When I was sixteen, I was given a pair of riding gloves made from goatskin. They were soft and supple with lanolin rubbed into the leather, and I carried them everywhere. The smell was comfort I couldn’t explain. Fast-forward thirty-five years. Well, thirty-five years wasn’t exactly fast, but marriages, children, graduate school, and a lifestyle at the speed of light caught up with me just after fifty.
By fifty-one, I was in the recliner every day, flattened by chronic fatigue syndrome. Waking in the morning, I would sometimes feel normal until I got out of bed, took three steps, and hit a nauseating wall of fatigue.