It’s nearly impossible to be around Tanja these days and not see strong parallels to last century’s great hero of flight, Chuck Yeager. Every morning she wakes up ready to see what this craft of hers can do, eager to find a way, by hook or by crook, to push it to its limits and beyond. And having set a new benchmark one day, she wakes the next ready to push further.

To see Tanja trying to pull on a jacket, something that would’ve been unthinkable a week ago and will be routine a week from now but that, today, requires intense concentration and physical ingenuity, is just like watching Sam Sheppard playing Yeager in The Right Stuff using a length of broom handle to close the X1 hatch despite his character’s broken arm.

And when Tanja took her first bath yesterday, was she dismayed that she could not sense the temperature of the water on her legs? Well, yes, actually, dismayed and surprised. But she was encouraged that she could sense the wetness of it and took that improvement as a sign that normal feelings were returning.

The water, for the record, was quite hot, the way she has always liked her bath. The room itself had been warmed up by a space heater, also to her pre-3/3 specifications. It was cozy as cozy could be. Perhaps too cozy.

When Tanja rose from the tub and stepped onto the bath matt she announced that she was feeling light headed. In fact she repeated it, calmly, over and over, like some kind of cockpit alarm.

I swept the shampoo bottles off the little stepstool by the tub and guided her onto it. She leaned on me for a moment and then all engines shut down and she went limp, like Yeager going into G-loc.

“Tanja?” I said.

Nothing.

“Tanja?”

Nothing.

C’mon, Tanja, I thought, watching the X1 plummet earthward. Then I could feel a little difference in my arms, like the afterburners had kicked in. The craft began to respond.

“Tanja?”

“Yeah?”

“You there?”

“Yeah. I got light headed. Too warm, I think.”

We went to the bed and she lay down for ten minutes. Then she was back and ready to take another run at it.

It’s little stuff. Today she ate soup with a spoon for the first time since 3/3. It was glorious to see. The soup had been dropped off by a friend and neighbor–matzah ball soup with noodles and a little foil wrapped rectangle that, when opened, revealed a dense, almost nutty bread. Something about the bread really hit home and there was a sudden surge of emotion that seemed perhaps to be about something more than a simple baked good, however tasty. We dined like royalty because we felt loved.

Now, I know there are undoubtedly those among you thinking, “Dammit, that should’ve been my food making Tanja cry with its loving goodness, but that son-of-a-gun Jed told me to hold off.” Well, yes, I’ve been reluctant to seek help because we just feel so lucky and so loved and we’re doing so much better than I’d thought we’d be doing at this point.

But the days are very full now. And it is absolutely awesome to eat a meal someone else has cooked. So here is that site we talked about…

https://www.giveinkind.com/inkinds/P6T3Y2P6T3Y2P

You have to register to use it–but registration and the subsequent using are free. We totally do not need or expect food every day, but if you feel like picking a day, we’d be thrilled and it would lighten our load and lift our spirits. You’re the wind under our wings 🙂