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Breathing Room has lots in store
for the year. If you would like to share your personal
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us at: info at thebreathingroom.org.
Stories, Poems
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those of the Breathing Room organization.
Please visit
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Breathing Room
facilitates candid and open
communication between adults with Cystic Fibrosis,
supports the development of a community of adults with CF
and provides education and insight for families, caregivers,
and medical professionals who impact our lives.
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The Breathing Room Continued
Step two involved hatching the room's conception to my father who
would be providing the cash. Thank goodness for rich fathers of only
children
with terminal illnesses. He grumbled about expenses but signed the checks
anyways.
Ground broke a month later. A drone of saws, top forty blasting
from a
paint splattered boom box, a parade of plumbers, tilers, electricians
sauntered through the summer. A month after my forty-first birthday, the
addition was borne.
Now, two years later, my expressions of life fill the room.
Pervading
every artifact on my shelves, every picture hanging on my walls, is a
story;
where it came from, who bestowed it. A plaque adorning my shelf, bearing
the
handlettered word SISTER from my best friend Fredi. A Life's Too Short to
be
Ordinary poster whooping across my wall, bought by my oldest friend of
twenty
years at a yard sale by the sea during our ten day travels down the Oregon
coast last Spring. Photographs of the three children I have helped their
parents raise poised on my shelf; Justin at six, almost ten years ago,
half-
resting on my lap at the beach, both of us gazing in the same direction,
Terra, my first child, leaning on an oak branch, beautiful in her budding
womanhood, and Tavi, at 3, my newest, beaming on his haunches in my dining
room chair. Their faces anchor me, despite changed circumstances wrought
by
Justin's brooding adolescence, Terra's escape to rock-climbing in
Australia
and Tavi's adjustment to the world in general, including my growing
limitations. As the writing life becomes more and more of where I exist,
my
computer, desk and hutch form the room's centerpiece. My hideaway bed
covers
an entire wall with its grains and golden oak hues, offering dream-filled
sleep to the assortment of friends and family that stay for extended
visits. I
envision that as my lungs continue to deteriorate, I will spend more and
more
time in this room, laying in bed, struggling for breath, a pile of
negative
images that leave me shuddering with fear. But then I let my eyes scan
this
comforting womb I have built for myself and I know it will be okay.
Because I
have this space. To create, to dream, to survive with others or with
myself,
whatever I choose. Once again, I've got my breathing room.
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