ERRANT SOCKS THAT WAUNDER IN HOPELESS LONELINESS and Osteropeniua 1200 Calcium 2000 Vitamin D

Blue Moon in Utah

On Wednesday night, I was asked to provide a short spiritual thought before the RS Enrichment meeting.  I talked about my "manic" button shoes . . . and how the difficult things we overcome are not left behind us, but woven into who we are and what we are now capable of doing and feeling.  I read a short excerpt from a letter I wrote to my sister Susan, but never sent:

           It seems like I only call you when I need something.  When I saw that I'd missed your call, I immediately thought how wonderful the time I got to spend with Martha and you in Minnesota.  I so enjoyed putting together the photos for your long, empty wall.  When I look up at the night sky here, I recall your overwhelming--stunning--midnight masterpiece . . . no lights but those provided by the planets and stars.  Your students (then and now) are fortunate to be exposed to your keen instruction.
           I asked Meg and Lauren last year if five years ago they could have imagined what their life would be like today.  Meg had just been married then--now she hs two children and a husband who loves her.  She makes bread almost every day and takes "bunny (shaped) buns" to friends who are feeling overwhelmed.  Meg told me she could not have thought she would be so happy.  I visited and  her apartment is cluttered with five small construction (in Jon's words--kon-stuck-sun) trucks I just brought for him, soft toys that Kate has chewed and drooled over as she cuts her first teeth . . . and errant socks that waunder in hopeless loneliness:  forever separated from the mates that the dryer ate.  There is a soft, quiet feeling that everything is in its proper time and place.

I heard on the radio, the next evening, a bit of a radio show that I'd never heard of before:  A Way With Words, described as a lively hour-long public radio show about language, on the air since 1998 [with a]uthor Martha Barnette and dictionary editor Grant Barrett.  One of the comments that stuck in my mind was a closing assertion that a real writer needn't be compelled to produce 50 novels or a continual stream of poetry.  Some need only to know that they have written a splendid, inexplicable sentence.  Poe once said that the best sentence he ever wrote was the first in his story "The Fall of the House of Usher."  Of course, there is always Snoopy's "It was a dark and stormy night . . ."

I think that one of the best things that I've written is the phrase contained above:  . . . errant socks that waunder in hopeless loneliness:  forever separated from the mates that the dryer ate.

To end this entry:  the results of my first bone scan came back this morning:  Osteropeniua--the beginning stage of osteoporosis.   It snuck up on me--I didn't even know that anything was wrong.  Creaky joints, yes, but not that.  I wonder if this is what it is like to discover that you have cancer.

I hope I never find out.