`Aha Update #11.5: "Mask in place before helping others"

"There is no cure for this, there are things that will help. You'll have to avoid everything that makes you sick. It will change your life. This is called MCS Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, or Environmental Illness." - The medical diagnosis I was given ten years ago 

Pete and I both felt the 'course correction' as surely as an earthquake. The funny thing about course corrections is a step to one side or the other is a correction, as much as an about face. What is happening for me is living through the real-time experience of putting on my oxygen mask to keep on. Period.

Yesterday we tried to outrun the wild fire smoke by taking a drive in Scout, the Subaru. The A.C. helps filter the air, and I was also using oxygen. This tactic helped just enough for us to realize the further north we drove the thicker the smoke. (The forests of British Columbia are burning. The wind was blowing from the north.)

"There's no outrunning this one, honey." This was Pete talking. Roger that! We made a course correction and headed home. On the way home we drove along the water on the western side of Whidbey.

"Isn't that where our friend lives?" I'm never real sure where I am on the back roads.

"Yeh, just up the road."

"Can we stop there, I'd like to leave her a check for the cards I bought." Our friend is in the process of raising funds for her safe nest. She also lives with severe chemical sensitivities plus.

"Sure."

Pete found the house and pulled a U at the end of the road and parked. With my face mask on I walked across the street and up to the door, and knocked. Our friend's mom answered. I asked if this is where our friend lived.

"Yes, she is my daughter."

I explained that I had a check for cards I had bought.

"Oh, yes. Thank you." The woman pulled her glasses from her face and looked at my check. "Yvonne."

I answered with a smile under my mask, "She knows me as Mokihana."

"Oh," that seemed to ring a bell for her. "Mokihana and Pete. I know Pete. My daughter's got her mask on today, too."

I left without seeing our friend, and left knowing something. The 'diagnosis' I received 10 years ago did change my life in the countless minute and about face course corrections in a given day, let alone 365 days x 10. What happened yesterday when Pete and I realized we could not outrun this wild fire smoke? It shifted me into L. Low Gear. The slow down Gear.

The slow down and be grateful gear. We couldn't and didn't outrun the environment, and haven't outrun Environmental Illness in these 10 years. But. What we did yesterday was stop along the way to help, with my mask in place.

That's something.

We can slowly keep on that way. The destination is still not clear, course corrections abound, and our mileage varies as my favorite astrologer Satori loves to say.

It's far less lonely this way and THAT is what Pete and I are aiming for.

P.S.
xo J.
P.S.S.
xo Elaine, you are the wind beneath our wings, mahalo nui!

Hang in there with us.
Love,
Moki and Pete

Good bye, Quonset

Life is a journey made by walking it, plans are nice, but timing? That doesn't always work as we plan. The Quonset Hut that has sheltered us and been our multi-purpose place had to be cleared out and soon Pete will disassemble it, reuse parts of it, and bit it a very grateful aloha. Mice had taken over the denim insulation and it was a gross and unhealthy reality.

We have relocated to mostly outdoors thanks to the unset of 70 degree daytime temperatures. Our kitchen and cooking is done under the eave of the Hale, and I'm seated under the big sun umbrella to work at the computer. While turkey and a root medley stew bubbles next to me, the birds are more so part of our moment to moment woods life, and soon I'll be enjoying that meal.

Grateful for our resourceful genes that have had lots of practice in nearly 70 years, I put this post here to document life, mice had a part in it. But there is so much more than mice in this fairy tale.
Hover over the photos for a little narrative and prose. "Good bye, Quonset. We will remember all the goodness you have given."