Tuesday

It's very nice to be in a crowd of sympathetic souls. I know you, friends of Ocean, will understand that there isn't much time (any time?) for writing this week.

The morning breakfast, usually a leisurely affair, is indifferently tossed indoors, hurriedly disposed of at the kitchen table. The cereal tastes terribly micorwaved and the fruit seem old news. Brown around the edges.

Ed has had a better night (even as I still stayed mostly awake, too caught up in the anxiety of the entire messy week-end), but I don't dare hope we're completely done with health worries. Ask me tomorrow, when we will have had two solid days of calm.


Later, in my office, I think -- tired. I am tired. Yes, Ed may  have been ill, but I am the one who is just barely keeping on my feet today. Like the guy I see outside my office window, out there on Bascom Hill...






Late afternoon. I finish teaching, I dash to complete and check off errand number one, number two, number three. Then home. I pull into the dirt driveway and I take a stroll around my flower beds. Surely there's an old Polish proverb that'll tell me - when you're tired, direct your gaze toward the flowers...






And, too, toward the tomatoes. Ed has picked a batch in the hours I was away (yes, he's up and moving!) and now I'm caught in the routine of sorting, washing, freezing, admiring them.





Of course, I want things to be just smooth as peaches again --  for us to return to the pre-worry routines where we were like kids, moving from work to play to work to play. It's as if I've already forgotten that only a short while ago, I would have given a lot to continue, even with imperfections, just so long as we could, in fact, continue and not be undone by events of catastrophic proportions.


I cook up cauliflower, eggplant, tomatoes -- with a fried egg on top. (Ed makes do with chicken noodle soup... no curds yet!) The quintessential comfort foods. Yesterday was like this, today is like that, so let's eat and let the world settle down again.

I see that they're warning of a frost possibility tonight. Don't get stuck in summer thoughts. We've moved on to the next stage. Like it or not, we're in a new place now.