I was reminded of this incident by a discussion on Bill E's thread about how life isn't fair.

As you know by now if you've been following my posts, I have lupus-like syndrome, which means I have an autoimmune disease with symptoms similar to lupus but no one's sure exactly why. My illness isn't usually life-threatening but it isn't properly controlled, either - since I'm self-employed with no health insurance, I was flat out told by the local specialist's office not to bother coming in. The tests I would need to track down exactly what's wrong with me would cost more than I can afford, and there's no guarantee they would ever figure it out. Auto-immune diseases are tricky business and no two patients are alike. A friend of my father's had a daughter who went through all the tests and all the treatments, including a bone marrow transplant, and finally died. Her diagnosis?  "We've never seen anything quite like this before, so we'd like to name this syndrome after your daughter."

In the meantime, my doctors are guessing, and for the most part, that means I struggle along with medication that doesn't work trying to encourage my body to behave itself. I try to get plenty of rest and not do things that I know trigger flare-ups, and sometimes that works, for months and years at a time, and I live the life of a normal person. Sometimes it doesn't work. The transformation from normal to sick can be astonishingly sudden. One summer morning just before dawn my husband and I went for a long, beautiful walk. We had literally stopped to smell the roses in front of a neighbor's house when it started to rain. Then it pelted down rain, sharp and stinging. The neighbor, who is an elderly man who likes to come out and talk about his roses, offered us an umbrella, but we laughed it off. We were soaked already. We ran home, almost two miles in the pelting rain. My tennis shoes were squidgy when we reached our front door, still laughing.

My body's retribution was swift. That day was the last time I would be able to run anywhere for over a year. The next morning, my head pounded, my extremities were covered with peticulae - broken blood vessels that look like little blood blisters under the skin - and I was suffering from what clinicians call "irritability." Have you ever read irritability on the list of symptoms for an illness and wondered to yourself, how would you tell?  How do you know if you're officially irritable or just plain pissed off as usual?  Well, I've been there, so I'll tell you. Clinical irritability is when your husband says, "Okay, do you need me to bring the car around?" and the sound of his voice makes you want to slap his nose off. It's when listening to daytime court tv makes you want to flip out like a ninja and kill everyone in a 40 foot radius. For some reason probably connected to inflammation of my central nervous system, when I have this type of flare, for about the first 24 hours the effort of decoding the human voice triggers intense rage. I can control it. In fact, I'm told that during these flares I'm excessively sweet and polite. That's because I'm praying for you to shut the hell up and die already, and it takes all my mental energy, leaving just enough for my manners, which are automated by long repetition. 

The other thing that happens during these flares is that my circulatory system tries to destroy itself. My blood produces antibodies which attack the walls of my blood vessels and heart like a billion tiny little miners with hammers.  And that, my friends, is not compatible with running two miles in the rain. It's not compatible with running anywhere, or even walking, for that matter.

Usually my flares last a couple of months. The flare I triggered by carelessly running two miles in the rain on a summer morning lasted  the rest of the summer, then into autumn, then into winter. On New Year's Eve it was still going strong.

I hadn't been to the grocery in almost a month, because standing and walking were so much effort. My husband picked up some of the slack, but if you have a husband I suspect you know that sending the husband to the grocery is not the same as going yourself. My husband is a wonderful person, but he cannot be taught how to select a ripe eggplant. More to the point, he can't be taught to look at the eggplants, say, "None of those look very good right now," and buy an acorn squash instead, along with all the ingredients needed for making an acorn squash into dinner. That's okay - telepathy is too much to ask of anyone. But it's also very frustrating.

On that New Year's Eve, after my husband got off work at 10 pm, I willed myself to get dressed and head to the store. Our objective was black-eyed peas. According to Southern tradition, the number of black-eyed peas you eat on New Year's Day predicts the number of good days you will have in the coming year. I figured I needed all the help I could get. 

The only problem was, everyone else in Memphis knows this tradition too. On the other hand, Hyde Park, which at this era had bought up all the local grocery stores, is based in Chicago. If you wanted some of the tiny supply of peas, you needed to buy them early. And here it was, an hour before midnight on New Year's Eve.

We went to Kroger's. Sold out. We went to Seesel's. Sold out. We went to Piggly Wiggly, which was in the process of closing early for New Year's, and they kindly let us in but they were sold out too. K-mart super center had also closed early.  The only place left was the Wal-mart super center.

By this time my heart was pounding as if I'd run a marathon. My husband asked a stock boy where the produce was, and he pointed to the back of the store. I wanted to collapse. "I can't walk all that way," I said. "You go and look."

I propped myself against a column near the front of the store and waited. With no one to see me, I started to cry. What kind of life was it if I couldn't even walk to get my own groceries? Why did such a simple thing as buying peas have to be so hard?  I try not to be superstitious, but at that moment it seemed like the universe was trying to tell me there would be no good days for me in the next year, no more good days, ever. 

My husband was taking forever. My attention wandered. Two small children were slinking through the clothing racks, ducking and giggling and pointing at something. I followed the direction of their gaze and saw an older man perusing magazines. He had his back to me. There was something odd about the way he turned the pages.

The children snuck up on the man, in little starts and darts, as if they'd dared each other too. By the time their mother returned with her cart, they had ventured across the open space, within ten feet of their target.

"Stop that," she hissed, scandalized, and the man turned around. Now I saw why his page-flipping had seemed odd. He had no lower arms, only two metal pinchers. 

His smile was instantaneous, huge and generous. "Oh, it's okay, they're only curious," he said. "You two come over here and have a good look!"

The children came, at first a little nervous, but quickly warming to the armless man, who explained that he had once been a worker for Memphis Light Gas and Water. He had mistakenly touched a power line which was supposed to have been turned off, and it had burned his arms. The doctors had tried to save them, but in the end they had to be taken off. His bionics were experimental and he had participated in the design process himself. He finished by telling the boys to be careful around electricity, and they nodded, eyes wide, their mother smiling and telling them to thank the man for telling his story. They gave him a big hug and ran to the checkout aisle, giggling.

It would be inaccurate to say that I had forgotten my own problems, but my self-pity seemed trivial now. Here was I, whining about some peas and a heart inflammation which I knew from experience would pass in time, and there was this guy, with no arms, facing every day with a smile. No, more than that:  making other people smile too. The universe had bitch-slapped me with a perspective check and my tantrum was over.

My husband came back, brandishing four cans of Trappey's black-eyed peas in triumph. He was followed by a small mob of equally triumphant last minute pea-purchasers. "They were in the back!" he said. "I made a guy go and get them!"

There are appromixately ten peas per lady-like spoonful of Southern black-eyed peas. If you eat 37 spoonfuls, you are guaranteed maximum value for the coming year.  The peas are not magic;  they will not cure lupus-like syndrome, for example. But even chronic illness is easier to face if you have the right attitude.

It's not New Year's, but Southern-style black-eyed peas are good any time. Now, these are not diet food - they are soul food, which means that the flavor comes mostly from fat. Cut the fat if you must, but be aware that the fat is really the whole point.

Start with 2 cans of peas (Trappey's is best) in a large, thick-bottomed saucepan. Don't drain them. You can use fresh peas but you will have to cook them forever before you start. This is a recipe where canned works best.

Per 2 cans, add 1 teaspoon minced garlic, 1 sliced large yellow onion, 1 sliced Granny Smith apple.  You want a tart, hard little apple. Plus half a pound of whatever fatty pork product happens to be on sale - bacon works, but so does pork belly or anything else that's mostly fat. You want to look in that part of the meat section where the poor  people shop. Alternatively, the last of the Christmas ham is perfect - smoked or honey-baked meat adds character. Salt, pepper, and tabasco (or diced jalapenos) to suit yourself. Add a little cider vinegar for a sharper taste or a little apple juice for a sweeter taste. Simmer at least an hour. It's done when the peas lose their individual identity and the pot liquor is thick and creamy. Serve with cornbread. A spinach-based green salad will help keep you from feeling like you've lost your tiny little mind to be eating quite this much pork fat in one sitting. Enjoy.