#3,577: Wishin' and Hopin'

Like yesterday, today is another important anniversary in my life.

Certainly, this anniversary is not up to what I celebrated yesterday, but it is something that I have to acknowledge.

Today, it has been exactly one year since my family and I moved from our home to the apartment we are now residing in.

It is a sad anniversary.

We went from a house that I personally lived in for more than 50 years, downsizing to the small apartment we have now, moving from a community that we had roots in to one where we were/are newbies.

I was hurt, I couldn't do much of anything to help in our move, and I, myself, had to be physically moved to our new apartment by my sister's husband, who basically carted me over in the back seat of his car and deposited me in our new abode.

And after spending six weeks or so in a chair 24 hours a day because I was so hurt that I could not make it up the stairs in our home, I forced myself to make it up the stairs at our new residence, and slept in a bed for the first time since my accident--

But little did I know I would soon have amother accident in our new residence, have to go through another major operation, and work hard to this day to make sure I could be as close to the person I was as possible.

It has been a very, very rough year in our new residence, and I will be honest with you, I don't know if I will ever really and truly get used to it.

Moving from a house to an apartment is a real step-down, but at least I can say that my recovery continues unabated, and I am certainly more comfortable than I was being, for all intents and purposes, chained to the bed for six months.

So we have been here exactly a year as of today, and while i am not ecststic about our situation, we made it through the first year, so perhaps things will be easier for us in our second year and presumably, yesrs to come.

i sure hope so.

And while I am wishing and hoping for better things, why don't you take a gander at the fifth chapter of my novel?

Comments and criticisms are welcome.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday ... the beginning of a very busy week for me.

5

Abraham Lincoln Panim had a tough go at it from the very beginning, and it continued through his childhood.

Although his mother believed he was the cutest baby she had ever seen, few people agreed with her. When she would take her son out in his baby carriage to get some sun, Mrs. Panim and her baby were the target of many taunts.

One time, a few weeks after Mrs. Panim brought her son home, and the weather had turned from cold winter to less-cold spring, a woman wanted to see the child Mrs. Panim was wheeling around. She was with her own teenage daughter, and the two approached the carriage on a bright spring day.

“May I see your baby?” asked the woman, overdressed in a winter coat meant for temperatures 30 degrees lower than they actually were.

“Don’t bother them,” said her daughter, neatly styled in a spring outfit. “They have better things to do—

“I would be happy to show you my son,” Mrs. Panim said.

The elderly woman approached the baby carriage with her daughter, turned down the blanket that was covering young Abraham Lincoln Panim, and she shrieked, but not with joy.

“This is not your son!” screamed the woman, and she, like the young nurse several weeks ago, fell to the ground by the side of her daughter.

“Mom!” she screamed, took one look at the child herself, and wobbled a bit, but not enough to fall to the ground as she bent down to tend to her mother.

“That’s a dog, or maybe a rat, that’s not a human being!” yelled the younger woman. “You should be arrested for parading that thing around here! And if my mother is hurt, you are going to hear from my lawyer!”

Mrs. Panim knew right then and there that the world would not be as accepting of her son as she was, and she never again took him outside during the daytime, preferring for strolls at night, when street lamps and the light of the moon were the only illumination.

When she would go out at night with her son, she would instinctively look for her husband, anticipating that he would be coming home at last.

But she looked and looked and looked, and he was nowhere to be found.

But that ended up being the least of her problems.

Abraham Lincoln Panim was the world to Mrs. Panim, but the world appeared not to be ready for Abraham Lincoln Panim.