.

In fact there were thoughts of living with the gnawing pain each day to avoid the real big pain for a few weeks.

Probably why it's taken me so long to fix it.

Yet I saw my mother over the weekend, and she's getting around rather well after having her hip replaced.

"It's gonna' suck, isn't it?" I asked.

"Oh yeah," she said.

"But you're better now than before you went in, right?" I asked.

"Definitely," she answered quickly. "It just takes awhile."

And through the years you've all gotten to know me a bit through the writing...I don't do 'a while' very well, but I most certainly will try.

Because I want to golf with the Grape Apes.

I'd like to go back to a beer now and again.

I wanna' shoot hoops with the boys next summer, and dazzle them with my cross-over moves and my rim-shaking thunderous two-handed dunks.

(Let me tell you, if that Doc gets me to dunk he's gonna' win a universal award).

But there is still gonna' be the pain of the coming week.

And at least I have the boys...who will run to and fro to help out...and my beautiful wife will most certainly be there to make sure I'm comfortable, and Melky will be out of her mind with worry. She'll even forego the rides around the neighborhood.

So we are off.

And at the very least I know that early tomorrow I will have that three seconds of glory as they put me under.

"Count back from 100," he'll say.

And I will slip off to sleep...

...and hopefully wake up in pain.

"It's not so bad," my mother said eventually. "Once you're able to sleep a little bit it gets better."

Oh joy.