Another Day Better in January 2013

Finally able to sleep.

Brent is asleep at last.  It has been a long day.  We went to see the doctor and they took the 42 staples out of his left knee and put 24 steri-strips in their place.  The swelling around his knee is coming down . . . most of it is congealed blood.  Last week the surgical assistant we saw tried to pull some of it off, but the mass was too thick to get anything out.  His legs have always been muscular and lean--now the left one has a huge, red, angry knot in the middle of it.  It reminds me of a boll in the trunk of an ancient oak tree.  

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.

Better Than Me

Geiger Tree Flower and Penny

It happened today--one of those events that you remember all of your life.  Remembered, not because it was a commonly pivotal thing (birth, graduation, marriage, death), but because it revealed something about yourself to you.  It stands out in my memory like the first firework in a 4th of July night.

I was driving to class.  Not really a class class--a survey of native Florida plants.  It is a semester of field trips and wandering treks through nearby parks and reserves.  Dr. George Rogers teaches to identify the plants and trees we find.  It is a delightful experience each week--if you get there in time to start down the trail with everyone.

And I was late.  There was road work and both lanes were merging into one--left into right lane.  And I was late.   I pulled into the right lane.  And I was late.  A red Honda drove past me--intent on skipping ahead in line.  I sped up.  I was late.  I started to get angry.  The Honda tried to jockey in front of me.  I sped up . . . but the car in front of me started to slow.  It continued to slow down--until there was a space in front of it big enough for the red car to slip in.

I was still late, but I was also ashamed of myself.

The guy driving the car in front of me did what I should have done.  One driver let me in . . . maybe he was late, too.

Next time I will be the one to slow down.

I will remember and I will be better than I was.