My to-do list of tasks awaiting a relative dry spell of the annoying and often debilitating burdens of this disease is long, and my dry spells are short. I live to begin (my walks with the dog, my couple of hours in the garden, my cycle to the shops) once it’s dry. It’s about as accurate as my MS self-forecast can be, so I go with it. I often keep an eye on a weather app with MinuteCast, which tells me how long before the rain will start or stop - to the minute. The people of our little, wet peninsula innately know the things it took me a couple of decades living with MS to figure out. “Once it’s dry” is the sort of eternal hope in the face of near-constant impending rain, which is one of the reasons we love it here. I Live to Begin Again, Whether or Not I Finish What we get, however, are snippets of time - mere hours, sometimes - that allow us to begin something, even if we know for all but certain that either completing our intended task will leave us wrecked for days, or we’ll be nowhere near the finish line when we run out of steam.īut we begin, and we will keep doing so. We might long for extended days that allow us to. It’s a catch-as-catch-can wrestling match with our disease and the hurdles it places along our intended path. Ours isn’t a life of ideals and perfect “as long as” days. That I can get something started, begun, underway … that’s what I’m looking for. I’ll go for my walk.ĭoing something “for as long as it isn’t raining” is like saying that I’ll take on the challenges life with MS gives me for the time that those challenges are absent.īut my symptoms aren’t absent for long anymore.įor how long isn’t the matter when it comes to my life with this damnable disease. We’ll do the gardening as long as it’s dry. “As long as it’s dry … ” means that we can do things for the length of time that the rain isn’t coming down. I don’t get many “as long as … ” days anymore. As Soon as Conditions Are Right, I Get to Work That last statement, “once it’s dry…” translates to what I might have heard back in America as “as long as it’s dry … ” The MS metaphor comes in here.

The day you begin