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Jun 20

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Rest

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. – John Lubbock

We must cultivate our own garden. – Voltaire

The wrinkles are winning.

A friend stopped by Wednesday to pick up something I’d forgotten to give her last week. I answered the door puffy-eyed, snotty-nosed, and gingerly touching my ever deepening crows feet.

Are you okay?

She’s one of those who remembers sooner than most that my life isn’t normal.

Sure, I said, just … June.

Oh, Junuary.

Each year you play Germany to my Poland, blitzkrieging your runny nose Luftwaffe, Panzer tank congestion, and goose step sneezes into my sinuses until I surrender with a weak Seig Heil and curl up on the couch with Benadryl and three boxes of Kleenex.

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Jun 4

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Brown Bear, Black Bear

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. – Winston Churchill

Frailty, thy name is cancer.

One moment, an oracle, another, a despot; it’s wedged its way in the crevice of each day – lurking, threatening to erupt if I give it too much attention.

Or too little.

Six months ago, I burst out of the oncologist’s office with an uncontainable laugh. I’d just found out the philadelphia (ie. leukemia) gene was at the lowest it had ever been. When David pointed this out to my doctor, he acknowledged with a smile that yes, you are doing very well, and several other words that I somehow understood to mean I was past the goal line and I was out of danger and this was as close to remission as CML gets.

I don’t know what I was thinking.

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