Life's a Prick Like That

Life’s a Prick Like That

by: Libby Ewoldt

Hunger has a color. For me, it's red. Not deep red, like burnt ends after twelve hours, slowly grilled to delicious crackling perfection.

No.

Bright red. Crimson, like a red tide. Husker football.

Want.

Or the icing on the cupcake that's sitting on the kitchen counter, just ten feet away.

It's right there.

But it might as well be on the moon.

Someone turned the television down again. It annoys the living daylights out of me. Nothing much is on, but I like my sound, how I like my sound. Preferably audible and with a side of subtitles. My family’s another story. Always harping on me about how loud the tv is—

I wonder if that red icing is raspberry.

Probably just food coloring. You can’t get that kind of vibrancy with fruit alone. You need good old Red 40 for that. While it lasts anyway.

A gas bubble works its way loose, rumbling up my gut. I wince and shift in my lift chair, then feel a sharp twinge in my groin. For crying out loud, comfort is stuck in some sweet memory. A thing of the past—just out of reach.

Like that cupcake.

Doc tells me my numbers are up. The bad kind of up. Unlike my mood. High cholesterol, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, hypertension. You name it. All too high. Tell me something I don’t know.

I’ve got a needle for every occasion now.

When I wake up? Needle.

Family dinner? Needle. After family dinner? Needle.

When I go to bed? You guessed it.

My skin’s so used to getting pricked, I barely flinch anymore.

I always feel it though.

Anyway, Doc says no more sugar. No more banana bread, potato chips, cookies, ice cream. The foods that have brought me so much joy for my whole life? Off-limits. Everything good is off-limits.

These days I choke down diet soda and try to trick my brain into thinking it’s real sugar. I’m eating hamburgers without the bun. My wife’s buying sweeteners with names using every letter of the alphabet but there’s only one sugar, and it’s spelled:

c-u-p-c-a-k-e.

My kids all have different ways of voicing their disapproval.

“Dad, should you really be adding that extra salt?”

“Dad, we want you to be around when your grandkids get married.”

“Those are just empty carbs, you know, Dad.”

If they’re empty carbs, I can eat more of them, right? I mean, that’s just logic. Of course, I don’t say it out loud. I might be hard of hearing, but that kind of comment would inspire an angry chorus of nay-saying that would be downright deafening, even for me.

The problem isn’t the sugar. Or the carbs. Or the binge eating.

It’s that my high blood pressure pills shrink my bladder to the size of a walnut, so I take pills to counteract it. Then more pills for the side effect of those pills. And so on.

I swallow a whole rainbow every day, one capsule at a time.

Funny thing though—none of them make me feel normal.

TV helps. I have my vices. My routines. Everybody does once you get to my age. I can spend all the livelong day watching YouTubers wandering all over tarnation in RV campers.

I’m retired. So, sue me.

I used to think that’d be me. Nomad life. Seeing every wonder this country has to offer, one state at a time. Still would, except they don’t build hospitals in the middle of nowhere.

So, I sit in my lift chair my youngest kid loaned me after her last pregnancy left her bedridden and press the remote. Up. Down. That’s about the extent of my kingdom lately. But it’s something I can still control.

And there seems to be precious little of that these days.

The gas bubble has worked its way out, but now I have to drain the hose.

Again.

I grip the remote and press a button.

The chair moves about as slow as molasses in a blizzard, and by now I really have to go. Once it’s high enough it plops me right out and into a standing position, whether I’m ready or not.

I’m not.

I have to grip the back of the tilted chair just to keep from another impromptu ER visit. When I’m sure I’ve got my bearings, I grab my cane and take the journey to the closest bathroom.

Past the kitchen.

And that cupcake.

Every time I get up, I feel like that tin man on the Wizard of Oz—each joint creaking and complaining with even my smallest demands. Now that I’m up though, that red icing is looking mighty inviting.

Except if I wait any longer, I’m going to have a cleanup on aisle three situation on my hands.

Maybe I can take it to go?

I only need one hand to do my business…

Too late.

I’ve passed the point of no return.

After I’ve let loose Niagara’s older, less impressive cousin, and washed my hands, I head back to my chair.

I’ve already decided on my strategy: don't look at the counter. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Wrong.

I’m back in my lift chair, watching some stranger empty his gray tank in the middle of Yellowstone somewhere, but all I can think about is how many bites I’ll be able to savor before my blood sugar spikes and I feel like someone dragged me behind a horse in one-hundred-degree weather for a few miles.

I know what you’re thinking. Not worth it.

There’s a point to be made there. But hear me out:

The counterpoint is smothered in gorgeous crimson buttercream frosting.

A rap on the back door signals company. Nobody uses the back door, except family. And I’ve got heaps of that. Six kids of my own, plus a couple dozen grandkids. Every one of them sticky finger cupcake lickers.

My thumb joint hollers at me as I dig into the button for my lift chair, willing it to go faster. But it’s one of those, watching a pot boil situations. My wife bustles past me to answer the now rattling doorknob.

Which is in the kitchen.

A slew of kids is about to burst through that door, and the counter is midway between it and my chair.

I’ve never been so focused in my life.

I zero in on that cupcake like my life depends on it, forcing my good for nothing joints into action, cold-turkey.

They have a thing or two to say about the mistreatment, but I switch off the HR side of my brain. I’m sorry, I’m away from my desk, drop your complaints in the box and I’ll get back to you.

I have a cupcake to wrangle.

My daughter smiles at me and three little toddlers waddle into the kitchen. I smile back, sweat beading my forehead. I try not to look at it. Maybe she didn’t notice.

“Hi, honey,” I say, then my traitorous eyes dart to that red icing.

It was only a split-second lapse, but her gaze drifts over and her smile falters.

She’s got on that look. The one where our roles are somehow turned on their head and I’m no longer her dad; I’m someone to be managed.

I reach out my hand.

So does she.

My fingers twist around the confection and I lick a sloppy smear, right in the middle of that red icing. Claiming it.

Manage that.

My daughter’s expression is priceless.

I take a big bite.

It’s everything I’d dreamed it would be. Sugary relief wrapped in a spongy, delicious package. I know my blood sugar will spike. I know I’ll pay for it later. But it’s my choice, my life, my goldurn cupcake.

And I’m going to enjoy every last bite.

My daughter lets out a long sigh.

“I’ll get your insulin.”

I give her a crumbly grin.

“What can I say?” I mumble through my mouthful of bad choices. “Life’s a prick like that.”