Mike Pond brought us these babies, picked fresh this morning. I've been hearing about his tomatoes for a few years now, so I'm looking forward to tasting them. I think I'll order toast for breakfast and put a little cheese and tomato on it. With a cup of coffee that will be delicious and will taste a little bit like home. Much needed and much appreciated. Thank you, Mike!
We've been languishing a bit from the cafeteria food. It's not that it's bad--it's actually decent fare--but it's so different than the food we normally eat, heavier and very meaty and featuring lots of sauce. Also, mealtimes sort of tumble over each other, so that by 5:30 p.m. we've eaten (or at least been served) three huge plates of food. The effect of this over time is to feel constantly full. You may be thinking, How about a salad? How about some veggies? Yeah. Well, I do my best, but any salad bar loses its luster after 27 lunches and dinners, and I try to eat the boiled vegetable medley, I really do, but it's hard for me. Every once in a while the universe (or the cafeteria staff) throws us a bone, like yesterday, when at lunch they served a squash and string bean medley that was tasty and put me in mind of squash from my garden over a bed of pasta with butter and salt and pepper. I think that that will be my first meal upon returning home. And last week they served spaghetti squash one day--equally delicious.
Anyway: the tomatoes from Mike Pond = Glorious.
Today is a big day at Shriners. There will be 12 surgeries. I haven't seen it this busy here in a while. All the docs are here in their scrubs, and there are more nurses than usual. You can tell that the doctors love surgery days. They are wide awake and springy, whereas on clinic days they remind me of how my colleagues and I look on student-conference days. I'm drawn to the energy out there today. I feel like hanging out at the nurses' station and talking about the patients and the procedures--you know, talking shop--but this isn't my shop, and ain't no one telling me about patients and procedures. I think maybe I miss work. I know! Isn't that weird?? But it's the beginning of the school year, and I'm so removed from it all. Ordinarily I'd be finalizing my syllabi and going to meetings, thinking during the meetings about all the work I still have to do to my syllabi, and I'd be lamenting the end of summer and marveling over how quickly it's passed. Instead, I'm counting days until Vivian's surgery--seven--and until we can go home--probably twelve--and feeling like August has been eternal, like I've never spent a longer month.
My hope is that when I'm in the thick of the semester, still exhausted and disoriented from my experience here and worrying more than usual about Vivian, I will remember that time is 99% perception and 1% pink slime, and I will shift the way I look at it all.
And another thing: I hope I remember what is and is not important. What's important is life and health and love and connection (emotional, intellectual, physical, and maybe a couple of other kinds). What's less important is everything else, some of which is actually unimportant. I'm afraid about Vivian's surgery. I can't remember what I've written and what I haven't, so I may be repeating myself here. When Alex and I talked with Mike Pond a couple of weeks ago about what to expect after the surgery, he urged us not to worry overmuch and, really, not to place our worry and Vivian's spinal rod at the center of our lives. "Don't become crazy," he said. "Some people go crazy." Got it. Check. I asked him what he worries about. He said, "I worry about the surgery." He worries about the surgery because in a way it's the most important thing--it's life, right? and it's health, and as a matter of fact it's also love and connection. Provided Vivian's surgery goes well, all the other stuff will work itself out. If Vivian's surgery doesn't go well, everything falls apart. This is why I'm scared. Also, I hate to provoke the universe by expecting things to go well.
Some of my friends are big on putting intentions out there and watching everything fall into place, or they trust in God or something like God to do what she/he/it will. I see the appeal of these practices, but I'm just not wired for them. So basically I hope, and when I find myself fretting I will myself to think about what is instead of what may never be. Right now, my fingers are on a keyboard, and a woman is cleaning the bathroom and whistling and humming, and I am annoyed by that because I'm trying to write, and I hear a lawnmower outside and the ventilation system inside, and my right foot is falling asleep.
In between the paragraph about fear and the paragraph about faith, I ate one of those tomatoes. It was the real thing, the kind of tomato that reminds you that it's a fruit. Hey! a guiding metaphor for this day. And I ingested it, with salt and pepper and a little cheese.
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