FOLLOWING A PRESCRIPTION

Bev went out and bought me a huge bag of almonds. She has heard they are good for people who have arthritis and—face it—I’ve been whining quite a bit lately. Her suggestion made sense to me, given my history. When my mother was about my age, she went on a vitamin diet which appeared to help her arthritis. Unfortunately, none of us can remember the name of the diet or the name of anyone associated with it. We only recall the success of it, plus the story she used to tell, a story about how hard it is to find an address in Sherwood Park, where so many of the streets are named for trees.
So I decided to go for almonds. It was a heady prospect, following a prescription to eat something I already love. Unlike every other treatment known to humankind, it would be gentle, pleasurable, even a little classy. I imagined myself saying, I eat almonds. They are very nutritious, you know.
I recall my mother telling me that her doctor prescribed eleven almonds a day. In that memory I remember exactly where she was sitting when she counted them out. She was sitting at the kitchen table. Bev, in contrast, recommended a serving of fifteen which, O took seriously, knowing Bev to be a woman who can be counted upon for wisdom, balance and moderation.
I decided that I would eat thirteen almonds. It was a compromise, a safe compromise. I’ve been working with numbers lately. Last week I gave up coffee because one doctor and one bone density equipment operator told me that excessive caffeine can be hard on the bones. But I didn’t actually give up coffee in the pure sense. I get a headache when I do that. I cut down to two cups a day, sometimes two at home and one at work. I figure that the coffee doesn’t add up so much if you drink it in different places.
I opened Bev’s big bag and counted out thirteen almonds. It was like clicking of the kilometers on a long road trip. I counted and counted and when I got to thirteen ... Do you have any idea what a puny pile you get when you count out thirteen almonds? I could store them in my right ear (don’t worry, I wouldn’t do that unless it was raining.) I could inhale them in a single swallow!
I ate thirteen almonds. I listened to my body, which is what we always suggest to people who are trying to set limits with regard to pain. My body said, “Eat more almonds.” I don’t exactly know how many. It takes a long time to count almonds.
Instead of wasting the time I’d saved by not counting the almonds, I looked up the calorie content of almonds. It looks to me like a cup of almonds contains about 543 calories. The kind of cup they usually mean in these lists isn’t very big, not nearly as big as a cup of coffee, good thing I didn’t start with chocolate-coated almonds. That was my plan, changed at the last moment by Bev’s quick intervention.
All this happened yesterday. This morning I was up bright and early, excited to see if the pain was gone. I listened to my body. It said, “Not quite gone. Maybe you ate too many almonds.”
It was hard to argue with that theory. How often do I tell people, “You have to take your prescriptions according to directions?” Today at lunch I counted out thirteen almonds. I tried to remember the calories, but I wanted one right away. So I didn’t put them in a pile. I ate one, then took the other twelve down to the lunch table and arranged them neatly, with spaces between. My buddies agreed with me that it looked like a reasonable serving of almonds. But I didn’t stop there. I put other psychological measures in place. Instead of considering the almonds as one whole group, I asked each almond to stand proudly on its own. I had a pattern, two bites of lunch, one almond. Sometimes I took three bites, or even four. And it worked! At the end of lunch, I still had two almonds to eat. And when I got back to my office, I only had five more. Maybe six. And I don’t feel too terribly guilty. After all, authorities don’t agree on the exact number.