consolationland

For one life topic, Mother had no mechanical aptitude or herbal remedy to share. It came up during one of our car junkets. As we talked I shared with her that despite my best efforts at attitude and actions, life alone was a lonely place. Mother thought that over during a long reflective silence. After all, her life was teeming with people day and night, all of them needing her for everything. Her answer illuminated my perspective. “I’ve never in my life had a whole day off of rest.”

For other life contingencies, Mother was flat-out in charge with a workaround in hand. She was everywhere, a strong deft limber woman in sensible shoes, always neat and tasteful in long colorful dresses and long light head scarves, with keen bright eyes and cameo skin and a thick crown of pure silver braided hair. She moved with endless energy and endless equanimity and precise soft speech and self-effacing humor. She had earlier careers in agriculture and textiles, and still created installations of fine artisan metalwork on commission. After raising her own children she welcomed other young ones into the home as well. She kept chickens, knitted sturdy winter hats and gloves in rich colors, farmed and preserved a family garden, taught evenings at a local college (her students posted sparkling online reviews), foraged for herbs, and crafted herbal tinctures and essential oils.

At their Orthodox Christian church, Father was the head — and Mother was heart and hands and feet. The two served a devoted united congregation, speakers of Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Armenian, and Georgian, with new American converts coming in. Mother trained and rehearsed and directed the choir. She supervised the renovations and cleaning of their little rented sanctuary. She managed donations and expenses. She coordinated the sumptuous potluck dinners cooked on the premises after every Liturgy, vestments for all the men serving on the altar, the flower beds outside, altar breads and beeswax candles and icons and chrism and holy water, baptisms and weddings and funerals, lists of prayer intentions, counseling for new converts, emotional support and car rides and home nursing and hospital visits and child care for members in need.

Their sanctuary and altar and iconostasis were in a lavishly reconverted rented room, upstairs in a nondescript community building; for years I’d peered out the bus windows of my evening commute, pondering the enigmatic little plaque on the door. In 2012 I was in their neighborhood searching for an office holiday party. Hopelessly lost, I finally gave up on the party and tried their door. The chanted candlelight Vespers service was so beautiful that I came right back for Sunday Liturgy. There the women brought bags of groceries and cooked a whole feast. Then the men washed the dishes and watched the babies while Mother and the women walked in pairs out in the park, arm in arm, singing Russian folk songs. I fell in love with these people and their faith. It was a sad loss when the church moved to a larger space farther away. That meant three bus rides with a stopover early Sunday mornings in the riskiest part of town, away from home for up to 10 wearying hours every Sunday. Considering the history of Orthodoxy, and how the faithful faced tribulations unto death to practice their religion, it is humbling to confess that when pandemic lockdown made the downtown more openly dangerous I gave up altogether on the intention of regular attendance.

But Mother never gave up on me. On special feast days she would call and offer me a ride to church. Every few months she would pick me up for a shopping trip to the produce markets for vegetables. I loved her conversation about the Desert Fathers, the wonderful Orthodox monastics and families she’d met in other countries, her personal witness of miraculous answers to prayer, her gifts of home grown greenery and herbs and knitted gloves and natural remedies. Any free hour that she set aside for me over the years was a privilege and a blessing.

Mother’s emails were always sent at wee hours when the household was asleep. They were missives warmed with reflections on faith, housekeeping, and wry humor, signing off as “your unworthy, MN.” In one of them she let me know that she and Father were leaving for another summer pilgrimage, and that she would contact me for a visit upon their return. It was a pleasure to see the lovely trip photos on the church website, and to anticipate her stories. I emailed her back that I greatly missed our church, but was not leading a totally unflocked life: for the time being I was walking to a friendly little Bible-teaching church right up the street. While Mother was away I prepared a packet to give her at our next meeting. It held readings for her to enjoy in case she ever had time to sit down and open a book. One was The Kitchen Madonna by Rumer Godden. Another was by Kathleen Norris (not the author of Cloister Walk, but an earlier author of the same name), the 1911 novel Mother written as a tribute to motherhood.

Summer ended, with no word about the pilgrimage. There were no more email replies. Messages on her cell phone went unanswered. As time passed the realization dawned: many Orthodox Christians would feel concerned and hurt to hear that I was attending services at another denomination. Mother must have given up on me after all.

Then, a cryptic text email appeared from an unknown phone number account. It arrived by chance; the sender had inadvertently used an outdated church contact list from years before. The message was one sentence announcing the funeral for the departed servant of God Mother N____.

I stared at the message, then tracked down the phone number to a member of the congregation, and called her. During our conversation she told me that after the pilgrimage, Mother had made rueful jokes about the sin of sloth, accusing herself of chronic laziness. But she kept soldiering along for months. Finally her family compelled her into the car and took her to a doctor. By then, it was too late for treatment. The women of the church cared for Mother through a long ordeal of immense suffering. (One Orthodox tradition cautions believers to never be scandalized or disillusioned, if a patient has an especially difficult death. It can be one way for God to truly perfect an especially pure soul, and a means of atonement and relief for the sins and sufferings of others.) Holding the phone, I thought what a grace it would have been, to be on hand to perform any service of care for her. Apparently during that illness Mother mentioned my name to the women, in the certain and hopeful faith that they would all see Mary in church again very soon. She was right.

The funeral was profoundly heartbreaking and beautiful. In a bank of candles and bouquets Mother was laid out in her coffin facing a white wreath at the Golgotha, the large Crucifixion icon before the altar. The customary Trisagion band of white embroidered cloth crowned her shining silver hair. The customary icon of Christ and the Harrowing of Hell was clasped in her hands. Father sat straight and still on a chair beside her. Every man woman and child, gracefully suited and gowned and veiled all in black, stood at attention with candles in hand, rapt in absolute reverence. Our choir director was gone, but the service was chanted by her grown children standing at her feet. The celebrant priest serving the funeral concluded with a solemn ritual prayer for the forgiveness of every possible type of sin that any deceased person might ever have committed over a lifetime. But after the service he added a personal word of his own: what a profound honor it had been for him, to serve as confessor to a soul like hers.

Each member of the congregation venerated the icon of Mother’s body. Each one took turns handing over their babies and their candles, then approached her for three full floor prostrations. Then they leaned close to kiss the image of Christ, then her forehead, then her hands; they lifted their children, who reached out to her with eager warmth and trust. Then family by family they picked up their bouquets and slipped away to prepare for the drive to the cemetery. As an outsider, I spent the service out of sight off in the farthest corner. Later I left by the back door, passing through the dark parish hall filled with boxes and bags of groceries, casseroles, and baked goods. The congregation had prepared it all, to return from the burial and share a funeral meal and final prayers.

I waited and tiptoed last to the foot of the coffin. Too timid to attempt those three floor prostrations, I only made the Orthodox sign of the cross. With one arthritic trembling hand I touched her fingers, and rested the other arthritic trembling hand to touch her crown. I stood staring in dumbfounded wonder and warmth before backing away.

Do I remember all that? No, not in the emotions of the moment. But there must have been a tiny movie camera tucked in at Mother’s feet. My YouTube recommended algorithm presented a startling display of me to me: clown-sized bunion boots and velcro felted lymphedema leggings, a dumpy bowing torso, a head scarf slipping all agley, arthritic hands looming in front and center, and finally an awestruck final gaze. Now it’s a public spectacle for the internet: a meeting between two faiths, from two sides of the veil, of two loving women. One of them at rest.

“…Do Thou, the same Lord, give rest to the souls of Thy departed servants in a place of brightness, a place of refreshment, a place of repose, where all sickness, sighing, and sorrow have fled away.”

Mary: Whenever I take Bingo on walks myself, he really gravitates to that phone pole there.

Angelina. Yes he does. And there he goes. Who’s a good boy?… So! Mare! Back to you. Just read your latest blog page. I’m intrigued! It describes a whole new side of you. One that only people in churches get to see. But I do not, because I don’t even know anyone else who is more inclined to the heart of Christ.

Mary: Bingo is.

Angelina: That’s a given; Bingo is a pure soul. But please walk me through the steps of how these church encounters happen.

Mary: It’s every church. They all have a different path which has always worked beautifully for that community: baptism as an adult vs. baptism as an infant, baptism as triple immersion vs. 1950s forehead dab, fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays and other fasts year round. I fall short at all of them.

Angelina: So first, people meet you being there all quiet and polite, and they underestimate you in a wildly drastic manner or find you threatening for some reason. Second, they walk up to you and just say this stuff, while you sit there listening patiently.

Mary: It really hurts. I mean, how hard can it be to just blend in and be normal and abide as a good church member? Maybe God only put me here as some hapless anthropologist unawares.

Angelina: Now before you step in to churches, do you first put on a pair of Dumb Eyes?

Mary: Yes, the eyes are very large with rolling googly beads. Like on Planarian flatworms, when you view them under a microscope in science club.

Angelina: Then, you stand there looking like a raving idiot?

Mary: Uh. I guess?

Angelina: Thus prompting people to diagnose you with lust, and fleshly desires. Do they even know that you handwash your socks in the sink?

Mary: I did go buy that Mexican scrubby washboard. That counts as a labor saving device.

Angelina: No. That still counts as self-flagellation.

Mary: And I do have a fleshly desire for an Excalibur food dehydrator. Then I can make my own apple rings.

Angelina: Well meanwhile, you’re getting pasta. Here’s some Tupperware; I made lots. You can eat it tomorrow for lunch. Night, Mare! Bingo, we’re not gonna chase that bunny now; let’s go home.

Another Thought, 4/8: Just reading Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. One of the points is that to engage in a negotiation (and many personal conversations are exactly that), we have to settle What are we talking about? Who are we? How do we feel? Well, in the conversations described here, let’s suppose that the other people were peacefully tending the home base of their faith, and I was crashing into the china shop with these big sandbags of unresolved grief and then expecting all sorts of understanding and approval? It would be good in the long run to circle back with all these good people and explore how they are, and how they felt. Maybe some day when my plumage grows back in.

The Big Disclaimer: This is not the path of “God must grant me the ideal life that I imagined, or I will not believe!” Nothing in this post is cause for complaint compared to the immense suffering in the world. Religious faith is an immeasurable blessing, and I am very happy for my friends whose faith is flourishing right now. This is only the rumination of a melancholic sort who is alone too much and would benefit from having someone at home to set her straight and help process these experiences the day they come up.

A friendly neighbor, young enough to be my grandson, called “Hi Mary! Heading to work again? Why not just retire?” For this common question I usually have a cheerful joke all ready to hand back. This time to our mutual dismay I just said “Because I’m really tired of being alone.”

“Whoa,” he cautioned. “You know, there is such a thing as being TOO desperate. When women hit up on me I show them this wedding ring and say ‘Thank you Lord Jesus, for giving me such a beautiful reason to say No.'”

In other news on the Christian front, a sweet warm-hearted acquaintance with a delightful family saw me when I stopped in at her church for some quiet time. I confided my bewilderment with the Gospel message, and how I’d tried to live up to it all my life. She kindly sat down for a heartfelt pep talk with me about my spiritual walk. She mentioned the salvation verses of the Romans Road, and our hope of heaven. She gently questioned whether my salvation years ago was really certain, whether my own faith in my salvation was secure, whether at the time I had really been aware of my inherent sinfulness and need of Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross, whether I fully accepted the church as God’s chosen family for me, and finally the barrier in the way: my fleshly desires. Of course, the fleshly desire she meant was the wish for a family of my own at home, but at first I just stood there with a dumb look, thinking of my bed = yoga mat, and breakfast that day = split peas, with weeds foraged from the tree farm near the post office. I am sad to say that my response was to finally take my leave and blunder off waving my hands in disconcerted surrender; later on I’ll go back and thank this gentle sweet soul for her kindness and concern. (Culture note: the Romans Road to Salvation topic is long long familiar from my years in the Bible Belt, where it came up as a caring everyday pleasantry everywhere — at gas stations, at the Jesus Laundromat, in line at the bakery to buy doughnuts. The town phone book even had little fish symbols to designate businesses owned by Christians. I was sincerely whole-heartedly saved there in 1980. The problem is that no one since then witnessed my conversion, so how can they be sure it was genuine?)

Last year I was attending a beautiful church. After two wise and welcoming interactions with a member of the clergy and his hospitable family, I booked a counseling appointment to discuss membership. He and his staff welcomed me to their office. There I openly confessed the greatest impediment in my spiritual life: exhaustion and despair caused by utter loneliness. “I expect to die alone and to be forgotten right away, and that’s just life for many people. But I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like, to love someone who would actually like to be loved by me. Someone that I have the right to talk to about anything, and the right to touch, in a relationship where no one is assaulted or humiliated or screamed at. I want to go home to my husband, and to lie down and be at rest.”

“Let’s just call it what it is: Lust,” he smiled. “You’ve chosen to feel lonely. You make sadness your comfortable choice, with fantasies about the pleasures of the married state. Our society believes celebrities like Dr. Ruth [Westheimer] — that to be happy, we need to be having sex!”

“No, it’s that… to be human, we need other humans,” I told him. “We need to know and be known as our whole selves. I experienced that one time long ago, with a deeply serious young man in Russia. Right before I left the country he and I became acquainted and spent several days with his family, taking walks and talking about life, and he asked whether I would ever consider a future with him. I took that very much to heart, and I think of him every day. But we never saw each other again.”

“You could have married him, yet ended up right where you are today,” he laughed. “He could have died in a year or two.”

[Momentarily speechless.] “He did.”

“Well, see? There ya go!”

He compared me with my adamant family-life wish to a little kid with his fist stuck because he’s trying to get a pebble out of a precious antique vase; or to an elephant chained up as a calf, who grows up and doesn’t understand that she can just break the chain and walk away.

Then for two hours he encouraged my path forward: renunciation of earthly desire, and union with the true Bridegroom of my soul. He told story after story about martyrs of the flesh, centuries ago in other countries. One young man was so enamored with prayer that he had himself walled in, standing up until he died; his remains are still there, and people come to his grave to pray for special intentions. Another woman in her devotion to God became a pilgrim, and spent the rest of her short life walking. Passersby discovered that she gave clairvoyant answers to their questions, though she lost all awareness of her past and her own name as her clothes fell into rags and her body wore away. “And YOU can have this same divine Eros, this same joy in the Lord! You can have the same trust in God that my children have in me.” He concluded with suggestions about texts to read, and ways to incorporate weekly fasting.

He’s a radiant generous person in general with a warm manner, someone I would ordinarily be happy to see again in his church. Still, as he talked I sat twisting my mind into a Mobius strip, pretzeling out the logic for that cosmic step of renunciation into ultimate fulfillment. I’d walked in looking forward to a meeting of the minds about deep spirituality. I walked out feeling like a naughty little girl harboring carnal thoughts, and haven’t had the heart to return to that church since. Being too dissociated to even remember saying goodbye, I left the church whimpering and groping along in a strange inner darkness to the bus stop. The bus was empty. I huddled up in a seat. The driver checked on me in the rearview mirror. Before starting the bus he turned and nodded to me and smiled with remarkable kindness. Getting off the bus later, still whimpering, I smiled back at him.

I arrived home and packed up all my Bibles and religious books, and boxed them in the closet. “I’m sorry,” I told the icons on the wall with their sad eyes, as I took them all down. “Something is wrong with me. Some day I’ll be ok, and we can all live together again.” That night, and every night for weeks after, I woke up in the dark gripped by fear: for the first time in my life, the night sky was an empty shell. Outer space held no heaven any more. Time was empty too; history had lost its meaning. There was no sense or plan for the full circle of eternal redemption or heaven, not for me.

The day after the session, my dear former dental hygienist passed me on the street. I watched myself cracking jokes about a real estate poster on a phone pole, making hilarious fun of the stylized commercial euphemisms and prices. That night she contacted me to follow up. “How are you doing?” she asked. “Something was wrong today. You didn’t look or sound like yourself.”

She had a point. The counseling encounter had hit like a concussion, a head injury that still hasn’t gone away. Now church services that mesmerized with their beauty seem like a nicely decked out puppet show. Decades of memorized chants from Liturgies and Mass and feast days and akathists and hymns (in Slavonic, Old Russian, Latin, Greek) have disappeared from memory. Those cherished daily prayer books are just obsolete words on a page. The favorite luminous promises and prayers of Scripture sound like trampled dust. God’s whole historic united body-of-Christ plan has marched off without me; he’s in some other part of the cosmos, a pleasant well-meaning guy with good ideas and care for better people.

Maybe the real fleshly desire, other than Trader Joe 72% chocolate, has been the lifelong desperation to belong to a church, to follow all the advice, to feel saved enough, to feel included like everybody else. Along the way of trying so hard, I lost my faith and want it back. I miss the words in print and hearing, the eyes on the wall. Most important I miss myself, and the way God used to lead me — a prompting of intuition that cut cross-wise right through my ordinary thoughts and showed the way, and was always always right. It’s time to find that again.

In fact, after my neighbor had the gentle word with me about salvation, she urged me to try prayer, asking Jesus for guidance. That night I did, and right away there was an inner flash of intuition. “You can be lonely, you can be sad,” that awareness seemed to say. “That does not interfere at all with the work I gave you, of sitting with souls in pain. But do not ever, EVER, speak to them the way those people spoke to you.” Maybe I needed to hear everybody’s advice, to feel exactly which words do not help.

Meanwhile, back to that driver on the empty bus. His silent nod and smile were holy, the sacrament I’d been looking for. He inspired me to carry that kindness forward, to kindle sacramental meetings ever since, all day every day, one human being at a time.

(No bunnies here. Just a nice view this week, on the walk home after work.)

Each morning, the alarm in their bedroom rang Ding! then with a polite pause Ding Ding! then with another polite pause really warming up with jazzy bright chimes in a doot-doot-de-doo rhythm. A fast online search turned up a picture that looks like theirs — a Westclox Big Ben Chime Alarm. Memory is a curious thing; I had no visual recall of that clock, but spotted it right away just now in a whole page of vintage models.

Every morning, when they turned off the alarm, Grandma’s voice would say to Grandpa “4:30 already! Goodness. After you retire, I’m going to sleep late until 6:00 every morning of the week. What a shame to wake up the little one in there.”

The little one though was up & at ’em, wildly excited to be visiting Gram & Grandpa, with the amazing novelty of being awake in the pitch dark and cold. Soon Grandpa and I were down at the table in the chilly kitchen by the warm gas stove, me on my foot stool for extra height, bundled up warm with an extra pair Gram’s woolly knee socks. Gram whipped up sausage patties, perfect round poached eggs, toast, and sometimes (my favorite) mashed potatoes fried crisp in butter, and delicious oatmeal cooked in milk. I got to eat it all up with a special tiny child spoon of real silver, and drink out of a special glass with a beautiful red Kentucky Cardinal painted on the outside. Every morning I looked at its red and black colors and jaunty crest, wishing I could go to Kentucky and see a real Cardinal, because we all knew New York is too cold to ever have any. (The first time I saw a bird outside that matched the bird on the glass, I burst hollering into the house to tell Gram to come running and see.)

Grandpa was silent at breakfast, and silent in general. He worked every day except Sunday from 6:00 in the morning to 6:00 at night at the family business, generally in the bitter cold. For the coldest days and snow, as outdoor clothes he put on just a quilted vest and a black and white hunting hat with ear flaps, made of hounds’-tooth pattern wool. I never once saw him wear a coat or scarf or gloves. Mornings we left the house at 5:30 or so, crunching through snow under the moon to the car. Grandma put me in the back seat and always said “Where’s your HANDS?” and I had to hold them straight up where she could see them so she knew it was safe to close the back door without hurting me. Then she drove very slowly all the way down the hill to town, to drop off Grandpa for the workday, and he got out of the car with a roast-beef sandwich in brown paper to tide him over until supper.

After work we picked him up. In careful stiff stages he eased in to the car after his long day. If my cousins were in the car, and if it wasn’t too close to supper to spoil our appetites, sometimes Gram opened the glove compartment up front and took out her supply of Black Jack gum for us to chew on. (In Wikipedia I just looked up Black Jack gum. By golly, that was really a thing — a licorice formula confection since 1884, the first flavored gum in the US and the first gum available in sticks. The licorice (pronounced lick-rish) flavor was completely strange to us, but we chewed it anyway. Then while Gram drove the car we kids took the gum wrappers and very carefully speared them on the long pearl pin that Gram always wore with her hairbun. We thought she might enjoy the fun of having gum wrappers falling all over when she walked into the grocery store or took off her hat.)

Back at home, Grandpa sat down on the foot stool while Grandma unfastened his high boots, working the laces free of the metal hooks from toe to top. His hands couldn’t handle small things like bootlace knots, after getting frostbit in World War I. I didn’t understand then how come if the War was more than 40 years ago, why didn’t the frostbite melt away by now? But Grandma said that’s how it goes with frostbite, and that’s why girls have to put on mittens and warm socks for outdoors. After easing his feet into fresh wool socks and slippers, Gran gave him a cup of hot tea to hold and then opened the freezer and took out a package of pure white goose-grease from the butcher, and she rubbed it on his hands to help them warm up for the night. Then he would sharpen his straight razor on a long leather strop, shave with a little mirror on the wall, watch a few minutes of TV news over a very light supper (small patty of round steak chopped, three spoonfuls of cooked spinach, three prunes for dessert). Then he said “Nacht Nacht” to all and climbed the stairs to bed.

But before work, in their half hour of pre-dawn free time, my grandparents went searching for bunnies.

Bunny watching was for short days and long winter nights, before the sun came up, when roads were empty and creatures were still out and prowling. Gram went a little bit out of their way, on the beach road looking out over Long Island Sound. At that hour there was not a car in sight; we had the woods and shore to ourselves. The car cruised at a gentle little pace, avoiding any signs of ice, taking its time. In the dark forest the stars trailed right along, hiding and seeking through the tops of the trees and over the horizon with its twinkling lights from the city.

We watched out both sides of the car with close attention. Gram always managed to spot them first. Bunnies! They dashed along the road with white cotton tails high, and sometimes right across, lucky to be seen by the slowest careful driver. Sometimes it was squirrels. Or mallard ducks. Or a cat with shining eyes. One time a real raccoon! Climbing out of a storm drain! And once it was a ringneck pheasant, with a great flapping soar of surprise and flashes of color and elegant tail. I kept breathing on the windows and rubbing off the frost with my mitten to see everything, and trying to trace the animals on the window so I could have a lifelike shape on the frosty glass to look at later. But the animals were all too fast for me, so mainly I did a lot of bouncing in the back seat trying not to yell and scare the creatures. It was just so amazing and great to see real nature animals that weren’t on TV.

Tonight for Catholic Holy Week, looking for an Easter memory to capture here, what came to mind somehow was bunnies. After growing up, and growing older now than those grandparents were then, it’s easy to see: the point of looking for bunnies was not scoring bunnies. It’s about two greatest-generation Germans born in the 1800s, weathering hardships and heartaches that they were not about to mention to us and that we can never fathom, saving string in a ball and bacon drippings in a jar and keeping a scrubbed warm well-fed home for the grandkiddos to visit and mess up and holler in.

Bunny watching was their one light enjoyable tradition of leisure; traveling in silence, side by side down the years, watching for the frozen dark to yield some sweet surprise along the road.

On Saturday somebody dropped their recycling in shopping bags next to (but not in) the recycling dumpster, the way folks do. One bag held two crumbling pasteboard folders. So I grabbed the bag to toss it to the bottom of the full bin, and then with a yip of surprise saw what was inside. I left the bags and hurried my discovery upstairs.

There I set it on the bathroom counter and fetched a sharp knife and scissors. It took about ninety minutes of chipping in little careful bits to remove crumbling pasteboard and layers of very hard mucilage. Then I cleaned up the bathroom, wrapped up the board and glue debris and ran that straight back to the dumpster, washed hands and tools, then took my find into daylight for a good view.

It was two photographs. There were no names and no date. Both came from Roberts Studio, Brooklyn New York, and were printed on Eastman Kodak film. I turned them face down on the balcony laundry rack for an airing in the sun. Then I opened the internet and started some research.

Roberts Studio was at 683 Fresh Pond Rd., Ridgewood, New York. The Ridgewood Times had a little article about the Fresh Pond neighborhood.

The newspaper invites readers to share any pictures or memories. I may just make prints of these, and send them to the paper. Meanwhile I photographed them, then showed my cell phone images to people around me. One neighbor made a little fun of my all-out rescue. “You do realize,” he said, “that one day all of your stuff is going in a dumpster too?” I said “Yes it will, but their stuff won’t if it depends on me. The hope and beauty in these faces does not belong in the trash.”

How old are these pictures? Kodak film was invented in 1889. Roberts Studio had a second shop as well, at 1230 Fulton St., Brooklyn. That was originally a family house built in 1910; it still stands today. My sentiment, and it may be wrong, is that the wedding fashions are from before the Roaring Twenties, perhaps even before World War I.

Both pictures have the same faint painted arch background. Both grooms are dressed alike, down to the little flower ornament in their lapels. The brides seem to be dressed alike too. Perhaps instead of buying wedding clothes, they rented them from the studio? If so, that would suggest that they were not wealthy people. Judging by everything I heard from my relatives, and from Brooklyn scenes I saw as a kid, life there 100+ years ago might have had its spirited occasions but was in no way easy or serene. There is something appealing and heartfelt about two people facing the future side by side in the best clothes they could manage.

For right now the wedding pictures are in page protectors at the front of my address book binder, protected from light. At first it was only basic respect, to pounce on ancestor pictures put out with the garbage. Then, the work of freeing these pictures from their old folder frames, and doing the research, made me care about these people. Now I want to find out how to preserve them well. Unless of course a reader at the Ridgewood Times says “Holy Smoke — that’s Grandma and Grandpa!” If so, they’re getting sent back home to be with their relatives.

I like to go open the binder to look at these young people, to hope that they got through the Great War and the 1918 flu, to wish them a good and long life together.

Big Disclaimers: 1. Warn the guests that these have peanut butter. 2. Don’t lick the batter off the spoon. The label on my oat flour warns that the flour must NOT be eaten raw. There are warnings about wheat flour nowadays too, that we can’t let the kiddos lick the spoon any more. Apparently, wheat fields are now contaminated by the deer population, as deer have proliferated so much and bring diseases along with.

Recipes for these cookies are all over YouTube, posted by better cooks.

This recipe might work with any kind of potato. At a St. Patrick’s Day party at college 45 years ago, one of our generous warm-hearted fellow students brought rolled “Irish Potato” bites including peeled white potato mashed with condensed milk and coconut cream and a whale of sugar and cinnamon. At the time I didn’t understand, and was too polite to ask, why these delicious treats had a biting astringent metallic aftertaste. Since then I learned that it means the potatoes had developed solanine (boiling doesn’t remove it), and they should have been thrown away. Potatoes can solanize even before they sprout or turn green. If the flavor bites, don’t eat them.

Back to our recipe. Sweet potatoes are sweeter to begin with and apparently they have a gentler glycemic index than white potatoes, so we use those.

Bake the sweet potato, mash it with peanut butter and oat flour, form into cookies, press with a fork, and bake. The cookies don’t rise, so you need not space them apart in the pan.

I used leftover steamed potatoes, peeling off the very outer papery skin. Then I inspected the potatoes carefully, cutting out anything that looked like a potato eye; the eyes are very bitter and not healthy to eat. Then I mashed the potato in the Cuisinart with cinnamon and vanilla first, and turned it into a bowl before adding unsalted creamy peanut butter and just a little dash of honey. I kneaded that well, then mashed in enough oat flour to form a soft dough. You can roll these into flattened balls, place them in a baking pan on parchment paper, use a fork to press in cross-hatch patterns to make them look more like regular peanut butter cookies, and bake.

They came out fine, but at first bite the flavor was a little cloying. Next time I’ll add a pinch of salt to the oat flour, and perhaps use chunky peanut butter. The starch-rich potatoes can carry more flavoring than I thought; a good dash of pumpkin spice would work.

After 25 minutes of baking at 350 F the cookies were still quite soft, so I let them sit in the oven while it cooled down. That improved the texture. My guess is that frozen they will taste even better.

They have a nice dense moist marzipan quality. It would be interesting to try almond butter, almond flour, and almond extract next time. Tahini and some ground sesame seeds with a dash of orange would be worth a try too.

These Hellebores didn’t come from the green valley. They’re at the local garden center.

Last Friday at our beloved surviving store of venerable books, the dollar cart turned up a real gem: a mint new Richard Llewellyn in the prettiest jacket with a picture of a village in the mountains. Of course I carried my find to the sensitive sweet cashier, and gave her my dollar and a story: “Once upon a younger time, a man ended our dating association with a dire prediction: ‘Some rainy Friday night you’ll think of me, when you’re in bed all alone. Probably reading How Green Was My Valley.‘”

The cashier’s look of eager friendliness slacked down to dismay.

   “And — I can hardly wait!” I confided to her, waving my new copy.

She was all smiles again. “Oh, what a lovely cover! Well, we can say he was giving you a helpful book recommendation.”

That night the rain and wind were in great form, a comforting racket for being all tucked in with this nice edition. It’s a good size copy, easy to hold and read. It fell open to Chapter 40: “I had splendid minutes in a bookshop…. O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come.”

After joining narrator Huw Morgan from cover to cover this week, I watched the lyrical warm-hearted 1941 film, made in California, and enjoyed the many viewer comments full of nostalgic memories and praise and movie lore and wit:

“This film stole the best picture award from the amazingly brilliant Citizen Kane and it is considered a shocking lapse of Hollywood’s taste. But you know what? I have watched this a dozen times and haven’t had the slightest desire to see Citizen Kane again.”

“Some weird accents to anyone who’s ever heard a real Welsh voice. Are the adult sons played by German POWs?”

It was a pleasant surprise that the plot faithfully followed the book and its dialogues. The choral soundtrack brings us “Cwm Rhondda” (we English-speaking Catholics call it “Bread of Heaven”), “Calon Lân,” and other fine songs. The black and white sets and scenes were beautifully composed. Young Roddy McDowall as Huw was a luminous hardworking presence all throughout. In the climactic scene shown below, Huw finds and brings Dada’s body up to the surface of the shaft with Chaplain Gryffud just before the mine collapses.

Why isn’t this book popular??? Maybe Americans want a plot that builds up something successful. Maybe they don’t want a lengthy plaintive remembrance about family and friends cherished and loved who all die under a mountain of coal or fire or starvation or exile, about a village and valley abandoned under creeping black slag as the narrator ties his last belongings into Mother’s head shawl, and walks away from his crumbling house never to return. There’s graphic violence and heartbreak too, hair-trigger tempers and fisticuffs and bloodshed and suffering at childbirth and drunkenness and madness and social shunning and English cruelty to children who use Welsh at school.

But through it all, there are lilting passages of intricate ecstatic praise of family and hearth and home and singing and the valley and animals and flowers. There is even tenderness for the little beasts of burden who power the mines underground their whole lives. Before the final cave-in that destroys all the life they know and Huw’s father at the bottom of it all, Huw rushes into the dark to get them out:

“Well, if you had seen the little horses when they saw us. Like children, they were, ready to sit down at a party, and with just as much noise…. the ponies were so full of joy that they pushed against us with their noses, and rubbed their necks…. all shouting to be going on top to grass.

Eh, dear.

If you had seen those ponies running when we let them loose. Blind they were, but they knew that mountain had only kindness for them and nothing for them to trip on or trap to bring them low.

If only we could all have been as happy.”

An improving read, something to be grateful for on a rainy Friday.

One week of rare forays in unvarnished emotional honesty.

1. Virtual seminar at work: medical research all about loneliness in society. Takeaway points: Loneliness means a subjective perception that one is isolated. Loneliness has become an epidemic. It’s big! Feeling lonely is a health hazard equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to the Surgeon General. [The same Surgeon General, in an interview I heard about loneliness, gave two suggestions. One, spend quality time with your spouse, children, and family. Two, look confident. This will encourage people to want to socialize with you.] Statistics, figures, pie charts, all show negative health outcomes of loneliness. Fortunately, elderly people report less loneliness as they age. Recommendation: treat young people with cognitive behavioral therapy in virtual video sessions. Train them to replace their negative thoughts with positive ones, and to learn behaviors which enable them to socialize with peers and become more self-reliant and resilient. Thank you.

Presenter: Discussion?

Me: Loneliness as a subjective perception really isn’t mentioned in this culture. Many susceptible people are too distracted with their drugs, junk food, guns, pornography, and pets to articulate it even to themselves. Elderly people can quietly faint from dehydration because they lose touch with their own sense of thirst; caregivers know to just hand them a glass of water instead of asking them whether they want it. In the same way, the loneliest senior citizens may not know how to verbalize to researchers that they are lonely. They may have lost touch with the sense of or need for close connection.
Participant: Actually, the research does show that older people report less loneliness.
Me: [They may not sit around reporting anything to YOU if they are busy planning to do something about it. Check your suicide stats in PubMed, especially for older men.] Sure. And, older people have been trained to not admit that they’re lonely. At least if they would like people to visit them.

2. Zoom meeting with friendly caring remote offsite co-worker who I’ve never seen: So, all set for Christmas?
Me: Well, Christmas is more for families. So actually no, I don’t celebrate it any more.
Colleague: Mary!! I am your family. All of us are! Your family is our whole department.
Me. Thank you! I hope your family have a wonderful holiday.
Colleague. We’ll be skiing — this time with the dog. Should be interesting!

3. Very intelligent science colleague: It’s been pretty rainy lately, but the days are getting longer now. Your problem is just seasonal affective disorder. 
Me: You know, it’s actually not. Summer is much harder. Rain is comforting and calming, but sunshine hurts.
SC: You could wear sunscreen.
Me: No, it’s the light itself. Sunshine fires off way too many neurons in my brain. That’s why rainy weather really helps.
SC: What really helps me is my full-spectrum light, timed to reflect just the right balance of blue/orange light throughout the day to aid in a healthy melatonin cycle. You can buy [brand name] on Amazon. It wakes me up every morning, and makes all the difference in my mood.
Me: That’s great. I’m happy you found something so helpful.

4. My oldest girlfriend: When in the WORLD are you going to retire?
Me: To whom?
OG: What?
Me: Retirement is our chance to devote our lives to our families. Who is that?
OG [?????]: Well if that’s how you feel, why not invite a co-worker out for coffee?
Me: My co-workers work remote at home. With their families. And their coffee.
OG: I sure wish I had some alone time away from our full house here. Your life sounds so peaceful.

5. Favorite bus driver: Jeez, Mary. Back on the bus again. When are you going to retire? What are you gonna, go to work and ride the bus back and forth until you just keel over and die?
Me: That’s the plan, Bernie. This seat will do fine.

6. Celeste, grandmother with a close growing dynasty: You need to gather your women friends together, and once a month go out and treat yourselves to lunch at a nice place. Then as the years go by, you will have more in common with them as they become widows too.
Me: Thank you. [Uh. Widow?]

7. A Favorite Neighbor since 2010: Hi, Mary! Happy New Year! How was your Christmas? What did you do?
Me: Uh, I didn’t get up. Mostly over the years I’ve worked really really hard to make it meaningful. But maybe for me it’s just a black flatline and that’s how it is? So I just stayed put until it was over. Then I started calling and checking on people in the building and in my life. Some of them are really struggling.
FN: Oh gosh, I was really sick! I’m fine now, but it was like… flu or something. Poor Gary had to keep helping me to the bathroom. He had to bring me hot fluids and hot water bottles and keep tucking me in. And then my sons drove to town, and they pitched in and did all the shopping.
Me: That sounds awful! I’m really sorry to hear that. Thank goodness Gary was there and you got to see your sons too.

8. After Church: [This conversation may be the most kind, caring attempt by a Christian congregation member to even listen. See how much nicer this is, than the Christian woman who once clapped her hands directly in front of my nose, shouting in the parish hall “You must have an unconfessed sin OR lack of forgiveness toward others. Forgive now! Just do it!”]
Very warmhearted church member: Mary! How are you? Doing okay?
Me: Hi! Working on it.
VWCM: Wait — working on what?
Me: Working on doing okay. Last week the sermon was about the Prodigal Son being left lonely and forsaken, and how loneliness is a sign that we have to repent and turn back to the Lord. I really worried about that all week. How do you turn back to the Lord if you didn’t turn away? Does loneliness mean that the greatest prodigal sinners are people in Medicaid nursing homes?
VWCM: The sermon didn’t say that!
Me: Well, and tonight’s sermon was about joy in suffering. What’s joy? My friend is red/green colorblind. He says God is the color green: something people tell him about, but he doesn’t know how colors feel. Maybe joy is just another color.
VWCM: But don’t you have joy in your life?
Me: Doesn’t feel that way. People talk about it at church all the time.
VWCM: It’s the joy of the LORD. The joy of the Lord is our strength!
Me: Okay. And what is that?
VWCM: Why, joy is different for everybody. Everybody has different things that bring them joy.
Me: Where is it in our chest? Is it red? Green? Like, here’s this lovely photo card you gave me of your whole family at Christmas. Every year people mail me these group photographs. The family members look like they feel a lot of joy being together. Then I open the envelopes and look at the photos and they just make me cry.
VWCM: Well our family also has concerns as well.
Me: Yes. It’s been very inspiring to watch you relatives care for each other. Families like yours face your concerns united, not alone.
VWCM: But single women can still have joy!
Me: Okay. And what is that? What does that feel like?
VWCM: [Hug] Well, at church we love you!

[Typed up thanks to the moral support of listening to many reps of “Cloud Nine” by Nik Kershaw.]

Big Disclaimer: Angelina is back. I would never mention anybody’s travel plans until they are safe at home again. Nobody needs to worry that their whereabouts will be blurted about under their pseudonym on an anonymous virtually unread blog written by another pseudonym in a city far away.

Bedtime for Bingo — a very, very good boy.

Angelina: Was that a knock? WHO’S AT THE DOOR? Let’s see who it is. Look, Guys! IT’S MARE!

Me: Hi Sweetie! Hey Super Pup. Hey Bingo. I didn’t bring treats, but you can come sniff and lick me anyway.

Angelina: This week while I’m away, Vickie is staying with the dogs. You don’t know her yet. Lovely woman. I think she is a Genius. Like, literally. You know how with some people, you can just SENSE that they’re a Genius?

Me: I wouldn’t know.

A: You’ve got to meet her.

M: I’ll watch for a stranger stealing your dogs, and go introduce myself. What time is your Uber pickup?

A: At 4:30 am.

M: So in seven hours.

A: Say a prayer for me, that I’m downstairs in time.

M: Okay. Have you packed yet?

A: No.

M: I’ll say two prayers. So, you’re off to Island X___ ! Exciting times.

A: Swimming with wild pigs.

M: Huh. So, like Chincoteague, but…?

A: Pigs. Look: Here are pictures on my phone. People swim with them.

M: Did they run out of dolphins?

A: Dolphins don’t live there. Pigs do. Careful, Bingo: I don’t want to trip on you. There, there; you go lie down. Good boy. Bingo’s joints are hurting him. Want some tea?

M: Not if you’re waking up in five hours. Aren’t pigs, like, large, heavy, faster than we are, and wicked smart with teeth?

A: A few injuries here and there apparently. But my friend wants to go.

M: Hence, she invited Nurse Angelina, R.N. Good plan.

A: Do you need extra tomato sauce? Here’s a jar. Here’s two. And, a scarf for you. It’s warm.

M: Thank you, it’s very pretty. You could stay home and swim with Bingo in a hot tub of Epsom salts.

A: Poor old fella. It’s time for his pain meds. Take this waterproof jacket. Let me hold it up to you. Good, it’s long enough. Eddie Bauer. Put it on. It’s just a shell.

M: Shells are what most people tell me to come out of, not put on. Gosh, nice jacket. Thank you!

A: So tell me ALL of your news!

M: My friend Gabrielle, the art appraiser and historian, is coming to visit next year.

A: That’s great! The one who was your boss.

M: Right, like that movie “I Heard the Mermaids Singing”? She’s the gorgeous cultured Curator, and I’m Polly, her organizationally challenged Girl Friday. I told her she can have my apartment and I can stay in your spare room. I guess I could have asked your permission first.

A: What about THE BED?

M: In your spare room? If your spare room doesn’t have a bed, that’s fine. I’ll sleep on the floor, like at home.

A: No no no. I meant the bed at YOUR place. As in, you don’t OWN one.

M: Oh. You’re right. I can’t put Gabrielle on a floor, because she has a stiff back.

A: Mare. Get a grip. You can’t put Gabrielle on a floor because she is A HUMAN BEING. That settles it. We are buying her an air mattress!

M: Tonight???

A: As soon as I am back. Or no — you take MY bedroom. She’ll take my spare room. You girls can stay up all night and talk. That’s half the fun. I’ll go to your place and sleep on the floor.

M: Well, we’ve got a year to argue about it. Better let you pack.

A: Take this carry bag for the tomato sauce. I put in some pasta to go with. And here: keto granola bars; Costco had a sale. Jacket looks good on you. But it’s just a shell, with no warmth.

M: Just like me. Bye Bunny! I’ll miss you!

(Eye of the Beholder: A sense of wonder stopped me in my tracks, at sight of these beautiful frost crystals on black ice. But on closer inspection it was a car part busted up in the gutter.)

I’ve always wished for 1. a companion, and 2. life-building occupations shared 3. in home space.

What is that like? Well, it’s two people who can spend an interlude in the same room, where for now their presence feels like enough, and is just right. Neither one has to feel shut down or afraid or left out or hurt. They like times of peace and rest. They can feel safe and at ease with how they feel and think and look.

The two can take care of each other when they are sick or having a hard day. They can listen and pay attention and talk their hearts out. Or, they are so comfortable that they can attend to their own chores. They can do the dishes. Or, they can take out the garbage. Or, they can plan on their schedule or budget for the week. Or, they can wash and iron and mend the laundry or do needlework. Or, they can cook and eat a meal. Or, they can sing. Or, they can play musical instruments. Or, they can read the Bible out loud. Or, they can pray. Or, they can practice a foreign language. Or, they can read and discuss each another’s writing. Or, they can take a nap. Or, they can play with the dog. Or, they can sit at the window looking out at rain and listen to the killdeers flying overhead. Day by day they can do small things to make every day better and more secure in a shared present, and a secure shared future.

My whole life was spent working hard on skills and character and wisdom to be the best companion for a loved one. Whenever heart-breaking things happened, or there were new lessons to learn, I tried to use this opportunity to become a better partner one day. God willing, good companionship is my biggest dream and meaning and ideal of life. I imagine it every morning waking up, and every evening falling asleep. I wish it for other people too.

Especially every holiday, and especially Christmas Eve.

The man with the bandana over his face pointed a gun at me. “Do you have any gold teeth?”

I recognized him as an arch-villain like the kind on TV, where cowboys in big hats ran around shooting each other. I had no idea when adults were only play-acting in a costume, or what “gold teeth” were, but was pretty sure I’d never noticed any while brushing in the mirror before bedtime. I shook my head.

   “Open your mouth!” he demanded.

That was a familiar command from trips to the dentist, so I did. Then I held very very still, staring up at him. Is he going to kill me? The grownups here are insane. I’m all on my own here.

   “Aright then.” He holstered the gun, jumped off the stage coach, and waved the driver to start the horses again. The passengers gave him a round of applause. Another day of family fun at Frontier Town. Now for a preschooler, the perfect punch line would have been seeing this arch-villain take off the bandana and say “Surprise! I was only kidding! I’m a local high school kid at a tiring summertime resort job. The gun’s not loaded. It’s made of licorice.” I would have really laughed and then dogged his footsteps for the rest of the day, peppering him with questions.

The Great Stage Robbery came to mind today in a waking moment before dawn, just one more vignette in a warm loving childhood set in the utter cirque-du-bizarro called the 1950s. I lay in my blankie roll thinking “Wait, what? Did that happen? Did some historic re-enacter really point a gun at a little girl? Was it called ‘Frontier Town’? Was that a real place?”

By golly yes it was. Who knew? I just looked it up. The park opened in 1952 at Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks, upstate New York. According to the website Atlas Obscura, it had “trick riders, bucking broncos, horses and buggies and stagecoach bandits…. Founded by Arthur Bensen, an enterprising phone technician from Staten Island, the park had a Pioneer Village (with lots of calico dresses and butter churning), Prairie Junction (modeled after a Wild West main street), an Indian Village, a rodeo arena, and even a narrow gauge railroad.”

And according to this article by Michael Maciag,

https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-north-hudson-new-york-frontier-town.html

“Frontier Town, a Wild West theme park, once attracted families from all across the country. In its heyday, more than 3,000 cars may have filled the parking lot on a weekend. Patrons filled up the town’s motel rooms. When the day ended, they dined at one of several restaurants or taverns. If thrillseekers wanted to make their own food, the town even had a grocery store — a luxury not many other places in the Adirondacks enjoyed.” Article photographs include this appealing abandoned church, looking like some Volga German construction in a Russian village.

I was too young to remember any of those attractions, or the rest of our trip. But it’s heartwarming to think of my thrifty serious overworked parents driving all day for a cultural holiday. I wish I could thank them for it, especially for the chance to meet a live horse that wasn’t just in a movie or a book. That is my main memory of Frontier Town. It happened at our cute little overnight motel, white with yellow shutters and a covered porch, run by a friendly motherly innkeeper. She had a small fenced pen outside with a pony. I think their names were Betty and Tony. Someone picked me up and put me on Tony, and led him around the pen. He was very gentle and very soft to the touch, with a shining black & white pinto coat. Up on his back, I was over the moon with astonishment and happiness. That made it a little sad to click through various websites and read about a family resort shuttered down with only a few animatronic cowboys looming around. But now that story might have a new ending, according to this website:

https://www.frontiertowngateway.com/our_story

Apparently new American Mr. Mohammad Ahmad and his family have made an enthusiastic home here, and have been hard at work setting up a gas station and a local restaurant as a rest stop for tourists. The website advertises cuisine from Pakistan at “Taste of Lahore at Frontier Town (Halal).” If I were near the Adirondacks, I’d hurry on down to say Salaam aleykum and have lunch and talk to the family.

Frontier Halal. That says it all. God bless America!

(Update to original story: Oh well, back to the drawing board. Next time I’ll just cook and eat these plain as a meal apart with ginger and other pro-digestive seasonings. Liver is a wholesome food, but my system wasn’t accustomed to the novelty, and didn’t really know what to make of it. Besides, I couldn’t serve this to Angelina even at the end of a ten-foot pole; she’s way too fast for me to catch. -m)

Angelina will not want to be surprised by a photograph of this culinary adventure.

Out of consideration for her sensibilities, here instead (with full permission) is a picture of SuperPup, crawling into my lap to show me her new chew snack. SuperPup was fine with having the picture appear on the blog, stipulating only that every penny of royalties goes to her.

Last night and today it rained hard with local flooding. To shop for food I pulled on my tarp slicker and fluorescent vest, and was just hauling on my OSHA-compliant high rubber boots (a $2.00 bonanza at the state surplus sale). Then the phone rang. It was Angelina, looking out her window and thinking “Rain = Must drive Mary to store.” That is how first responders think. They just spring into action. It’s amazing. They are not one of us. Would I like a ride? Yes, Ma’am!

Soon she and I set out, with SuperPup and Bingo in the back seat. They happily licked the side of my head but whimpered in heartbreaking woe when we left them in the car. It is touching to see that when Angelina issues a training command, the dogs may have their sassy moments, as in “Ha! Are you going to make me? You and how many papal Swiss Guards?” But they are existentially distraught when Angelina is out of their sight for even a moment. She is the sun of their entire solar system. They need their alpha figure and pack configuration in order to feel safe and comfortable.

First we stopped at Fruit & Folks, where I loaded up on the Saturday bargain bin produce specials. Then we headed over to a whole new destination: the uptown butcher shop, so I could branch out and explore food products derived from (as my plant-based peeps will say) animals that had a mother and a face.

That first trip may be my last. Beef, $69.99 a pound? $40 for salmon? Where’s the decimal point? Holy smoke. Clearly, all those times that colleague Gunnar served salmon to his guests from the office, I should have been nicer to the guy.

Me: You know, at the Dollar Store there are jumbo cans of mackerel with only mildly scuffed labels. Oh wait — look at this. (Holds up clear plastic container of organ meat and blood.) $3.82 a pound. I’ve found my price range!

Angelina: (Discreetly averts eyes with random throttly noise, and walks away.) Enjoy! I’ll be in Housewares.

Out in the car, I gripped the chicken livers to keep them tightly lidded and level all the way home. (On the next offal outing, I’ll bring a lidded tupperware canister to hold the meat and avoid any chance of spillage on the upholstery.)

SuperPup and Bingo were luminous with joy to see that Angelina had decided to return instead of farming them out to a new forever home. Their great mood might have been even better if they’d had a few licks of my purchase too.

Chicken Liver Hash

Blended in Cuisinart: Celery leaves, mushrooms, zucchini, apple. (Chives or scallions would have been nice too.)

Seasonings, added to the Cuisinart hash: Parsley, dill, paprika, ginger, Bragg’s aminos. (Honey mustard and rubbed sage and black pepper could be good too.)

Last night I boiled down bones and bone broth in my heavy stew pot. Instead of scrubbing out the pot, I put the whole pot in the fridge for the night to reuse the flavorful residue at the bottom. In the pot I sauteed some minced garlic in a bit of bone broth and a dash of apple cider vinegar. I stirred in the vegetable/seasoning blend. Then I poured the livers and handy liver blood directly from container into pot without getting raw meat near cutting surfaces or utensils. Since I don’t put meat in my Cuisinart, I chopped and mashed the livers right in the pot after they were well cooked through.

Half the liver went in the freezer. The other half was mixed with one whole cauliflower, steamed and mashed. The idea was to make the dish about 90% cooked vegetables.

This tasted good. The recipe was a keeper, worth making again.

Dates, 6 large, pits removed, soaked in a bit of water for half an hour, then diced up.

Oranges, 4, tiny mandarinees or tangeritas or whatever the word is, peeled and chopped.

Flavoring mix: bitter cocoa powder, 1/2 tsp or so. Cinnamon. Vanilla, alcohol-free. Teaspoon of coconut cream (optional, for softer fluffier texture).

Coconut, unsweetened flaked. The package is 8 ounces, but this was more like 7 ounces because I put some on my oatmeal last week.

Spin coconut in Cuisinart until it’s all powdered down and just starting to stick together. Add flavoring and spin some more. Add orange and date pieces. Spin until mixture sticks together in a clump.

On a sheet of wax paper, pat dough into a firm ball. Wrap it in the wax paper. Press down into a small bowl. Pop into the freezer for an hour. Then unroll and slice it, or roll into little balls. Put it back in the freezer, and serve at dessert time. It’s handy that for upcoming social events you can freeze this in advance.

This is for anyone at the party who is cutting out refined sugar. The coconut is the central ingredient. (But spinning raw almonds, soaked and peeled, should work too.) Overall, a very versatile recipe. Substitute anything for anything. This doesn’t give the usual spike hit of sugar because there isn’t any. But when it’s chewed a while it tastes sweet, and the healthy fat and fiber give it a satisfying feel. I brought this to Angelina’s tonight, and the guests were fine with it.

For colleague Gunnar, holidays are a time to get up before the sun and hit the HIKING TRAIL for a fast light 5 miles before his coffee, if he even drinks coffee which is doubtful, and not only on holidays but any old morning before a full day of work. This time I ventured to join him. For a slow-moving organism, that meant planning the day before by laying out clothes and going to bed early, then hopping up before 6:00 for a cold bath and lymphatic massage and foot bandages and compression hose, getting dressed and having shoes and carry bag ready at the door.

Yay, all ready — half an hour early! So I curled up on the carpet with a Pimsleur language CD and learned some Italian until hike time.

We hit the trail for that fast light 5 miles. (Fast and light for him, clumping along for me.) Through the trees there were views like this one. Cropped out the family’s house. Kept the scenery.

Along the way we passed a strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo, national tree of Italy. There are impressive online descriptions of its many uses in Mediterranean cooking. (Usual disclaimer: For goodness sake do your own research. Don’t take nutritional advice from some language major.)

The fruits were ripe and falling all over the trail anyway, getting trampled. Soon they’ll be gone. So naturally I picked some for my carry bag and brought them home.

There I simmered them over lowest heat, mashing and cooking them down in their own juice. Here’s the cooked whole fruit mash. The light fruity fragrance was wonderful.

Tricky part: the fruits are sand balls. They’re sandpaper puffs of very fine grit seeds. So I added a little water, stirred them in a sieve, and strained them. Then I rinsed the strainer and bowl, and strained the fruits again, repeating that about a dozen times. I don’t know the effect of superfine grit on our digestion or plumbing, and don’t need to find out today. So I strained them very well and collected the rinsewater with the pulp to pour on the garden. That fruit cooked down to about four ounces of puree.

The slogan for truth in advertising would be “A pleasant subtle peachy-mango nectar if you are fine with rinsing residual superfine grit from your teeth and tongue and spitting in a garden bucket.”

I texted Angelina to let her know that for her Thanksgiving dinner tonight, I’m bringing her some “REAL Italian food.” She texted back a thumbs’ up. Whatever she’s expecting, it’s likely not this.

As you would expect from a guy named Gunnar, he’s a long distance type who can outpace me twice over. But today he was kind enough to interrupt his workout and stand around on the trail helping me pick fuzzy balls off a tree. Thanks, Gunnar!

Pumpkins didn’t cross my mind much as a useful vegetable. Winter squash and sweet potatoes and parsnips have a more pleasant taste, and it didn’t make sense to replace them with something that for most of the year just comes in a can. But then this BBC article was interesting food for thought.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231026-are-halloween-pumpkins-a-future-superfood

Apparently they’re a sustainable highly nutritious crop which thrives in even dry land and poor soil. In Bangladesh, they’re a food source thriving in the mini-deserts caused by flash flooding. They don’t require refrigeration for transport. The flesh is full of nutrients, and so are the seeds. In some heirloom varieties, even the leaves are edible. That inspired me to think about planting pumpkins next year; perhaps on the steep inclined poor runoff soil behind our property? Maybe the vines would anchor and improve the ground.

Meanwhile, I went out comparing pumpkin prices. At the bargain bin down at Fruit & Folks, my favorite produce open-air stand, there were a couple of sugar-pie pumpkins that were slightly dented but perfectly good. Trader Joe had a sale on canned pumpkin pulp, so I bought some for the winter pantry. After Halloween I’ll check the half-price shelf at the grocery too.

Yesterday I bought a small pie pumpkin to support our local Boy Scout troop. The Scouts and their families were just closing the gates for the season, but still had a few pumpkins left looking wholesome and nostalgic in the sunset.

Which of the pumpkins were best for cooking? I asked the farm manager. “We don’t know; we always sort the varieties and box them up with labels, but customers spend all day carrying and moving them around. They end up all mixed together, so we don’t want to guarantee. Your safest bet is a smaller round one; that is the most likely to be a pie pumpkin. All pumpkins are edible; but these big ones, for decorations and carving? Those don’t have a good flavor, and might be bitter. The largest ones are cheapest per pound. They are bought out by [A supersize nationwide food distributor], to bake into pies. How do they fix the flavor? By adding lots of CORN SYRUP. That is not your Grandma’s pie. But the customers buy it right up.”

It was troubling to think that after the stand closed for the year, these pumpkins might go to waste. But no, the staff explained that they will drive those pumpkins home and feed them to their cows. “On the farm when we pick the pumpkins to drive them here and some are too damaged to sell, we drop those in the cow pasture. Those cows come running! Pigs love them too. Pumpkin makes great feed.” It was heartening to hear about livestock in America who receive wholesome food.

But for sustainable dry weather planting, it’s time to learn more about this underrated vegetable before garden season next year.

Disclaimer: This pond scene is not a close approximation of today’s flu shot clinic.

In our fancy patient online portal, I clicked through the decision tree to book me a flu shot appointment. Sure, the local pharmacy offers them, but if I schedule through the portal then the shot can go in my permanent record, and my providers will see and won’t fret about me this flu season. Trick is, the portal lists all the local clinics in our agency except the real convenient one across the street from work. There was no evident way of adding that clinic to my list of provider sites. So, after typing a tech support question (how do I add this member of your franchise to the viewing page?) the team sent me a nice lengthy explanation sounding like a prepared chat reply, about how to open the portal and click through the decision tree to book me a flu shot.

Sigh. So at 3:10 pm I got out of my chair and walked across the street to the clinic registration desk and got in line. During the little wait, 15 minutes or so, all of us in the building could hear ear-wincing roars of distress from some small child in a back room. All we could do, clinic staff and patients, was abide there going about our business while the little gipper just roared to the ceiling. My heart went out to this poor baby being subjected to some scary procedure back there.

Then it was my turn at the Registration desk. We had to raise our voices to be heard above the screaming, but it was still a pleasant exchange. “Hello!! Say, here’s my ID and insurance. I’d like a flu shot. I’m a patient in the system, but can’t figure out how to add this clinic to the list in my portal.” The friendly staff member said “Well, then howbout you just step through that door and ask the nurse? Maybe she’ll take a walk-in.” Really? Wow! Sometimes there is no substitute for levitating out of your chair, logging out, and walking across the street to ask questions and find out stuff on your own.

So ok, at 3:25 I peeked around the corner. There were two nurses in a little office with, sure enough, a kind of popup flu season vaccine site. But the 3:15 slot had already been reserved for the howling baby, who was flatly refusing his flu shot. It was surprising to see that he wasn’t a baby at all. He was a strapping kid of five or so, sitting back on a chair and kicking his Dad’s stomach with both legs while demanding that Dad take him home without a shot. “Would you rather sit in Daddy’s lap for this? I’ll hold you,” said his father. But, no dice. Well, no one could restrain this unhappy patient from fighting. His anxious father tried to soothe, comfort, and apologize to his frantic son as the minutes ticked by. Finally Dad peeled his son out of the chair and hauled him out to the hallway for a gentle cuddle.

Now. This was not the common everyday occurrence of, say, a child with autism at the grocery store who is understandably overwhelmed by the fluorescent lighting, the random announcements and chimes shooting out of the overhead sound system, people with carts trying to navigate around crowded aisles. When one of these little fellas has an implosive incoherent meltdown, that’s different. My standard response is to catch the parent’s eye, and say “I wish I had a cool person to shop with!” Sometimes that’s enough to improve things. There is also the ploy of crouching on the floor at a safe distance and talking out loud about these fascinating barcode stripes on the shelf. What can they all mean? It must be a special language! Those stripes there mean tomatoes at 99 cents a can. How much is that an ounce? Is it cheaper than the tomato cans over here?

But that’s a child who is neurologically drowning and screaming for help. That seems different from a child issuing commands that he doesn’t want to get wet, and therefore everybody must get out of the pool (all while aiming full frontal blows at his parent).

The two nurses glanced over at me. It dawned on the three of us that maybe that 3:15 slot wasn’t going to be a wash after all. They opened the portal to my patient record immunization screen, and asked me a few questions about allergies and such. “Just so you know,” I told them softly, “When I get flu shots, I sound just like him.” One nurse gave me a long patient look. “You go for it,” she invited me, entering my data. “Ma’am, you’re going to heaven,” I predicted. “Don’t know about that,” she reasoned, preparing the hypodermic.

I unfastened a couple of buttons, pulled my shirt off the shoulder, stepped out into the hall and spoke to the kiddo. “HEY, look at this: I’m getting a flu shot. Come watch me! This is gonna be AWESOME!” Dad looked hopeful. “Would you like to go watch the flu shot and see what it’s like?” At this the boy just roared even more. “Oh… you’re afraid to watch,” the Dad said, giving him a sympathetic squeeze.

I went back in and sat down. “I’m being pretty good, you know. There better be a lollipop in store for me.” The nurse gave me my shot and applied a band-aid. “Well, you can help yourself to this bowl of stickers. I think you should take two.”

I took a colorful sticker at random, thanked them, went back to the hall, and announced to no one “THAT ONLY TOOK A SECOND. IT DIDN’T HURT AT ALL. AND, I GOT A FREE STICKER.” The boy paid no mind to me. The clinic closed at 4:00, so it’s not certain that he ever got his shot. But his mom gave me a grateful look: “You are very brave.” I buttoned my shirt, gave her a smile, and said “Well, I’m 67. That’s almost grown up.” Back at the office across the street I logged right back in, looked up the nurse in our hospital system directory, and sent her an email hailing her with praise and appreciation. We’re not allowed to mention religion in our email communications, though it is still evident that she’s going to heaven.

At home, one of my favorite smokers was out on the bench, enjoying the evening. I told him about the clinic. “It seems to me,” I said, “that by shielding and lulling that child for 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes and more, it was only prolonging his ordeal and holding him in his place of panic. When I offered to let him watch, I wanted to portion the task into manageable pieces and include him in cheerful community support. Maybe the parents could have asked for a saline injection for themselves too, to model the experience. Make it all a victorious rite of passage, complete with stickers. One time when I was little, Mom brought me to the doctor for a shot, and I locked myself in the doctor’s office bathroom. Mom told me in a very quiet Company Voice to open that door this second and get out here and SIT. Then she gave me That Look. From a Mom, The Look was worse than any shot. We were taught to respect doctors and do what we’re told. What about your childhood?” No need to ask. I knew perfectly well what he’d say next. “Would your mother put up with fuss?”

“Would mine?” He sat back with a delighted laugh. “A Mexican mom? Whoooa.”

The sticker in day-glo colors spells the word EXTROVERT. That gives me an image to live up to.

The band-aid is extra bright and very sparkly.

Our summer was dry and warm, 90 days with no precipitation. Then The First Big Storm was predicted for last Monday with heavy wind and rainfall. That means that the dry ground, full of air pockets, can be drenched so fast that tree roots grow loose and the taller trees, still full of leaves, can fall and take power lines down with them. We did in fact get a thorough deluge, two power outages, and a very wet week.

Before the weather blew in, the neighbors and I were in serious deliberation: What about Captain Wing and Mrs. Wing and their prized stand of Sunchokes? We didn’t know what day of the week the family would be back from their little vacation. Would the storm wipe out the whole patch of these thick top-heavy plants? Were we supposed to dig up the whole bumper crop in the family’s absence? Would the tender chokelets be ruined by flooding? Would the family be upset to return and see their prized armament of stalks beaten down, and the chokes rotted from the wet? I was all motivated to run out and start digging as the storm front grew closer. It was hard to hold off and do nothing. But some instinct whispered that perhaps I’d better leave it to the family. If there’s one thing we knew, Captain would have a plan A, plan B, and plan C. If his executive decision-making included reaching out to us for help, he would.

We’ve all been eagerly anticipating their return. What a happy moment it was a couple of days ago, when Mrs. Wing’s soft friendly voice called from their kitchen door. I started jumping up and down and hollering greetings, wishing it were appropriate to rush over and give her a bear hug. She had gifts all ready: a large bag of sweet ripe plums, and a gorgeous gift-wrapped tin of Moon Festival cake made with salted duck eggs and lotus seed paste. She also asked me to please wait a moment for what she was pleased to call “a slice of squash.” Then she disappeared for several mysterious minutes, while inside the kitchen there were sounds as if she were breaking cinder blocks with the side of her hand. While waiting I imagined that “a slice” meant a teacup portion. In Mrs. Wing’s view, it was this:

The egg (hen, not duck) is there for size perspective. This gold ingot of squash “slice” must weigh five pounds. A Clydesdale could wear it as a collar; I tried it on, and my entire leg fit inside all the way up.

Doubles as an attractive planter, too.

I can’t wait to cook it up. “Very sweet,” Mrs. Wing assured me. “Like chestnuts.”

Captain looked pleased to be back. He called me over to the raised garden bed four feet high, and on top of that the sunchoke row of plants six feet tall. “Look, all the way up at the top.” He pointed ten feet up to the sturdy saplings waving proudly all down the raised bed. The rain brought out a real surprise: yellow buds, all over the tops of the plants! “When those yellow flowers finish blooming, it means the sunchokes have grown and are ready to harvest.”

Well, that is the difference between an uninformed pessimist and an enterprising optimist. Here I was, afraid that the dry summer had left the chokes with no flowers and no crop, expecting that the family would be disappointed. But all this time they weren’t worried at all! They had faith that summer would be summer, and that Nature was right on schedule. Meanwhile we neighbors have been greeting each other with the words “Wings are back!” We are just happy they are safe home again.

August brought two full moons instead of one. Here is a picture of the second, or “blue” moon, seen over a water glass of fennel from the garden.

CatCub’s owner reports that now when CatCub watches out the window and sees me walking on the street, CatCub rushes to the front door and waits patiently for me to come in and visit her. This week she has me visiting three times a day while her owner is away. CatCub has started a new object permanence game to play with me. She waits for me to sit down with her cat brush. Then she stares at me from the floor. Then with a yip she leaps up and starts kneading my lap and purring, lashing her tail directly toward my eyes from pure exuberance. While I hold up the brush she decides how much of a brushing she wants, and for long, then leaps off my lap and hides. That way she’s in complete control, and that seems to make her feel safe. After hiding out of my sight for one minute, she pops out all ready for the next round. She can keep that up all day.

This morning, Melina was feeling some woe. Mom and Dad and Bernard, her baby brother, were all ready for fun at the playground. Everybody was waiting for Melina to hurry up and put on her socks. To their credit, they were going to give her all the time she needed to put the socks on by herself. But socks are tricky to put on, and the morning was getting hot. One sock was half inside out. The other sock had the heel upside down, facing up instead of down. Finally she sat down in the building lobby and had to start over; not only that, but she couldn’t find her water bottle. “Here it is,” I pointed out, finding it in the outdoor stroller. But no, that’s not the special bottle! Fortunately, Mom appeared with Melina’s special bottle; Mom had filled it full of ice as a surprise. Now after playtime Melina and Bernard could have nice cold water in their bottles. The sock battle was a victory, and the family headed out.

Later, Melina ran over to tell me about the playground. She found me sweeping the garden walk. “Whatcha doing?” she asked. “I’m on Rock Patrol,” I told her. “And now YOU can be a Rock Ranger too.” Naturally, she came closer to investigate this special offer. I pointed out some little rocks that were sneaking out of the rock bed and on to the sidewalk. “When Mrs. D. walks this way after supper, sometimes she steps on a pebble or rock. It feels shaky, and she’s afraid that she might fall down. We don’t want that! When I see a rock that got lost, I put it back home in the rock bed. You can too.”

Last week I arrived home from work, and in front of our building found an ambulance with emergency personnel just slamming the doors. Oh no! Which neighbor? I sprinted across the parking lot, and was 2 seconds too late just as the back doors of the ambulance closed. It felt sad to miss the chance to wish them well. And what if they had pets or plants to care for? Were they ever coming back? I know that curious interested ambulance-chasing neighbors are a real distraction and delay for paramedics and EMTs. So I only gave them an appreciative wave and got out of their way.

Fortunately, I already had two phone texts letting me know which neighbor it was, and we had a fast-moving group text consult on the spot. Who’s got apartment keys? Who’s driving to the ER right now to sit and be company? Who will pick out personal care comfortries and deliver them tomorrow? Who will watch for and take in the Amazon deliveries? In no time we had a good strategy. As one of them said “It takes a village!”

On the street outside the grocery store, Seth from Produce called to me with interesting news. He showed me a real treasure in the photos on his phone: a serendipitous forage discovery of a particular beautiful mushroom. It’s a delicacy in spectacular demand; I’ve never tasted one. Local chefs who take pride in signature local gourmet foods have assured Seth that they will welcome all he can find, at top prices. Through years of study and exploration, Seth has worked out a sense for the precise habitat and annual climate of these showy creatures. He was kind enough to divulge the whole list of conducive conditions, none of which I will mention here or anywhere. And now, as innovative people do, Seth is taking smaller specimens and painstakingly culturing the spores so he can add them to his home mushroom ventures. It was a real spirit lifter to share his enthusiasm for nature, and to see how industrious he is about raising and prizing good produce.

This afternoon I lugged and hauled the hose around and gave the Wing Family garden a good soaking. A passing neighbor, one famed for his hearty and antic sense of humor, said “Why Mary — that’s very kind! I didn’t know you had it in you. I think I’ll text and let Wing know that his garden is baked toast and everything is dead. You were fed up with all this field labor, and two weeks ago you went on strike. I’ll remind him too, that if ya make a Catholic woman angry, ya better watch your back!” He and Captain are friends from way back, so I invited him to send off tidings as he sees fit; far be it from me, to get in the way of male bonding. Meanwhile, their butterscotch dahlias are just flourishing:

In Mrs. Wing’s herb patch there is some kind of mystery bulb, putting up small flowers in delicate tones. It will be interesting to see her again, and find out the name of this little visitor.

We look forward to seeing them soon. Happy trails, Friends!

Dear Captain and Mrs. Wing,

You have way better things to do on the road than be reading this, but if you ever wondered “What is happening to our garden? Will it be there when we get home?” the answer is “Copacetically, sort of.”

Fish Mint is a real natural, merrily creeping all over and staying healthy.

Your little pots of herbs are fine too. Here is a delicate little onion cousin. Garlic leek?

But the important crop is your two beds of Sunchokes. (Readers a little younger might know them as Jerusalem Artichokes. Readers my age didn’t call them anything, because in the 50s they hadn’t been invented yet. We had just peas and carrots in little frozen cubes.)

Your chokes are tall and full of leafy growth on top, as seen here in Exhibit A:

However, I have not seen them put out any of their signature yellow flowers. What’s more, the ones in the raised bed look okay, but the row planted directly in the ground outside your kitchen? I hope you are not too disappointed. They are looking stalky, and the middle leaves are losing color. Their lower leaves dried up, so I crunched them into flutters and scattered them on the ground as mulch.

Why’s that? Probably because of our heat wave dome. That set in right after you folks left, followed by a weekend of wildfire smoke. Four of us neighbors took turns watering every day, but the ground would dry right up again. That soil outside the kitchen is baked down pretty hard. I dug it up some and scratched a kind of moat around the plants, and Angelina drove me to the nursery for some topsoil to spread around, so that holds the water a little better. Yesterday cloudy weather set in with actual soft rain, so that should help. You might look at these pictures and think “Gah! Why can’t you lot have the sense to just add some [potash / potassium / nitrogen / lead shavings / brown sugar].” Or whatever they need.

Scarlet Runner beans in pots: Same deal. During the heat wave their lower leaves fell off, and the lower pods didn’t mature at all. Some really large pods are still there near the top, but as you can see they are looking a little peaky.

I brought some large pods in the house for fear the sun would burn them up. Those large pods were mostly empty. Two beans started to sprout, so now they are in a dish of water. The other beans are drying here indoors out of the sun, and I turn them every day. Most are too small to grow or eat. There are only a few mature beans, but they are certainly pretty.

Fuchsia: looking good.

Tomatoes: are those plum, Roma, San Marzano, or what? By any name, they’re growing in clumps.

The gladiolas are gone now, but they were the hit of the year, and people on the street still stop me to give me all the misplaced credit for how lovely they were. There are still some giant dahlias in different colors, and those are a hit too:

In conclusion, here is hoping that you are not unhappy with us. After all your hard work in the spring and early summer, you trusted me to take care of things. Maybe you will come home and feel that the crop will not be your dreams come true. If that is true, I am really sorry. We sure slugged around a lot of water. The texts and calls were flying as folks sent bulletins back and forth on what-all they managed to water when, so it really brought people together and gave them something to talk about.

Maybe your important crop this year was neighbors, and how we look at your plants and think of you. We miss you. Have a lovely time, and hurry home.

Oh oops — it’s an even-numbered date. My turn to water the garden. Should have thought of it sooner, but I was out at the store stocking up on bulk grains. Well, ok. Downstairs we go.

Ok, so bumbling in the dark with this triple-sized hose trying not to trip or to trip the smokers who are innocently strolling to their designated zone by the garbage cage and who don’t expect the shrubbery to be full of water or me. I collected some ankle-level bug bites right away even through my compression stockings, narrowly avoided taking out a really ambitious giant spider web, and panicked some bunnies who realized that sitting perfectly still could get them thwacked with the hose.

You saw this coming. All this nocturnal activity was way too much action to miss. One of our resident little girls and her Mom hurried to help by turning on their Christmas lights to illuminate the work and give the scene a festive air. Melina, another of our little girls, rushed outside wearing a pretty flouncy white dress with twirly skirt, costumed much like the white gladiolas in this picture, with a public service announcement: she and her Dad were coming outside! to re-home a scary bug! that got into the house! As far as my ankles went, one more bite wasn’t going to make much difference except to the bug, so I told Melina to bring it on.

Melina left her hula hoop outside their door, because with a good toy or game you never know when it might come in handy later in the day. She has a little rotating exhibit of hoops and balls and such going on. That’s against building rules, but the Management team somehow fail to notice because Melina keeps rushing out to greet everybody with a Richter magnitude of friendly cuteness.

I did a pretty ham-handed job with the hose and its sprayer and all those heavy coils. Melina told me all about her family hose, how the nozzle has many adjustable volume options but her very favorite is JET all the way. I have to admit that yes, if I used JET all the way with this hose, I’d be finished in no time. Of course, the plants would be finished too, so we’ll have to trudge along with regular gentle spray. She and I made a plan that I’ll bring my own hula hoop downstairs, maybe tomorrow, and we can do some hulaing.

Dad though reminds her that the family is going swimming tomorrow. That leads to a discussion: what happens when you hula hoop in water? Is it really easy, or really hard? Will the hoop sink? If it floats, can you stand still and just let the water float the hoop around, and if so does that count as real hooping?

Finally done! Well, most of it. I had to skip Mrs. Wing’s many small pots of special herbs; they are too hard to see in the dark up on the wall, and I don’t want to knock them over. But, enough water got tossed around that they should be okay. I started wrapping up coil after coil of hose to put it away, musing to Melina’s Dad that this is good training if I ever want to go to the Everglades and pin down pythons for cash. He had not heard of this Florida entertainment, and was probably not expecting this conversation while taking out a simple bag of recycling. But he wished me well in whichever path (Snakes vs. Hoses) I might choose, and did it in a hearty Scottish accent. I tried a Braveheart accent in return with unconvincing success.

“My Braveheart accent just sounds like Supernanny instead,” I had to admit.

“I was aiming for Monty Python,” he explained, guiding a suddenly sleepy Melina off to bed by the hand.

I stayed a moment to catch a picture of the gladiolas while trying hard not to scratch my ankles.

As I headed for the door a bunny watched me, sitting very very still.

The nasturtium patch, in July

I had to plug in a new Apple Mac Mini. That should mean plugging a polarized 3-prong plug right in to a polarized 3-prong socket in my surge protection power strip. But what’s this? The new Mac plug is non-polarized and 2-prong. Hm. This was going to need a 2-prong to 3-prong adapter. So I took a bus trip to the big hardware-&-everything store. At the counter, the friendly mechanically inclined men directed me to the adapter aisle section.

This was a big section at the way back, with boxes and bins full of everything one could think of for adapting any gizmo to anything else. Some adapters were very elaborate, some industrial-sized, a lot of it had a vintage look as if it came from a salvage yard or was sitting on the shelf for years. I pored over all of the different types. There was not a single 2-to-3 in sight. Back at the counter, the men were puzzled when I described the type needed, even when I explained again holding up 2 fingers on one hand and 3 fingers on the other, with plug/unplug hand gestures. They advised me to get in my car and take the Interstate three exits to the commercial electricians’ warehouse. “They can advise you on the safety,” one man said. “You sure don’t want to be plugging in the wrong thing and blow up your house.”

Instead of finding a weekend Interstate bus line and doing the Finger Dance for the electricians, I went home to fret for a while. Then the following week I logged in to our workplace Tech Support office hour, and told them the story. “Why does a new Apple model require the most exotic adapter? What are the odds of blowing up the house? This is all Greek to me!”

“Apple takes care of grounding the connection right inside the new model,” said our IT team. “Apple doesn’t bother telling you that. They just tell you that the model is sleek, and comes in a cool silver color. You can just plug it right in to your power strip. The hardware store had to give you that standard warning, just in case you were going to take the power strip and plug in your washer & dryer. And by the way,” they protested, “Since you are actually learning Greek, you have henceforth surrendered the right to say that. From now on, nothing will be ALL Greek to you.”

“Good point,” I said. “Ok, it’s all Javascript to me.”

“There ya go,” they agreed. “Enjoy your new Mac.”

__________

On the bus back from the hardware store, there was a long wait at the transfer stop. The sun was beating down. The other passengers had a distressing time in the heat. Many were weighed down by personal belongings, and needed to keep their bags and bundles together and ready to move quickly. One woman with a walker seemed especially upset; she was talking rapidly into her cell phone, in a raised voice monologue. I didn’t understand her particular language, but she was clearly agitated. Her speech was slurred, her gestures erratic; she was pacing and darting back and forth. On a heavy chain she was yanking and dragging a very small thin white dog. He was a pretty creature, whippet-shaped with pointed ears and a furrowed brow and very expressive face. He was on constant alert, trying to predict which way the chain would yank him next, dodging people and his owner’s erratic feet, looking frightened of the traffic, searching our faces. I wished that his owner would use a light leash and stop yanking him around, that she would either hold him in her arms, or at least place him securely in a sit/stay between her feet with a few words of encouragement.

Finally the bus arrived, and we all got on. The dog rushed to hide under the closest seat, right at the front. The woman and I sat there opposite one another, on facing seats. From across the aisle, now in English, still in a raised voice monologue, she began telling me her story. She had no family. Her medical and housing and social support systems had fallen to pieces. She’d had multiple strokes that affected her speech. She had heart failure and terribly swollen knees that made it painful to walk. She showed no awareness of the dog’s presence or mood, but told me that he was a stray rescue and her only friend. Without him, she did not know how she could get through the day.

With her story unfolding, my heart went out to her. Dear heavens, another person who could really use some kindness! I leaned forward and watched her speak to better understand her speech. As she told me all about her daily life, I made a point of expressing admiration for whatever good decisions she’d made to build a margin of safety for her and her dog.

At the sound of my voice, the dog snapped to attention. Dragging his chain he shot out from under the seat and stretched up to tuck his paws in my lap and hide his trembling face flat against my chest. I circled him with my arm and sheltered his head with my hand. I wanted very much to grab the chain and the dog, tuck him in my jacket, and take him right to Angelina’s so we could share custody. “Surprise! New pack member!”

The owner rang the overhead bell rope, grabbed her shopping cart, and tugged the chain. The two got off the bus.

__________

On Friday night the foliage in my lovely nasturtium patch began turning yellow. A closer look showed that black aphids had taken over, seemingly overnight. They coated the plants like fuzzy moving pepper. Rolling up my sleeves I carefully unwound twelve feet of lush beautiful flowering vines from among the neighbors’ vegetables and fencing. In sections I snapped off and wound up spools of vines, getting sticky aphid essence all over my skin, holding the greenery at arms’ length and marching them to the compost bin. (I was walking them to the landfill bin for fear that as recycled compost they would spread to other gardens. But Captain Wing spotted me. “Just take them to the compost bin. Aphids won’t survive that.”) The whole routine made quite a spectacle for the children. They wanted to come exclaim with surprise and dismay, pointing at but not touching the moving fuzz of aphids.

It’s touching and sobering to witness how these little ones will run right over and follow me around and believe what I tell them just on faith. To me, children are not particularly cute or fun; they are a heavy magnitude of responsibility, astute witnesses who watch and remember, and before them I’m responsible for every word and action. Jesus was clear enough that anybody who misleads them is heading toward a millstone and the sea.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m pulling up the nasturtiums.”
“Why?”
“See this black fuzz? That is black aphids. They are living on these plants.”
“Why?”
“Because aphids enjoy drinking plant juice. But it’s not good for the plants.”
“Why?”
“Because the plants need that juice for nutrition and energy. If aphids take too much, the leaves turn yellow. It’s not good for the plants.”
“It’s not good! For the plants!”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t want those bugs on my DRESS.”
“Yes, I don’t want these vines to get on your dress or my clothes, so I hold them out like this.”
“You are holding them away because it is BUGS. I don’t like any bugs.”
“Well, when they are at home outside all bugs are good if they are in balance with other bugs.”
“Has to be balance! With bugs!”
“Yes. It is only a problem when ONE kind of bug takes over all the area and gets all of the food. Then it doesn’t leave room for other creatures. That’s why I’m taking these to the compost bin now.”
“Mom said I can walk you to the compost bin! We can take them there!”
“Ok. It’s right inside that garbage cage. Then we’ll come right back to your mom. Here we are at the bin. It’s full of vegetables and fruit.”
“Lots of fruit in there! It’s everybody is putting their fruit!”
“Yes. The city picks up the bin, and turns the vegetables and plants into compost. It makes dirt for growing plants.”
“Then the plants can grow! And it’s good for them!”

A slightly more pleasant job was hacking down the whole spearmint patch. The plants are in full flower, but the leaves developed a white powder mold. To my mind, if the plants aren’t pretty and in top form, out they go. But the blossoms are an important attraction for pollinators. So I snipped off the flowers, buzzing with happy bees, and placed the flowers in a crock of cold water. Fortunately, the bees were happy to transfer their efforts to the cut flowers.

Neighbor A asked about a small bag of leftover potting soil on one side of the garden. Who owns it? Would the owner be interested in selling it? He of course made an assumption that I would know the owner, and how to find him and negotiate the deal. As it happens, I knew that the owner is Neighbor B, who has a favorite smoking chair. While I was out gardening he came outdoors, and I posed the question. Neighbor B named a reasonable price of $6 for the half bag. So I walked to Neighbor A’s apartment to let him know. Then of course at his door I realized that it would be more efficient to just walk back again to Neighbor B’s, pick up the bag, and tote it over there. I walked back to Neighbor B’s. But the bag was too heavy for me. So, I walked back to Neighbor A’s again, to knock on his door and let him know about the $6 and the bag. But before knocking I remembered that Neighbor A works nights; I’d have to go upstairs and write him a note instead. Then I realized it would be smart to first walk back to Neighbor B’s and just hand him $6 and let Neighbor A pay me back instead of brokering a meeting between the two. But when I arrived at the smoking chair, Neighbor B had gone indoors. I’ll just leave Neighbor A a note in our Daily Journal greeting notebook that we tenants keep on the lobby table.

Meanwhile, texts were coming in about the garden from people who could look out the window and see me puttering. Then more people strolling by on the street spotted me and stopped to chat:

1. Where are the nasturtiums? They were really pretty. Why did you get rid of them?<br>
2. Thank you for watering the Wings’ garden today. I did it yesterday, so we’re good for now.<br>
3. You have some cherry tomatoes getting ripe. You should eat them before the squirrels do.<br>
4. I’d like to prune back my [plant name here], but there’s some kind of Chinese herb growing around it and I don’t want to damage any. Whose is that? [It’s fish mint. It walked over from the Wings’ garden. I’ll go move it out of the way.]<br>
5. Where’s the SPEARMINT? It had flowers!<br>
6. Are the Wings ok? I haven’t seen a single Wing in 2 whole days. <br>

I answered all the texts and several verbal inquiries with the glad tidings that The Wings are fine. They’re just taking vacation from the lot of us.

(Hm, who left me this vase of gladiolas? Why are my pink geraniums looking great all of a sudden? Who would go about wreaking this kind of niceness? Should we question the usual suspects?)

Last week the Wings went away for two days of well-earned vacation. Captain Wing asked whether I would water their kitchen garden until they came back. Would I ever! It felt good to have the vanishingly rare chance to finally do something useful for them. What’s more, there was no need to haul water in my one-man bucket brigade, because Captain has installed a super long hose for everyone’s convenience.

That hose did prove super handy. It is though surprisingly heavy to drag around, especially when it is full of running water, so in my clumsy struggle I managed to whap down a couple of Mrs. Wing’s berry bushes. But somehow the bushes seemed to straighten up again and got their water, surviving their weekend with me. The family came home to a nice harvest of berries and vegetables.

On Day One I was struggling with the hose, lifting and moving it coil after coil in big armfuls. It called to mind those folks who subdue Burmese pythons in the Everglades for bounty money. One of the neighbors spotted me. “Are you doing the Wings’ watering for them? Then watch out,” he warned me. “If you do something nice for a Wing, they will never forget. They will do FIVE even nicer things for you.”  

He’s right, of course. It’s been Payback Time ever since. Upon their return, Mrs. W. came running outside with a quart of whole home-toasted walnuts, plus a sizzling platter of the most delicious tender eggplant, sauteed in bacon and snow peas with some kind of flavorful green herb. She also started placing a vase of fresh-cut flowers from her garden patch into my garden patch, refreshed daily. This false advertising leads passersby to think that my garden is much showier than it truly is. In case this were not enough, since the family’s return my pink geraniums have skyrocketed in size and number of blooms. It turns out that they’ve been getting secret doses of Wing Wormfarm Tea, from special red worms fed on the choicest overripe whole fruit. Maybe I can persuade the family to go away more often. But it’s great to have them back.

________

Sunday morning, bus stop. A friendly young man and I exchange smiles. “What is the GOOD WORD?” he hails me in greeting.

“Everything,” I greet him back. “Every one of these words is a good word.” I hand him my Greek-English prayer book.

“Ooooooooh my gosh,” he says, looking it over and shaking his head. “But, you know what? Ought to study the Hebrew first. That is the true Bible.”

“Hebrew is good,” I agree, while wondering: Is there a Hebrew Orthodox Christian Church out there?

“People come along, translate to Spanish for me, English for you,” he adds. “But in any language, people are gonna argue: Does it say this, or Does it mean that. Best way to read the Bible? It’s with your open heart, and with the Holy Spirit.”

“Amen!” I agree to agree, as the bus arrives and our journeys begin — one to a Spanish-speaking church several towns over, one to a Greek church one transfer away.

“Mine has the best TAMALES,” he assures me.

_______

At church that day, a wee little girl all in purest lacy white joins the Communion line holding up a tall yard-long lighted white candle with white ribbons. She walks hand in hand with her mother, who also holds a tall white lighted candle. The little girl is nearly borne aloft with the joy and seriousness of that walk to the altar. If this were a Catholic church, one might think that this was her first Holy Communion. But in Orthodoxy, Eucharist is administered even to babies. Is this child newly baptized? Whatever the reason, she and her family are forging a beautiful life memory in their procession toward the front of the church. They stop right at my pew waiting for the line to move.

The Orthodox show no fear of open flames. They will happily hold lighted candles even in a packed crowd, even while jostling around up and down steps while processing midnight streets on Easter Eve. But for me, the sight of a thrilled small child steadying a yard-long candle in one hand does not inspire peace of mind. A sudden instinct, one that perhaps only Gavin de Becker would understand, prompted me to drop my prayer book and crouch down to the level of the little girl. Just then, as she glanced up at her mother with an exchange of smiles, the usher ahead of her signaled to the pew ahead of mine, and took a sudden step back. My arm shot out to the seat of his pants and gave him a hard shove. Naturally the good man turned quickly to investigate. In a glance he summed up my motives, and offered me his thanks. The line went on in peace.

Catcub’s Beloved Owner is away, helping a relative with a medical emergency.

This is big news for Catcub. Up until now, Beloved Owner worked at home and has never left Catcub before. On a normal day, Catcub is used to constant presence, laptime by day, reassuring company all night, and lots of cuddling. Catcub can not fathom what-all has gone so wrong in her peaceful life.

Instead, she is left with a random visitor three times daily. That’s 33 care visits from me in 11 days for 20 minutes apiece, totalling some 11 hours of together time. At each visit I sift Catcub’s litter pan, wash her water dish, top up her kibble, place treats in her treat mouse, play games with a homemade sock ball on string and other toys, talk to her, and hold out her brush while she gives herself a good grooming. It is striking how innocent these pets really are, how we humans are their entire world. It feels important to let Kitty see that she’s not abandoned, and that her little needs are met every few hours.

From Catcub’s astute point of view, the new visitor has an alarming penchant: three times a day said visitor will go away, locking the door and leaving Catcub all alone. Upon my arrival the cat is right on hand inside the door. When I step in, she will rush to her scratching post to show me how well she can tear right in to its rugged surface. Then she will face me and stretch out her front end to knead the carpet. Then she will tag along during the chores to tell me loudly all about her day. But when it’s time for me to go she will catapult over the furniture to beat me to the door, blocking the lintel at full length and instructing me to stay indoors and put.

Catcub is an extremely cherished people-meep, a petsome little smooch. She is avid for attention, tracking me with wide dilated eyes, lashing her tail. In a perfect world her ambition would be to bedeck me with pheromones and plant her nose up to mine and wrap herself around my neck like a fancy stole for unlimited whiskering and purring. This could be very jolly, except that a. I am allergic to cats, and b. any kind attention makes her even more distraught when it is time for me to go.

There’s another wee complication in the mix. Normally she enjoys chasing Beloved Owner hither and yon, giving friendly nips and swipes out of sheer enthusiasm. It’s all meant in good fun. It also calls to mind episodes of the YouTube show “My Cat From Hell.” Cat behavior expert Jackson Galaxy presented cases of cats who began mysteriously tackling their owners and hanging on with a four-paw claw wrap and tooth grip. During his house calls, Jackson advised that these cats were simply suffering from pent up energy combined with abandonment issues and separation anxiety when the owner had to be away. Jackson brought peace and calm to these households by implementing successful solutions. These included extra exercise and enrichment opportunities such as a tall running wheel, outdoor harness and leash for long walks, a hired cat visitor to stop in for regular quality time, and so on.

Jackson’s empathy is inspiring especially during his initial home assessments, when he cheerfully presents his hands and arms right in harm’s way to test just how distressed the cats might be. (Spoiler Alert: They are generally very distressed.) But for me, living with lymphedema means that I can not afford even the most affectionate cat bite or cat scratch, so these 33 visits to Catcub mean suiting up. It’s the usual compression hose and jeans, plus surgical scrub pants (worn down off the hip, so that they dangle over the ankle), plus thick ski socks and boots and two sets of house keys and a visit / task checklist and an N-95 mask. On the first few calls with all this cat caboodle I also tied brown paper grocery bags around my shins. For carrying the litter bag directly outdoors to their landfill bin each evening, it makes an eye-catching ensemble.

Luckily, Catcub is not a cat from hell at all. She is a gray tabby punkin of cuteness. It’s just that she is distraught about the absence of her owner, and growing adhesively bonded to me. This is why I pet her only by holding out her favorite brush. For departures I walk sideways, one small paused step at a time. While approaching the door I also dangle the sock ball on string between us, as she is conveniently distracted by the sock ball, and is more conveniently rather afraid of it. Just before opening the door I gently toss her treat mouse a few feet away so she will pounce on that while I slip out.

Yesterday over the home hazmat suit I added my shin-length rain slicker. The slicker deflects not only cat hair but the entire cat. Catcub is still lamenting and weaving around and leaping on furniture in attempts to get up against my face, but the swishy slicker keeps her two feet away. She still lets me brush her, and today she actually curled up in a ball on my lap while I concealed most of me under the slicker. We do what we can.

20 visits down; only 13 visits left. Better go suit up.

Ok, that’s really keeping up with Mrs. Wing, and even that is only a misty abstraction. There is no foreseeable prospect of keeping up with the Wing Family, whose favorite greeting as I come trudging home after work is “Mary! Have you had dinner?” That’s the alert for a sizzling plate of food, or a basket of harvest from the garden. Here are just a few highlights that they’ve shared with me in the past week.

Another tribute to Fish Mint. They planted some in my garden to beautifully fill in a bare patch after purple potato harvest.

Freshly foraged Cornelian Cherries, or Cornel Mas

Lovingly cultivated red raspberries, and golden raspberries too, grown in pots at the kitchen door. These were the first sweet mellow raspberries I have ever tasted. What a revelation. I could never fathom why people pay good money for fuzzy bird gravel wrapped in acid, but these berries are simply fantastic!

Purple potatoes. Last winter some knobbly wire tips started poking out of the ground in my potato patch. What the? But then Captain Wing explained that their cold-stored purple potatoes had started to sprout, so they planted them in my area. Wellsir, last week these small plants turned yellow and wilted. I was going to grub them out, but they disappeared. Presto — Mrs. Wing had harvested the lot, then handed over the whole grocery bag worth. Let’s review this word problem: They donated the potatoes, they planted the potatoes, they guessed correctly that edible potatoes were afoot and ready (Huh? Here I figured we had to wait until November!), dug them up, cleaned them, wrapped them in a large gift bag, then concluded that “Oh, these potatoes must belong to Mary!” and to my chagrin and surprise handed them over. Tonight I cooked up a batch of them to keep on hand in case smoke season kicks in this week. They’re terrific; tender but substantial, packed with good solid starch.

In other news, Angelina has a visit this week from her daughter Kalia (short for Philokalia, Lover of Spiritual Beauty). Both women have careers intervening in extreme human medical emergencies, and have the reflexes and wits and tough love that comes with the job. All year the neighbor klatch has heard many stories about Kalia’s accomplishments and character, which like Confucius she displayed from birth. Knowing that on early acquaintance my own personality comes across like a bowl of cooled farina, I felt intimidated about meeting Kalia in person. How would her impressions of me advise Angelina’s friendship? But within minutes Kalia and I hit on a topic of mutual girl interest (to wit, how Barry Marshall nailed down the etiology of gastric ulcers by swallowing a beaker of Helicobacter pylori). At that moment it dawned on me that maybe she and I were doing okay.

To celebrate the 4th of July, Angelina and Kalia took Bingo and Super Pup out for a good romp of ball fetching for paw-eye coordination and social enrichment. Then they left the doggoes at home, and went out for dinner and to view the recreational detonation of explosives.

Bingo is a docile but sensitive soul prone to nervous starts and firework panic. There were already amateur bangs going off near the street and fire trucks wailing past on small brush fires here and there. So an hour or so before sunset I got the bonnet bee to go over there and take Bingo for another walk to shake off some nerves before the organized municipal ruckus.

Bingo was never so glad to see me. I never never give the dogs treats or games or fun of any kind, but right then he didn’t care. He was waiting right at that door with no fuss about clipping on the leash, and off we went to salute fire hydrants and trees all around the block.

Dog owners from all over were out in force, catching a promenade before sunset. We all stopped in solidarity to let the dogs sniff each other’s delicates while we exchanged caring questions and stories about how our big and little fellas reacted to deafening racket. After some contemplative time petting the various heads and untangling the leashes, we swapped good wishes and went our ways. Bingo was such a good lil egg, trooping along right next to me all serious and earnest about sniffing his way around his turf. At 16 years old he’s lost his hearing (or as one of our sympathetic pre-K neighbors expressed it with sweeping hand gestures, “He is so old, he is tired now and DONE with listening more!”). But the vibration of isolated booms still made him try to flee, until he noticed that we humans were not afraid at all. He was still eager to finish up with hydrants and trees and get home. There I sat for a bit to keep the dogs company. Bingo nestled right up to my feet. With each boom and bang he would raise his head and look at me, and I would keep stroking his back until he put his head down again.

On Sunday I hopped off the bus after Orthodox Liturgy with bilingual service book in hand, and was happy to run into Seth on the street. He was taking a break for once from managing a produce department and nationwide vegetable supply chain and deliveries and a crew of stockers plus hordes of customers who shop during business hours of 5:00 am to 1:00 am and who are in and out of their right minds. He was working fiercely hard to coordinate the perishables for 4th of July, so I didn’t tarry or take his time.

But first thing next morning I stopped by the grocery to bring him some of Mrs. Wing’s cornelian cherries, and was pleased to have hit upon a fruit that Seth hadn’t tried before. “What are these cherries?” he asked, tasting one. “Are they like Montmorency?” To me, the cornelians are simply delicious in a unique unexpected way. But it’s edifying to see a real expert try one with genuine sensibility and awareness, letting the flavor chime at a whole palette of taste sensations. “Interesting!” he said. “Must research these.”

Then he turned to his crew with an announcement. “Mary reads ancient Greek!” he called out to them. “I caught her with the book on Sunday.”

“But I’m sure not coordinated enough to stock or handle those carts there without causing an accident,” I assured them. “That’s more essential to civilization and quality of life.”

[Mrs. Wing’s Fish Mint, Houttuynia cordata, is blooming outside in her herb patch.]

On Thursday at dawn, before work, I was down at Seth’s produce aisle.

   “Mary!” Seth exclaimed, maneuvering a massive tower of fruit crates on wheels. “Our Saturday shopper! What’s with the Thursday visit?”

   “Outa greens, Seth!” I held up two bunches. I’m always especially happy and a little shy to see Seth, who is gorgeous and fit and fast moving and brimming with optimism and chlorophyll-based vitality. (Why don’t you try asking him out, Mary? I did, years ago, suggesting that I join one of his birdwatching hikes. My idea just left him baffled, so now I stay out of his way. I’m still all smiles when he talks to me.)

   “You?? That explains the sense of urgency,” he reasoned, with his signature flash of smile. “Don’t be the only one on your block running out of mustard greens!”

Today, two days later, at dawn I headed for Seth’s aisle, the place to be at 6:30 on a Saturday morning. Seth was racewalking two empty industrial carts out of the cooler, but spotted me right away as always, and we hollered greetings over the avocados.

This time at the mustard greens there was a young man deliberating over the display. “Don’t want to accidentally touch them all while prying out just one bunch,” he explained.

   “Like a pickup stick game,” I agreed. “But with greenery.”

We wrapped our respective foliage and tucked them in our baskets, then gave each other a second look before turning away.

   “Derek??” I said. “Apartment 34-B with the snake plants and Ebbie the windowsill cat.”

   “Wow,” he said. “Yes. It’s been ten years. Or more. How’s the old building? I miss the neighbors.”

So I told him about our counterculture klatch, the single moms who team up to care for each other and the kids and dogs. “We had a party just this week,” I said. “One of the girls was in a recital, so we had to celebrate and make sure she felt special. Single moms and kids need each other.”

Well. That struck home hard with him. He gave me some rapidfire smart sensitive schooling on how many fathers get marginalized in their own households, edged out and made to feel increasingly dispensable and inept until finally the home life fades to pieces. He shared a little of his own story about a sincere marriage pulled apart by the hard and blameless ways that life is life. He was still in shell shock, by the sound of it. So there we were, 6:40 a.m., waving greens at each other in this intense head-to-head exploration of family structures and how society lets former partners flounder in free-fall.

   “Marriage is the bravest voyage there is,” I affirmed. “People deserve credit for even launching out on that ocean, and yes, no question, there are men getting shipwrecked too. Only we don’t see them! Where are the klatches for the single dads? Do they get to live upstairs and downstairs in a whole flock of other fathers who are out on their own? Do they make a point of buddying up? Do they ring each other’s doorbells every day with a pan of hot buttermilk biscuits? Do they rehash their relationships over drinks and hugs and a few tears? Do they text each other to say ‘Hey, your dog’s barking; you want I should go over and walk him?’? When one of them has a night class, do their kids run upstairs and knock on a door and say ‘Dad’s at school; can I do my homework up here tonight?’?”

   “No, nothing like,” he said. “Gosh. Those women sound amazing. That’s so eighties.”

   “Or sixties. Or fifties. Ricardos, with Fred & Ethel running in and out. AND men deserve that too! What encouragement do they get, to build support like that?” I described the “The Braiding Bunch: Dads on the Front Lines of Style,” about single fathers who meet regularly to swap tips on how to brush and style and braid their daughters’ hair.

   “Where are those men?” Derek asked eagerly. “Your building?”

   “No, it’s a CBS News story with Steve Hartman.”

   “When you see the women again,” Derek waved, “tell them stay strong. Stay strong.”

We picked up our baskets and wished each other a good day. Behind us, Seth finished stacking boxed salad greens at triple speed in precise pyramid formation. With a thoughtful glance at us he wheeled the carts into the cooler.

On a morning walk down a new street, here was one front yard with bright freesia flowers. The garden patch had an old metal astrolabe-style globe as a weather vane. And what a lucky angle and composition: a storm cloud was coming on fast, blotting out the sun and framing the picture. (I had to crop this narrow, to cut out the streetlights and traffic signs.)

If the sky were clear and smiling, the view would just not be the same. The yellow freesias and the ray of sun looked especially appealing because of the weathered black metal, and the dark squall of rain.

There is a popular message (certainly among people of faith) that a sunny personal outlook is a hallmark of good character and maturity, and a good indication of solid belief in God. But some of us are just more aware of and affected by the darker clouds. Then what? Do we look only at sunshine and turn our back on the rest? If there are dark clouds, why not at least put them to work making something beautiful?

After this photographic interlude, some friendly neighbors came up the street and greeted me. They were out walking their dogs. I’d seen the women a couple of months ago, and we’d had a good radiant chat. At the time I really wanted to ask for their names and their contact information, but didn’t want to look like a snoopy-boots about it. I was sorry to come away not knowing how to find the women again; with prosopagnosia, I’d never recognize them even if they walked right past. So, I went home and wrote them a note with my contact information, tucked it in a ziplock bag for safekeeping, and carried it in my knapsack all this time in case our paths ever crossed again. And now here they were! Luckily for me, they were the ones who stopped to say hello. So I got to hand-deliver my note. (It was fun to see someone purely by chance on an early walk and say “Here’s your mail.”) They texted me right away, and now we’re in touch!

The next step is to go talk to Angelina. She would enjoy meeting the women too. There ought to be a good time for everyone (and their dogs) to come over here, to sit out with some snacks and enjoy the garden.

On those early spring walks, often setting out a little after 5:00 a.m., I get to see and greet a whole new set of people who work nights — security guards, construction crews, groundskeepers. It’s good for the spirit to get out on a daily route, and to weave a new social fabric where new faces become familiar as little mooring touch points all along the way.

One municipal worker was a calm serene Vietnam veteran, at his post and his work rain or shine. I began stopping to share appreciative words about weather and nature. Those greetings became a positive fixture of the morning. He had such a craftsmanlike work ethic and philosophical outlook that a question came to mind: what small treat might he enjoy during a work break? Various home-baked goods came to mind. But one never knows what allergies or restrictions people might have with their diet. Finally I decided to get a bottle of sparkling water and some individual wrapped packets of Trader Joe trail mix, and anticipated with pleasure that small shopping errand.

But the errand had to wait. I missed three days of daily walks to keep my box-cut foot elevated as much as possible. I returned to the walking route this week, and missed seeing our trusty municipal colleague. Next day it was puzzling to see that the street sign nearby was now covered with small American flags, and a large bouquet of pink peonies. Next day on a tall piece of foam backing there was a large photograph of our worker looking proud in his uniform, next to a vintage photograph of the same gentleman back in his twenties, joyful and triumphant in a sports event. The poster was beautifully drawn and colored neatly with his name in large letters, with drawings of hearts and flowers. Next day, someone hung a magic marker on the poster from a rope. Soon the poster accumulated signatures radiating appreciation and love from dozens of people.

While I stood pondering all this, a city bus pulled over. “Where is he?” said the driver.

“I guess he retired?” I guessed, reading through the messages.

“Uh-oh,” said the driver. “What’s that little ‘R.I.P’ down at the bottom?” Oh gosh! Sure enough. “I hope it means ‘Retire in Prosperity,'” he said, wishing me a good day and waving goodbye.

Today my walk was much later. It was after 7:00 when I finished the loop and headed home. Now there was a cluster of elementary school pupils around the poster. One little one was anxiously dictating a message while his Mom wrote every word. The parents were out in full force, escorting their children to the poster. They stood together with other parents in respectful silence while the children exclaimed over the pictures and practiced reading all of the greetings. Then as each little group of children had time to explore messages and shared their impressions and feelings, the parents would shepherd them on to school to make room for the next group. One mom looked up at me. “He died,” she said, taking her child’s hand and setting out for school.

It was a tempting idea, to place a picture of that wonderful poster here. But this blog is anonymous. Besides, you already know who he is. You see him or her every day in your town. He is many people everywhere, taking care of routine business that keeps our lives clean or safe or lighted or fed. Like them, this quiet man probably thought of his job as just all in a day’s work.

If only he could be with us for one more day, to see these children, and to read and hear their words.

The latest recap of what’s happening in the dirt outside the window.

Tonight there were 4 green sweet peas in the pod, all ready to pick. That was the work of about 10 seconds, but think how much more fun it could be if I could get some helpful child to do the farm labor in exchange for the crop. A new neighbor is Miss Ariel, four years old and bursting with ideas and happy commentary about the world. So I asked Miss Ariel’s mom whether Miss A. might have leisure to help. Once Mom graciously gave permission, Miss A. rocketed off to her room in high excitement to select and put on a suitably pretty pea-picking outfit. Soon she reappeared in a fetching garden costume. Mom carried Baby Brother Tristan, and the four of us headed for the pea field 10 steps away. As expected, Miss Ariel proved to be a stellar hand at spotting green pods in green leafery. I held the stem while she did the picking. Our next chore was to train the pea vines to nestle their little tendrils around the poles where they belonged, rather than latching on to other flowers or one another. “If we let these sprout tips touch the pole, the plant will recognize that this is a safe place to climb, and tomorrow it will already be growing up this pole,” I told her. “They’re like children: with a little bit of guidance and good sturdy support, they can really grow and be healthy.” Miss A. was pleased to have a contribution to suppertime, one pea pod for each member of the family.

In other news, Mrs. Wing’s white daikon radishes and purple daikon radish plants are four feet high and flourishing in a splendid manner with, respectively, a show of lavish white blossoms and lavender blossoms. Captain brought home a big barrel for keeping thin red worms, and showed me the different screen layers of operation: lots of grass clippings and other mulch in the top layer, then fruit scraps in the middle layer packed with worms munching away (Captain reports that the worms really gravitate to melon), then below that the sediment, and below that a layer for worm “tea,” with a spigot. There was a good gallon’s worth of fruit scraps; he explained that it would all be eaten and turned into compost in about a week. The Wing family finally obtained one of the very coveted city garden plots to expand their base of operations. These plots have been in families for generations; they are well seasoned and lush, in a beautiful setting; securing a prized new slot can take years. The Wings happily went and cleared and dug up their new assigned patch, fertilized and primed the soil, laboriously dug up all of their Sunchoke tubers grown in pots around the house, transplanted them all to the new patch, and got them growing beautifully. Oh boy! A bumper Sunchoke harvest! Except that when they returned to view their new holdings, somebody had ripped out the Sunchokes and planted some other crop instead. The Wings could have gone to the garden committee and instead of raising produce could have raised some Cain. But they came home with their tools and a shrug and a smile to patiently start over with new Sunchokes in pots again.

Tariq and Darina are a radiant industrious couple who put in raised beds outside their door. The picture above and the picture below are only very small corners of their successful beds of all mixed greens.

Earlier this spring, last year’s crop of overwintered Tuscan kale was still hardy and strong with massive stems, just ready to bolt into flower. One day I stopped to admire the kale, and we got to chatting. Darina and Tariq were telling me all about their pet snails (they had interesting astute observations about the fascinating habits of these shelled creatures), and Darina noticed my admiration of their giant kale plants. She invited me to cut down and take away all I could eat before she cleared the ground. Well! For a couple of weeks I was out by 6:00 am, picking a big double handful every morning for breakfast. Tariq and Darina’s bedroom window is a good six feet up off the ground, and every morning I would hold the day’s pickings high within their view, and wave the greens in a vigorous salute so they could look outside and know that this interloper was me. I always finished off with a kale pompom happy dance of gratitude for their generosity before waving goodbye and heading indoors.

One day, when Angelina and I were walking the wolf pack, I pointed out the kale garden and their window. The conversation went off the rails something like this.

Mary: That’s Tariq and Darina. They said I could pick their kale! And they are such interesting people. Just the other day, they told me all about pet snails.

Angelina: That’s nice. Where did she have them done? (Note the stellar extraextravert people-personality. Anybody else would have said “Why should I care? Why are you telling me this nonsense?”

Mary: Who?

Angelina: Pat.

Mary: What?

Angelina: Where did she have them done?

Mary: Huh?

Angelina: Pat’s nails.

At that point I sat down on the ground gripping my sides, and was unable to catch my breath or stand up for the next three minutes. In our parallel conversation, what my ears heard Angelina say (honest, hand to heart, because she is after all a nurse who talks to me about medical stuff all the time) was “Pap smears.”

Angelina: When people see us together staggering around out here, they must think we’ve had a few drinks.

Mary: Around you, who needs a drink?

Angelina: We’d be terrific at the game of Telephone.

Mary: Like, “Let’s put these two at opposite ends of the line, and watch the fun.” We’ll be the life of any party.

Later I relayed all this to Darina. I also mentioned how much I’ve enjoyed breakfasting on her kale forest and doing the kale dance outside her bedroom window.

Darina: Dance?

Mary: Yes, at 6:00 a.m. Right here at your bedroom window. See? (Hopping about.) Like so.

Darina: Oh, I didn’t know. Mm…… Our apartment is next one over. That’s someone else’s bedroom.

wood sorrel

Since our last episode, Angelina rented a big cattywampus of a carpet cleaner, and offered to loan it to me. In the full expectation that the controls would baffle me to tears and that I’d end up tripping on the thing and hurting myself, I asked her to come over and help me operate it. She brought it to my place, and she just went ahead and shampooed the rug herself, at one point getting on her knees with a scrub brush to work the suds into the places where my foot bled all over. “It’s a whole new dimension to our friendship, Mare!” she exclaimed happily. How loveable is that?

Angelina was full of fun plans for this weekend. Her old dear friend is in town for a few days, for an action-packed time of worthwhile experiences. They invited me to join in. (The girls are at a rock & roll laser show this minute. I had to decline, on the grounds that after a couple hours of concert-quality sound and a ceiling full of flashing lights I wouldn’t have any neurons left.)

So Friday night while those two younguns were out and about on well-earned shore leave, I stopped by Angelina’s to walk the dogs. Bingo and Super Pup are friendly folks, and they usually charge the door with barking, spinning, jumping about, and dropping toys and bones on my foot. This causes Angelina to grab a baby gate and set it up around me so that I can sit down and visit in peace. It’s all fun and games, but now with my box cut I can’t afford to be frisked at and jumped on by dogs or anybody else. What to do?

On the way to the house I felt anxious about getting scratched by their happy little paws. I decided to visualize the possibility that space exists all as one continuum, and the house key is only a symbolic manifestation of one phase of that continuum (to wit, the door) such that there is little difference between being inside and being outside and therefore nothing to fuss about. Likewise, there is little difference in the reality of a household with dogs, and a household without them. There is less difference between a room with me in it, and a room without. Hence, it might be possible to waft through this house-entry transition in such an anti-climactic manner that the dogs would be not excited at all. In other words, aspiring to be Pema Chödrön walking a dog.

It worked great. I let myself in all calm and silent as if I owned the place and completely ignored the dogs. There was not a peep out of either one. Super Pup lifted her pretty head from her paws, and laid it down again. Bingo, 16 years old, didn’t even wake up. I took down the leash, wrapped it around my waist, passed the clip through the handle loop, and clipped it to Bingo’s harness. Then I waved my hand close so he could smell me, then started gently tapping the floor, since he’s hard of hearing and I didn’t want to startle him. Then I stroked his dog mattress in even moves, then rested a steady palm on his shoulder. Then I stood and started gradually hauling him in inch by inch like a fish. After a while he opened his big soft eyes and looked around in bewilderment. What on earth is happening to me? Finally he shook himself and stood up. “You will feel refreshed after our walk,” I promised him, though he probably couldn’t hear me. “Then you can sleep even better.” We had a productive walk time of fire hydrants and trees. Then back indoors I unclipped him and sat down quietly on the floor.

The dogs stood and watched, all interested. Super Pup gave two short sharp expectant barks. When I didn’t hand over whatever it was she wanted, she pondered a moment and then tried another tack: full submission mode. First she displayed her adorable little tummy. Then she laid back her ears and crept close, flat to the floor, dragging her hind paws behind her. Then she tried in gradual degrees of stealth to creep into my lap. Finally I realized that the leash still around my waist had a Velcro pouch attached, full of treats! She wasn’t looking to snuggle at all; she just wanted the goodies. I gave her a head ruffle as an A for effort, and got up to sit on a chair and check out Angelina’s science book collection. I read for a bit to keep the dogs company, then did the merge-reality trick again, this time passing through the door and locking it behind me. They just lay right down. Two hours later I repeated the whole routine (entry, leash, walk), and this time ended by giving them both a bite of chicken from the fridge.

Even when they are tricky little rascals, dogs are innocent creatures of God. I don’t bring them any entertainment or excitement, but I do commit to bringing them safety, security, consistency, comfort, and calm. By now the dogs know that when the visitor is Mary, she will predictably compel them to do things that they do not feel like doing, while barring them from things that they like very much. Still, they take it in stride. They survived their evening with Auntie Math Camp in good form.

On Saturday morning I hopped up early, full of interesting plans for the day. That started with the usual three mile walk. But for some reason the walk seemed to drag on. My feet felt heavy. To fortify the walk home I started chanting “Unexpected Joy,” “O Champion Leader,” and other favorite Slavonic prayers. It still seemed to take ages to get home. There I started washing and bandaging the box cut. And say, the ankle under the cut was more red and swollen and firm, and the ankle felt warm.

It’s probably nothing, I admonished myself.

Come on, you have a whole-food-plant-based diet. You walk all over the place. Give the body time to heal up on its own, the way it’s designed to. Besides, it’s not healthy or even Godly to be all obsessed and hypochondriac this way. Where’s your faith? Urgent Care saw you about this just a week ago. What will the staff think? They’ll all think you’re some older single lady looking for attention. Or meds. Going back would waste their time. It’s using an appointment that should go to somebody who really needs their help. This is not the ankle infection you had last year in the ER. This is not Ukraine. It’s not Sudan. Every human on this planet has bigger issues than a warm ankle. Get over yourself.

So okay, I avoided the issue with hand laundry, and buying vegetables and prepping them and washing the bathroom and kitchen floors. Ankle was still warm. Feeling increasingly anxious, I sat down and opened the Bible, looking to boost my spirits with Jeremiah 29: ” For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil….” But what caught my eye first was Jeremiah 30: “Thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is grievous…. thy sorrow is incurable for the multitude of thine iniquity: because thy sins were increased, I have done these things unto thee.”

Somehow that didn’t exactly reassure me. But it did prompt me to stop procrastinating. So I booked an appointment at Urgent Care and walked in prepared for the staff to be disappointed and annoyed. I was there at 3:45 for the 4:30 slot, by visit had to be pushed back for other patients until 5:30, half an hour before closing time. For company I spent the wait studying the Gospel of John chapters 16 and 17, just taking in the words one phrase at a time. Luckily, the clinic was still able to see me before closing.

“Oh my,” said the same wonderful doctor from last week. “The area is looking more angry than last week. This is cellulitis.” She got a special pen and drew a line above the red part of the ankle. “If the redness passes this line? Straight to the ER for you. Meanwhile, here are prescriptions for antibiotics, topical and oral, plus a diuretic for this ankle swelling. On to the lab for a blood test.” It was good luck that the lab was still open. Everyone at the clinic was very nice and caring. The lab test results were fine. I picked up the prescriptions and went home to rest.

There was a lot to be thankful for, having Urgent Care open on a holiday weekend and getting medications right away and having another day or two to rest before going to work. And even though I didn’t get to be with Angelina’s old friend, we did get to say hello in the parking lot and then Angelina drove me to the library to pick up my reserved books, so there would be something interesting to read over the holiday to keep me company.

It would have been great to go to church tonight, to tackle some errands today and go out with the girls on their adventures. But this holiday at home is a chance to think of the millions of people who can’t leave their homes either, and pray for them and be more alert to ways to help them.

Off for the last round of meds for the night.

This picture does not illustrate the story. It’s just as well. You’ll be okay with that.

Down at the Urgent Care clinic, nobody asked, “Did this all start because you took your annual personal holiday from work? Was it caused by your latest round of decluttering for the Goodwill store? Or, was it your latest bone broth project using a whole meaty chicken carcass donated by Angelina?” But really, it started with all three.

On Thursday night at bedtime I took a cardboard carton and filled it with books and clothes to donate to Goodwill. The box was full, so the flaps didn’t close. It took up a lot of space, so I slid it halfway into the closet partly out of the way. Then it was ready for me to take to the store first thing in the morning.

On Thursday night the whole chicken was in the freezer doing no harm to anyone. It dawned on me, “Say, since tomorrow is my annual personal holiday, why not make bone broth tonight? I can get up every couple of hours and check on the water level.” Now, checking the water level is not really needed because I always add extra quarts of boiling water before turning the stove temp to just above Low. There is no way all that water is going to steam away. But it’s good to be safe, I can fall asleep again really easily, and the kitchen is six steps away from bed. Not a problem.

So fine, at 10:00 pm the chicken went into the pot on Low-ish with quarts of boiling water and a dash of Bragg’s vinegar and a bay leaf and a piece of fresh rosemary. Then I went to bed, setting the alarm. I got up and checked the water at 12:00, 2:00, and 4:00. At 4:00 am Friday morning it was time to turn off the stove, strain out the bones, and let the broth cool. I keep rice milk cartons in the freezer full of ice, and set the containers into the sink to make a frozen layer. Then I set a shallow metal baking pan right on the cartons, and poured in the broth.

At 4:10 the broth was cooling nicely. It felt good to look forward to my holiday and three-day weekend, and nice to think that the broth gel would be a treat for the neighbors. I still had a couple of hours to rest in comfort before my morning walk. First I tidied up the kitchen. Then, primed by the forecast of sunny warm weather, I took the protective floor cloths off the carpet, and hung them over the window as a sun shade. Then I gathered some clothes from the drying rack to put away.

Zipping into the hall in dim light, I was startled by a sharp pain in one shin, and stood gaping at mysterious splashes of blood on the creme wall-to-wall carpet underfoot, which for once was not protected by the floor cloth. Apparently while rounding the corner with the big armful of clean laundry, I’d slammed right into a corner of that cardboard carton, against a top flap braced open in the closet door. The corrugated cardboard corner sliced right in with the equivalent of a sizeable paper cut. (“Did you utter swear words?” Angelina asked me later. “One swear word,” I confessed. “Then, I realized that Jesus Our Lord shed every single drop of blood for me. Do I get upset over that, or do I take that for granted? He didn’t do any swearing on that cross either.”)

I pressed the clean laundry against my shin, and hopped to the kitchen sink. Then I poured on Bronner’s soap, and for twenty minutes held the foot under running water interspersing soap with dashes of salt. I broke open a bottle of peroxide, and poured most of it on. Then I spread antibiotic ointment around the area, and dressed the shin with gauze and surgical tape. Then I sorted the laundry; some pieces needed to soak in more Bronner’s with baking soda. I sprinkled more baking soda on the carpet with dashes of peroxide.

The cool broth went in labeled containers in the freezer along with the rice milk cartons. I put the bones in the fridge. Then I wrapped the bandage in bath towels and got back into bed for a nap, elevating the leg up on a chair.

With lymphedema and a lower leg skin break, the first concern is infection. So I set an alarm for 6:45 to contact Urgent Care; their online appointment site opens at 7:00. I logged in at 7:03. In that three minutes all the morning slots were snapped up by speedier patients, but I got a slot for 12:30 on the same day. That meant leaving the house at 11:00. Of course a visit to the doctor means freshening up, and looking one’s best. To keep the bandage dry I washed with one foot outside the tub, then washed my hair in the sink before putting on my nicest slacks and blouse. Then I made the bed and hand washed the soaking laundry and hung it back on the rack.

Right after seeing the condition of the carpeting, my first thought was to walk to the computer and search for “removing blood from carpet.” But it dawned on me that it’s a work computer; it didn’t seem a great idea to request a personal holiday, then take a sudden interest at 4:00 am researching blood removal techniques. Besides, it was probably too late for home remedies.

I texted Angelina: Say, would she have a little minute before work, to loan me her portable rug shampoo gizmo? I was careful to not tell her why; this was a workday for her, and she’d have her nurse hat on for people all day as it was. She texted right back, to say that she’d filled up the machine with rug shampoo and set it outside her back door. I walked the chicken bones to the compost bin and ran right over to her place, picked up the machine straight up instead of flat, and so spilled blue cleanser all down my best pants. But I got the machine home, sponged off my pants, and studied the user manual on line. After poring over the diagrams and arrows and directions, with anticipation I turned on the machine to spray the carpet to pre-treat, set a timer for 5 minutes, and started cleaning the rug. When I got all finished, and when all the blue cleanser was used up, the carpet still looked the same. Oh gosh. Well, at any rate the important next step was to clean all the parts and bring the machine right back to Angelina’s.

I carried it into the kitchen, and was troubled to find that apparently the machine made some headway after all, since the clear canister for rinsewater was now full of foamy blood. Oh no! I’d filled my neighbor’s machine with a biohazard! I spent 20 minutes fiddling all different ways to get the open tab to open. An hour before I was upset about my leg and carpet. Now I might lose a friendship too.

I rushed back to the computer to peruse the instructions. They didn’t mention anything comprehensible about taking the machine apart. A search for the brand and model turned up lots of demonstration videos. None was filmed by the company. All were made by sociable people who endorse products and can chat all day about their feelings toward one brand over another, with entertaining stories about carpet mishaps. I fast forwarded through a half dozen, but no one mentioned how to take the machine apart.

It was after 10:00 by now, almost time to get ready to go. But it wouldn’t do, to let this blood congeal up inside the machine. Finally in a state of high anxiety I wrapped the machine in a bath towel to keep from spilling blood around, and ran over to the management office. When I burst in the door, our dear building manager was sitting in a meeting with a couple of other men. He seemed struck by my urgent woebegone manner and the mystery bundle cradled in my arms. He interrupted his meeting to ask what was wrong. When I pointed out the sheer complexity of the apparatus, he reached over and twink unlocked the canister. “You’re the man!” I cried, and rushed off again.

Upstairs at home, I took apart the machine, rinsed and cleaned the parts, then watched some more videos for a hint on how to put it back together. Finally I just kept turning and fitting stuff over and over until things clicked into place. Then I wiped the baking soda film off the exterior of the machine and shined it up. I unpacked the Goodwill donations out of the cardboard carton, placed them in a nice safe smooth plastic bin up off the floor and out of the way, and placed the machine inside the box. Then with scissors I cut off all 8 corners of the box flaps, trimming the edges into gentle smooth curves, and ran the box to Angelina’s house.

At home I packed the antibiotic ointment to show the doctor, grabbed my sunhat and a good waiting room book (The Scent of Holiness, by Mother Constantina Palmer), and headed for the bus. At Urgent Care I checked in, and took a seat. At times there are so many patients in this waiting room that the hardworking staff have to break the news that everyone will have to come back tomorrow. But on this stellar spring day, the waiting room was empty and quiet. It was a good place to rest and calm down. Though the skin tear was the most trivial injury imaginable, it was surprising how anxious it had made me feel. Thank God that clumsiness hadn’t hurt anybody else instead! In my seat I fell in to a deep reverie of prayer, with my heart reaching out to all the many people who experience accidents of all kinds, true afflictions and tragedies that in a flash can change their world. It drove the lesson home how important it was each day all day to be very thoughtful with safety, and gentle with others.

The clinic reception staff and medical assistant were caring tactful people. They all asked the history of my presenting complaint. I was careful to clarify that the cause was not losing my balance, feeling faint, or loss of lower peripheral vision; it was really just jaunting around a doorway in dim light and smacking into a cardboard flap. Hearing the cause of injury (“Patient walked into a cardboard box top.”), their eyes went blank a moment, and they seemed at a loss for words. Later I realized what they may have been thinking: How are we gonna CODE this for insurance? After all, the Wall Street Journal from 9/13/2011 ran an article “Walked Into a Lamppost? Hurt While Crocheting? Help Is on the Way.” They reported a federal mandate raising the number of ICD-10 medical injury codes from 18,000 to 140,000, all to elaborate upon potential sources of harm. Example: the new system specifies 72 codes for injuries due to bird encounters — with 9 codes apiece for most high-offending birds (macaw, turkey, chicken…). The word “box” might have its own ICD-10 family of fracas: box cutter, box stall, box privet hedge, box on the ear, box tortoise, box jellyfish from Australia, box o’Whitman sampler chocolates, Box Flower Remedies (ok, that “Bach” is really pronounced “Batch,” but it’s a pretty good pun), or impact with a Box Car Willy album cover. (Did you know that Box Car Willy sold more record albums than The Beatles and Elvis combined? No you did not. But my housemate Sean did. He told me that in 1991. Then he explained the punch line — that The Beatles and Elvis didn’t sell their own records.)

A very warm and supportive medical doctor came in to the exam room. Her presence and energy were so positive that they immediately calmed and cheered me. But she shook her head at sight of the cut. “You should always come in right away! If you come right away, we can close it!” I asked,”You mean stitches?” She exclaimed, “Yes, stitches! We had to close that right away. Now it’s late, it happened eight hours ago. This will take a long time to heal.” She treated it with sterile saline rinse and a clear bandage with advice on followup care. After tuning in to her voice and glancing at her name badge, I said in Farsi, “I am glad to meet you. Many thanks for your help today.” She beamed and gave me a warm Farsi goodbye. She walked me out toward reception, and we wished each other a Khoda hafez.

It was a great relief to have a medical opinion and reassurance. For good circulation in the leg I took a nice 40 block uphill walk home. After a bit of lunch and rest with the feet up, it was off to Goodwill for some fortunate bargains. That included a large plush bath towel to cover the dismaying splashes in the entryway, so they wouldn’t upset the guests or for that matter me. The lady at the cash register and I exchanged cheerful remarks. Then she leaned closer with some news. “I was in the very first Goodwill job training class! It’s been 25 years!” It was a touching moment, to imagine how hard she must have worked at this job all those years. She told me how proud she was of her work, and we shared a little minute of congratulations and good feeling about it. She reached out and clasped my hands and said “God bless you!” and I blessed her back.

At home I spread the new bath towel on the rug. That was a big decor improvement. It was sad to think that building management trusted me to rent their studio, and now I’d wrecked the carpeting. This would call for some better cleaning resolution. I sighed and put away the clean laundry.

Later there was a text from Angelina. She was following up on the machine loan: If I was interested in a clean carpet, how about if she went and rented one of those big machines, and we could both use it on Sunday for both our apartments? Would I like that?

I said yes.

Disclaimer: This is a very temporary morning schedule. On July 1 my excess vacation hours will disappear, so I use up 3 morning hours a day for fitness and cooking.

Last week the Little Free Library had a real treasure — The Holy Bible. This installment contained all four Gospels of the King James Bible in 12 cassette tapes. It’s read aloud by Alexander Scourby, apparently a famous distinguished narrator born in 1913, “known for his deep resonant voice and mid-Atlantic accent.” This looked like a good opportunity for Bible study. I rummaged in my closet for the cassette tape player, blew off the dust, and popped in a tape. Then I went off to do the chores looking forward to some background audio edification.

One chore of the day was already done; it was folding up the blankie roll and mat away from the sliding glass doors. That’s because a team of men were due to pressure-wash our balconies and clean off the moss.

Next chore was already completed too. That was putting on my compression hose, and getting right outside for a walk. It’s a little loop of 2.6 miles, greeting the school crossing guards and a security officer, and sometimes sharing neighborhood news with a circle of dog owners who gather on benches with their coffee to chat and let the dogs jostle and sniff. May and June are peak months for taking flower photos along the way, like this wood sorrel.

Then home at 6:30, to pop in the Bible cassette and work on some lymphatic drainage massage and a refreshing cold water splash in a washtub. The cold water notion came about from reading and watching Wim Hof, a 64 year old physical conditioning teacher in Holland. Wim once climbed Mount Everest equipped with absolutely nothing but a pair of shorts and shoes. Through breathing techniques and acclimating himself to both ice and desert, he’s set 26 world records for feats that would not even dawn on most of us. He seems a high-spirited guy whether relaxing in a tub of ice or making vegetable soup or playing the ukulele and singing flamenco ballads. Anyway, since January 1st I’ve been washing up in cold water every morning. It’s a slow methodical approach, starting with hands and feet and working the way up. When it’s over and the water rushes off, my first thought is “I want another cold bath!” It’s good for lymphedema, and even better for one’s mood.

Another chore in this warm time of year is watering the garden. That’s carrying a two-gallon bucket (16 pounds of water) down 42 steps and around the corner, then back up the stairs. The garden needs at least ten round trips of that a day, five in the morning and five at night. It makes good use of wash water from cutting vegetables and rinsing the blender.  

Another is washing the laundry. For balcony cleaning day (all objects had to be removed from patios), the drying rack had to go in the bathtub. Otherwise it would be out on the balcony in the sun and air. It’s good fortune that the balcony is on the fourth floor, not visible from the ground. To be offended by the wash line, someone would have to film it from a drone. Hopefully local residents have more interesting things to do.

Then breakfast, a pot of the vegetable combo of the day. That’s some mix of greens, summer squash, onions, mushrooms, eggplant, tomatoes, and/or cabbage with beans or tofu. Then it’s packing a big salad and nuts and oatmeal or sweet potato, plus an improving book, and heading for the bus to work.

But that morning, there I was happily washing up in a little tub. Suddenly, I heard a man’s voice through the bathroom door. Oh my gosh! Was he someone on the pressure wash crew? They had planned to just maneuver up the outside of the building, not enter the apartments. What was the man doing in my kitchen? He was pretty loud, too, raising his voice to criticize something or someone — maybe my balcony? I threw my clothes on, cracked open the door, and then remembered that dusty little cassette machine. Either the tape was marred by a long blank pause, or the machine had stalled for some reason and finally activated again. That deep resonant voice was my introduction to Alexander Scourby, in a dramatic kitchen reading of the Gospel of Matthew chapter 23: “WOE to you, Pharisees and scribes, hypocrites!” If it sounded that arresting in my kitchen on a tape, it’s impressive to think how the actual event must have set those original listeners back on their heels.

Gosh, it’s time for the evening bucket trip right now! Those peas will be thirsty.

Jesus Christ died on a cross to save me from my sins.

How can one mind comprehend and appreciate that? It’s like gathering this entire shore, from today’s walk. (Good thing someone brought this 10-inch dump truck. We’re gonna need it.)

Repentance was the theme for all of the feast day. From hour to hour and chore to chore, the central thought was sin and forgiveness, humility and gratitude. The idea came along on a morning walk, chanting the steps with Psalm 50/51 in Church Slavonic. It was there on a visit to the bike shop to drop off a thank-you card for a tire check by a respectful talented mechanic. It was there while buying eggs and hearing the cashier’s Christian testimony. It was there talking to drivers on the bus. It was there at the monastery for Good Friday vigil. It was there at the thrift-store fitting room thanking the staff in hijab with a “Ramadan Karim!” (These women in their trousers, manteau coats, and full veils took over the shifts for the staff out on Easter weekend — and these women did it without a drop of food or water since dawn). What memory of repentance was worth writing down as a story for this day? What example best conveys metanoia, true change of heart, and the grace to return to Our Lord and Savior?

It has to be that midnight special of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

That was well over 40 years ago, for a transplanted co-ed with no street sense at all. On that afternoon I went out and walked the city, scared of going home to my roommates, our campus neighbors and faculty and friends, my loving parents who would call with eager questions about my weekend plans, and the recent verdict of the school psychiatrist. All of them urged me to break out of the comfort zone, date the new boyfriend, and practice the compromise skills that would make me a good wife one day. The accomplished young man had many fine sincere generous virtues, and was eager to enhance and inform my personal growth. From his point of view, compromise was simple. All it meant was no unaccounted AWOL time away from him on weekends, no more nibbling nuts & berries or other rabbit food out of little pocket packets, no singing along to the radio or anywhere else, no high collars or long sleeves, no highly textured fabric, no tied or covered hair, no speaking to other men (including my faculty advisor), and most of all no God. That was just his idea of efficient sensible operating procedures. It was meant to protect us both, and especially him, from What People Might Think. He was fine educational company, and I was overjoyed to be with him and to learn all of his rules. But soon his level of exasperation, and the number of rules, kept growing: no tracing finger lines in the steam condensation on a glass of ice water; no letting shoelace tips tap on the floor; no changing seats midway through a campus party; no more warbling the falsetto “Rrrighty-OH!” from those Felix the Cat cartoons; and some lengthy rubric about maintaining the patina on carbon steel kitchen knives. It didn’t work. Within a month, this man’s last nerve was losing its myelin sheathing due to my rube manners. (As always in this blog, I carefully alter the details to make everyone unrecognizable. For all we know, what sent him storming out of Shaky’s Shrimp Shack could have been seeing me nibble my ear of corn vertically instead of along the row.)

So before one Saturday date night, I ran away from my suitor and just didn’t go back. I was getting scared of his level of upset, scared of facing the disappointment of my roommates, scared to face my inept self. Knowing he was likely to call the house over and over asking the other girls where I was, I disappeared from all usual haunts (language lab, library, local Cathedral, park outside, neighbors). Instead I walked all over the city. Friendly all-new hidey holes beckoned me inside to escape and pass the time. One was a whole new church, the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, for half a Mass and a rosary. One was the discount cosmetology school, where a waist length of hair drifted to the floor. One was the Yes! natural food store down the Exorcist Steps to the canal, for bulk bin pocket packets of sunflower seeds, savory nut wafers, dried apricots, and coconut date rolls. One was a tour of the Old Stone House on M Street. One was The Hecht Company department store, where the staff bit back smiles at my excitement seeing pullover sports bras (No fussy hook & eye in the back? Whoa, I want one of those!). With this sturdy one-piece garb I purchased the thickest heaviest turtleneck with the highest collar in ribbed hunter-green wool, plus a jade-green head scarf, and put them all on in the fitting room to wear out the door. Last there was the Army Navy store with an eye-catching display window of goldfish bowls heaped with shining nails; I hurried right in and bought my first pair of high combat boots with thick gumsole cleats, then ran my fingers through the fishbowls and picked out a dozen shining stainless six-inch nails and three lengths of rawhide laces. The fellows at the counter struck up a nice chat, and asked in sociable fashion what repair job called for all those nails. At my idea they raised their brows and nodded. I walked out all smiles.

After an evening’s jostle through candle and soap boutiques and chocolatiers and bakeries and endless couples holding hands and bright windows with French menus and musicians on the street, I stopped short at a movie marquee. For months it advertised the same late-late feature. There an hour early was a boisterous queue of fans, though ticket prices at the time were skyrocketing up toward the $4 mark. Somehow I found myself at the window, bought a ticket just like everybody, and was swept inside.

The house was packed. The audience wore wedding clothes and motorcycle leather and chenille boas and bells. They waved umbrellas and sprayed water pistols and threw toasted bread and white rice and ticker tape and confetti. They hollered out the lyrics and lines. They acted out flickering scenes of glare and blare, overstated costumes and makeup, theatrical theatrics. The sound system revved right through the floor and into one’s ribs. An exploding kaleidoscope of plot threw pieces of archetype around from every which where. Something about a wedding? Motorcycles in the house? Thunder and lightning? Transylvania?

I parked my combat boots up on an empty seat back and bit my cuticles, rocking back and forth, staring at the filmed and live antics. The jokes flew like the ticker tape over my head. No word of dialogue made it into long-term recall. Neither did a note of the music, though there was plenty, and loud too; that Mr. Curry could sure belt out a tune. (Apparently one of his show-stopping vocal numbers is still so popular that fans my age who met and courted and sparked at those shows use it as an anthem for their spouses’ funerals.)

This is not to advise being out at midnight in Washington DC, or walking home in the wee hours from the bus stop. But for that performance, my plush seat felt like the safest haven in the world, the last place where anyone who knew me would think to look. That perception of safety is not as outlandish as it seems. The Picture Show was a public event supervised by management and the fire code, not an exclusive arrangement for two. The Show had stable rules familiar to virtually everyone, built up by large-group consensus each week over a period of years, not invented on the spot by one person to manage another. The Show was choreographed consensual adult group play, not private coercion. The Show channeled cathartic singing and dancing, and welcomed a free range of individual creativity equally from all participants. Most of all, The Show was not spurred on by unbearable anxiety and need for control and social image; it was inspired by campy schmaltzy merriment.

In that crowd, no one looked annoyed or distressed by me at all. Someone loaned me an umbrella. Grown men in lace veils served us toast, and I passed around nuts and berries. During some pointless catchy ditty, I heard myself humming right out loud. Shaking rice off a sleek helmet haircut, securely armored by a new foundation garment that couldn’t be unfastened until I took it off myself when I was good and ready, warm in a nubbly wool turtleneck, under a homemade necklace of braided rawhide and flashing six-inch nails, I felt welcomed and free.

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was a full-onslaught sensory reset. For those hours there was no brain bandwidth available to worry and brood about my dating failure. Judging by the crowd, the point of this whole folderol was being yourself. For me, that meant genuine repentance for the wrong steps of serving a wrong relationship, and thankfulness to God for setting me straight. It meant breaking neurotic rules and going home to Godly ones. It meant returning to the body and soul that Jesus died for. Instead of driving any more nails into His cross, it meant wearing those nails around my neck for weeks as a reminder and guard over my heart.

Thank you, Mr. Curry. Blessed Easter.

Purple Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum) was a pleasant familiar face on today’s early morning stroll. This fuzzy and appealing little mint has delicate flowers and unique ruddy top leaves. The county extension websites call it an invasive weed, to be firmly banished from our dooryards, but in our neighborhood it’s a soft pretty accent to vacant lots and curbs.

The flower brought back lovely memories from the town of Eagle a year ago, and its people and landscape. In April, the Deadnettle there will grow as a luxurious shawl of soft lavender and lilac shades, flowing all along the contours of the waterways and lowlands, in bright contrast to the stone hill formations and sterling clear sky.

After arranging this tiny nosegay, I couldn’t resist a nostalgic browse of the online Eagle local paper. Main Street has interesting new foodcraft and household businesses, and even a new urgent care clinic. An abandoned building has been turned back into a community center. News features included an alert about proper battery storage to prevent hazardous corrosion and combustion, best practices for spring hunting season, handling and cooking fresh fish for observant Christians during Lent, keeping alfalfa crops safe from weevils, and safe healthy trail riding on horseback. There was an announcement of a joyful musical event planned at a local church; this happy news came with its own illustration — batteries corroded and scorched, no doubt from improper storage. It was heartening to read that scholarships for local youth are being sponsored by the truly outstanding second-hand store packed with bargains and charm (I still wear those excellent walking shoes, 25 cents brand new). The local historian was well over 100 years old during my visit; now he’s even more over 100, and had a party with a deluge of birthday cards. Even the memorial notices show remarkable warmth and tenderness; each resident did not only pass away, but took the hand of Lord and Savior Jesus, or left their earthly vessel, or gained heavenly wings, entered into rest, was called (or, transferred membership) to heaven, was welcomed to heaven by departed and reuniting family, or was now parading in God’s glory.

It still sounds like a healthy and likeable place to live, and a fine memory for a traveler.

This morning, Super Pup and Bingo allowed themselves to be lassoed with not even token resistance, and placed in the car by Angelina with drinking water and a bag of delicious yums made of dehydrated meats. We headed out for the dog park, where Super Pup chased the ball 1,100 times and Bingo softly slipped up to one stranger after another, peering upward with soulful dark eyes in hopes of a pet on the head.

At the park we found these “Blue Shade” Anemone / Grecian Windflowers.

At the demonstration garden, some industrious grower was well rewarded by cruciferous edibles that survived the winter, then bolted out these cheery yellow blooms.

This first outing of spring was overcast but warm. A dapper Spotted Towhee, black and white with rich burnt-orange side stripes, flew up to a twig and shrilled his ratchety “Whaaat?” Frogs were out in force with their husky little sleighbell noises. “As they hear us crashing past or even crashing closer, they will keep merrily croaking along,” I told Angelina. “But as soon as you stop, they will stop too and nestle in silence under the ooze. I keep trying to sneak closer, but any amphibian is enough to outsmart me.” For her nature edification I demonstrated by stepping off the path and holding still. Sure enough — freeze and be quiet, and their songs will disappear.

Here is half a minute of their happy ruckus.

At the end of our power chat outing, the dogs got their yums and Angelina bought us both a slice of pizza. She and I talked the entire time about the nature of evolution, people and dogs as pack animals, cooking, gardening, parenting, stages of grief, the state of medical care, health, and everything else.

Petting the dogs goodbye I told Angelina, “You and I have exhausted every possible topic to talk about. We ran out of words. Unless we can think up something else to say, this friendship is over.”

(That lasted five hours, and then I had to go bring her my extra fluorescent vest so she can walk the dogs with safety after sundown. She offered me an avocado and a really nice extra chair made of wicker that I might take for my studio.)

It was a good spring outing.

Photo: These winter-blooming Hellebore flowers have nothing to do with this subject, but they are more photogenic than my new support hose.

The Usual Huge Disclaimer: Ask your medical care team. Don’t come to a Russian language major for your health information. This is basically a journal entry about the past couple of weeks, and is not meant to apply to anybody else.

Extra Disclaimer: Here’s a show tune I wrote to lighten the mood around this topic. I don’t own the rights to the copyrighted melody or the pastoral Rodgers and Hammerstein lyrics named after The Sooner State. That said, if you want to sing along to this, go right ahead.

Lyyyyymph / Edema

Diagnosis. What to do with that???

And initial fears

when all these years

here I thought my ankles are just fat.

Tweeeeenty / Thirty

is prescribed for these new pressure hose.

They’re the right tight sort

for vein support

Iffen I can pull them past my toes.

Driiiiink / your water

ease up flour and salty snacks and sweets.

Keep up active motion

Slap on lotion

Take some break time putting up our feets.

So here I’ve been hiking around for years on stout thick stiff ankles with chapped dry flaky reddened and often-itchy skin, and thought nothing of it. Windburn made it worse, and so did sunburn, freezing air, gluten binges, and picture-taking strolls in the cemetery and golf course with, just maybe, chemicals to keep those lawns green. I just slapped on coconut oil and resolved not to scratch, and went on with life. Finally I ended up in the ER with an ankle staph infection, apparently after some trivial unnoticed skin break. Ever since then, doctors have been asking questions and referring me hither and yon.

A wonderful vascular nurse determined that it’s lymphedema. She prescribed compression knee-high stockings that apply 20-30 mm of graduated pressure, tightest around the ankles, to wear during the day but not at night. Apparently they help keep the lymph from settling down in the lower legs. She instructed me to put them on first thing in the morning, before the legs start to swell up. She explained that we’ll have to reduce the mechanical swelling in order to let the skin heal. She recommended frequent changes of position and exercise breaks. She referred me for a vein valve leg scan in April. (If there are defective valves close to the skin, they might be able to fix them. If valves are defective but deeper, we’ll stick with compression stockings.) She also referred me to an occupational therapist.

The 20-30 mm stockings from the drugstore are like a circular-knit stack of firm rubber bands, tightest at the ankle. My arthritic hands couldn’t get them up over my bent bunion toes. Uh-oh. I asked Angelina, Power Nurse at Large, to help me. “Am I gonna have to come over to your house every morning at 6:00 a.m. so you can get me dressed?” I asked her with some anxiety. “Maybe,” she said, cheerfully giving it a try. She couldn’t pull the stockings over my bent toes either. Over the next few days I kept practicing stocking techniques, all of which left me in hand pain and close to tears. I was failing as a lymphedema patient!!

Luckily for me, the outstanding occupational therapist immediately calmed me right down off the ceiling with her reassuring and cheerful solutions.

First, she defused my panic by starring me in a fashion show of wrap-around and other support garments, plus hand-held gizmos for pulling them up easily. It was really reassuring and fun trying them all on. Then she gave me a wee thin floppy square of Dycem, a wonder substance which on hard floors provides a non-skid surface. (Wash it with a drop of soap and water, and dry it on a lint-free surface to keep up the non-skid tacky qualities.) She put the Dycem on the floor, and coached me to put my toes in the stocking and slide my foot toe-to-heel. To my delight, the stocking slid right on like magic! No strain on my hands! Next, she gave me garden gloves with grippy nitrile palms. The gloves gripped and smoothed the stockings right up to the knee!

She showed me an anatomical chart of the lymphatic system with its channels and nodes. Our lymphatic system carries and cleans away dead white cells, cancer cells, and waste products. When lymph slows down and backs up into the tissues, it separates the skin more from the muscle and circulation system; then the skin breaks down, loses lubrication, and become dry and thin and fragile. Lymph pressure pushes red blood cells out of the vessels and into the tissues of the lower leg, causing iron oxidation and a brick red skin color (it’s basically rust).

She taught me lymphatic drainage massage to do for 40 minutes every day. We can use diaphragmatic breathing as well as soft gentle directional strokes (“like you’re petting a cat”) to massage and stretch bare skin along lymph channels and nodes all over the body. Stroking the lymph layer upwards and clearing it on its way (starting at the top, and working our way down) will allow the circulation to start healing the skin.

She also explained that the ankle skin needs to be kept clean and hydrated, with water-based lotion. A lotion with water as the first ingredient also helps during the massage, to gently stretch the skin. We need to avoid any activity that causes reddened skin. When the skin is reddened by topical allergens or cold or heat (overuse of hot tubs or saunas), the body will rush liquid into those tissues. (I did ask her about my Wim Hof Method daily cold water wash. She thought this short dip in cold tap water sounded okay.)

She emphasized the need to avoid cuts and scratches, because lymph is so rich in protein; any bacteria entering stagnant lymph will feast on protein and multiply rapidly. If the ankle skin shows redness and swelling or a rash, infection might reach the bloodstream and require intravenous antibiotics. At any sign of infection, it’s time to head for Urgent Care or the ER for immediate treatment.

She also emphasized the importance of hydration, drinking enough water, and cutting way down or out on flour and sugar. She suggested that I photograph the ankles so that we could measure our progress before my followup session.

I asked her, “Could this influence our emotions? I have a literal sinking feeling, a deep discouragement that is very hard to forge through.” She said “Water is heavy. If you are carrying extra water in your legs, that can definitely add to a feeling of heaviness.”

I went home wearing my stockings, and practiced the massage and skin washing and lotion that evening. But if only I had taken that starter photo before the OT session. Next morning I took a look. Whoa, thin legs! What? Are those ankle bones? Where did they come from? Since then the ankles look slender, and the skin is much softer and hasn’t had a single itch flareup. Even foot circulation looks better, with a healthy rosy color and warm feel.

That day I bought nitrile gloves and three more spare pairs of 20-33 mm stockings. (I wash each pair after taking them off, and dry them, for a supply of fresh pairs each day.) Then I shopped from store to store looking for a water-based lotion with water, not oil, as the first ingredient, and with the fewest additives. The simplest formula was Trader Joe’s “Nourish” Hydrating Hyaluronic body gel cream in a pump bottle. The pump doesn’t work, so I have to drag lotion out of the bottle with the pump stick and slop it on the skin, but oh well.

The new routine is an extra 40 minutes in the morning. It’s Wim Hof breathing exercises and lymphatic drainage massage, then a cold water wash (cold tap water feels wonderful for leg circulation and mood), then drinking plenty of warm water, then lotion, then letting the lotion soak in, then with the Dycem as an aid sliding the stockings on for the day. At work it means frequent sitting and standing changes, and breaks in the conference room holding the legs up against the wall. At night it’s all the steps backwards — stockings off & washed, massage, washing, lotion, then earlier bedtime and sleeping with the feet elevated on a cushion.

That is a whole lot of privilege and pampering. During the daily routine I think sadly about the working women back in the Soviet Union, forging around on their feet all day long. Some had massive ankles with rolls of swelling and the skin weeping fluid right through their heavy stockings. And even here, how many single moms have time to fuss with doctors and self-care like this? What about the many people I pass all day, sleeping in their tents on the streets? When do they get clean lotioned skin and the right stockings and adequate diet and rest?

Well, if I neglect this condition, that will not make me more useful to society. This is my homework for now. Lymphedema is chronic and apparently permanent. It’s painless and subtle and gradual, and I wish that someone had diagnosed it for me years ago. Like other gradual conditions, it can coast along for decades. But it can also make us vulnerable to rapid complications such as skin staph and strep infections, cellulitis, strained vein valves, and stagnant circulation leading to blood clots and embolisms. Our task is to slow down that progression in the future.

Maybe someone will read this, and start to wonder about their own ankles. Do they look swollen, or feel stiff or itchy? Does the skin look red, or have cinnamon-colored dot points? Do even soft loose low socks leave red lines on the skin? A medical provider can do the thumbprint test, where they press in a thumb (ow!) and then gauge the depth of the print and how quickly it disappears. Those are all signs to ponder.

Live and learn! This whole adventure is food for thought, and a lot to be grateful for.

Peas are jolly little troopers, happy to be planted even before the temperature warms up. According to the seed packet, they can go in the ground 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost date, especially if the soil temperature is above 40 degrees F.

Here are the peas at bathtime Saturday morning in a blue glass bowl of water for a good 24 hour soaking.

Here they are on Sunday morning, all plumped in together. The soaking is meant to give them a head start on germinating once they are in the ground.

On Sunday morning, hauling out of bed was just not my favorite idea. But those peas needed to get in the ground, so I trudged straight outdoors aiming for an optimistic mindset and humming “Why do fools fall in love?” with the peas and 25 bamboo stakes. The stakes went along the raised garden bed. Each stake got two six-inch holes dug beside them, hopefully deep enough to confuse the crows. Then the 50 or so peas went into the holes under a layer of garden soil.

It’s good luck when peas go in the ground while the weather is chilly and windy and damp. They’ll hatch along on their own and find their way up to the sun. If all works out well we could see 50 little shoots perk up through the ground on or around February 22. If all works out even better, we could have peas starting in 70 days, or early May. Peas are a very pretty sight, and they are dramatic and fast-growing enough to amuse the neighbors. Which is, after all, the whole point.

Meanwhile here’s another view of Mrs. Wing’s daikon, as pretty as… well, as a picture.

It would have been really thoughtful and considerate of me to tell the Wings that for cataract surgery #2, I was going to go ask Angelina to take me to the hospital instead.

And why? Because for cataract surgery #1, it was so wonderful to have their perfect help — doing without the family car for two mornings, and rearranging their schedule. Thanks to Captain’s winter-weather navigation and motoring skills, the surgery and the followup appointment next day were a breeze.

Me being me, my first conclusion was “That was great! Therefore, I would never venture to ask this wonderful family to help me with surgery #2. Instead I will distribute this huge imposition elsewhere so that no one set of neighbors needs to be burdened twice.”

Ya whatever. But because I didn’t dream of asking the Wings to go again, I didn’t dream that they would think they were going to be asked again. Therefore I did not talk to them of my decision. Result: they waited patiently in readiness, having noticed that cataracts come in pairs. Finally they found out by chance (with a glance at this blog) that I’d moved on and hit up someone else without ever telling them, or explaining why.

Captain called me this week with a message from Mrs. Wing, asking me to drop by the house on my way home. The call was a pleasant surprise. “It’s so nice to hear from you!” I told him. “After imposing on you for that surgery, I was afraid to contact any of you for fear you would be upset by how much work that was.”

Tactful moment of silence on the phone. “We were waiting for instructions,” he replied. “Then we read that Angelina took you to the hospital instead.”

Oh dear goodness. I am such a dork.

For some reason, they are still speaking to me. Mrs. Wing gave me a whole sack of fresh vegetables from their expedition to the grocery wholesale store, along with a couple of home-baked supersize macadamia cookies AND part of her harvest of winter purple daikons which grew all sturdy in the cold and snow. Here is one of them, showing only part of its lavish healthy foliage. They really are this beautiful.

And (like the Wings), they are beautiful not only on the outside, but at heart:

Each nibble is perfectly crisp and bursting with juice, and remarkably sweet. Then the hit strikes — wow, what a spicy kick! The foliage was great too in long-cooked potassium broth with vegetables and a bit of wakame, and then the simmered leaves had a good flavor for munching. Those slices will make beautiful kimchi with some grated Asian pear, garlic, ginger, anchovy sauce, and cayenne. It’s a much appreciated home-grown super thoughtful gift.

Well, that is a life lesson for me. When God sends the best helpers, it is my job to be easy to help. That starts with updating everyone on what might be needed in future, and how best to strategize so that no one is too burdened or is left out and wondering about the plan.

Wings never wait around to be thanked or praised. But thank you all the same, dear neighbors. Maybe I can find some way to show appreciation back for all that you do for us.

Tonight we neighbors (is there a feminine plural? neighboresses?) are hurrying down to Angelina’s for Netflix and pizza. The group hasn’t picked out the movie yet. I’d like one with a Gospel message of redemption and salvation. But that may not be the case, judging by the 2023 film trailers I watched last night with the sound off, finger poised to click the mouse button to the next selection. Yike. Depending on the title I may have to leave after our supper of fellowship (is there a feminine singular? galship?).

But no matter what, I’m bringing her a salad for her weekend dinner.

It has steamed kale with grated raw carrots, red onion, boiled firm tofu, boiled eggs, chopped roasted almonds, goat cheese, yogurt, dried cherries, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, paprika, and a sprinkle of tiny fennel fronds that sprang up from an old wintering stalk out in the garden. Angelina is a grand-slam cook and comes from a background of classy restaurants, so it was necessary to think up something marginally gentrified. Besides, she was a Godsend last Saturday taking the lion’s share of weight when we wrestled four 60-pound sacks of topsoil from her car hatch to the garden in the freezing rain. Hopefully she will like the salad.

I’ll bring something to wrap around my feet and legs too, after leaving shoes at the door. The Dog Pack have decided that I am delicious, and are forever looking for an opp to wander up the couch and start nibbling my toes. That’s caused by regular foot and ankle applications of coconut oil. Apparently coconut oil must be some form of olfactory dognip. It would be interesting to see how the dogs react to alternate lubricants week by week — lard, schmalz, marrow, sardine can oil, or birdfeeder suet. As it is now, their collective greetings are all bouncy glee. “It’s Mare! Look everybody, I’m totally sticking my head up her dress! You can too!” Now I could protect my feet by sticking them in one of the tubular cages of chicken wire that we use in summer for the tomatoes. But for a visitors’ parlor Emily Post might vote for my rolled yoga mat. The yoga mat turned out to be good protection. The dogs still found great entertainment value in vaulting up on to my lap for a bite of my food. Whenever they try that, I give them a soft hiss and a firm poke, and they frolic off and pick some more hospitable lap. But it’s interesting; they are still just as pleased to see me every time. And they’ve figured out that if they edge closer in calm submissive fashion and just snuggle up next to me for a nap they know I’ll pet them, so it’s all good.

Update, morning after: We watched the first 5 episodes of a program called “Ted Lasso.” It was a pleasant surprise with interesting character development. I’m re-reading The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, so it was interesting to watch how Coach Ted’s brain worked. The character shows hyper-developed and hyper-attuned neuroplastic connectivity skills for matching people up with their best opportunities for personal growth. For example, during various scenes Ted keeps passing by an ignored street musician busking on the street, and always stops to give him pocket change and some word of encouragement. In the finale to episode 5, when a famous celebrity doesn’t show for a benefit concert, Ted steps outside and brings in the busker (“and now, live from… outside!”), and everyone jumps up and starts dancing and has a grand time.

Angelina not only served an ample selection and portions of yummy food, but made a very good and considerate entertainment choice that pleased all of her guests. She’d make a great soccer coach herself.

The usual big disclaimer: For goodness sake, this is not medical advice. This is just one person feeling her way along, not an endorsement of cataract surgery or a prediction of anybody else’s results. This does contain an opinion about the color of my favorite breakfast bowl in my cabinet, but you could already pick out your own dishes and fix your breakfast without my say-so.

In these weeks after surgery, it is still a surprise to wake up and look outside the window. For years, the houses in this complex were turquoise blue. Now after surgery those same houses are heron slate gray. My favorite breakfast bowl was tangerine golden-pink. Now it’s pure pale rose. Those true colors, those slate houses and rose dish are new acquaintances, fresh every morning.

Of course the main dramatic change is sharp visual acuity. All day every day it’s amazing to live without prescription eyeglasses. (Of course, without eyeglass frames it’s easier to see how tired my eyes look, and how sensitive they are to light. But plain tinted safety goggles cover that pretty well.) After three years of wearing a Covid mask, it feels much safer to maneuver without the fall risk of steamed up lenses. (Stepping into a grocery store or library or clinic, I pull up my mask. Then to avoid the steaming I still reach up to take off glasses that aren’t there.) It is amazing to just type on a computer and tell the time on a wall clock and identify my books by title instead of topic order and binding color. Before, on the street corner there’d be buses materializing in the distant traffic, and I’d be there with glasses on bobbing and weaving and shading my eyes trying to figure out what the route number was, worried that if I flagged down the wrong bus and then had to wave it away the driver might be upset. The other pedestrians, the other deer in the herd, they didn’t seem to stare into the headlights at all; when a bus appeared blocks away they could just instinctively sort themselves out by stepping closer to the curb or by backing away. Now I was finally starting to catch on to the same hat trick and could blend in better with everybody else. So that’s all a marvel all day.

Next month the eye clinic team will run some tests and figure out new ideal corrective lenses. Now, the focus going forward is good care and prevention for any potential retina issues. Unfortunately, that is a risk after cataract surgery. (During recovery, resting alone in the dark, that possibility caused my melancholic mind to dredge up the “Flowers for Algernon” dilemma, and if your 8th grade curriculum didn’t make you read that then for sure don’t read it now.) One night it scared me to view what seemed to be a new internal black floater shooting across the visual field; what a happy relief to find it was a spider zipping across my monitor screen. But instead of fretting about the future, it is far better to research and learn all the symptoms of retina difficulties, to be vigilant, and to keep communicating with the care team. So, there’s an Amsler Grid taped to the bathroom wall for frequent vision tests. There’s a retina checkup in two months, and regular checkups after that from now on. This week I alerted the team to report a subtle vision glitch — an early warning? (The surgeon wrote right back, giving the phenomenon a scientific name and explaining that this was a normal short-term illusion and ought to resolve soon. He was right. It did.)

[Memory interlude: That same surgical team did a brilliant job of repairing a retina tear years ago. At the time I told my health-care colleagues in our medical department, “I need to be out of the office for emergency surgery. My retina is detached! They have to re-attach it again. Will report back in a few days.” My cubicle mates made a point of welcoming each other back from any medical time off with get-well cards, flowers, balloons, and cake. But for my return from retina surgery? Nothing. Not a soul asked how I was, or whether they could help. They even avoided looking at me. Finally, a an old-school high-level physician days from retirement stopped by my desk after hours. Looking around and clearing his throat, in gruff but obvious concern he said “So… how’s the rectum now?”]

Another rumination during rest days in dim light has been awareness of shame. It’s a lifelong tension, like chronic hyper-vigilant armoring in muscles and nerves. Some of it comes from being a failure at vision improvement exercises taught by inspiring authors like Meir Schneider. (When Mr. Schneider came to town I joined a large group for a two-hour workshop. He was an outstanding nurturing teacher. He would have been the first to say to me “Whoa, you’d better get a cataract exam.”) Mostly, shame is the memory of people’s frustration and ridicule, their assumption that near-sighted behavior shows stupidity or disrespect. It was the Sister of St. Dominic who used to comically mimic the gobsmacked look on my face when I strained to read the chalkboard. It was grownups warning “Stop squinting; you’ll get wrinkles,” or “For God’s sake come on, look alive!” or “Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses!” (I didn’t know what a pass was, and didn’t even want boys to throw a football at my head.) Now even after surgery, people still say “You were crossing the street at the WALK sign, and when you stepped in front of my car I honked but you didn’t wave!” (No, I was too busy fleeing the path of some yabbo leaning on his horn.) Last week I ventured out at night, wearing wraparound black goggles against the glare. I had to scoot two blocks from bus to train in a crowded but moderately distressed neighborhood where people run about with guns, knives, and tazers. A chipper neighbor (who knew all about my surgery) charged right up behind me on the dark street. He looked forward to how happy I’d be once I realized who he was. When he lunged at my head I spun around with a skewering combative stare, recognized him, and stared even harder. He burst out laughing, backed off, and hurried away. Later he said “Hey!! Even after you saw it was me, you STILL gave me an angry look!” (This behavior must be a vestigial artifact in the deep reptilian brain: Act like an apex predator. Tamper with a woman’s friend-vs.-foe meter. Laugh uproariously at her reaction. Fortunately it’s a gag that most men set aside once they discover Play-Doh.)

On the first day after surgery #1 and the checkup next day, I left the house without my eye shield. Still feeling tired and chilled, I bundled up in a long heavy dress with trousers and high boots and sweater and black hoodie sweatshirt and head scarf and cap and black goggles. I walked very slowly, looking into the distance up ahead, to let the brain balance the new left and right visual fields. For a quiet pleasant route I walked around the block bordering the golf course, an exclusive little cul-de-sac with a security guard inside a booth who waves back when I wave at him. Taking small steps, enjoying the fresh air, I suddenly heard a sharp thwack. Oh no! A golf ball! I’d only been near the golf course at sunset or at dawn or on moonlit nights, never a weekday afternoon. That called to mind the sign posted right at the entrance:

Yike! I shielded the goggles with my hands and ducked my head. Listening hard for any more thwack activity I turned my back to the putting green and walked sideways for the next three blocks, one foot at a time, slowly fleeing for the exit. Soon a little maintenance cart came putt-putting by. The course worker peered at me, and we exchanged waves. Then another little cart came by with two workers, conversing with each other in Spanish. I hollered “Hola Señores. Qué tiempo lindo! Tengan an buen día!” [Wait, where are the upside down exclamation points on this keyboard?] The men hollered back. More handwaves. Another cart. Waving, smiling. The carts kept circling around and trailing along behind me. It looked like a Shriner parade without the fezzes. Maybe the security guard contacted them on walkie-talkies? “Slow-moving intruder. Spanish-speaking granny moves off-kilter, difficulty walking forwards on pavement. Monitor scene. Hover while she heads toward exit. Keep waving.” Finally I sidestepped to the gates, and with more waves the friendly convoy doodled off and back to work and I went back to bed.

This has all been an amazing life adventure.

And just maybe some day the Goodwill housewares shelf will have a dish in a genuine shade of my lost tangerine. I might just buy it and bring it home.

The Usual Disclaimer: This is absolutely not medical advice. It’s not a promotion for cataract surgery, driving in winter weather, writing on one’s arm in ink, or anything else. It is a promotion of Angelina, but in her own circle she was famous before she met me.

After Surgery 1, there was a followup exam one day later, then again one week later. Then one week after that, we had Surgery 2. For round 2, I knew more of what to expect; at least my hands didn’t start shaking a whole day in advance.

Another winter weather front was on the way. Angelina and I kept in touch with frequent weather updates about the advisability of driving. Angelina made the final executive decision on the day in the dark street while innocent ordinary rain fell softly on our heads. I threw my backup gear in her car in case we got stuck under some highway overpass for the night through my own fault. There was a knapsack and duffle with bottled water, bread and cheese, fruit and nuts, chocolate, blanket, raingear, two fluorescent vests, emergency whistle, torch flashlight, and my cell phone charger so we could charge our phones at the clinic in case the power went out that day.

We were off.

Angelina is a conversation artist. She will whip the life story out of you before you know it yourself. Now I understand that she probably did that to put me at ease. In any case, the rain only spit some sleet at us once, then settled back to rain again.

In the clinic a surgery team member approached to check my identity. As for the first surgery he handed me a whole roll of adhesive labels pre-printed with my name, patient number, and date of birth, so that I could verify the information. That might be the point when they attached the same label to a bracelet on my wrist. He asked Angelina “And will you be the Getaway Driver?” He asked her for her phone number, and I showed it to him written on my own forearm in heavy ink for good measure. (“You can write my number on your arm too,” I told Angelina. “Later we’ll get matching tattoos.”) 

In the prep/recovery room, the team greeted me and ran through the same solid checklist. “And which eye?” they asked at three different points, before the surgeon drew on a faint confirming arrow on my forehead. After answering three times I suggested “Let’s do the one with the cataract in it.” They asked me for the pre-printed labels, but this time I’d made the mistake of tucking them in to my waist pack, and placing that in my knapsack. “I’ll get them!” I offered. But no no, they kept me sitting still for my blood pressure check, and assured me that they’d flag down Angelina and get the labels back. Angelina as it happened had taken a stroll next door for a fortifying cup of coffee, so the team cheerfully printed a new label set. 

Finally the team waited at attention, poised to zip my wheeled chair into the OR across the hall. At that moment one of them noticed that outside the window, the heavens had opened with a thick fall of enormous snowflakes. (Fortunately the huge clumped flakes suggested that we had warm temperatures, and the snow might be short duration. I certainly hoped so.) Because I was already in place with heated blanket and electrodes, a nurse darted to the window with her cell phone. She made a little video of the dramatic snowfall, then darted in beaming to play the video so I could marvel at the snow too. Her thoughtful gesture was an extra cheering touch in those moments as they zipped me across the hall and into place.

In the OR a dear team member from the first surgery said “Why hello. Thank you for visiting. Fancy seeing you here.” I assured him that there was nowhere I’d rather be. “A nice place. I love what you’ve done with it.” Even our surgeon laughed. 

This time during very gentle slow deep breaths, it dawned on me lying there that I’d never felt so vulnerable or open or trusting to anyone as I was to this surgical team. That was a poignant thought, but at least the moment happened in good hands. It was a remarkable feeling. My body settled down into such deep relaxation that there seemed no need to breathe at all. I did keep breathing though, very softly and evenly, to maintain steady pressure in the eye and to keep from disrupting the monitors or the team. After 77 gentle breaths our surgeon said “We’re done.” I felt sorry to bid them all goodbye (“I guess we’re all out of cataracts now.”) but gave them a heartfelt thanks. 

The original team member walked me back to Angelina. Anxious about the weather, and anxious to not keep her waiting, I zeroed over and grabbed the straps of the knapsack and duffle. “Aaaaaaah No!” Both our nurse and Angelina (a nurse herself) grabbed the straps to keep from lifting them. “That stuff must weigh thirty pounds!” Angelina said. “I hauled it with me to get my coffee. YOU can’t lift anything heavy after your surgery!” I remembered that of course they were right. While I meekly and gratefully obeyed, she carried my gear to the car herself. At least this time I was clever enough to pay for our parking.  “Look at you, Girl.” She opened the car door for me. “You walked out of that surgery like it was NOTHING.”

The snow had tapered off, but the temperature was falling fast. Angelina drove home carefully, and she carried my things upstairs before I got into bed. Then the sleet set in, but thank God we made it home safely. 

Up next: Recovery round 2, and helping the mind adjust to a new visual world.