5 Minutes

After being put off for two days My Beloved was finally permitted to see his mother for a few minutes. Apparently she had not wanted him to know of her death until after the fact. We are honestly puzzled by this but since My Beloved is the family scapegoat we can only assume he is guilty of some misdeed of which he knows nothing. He was forbidden to speak while he was in the room and was sternly prohibited from touching her either. A few hours later she died but remarkably they didn't try to blame this on him. This morning we had to tell his 90 year old grandmother that she had out-lived her only child. "Oh me," she said.

13 hours

I feel a little like Dorothy in Oz. Tuesday, I was in the middle of the usual controlled chaos of another work day when there was a sudden and dramatic shift in priorities. By 9pm Tuesday the car had been to the shop, some urgent banking had been done. Cat-sitters had been arranged. Hotel reservations made, we crossed the state line into West Virginia on Highway 70. My Beloved's mother lays dying in Jonesboro. It was a fluke we found out about it at all as various family members had conspired to hide this fact from My Beloved. This is a family that seems to use day-time soap operas as their moral compass. We saw the dawn in Cairo where barges and their tugs emerged sleepy-headed from the foggy confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi as if from their bedcovers. Cairo is well on it's way to becoming an archeological site. Never have I seen a town so vacant and decayed. We crossed into Missouri and left the interstate at Hayti. From there to the Arkansas line the cotton harvest was complete and the rectangular bales sat like small trailers the color of new cement parked at the end of the fields. Tufts of cotton lined the shoulder of the road. For some reason across the St. Francis river in Arkansas the cotton is still in the fields. Early Wednesday morning we checked into the Holiday Inn which had granted special permission for Dogzilla to stay as a guest as long as he was more dog than zilla. He loves the Holiday Inn for the sole reason that it is not moving. I love the Holiday Inn because Dogzilla will finally stay off my lap. It's not so much that he minds car trips but he will not have anything to do with My Beloved's lap, the back seat, or any number of doggy-bed options. He is attached to me as if with suction cups increasing the pull of gravity over my lap in the way only an anxious animal or child can do. So here is Jonesboro a featureless but thriving town. Thriving like mold in a closed refrigerator with the power off. We are waiting for the five minutes My Beloved has been granted to say goodbye to his mother. In a little while we'll have lunch with his grandmother, her mother, who is ignorant of her daughter's immanent demise by order of the family cabal.

Thanks

Last weekend I attended the inauguration of the State Medical Society’s new president. While I sat and listened to her thank and acknowledge all the people who had helped her in her career I started to imagine what my speech would sound like if I were standing up there in my 70’s being inaugurated. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I needn’t wait that long to thank people. It’s funny the ways in which people influence you without you realizing it. For example my grandmother was one of the hardest working people I’ve ever known. I believe I owe to her the fact that I derive such satisfaction from hard work. It was she who gave me my conviction that hard work is more easily done with a smile on one’s face than with a frown. I thought I was born with it, but I got it from her. Mercifully my mom didn’t form my personality too much. She did give me my love of reading, my ability to break down overwhelming problems into manageable bits, and a knack for weighing the pros and cons in difficult decisions. She also taught me the very useful skill of memorization. Memorization was not a common didactic technique when I was in school but mom taught me how to memorize my catechism and it has served me well; the memorizing, not the catechism. I believe I get my empathy for the weak and vulnerable and my sense of outrage at injustice from my dad. He was forever bringing home injured animals and continues giving too much of himself to people he feels have greater need than himself. Sometimes I wish they’d raised me to be heartless and money grubbing. Oh well.

Bring on the Goodies

It hit me the other day while I was waiting in line at the grocery store and I saw the Halloween candy: it’s time for the annual food onslaught to begin. First it’s individually wrapped chocolate bars. Then it’s pumpkin flavored cookies, cakes and pies. Soon after that the holiday collections of salted nuts will begin to arrive. As Christmas bears down on us the homemade baked goods and commercial gift baskets will start to appear. The homemade stuff is my favorite, especially the Italian pastries. I feel a little guilty for liking the stuff but I do. After Christmas it still doesn’t let up. New Year’s is ushered in with stuffed cabbage, nut rolls and kielbasa. The chocolate doesn’t let up until the end of February.

House of Delicates

This past weekend My Beloved and I took a little road trip to Hershey for the Pennsylvania Medical Society House of Delegates. My Beloved enjoyed long soaks in the tub, cable TV, and a home-repair free weekend. It was a nice drive since the leaves are turning and this time of year the Turnpike is relatively construction free. The House of Delegates is kind of fun. The doctors willing to put time into this kind of thing are generally very idealistic and optimistic people if benightedly Republican. Before the meeting they mail each delegate this H-UGE packet of reports and resolutions to read. When we arrive we are given a gigantic three-ring binder to put it in. Such a binder I have never seen before. It has handles on it so when you close it you can carry it around like a briefcase. Every morning you start at 7 AM if not earlier by meeting with your caucus. In this closed door session you decide as a group what you will support and why and who will go to which meeting to argue for it. I suppose this is what the Junior UN is like. On the second day we approved a change to the by-laws and instantaneously went from Davis Rules of Order to Sturgis Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure. This caused some distress because nobody knew what archaic verbiage to use. There were very few women in attendance. The only upside to this is that there was never a line for any of the bathrooms. It also appears that my haircut is the standard middle aged female physician hairstyle. There will be more about my adventures in parliamentary procedure shortly.

The Garden in Fall

1968

On this date in 1968 students gathered in Mexico City to demonstrate for greater freedom. 500 were killed by police.