I don’t think the bird is aghast. Me either, walking on the beach. There is so much to see.
What is this cloud bank behind the ship? And the ships are so big close up and so small on the water. Gast and ghast are both words, but don’t mean the opposite of aghast. The opposite is unfrightened, unfazed, relaxed.
The water is never what I would call warm, yet surfers and divers and swimmers are out there, with their extra skins.
I went to the post office Monday. I am in a rental house, and get packages every so often for the previous renter. This time I realized at the post office that one was misdelivered and was to the house next door. Ooops. But the post office said they would redeliver it.
I love snail mail letters. I have colored pens and stickers and stamps. The whole thing makes my inner child very happy. Once I got a letter from my mother-in-law saying that my letters are national treasures! I kept that letter.
I haven’t written myself a letter, but maybe I should. What would I write?
I sent the envelope above out, but it came back. I will be driving home soon and wrote to a friend on the way, but I must have the wrong address. I bought the stamps here. The stamp pads were expensive, though, so I only got two!
This is not as static as it looks in the still photograph. Not at all! This is a happening rock!
There were ten in the bed and the little one said “Roll over! Roll over!”
So they all rolled over and one fell out
There were eight in the bed and the little one said, “Roll over, roll over!”
So they all rolled over and some fell out,
There were three on the rock and the big one said, “Roll over, roll over!” So they all rolled over and one fell out.
There were two on the rock and the big one said, “The tide is coming in, and we are going to swim.”
These were taken in May of 2023 from Marrowstone Island and the order is reversed. As the tide goes out the island appears and the seals start hopping out to rest, digest and enjoy the sun.
Careful, careful! That seaweed can be slick as snot and hiding a squelching tide pool. Not so deep that you fall in, but you may fall down and ouch! The rocks and barnacles are not soft.
Think of the things the thumb and fingers have built
Hunt and home and hearth and healing and hearts
The eyes to look, the brain to decide, down the body tilts
This is the stone I choose to pick up, and toss, or collecting starts.
Honey is in her second year working. She escapes clinic because she has a labor patient. In the daytime! Not on a weekend or at 2 am! Hooray!
She has to hang out, because this is baby number five, so it could come really really fast. Everything is cool. The mom has more experience than she does, nearly. Well, Honey has done more deliveries, but has only had one baby.
Honey starts to feel itchy. Agitated. It’s not skin at all. Something is bugging her. She goes in and out of the room. The nurse seems totally unperturbed, but Honey feels like ants are attacking her, from the inside. She goes out the room and studies the rhythm strip, the baby’s heartbeat. There is a printer feeding out in the central nurses station.
Screw it, thinks Honey. I make look stupid, but I don’t care. She calls the obstetrician. It’s the woman who is on. Honey is a Family Medicine physician. They are in rival clinics. “Hi,” says Honey, identifying herself, “I need a consult on this woman.” She reels off the medical details, Gravida 5, Para 4, all vaginal deliveries, no complications. “I just feel like there is something wrong. There isn’t anything really bad on the strip. But I need you to come.”
The woman obstetrician comes. She sits and studies the heartbeat strip. Honey still feels like ants are biting from inside. The OB puts the strip down. “There is nothing on this that would get you in trouble. But you’re right: something is wrong. Come on.”
Honey has not told the patient that she’s calling the obstetrician. The patient might be annoyed. They go in the room. The obstetrician introduces herself. “Dr. B called me to consult. We have a bad feeling. We want to do a cesarean section.” Honey is sure the patient will say no. She is wrong.
“Me too,” says the patient. “Do it.”
They do the paperwork and move quickly to the operating room. Not a crash cesarean, not an emergency, so spinal anesthesia, not general. Honey assists.
They are in. There it is. The umbilical cord is wrapped four times around the infant’s neck. It has not tightened down. Honey has goosebumps as they gently unwrap the cord and do the delivery. The baby is fine, no problems, apgars of 9 and 9. They complete the surgery, mom is doing fine too. Honey still feels rattled but the ants have gone away.
The mother is relieved when she wakes, glad they did it, glad to hold her fifth child. The obstetrician is in charge of post operative and Honey is managing the baby. They don’t really talk about it, everyone acts as if it’s all routine. If the cord had tightened down, everything still could have been ok, but it would be a crash cesarean section, general anesthesia, more risky for everyone. It could also have not been ok.
Honey is relieved to go home, adrenaline draining away and leaving her very very tired.
Honey decides that she will listen to those ants, that feeling, any time it shows up.
______________________
Based on a true story, at least, on memories, that are unreliable. Aren’t they?
The naughtiest postcard I ever sent was to my friend B, when he was living the romantic life of a government tax economist in New Zealand. He had been working for the US government, but went off to work for New Zealand’s government for two years. I felt rather jealous. Uprooting as a physician with a husband and two children to go work in a foreign country seemed a bit insurmountable. There was an awful lot of difficult family drama and illness going on, so that is the real reason that I did not do it.
Anyhow, naughty postcards. I sent B a postcard from Georgetown. It is black and white, a man lying prone looking up. A sheep is standing over him, so that no naughty bits can be seen, but one certainly suspects that the man is nude. He and the sheep are looking at each other. The caption is “No more sheepless nights.” Eeeeee. I bought two of that one, because it made me laugh.
B sent a letter back, along the lines of, “Cut it out, you are getting me in trouble with the postman.” I desisted. I did not have any more postcards like that one.
I have bought and kept blank cards and postcards over the years. Good thing, too, now that cards are a whopping $4.00 to $7.00 each. People must buy them, right? I have picked up blanks at garage sales too, once in a while. And the ones I don’t like can go out in the Little Free Library for other people.
I plan to make a calendar and maybe some postcards of Elwha’s cat art. He did it more than Sol Duc does. The photograph is one of the designs, from February 2023. I did see both of them adding to it. Perhaps there was some sibling rivalry going on, I don’t know. This installation is quite complex, with two toy mice, the earbuds, one of those glittery balls tucked under a mouse and the toy made of pipe cleaners.
It is time to visit. It has been long enough and it is time.
He is in a dungeon. I have to go down flight after flight of stairs. It gets colder and damper and there is mold growing on the walls and puddles. Light comes with me.
I can hear him one flight above finding him. He’s having a tantrum and hitting something.
I find the door in the dungeon. It is thick and moldy damp wood with bars in the window and a huge lock. It is also open. My friend is screaming at the ceiling and hitting the ceiling and walls with a yard long heavy pipe. It clangs and I feel a tremor when he hits metal. There is no window, we are too far underground.
I lean on the doorway. “If you go deeper in to the earth, it will be warm and dry.”
He turns with the pipe held like a bat. He is huge and muscular and dressed in rags and very threatening. The room is mostly dark. He sheds a faint light. He glares at me and then lowers the pipe. He shrinks to his child self, like me. About age three.
“You are awfully cute at three.” I say.
He drops the pipe and lets me come hug him. The cell smells truly awful. There is a drain in the floor that appears to be working, sort of. There is a visible liquid level below the drain.
He is still while I hug him and then relaxes. “Ok,” he says. Silence for a minute. “I didn’t really think you’d come back.”
“Friends forever, right? That’s what you said.”
“Yeah, but,” he hesitates. “You were mad.”
My turn to shrug. “Yes. I got over it.”
“Took you long enough.”
My eyebrows go up. “You could have made the first move.” Now he shrugs.
“How about a picnic?” I say. “This is icky. Let’s get out of here.”
He looks at the ceiling. The stone is scratched and chipped. “Yeah. No progress here. Might as well.”
We leave the cell and go up. “Damn stairs.” I say.
“Your lungs are good.” he says.
“Most people’s lungs are pretty good at three.” I say.
“You are pretty cute at three too.”
“Thanks.” I get tired of the stairs and transport us to a meadow in my garden. It is summer and full of wildflowers. It is on a sloped hill with an enormous willow tree. “This is from when I was 7, really.” I say.
“Nice.” he says.
I have a picnic basket and get food out. We don’t really need to eat but it’s fun anyhow. We can taste food, a bit. His keeps turning black on his plate.
“Cut that out.”
A shrug again. “I like bugs now.”
“Did you at three?”
“Naw, but I ate them if I was hungry. Ants are not good. Grasshoppers are better.”
“Are you making any progress at all?”
He leans back on the hill, about as relaxed as he gets. Still hyper alert to everything around us. “No, and I don’t think I will. He’s 69 now. Getting older.”
“Well, he’s expecting to die of a stroke at 80.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty much too late. There is too much to process. And wine and pot do not help.”
“Using more?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s talk about something more fun. Politics or taxes or something.”
He laughs.
We talk about cabbages and kings. Why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. The sun moves like the real sun.
He is starting to fidget.
“Time?” I say.
“Yeah. You know, it’s not fair that they need us even if they won’t listen.”
“Seems like it.”
He glances at me and away. “Yours listens.”
“You’ve seen the results of that.”
He looks down. “Is she happy?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes sad, sometimes lonely, sometimes impatient. You know, all of it.”
He nods. We start packing up and we trek back to the dungeon and the endless stairs. We have gone down two flights when the landscape shifts. A forest, dark and huge trees and overcast. Damp and cool. He is morphing. “Oh!” he says, “Asleep again! And it’s 4 pm. Must be tv. And wine.” There is a small clearing in sight with a shack. It looks run down, no vehicles. My friend has morphed and split. He is a huge bear with red eyes. And an older man who smells of alcohol and reaches into his shirt for a handgun.
“Really?” I say to the man with the gun.
“They are his memories,” growls the bear. “I have to go.”
“Well, the bear isn’t. Goodbye and good luck.” I say, patting a furry leg. “I will come back.” But he is not paying attention any more, he is focused on the shack.
I go home and he goes to try again. Wake up, my friend, wake up.
“Are you free?” Dispatch always sounds so disinterested.
“Yes, I’m free.” I try not to sound annoyed. I am too good at my job. I’ve given up on dating. This frees me up for the Agency.
“Room two.”
Room two has a woman who looks frozen. I introduce myself, a stranger, her previous person left.
“Are you sleeping?”
“No. Well, I fall asleep but then I wake up. Nightmares and my heart beats so fast. Then I can’t go back to sleep.”
“Did something happen?”
Her face tightens all over. She wants to tell me but not let the emotions out. “A scam!” Now the dam is cracking and falling apart. The story comes out bit by bit. “They opened an account in my name! Took out a loan! I am so scared. And ashamed. We could lose the house.” Not many tears. She won’t let them.
“Ok, I think this is a PTSD reaction. The not sleeping is really common. Can you talk to your husband?”
“I’ve snapped at him! We never fight! Forty two years!”
The monsters are visible now. Clinging to her, but some are coming to cling to me. Fear, shame, grief, anxiety, fatigue. They aren’t really that big, because she has been a careful person, a wise person. But this has cracked her open because she never expected it.
“Have you contacted the authorities?” We talk about what she has done, the practical bits. She has already made wise moves. It’s the feelings that are upsetting her.
We pick something for sleep, a low dose, not one of the newer addictive ones. An antidepressant that will hopefully make her sleepy. Close follow up is even more important, to be sure that she is starting to comfort the monsters. Many of the monsters are crying for her. I think they will be ok.
She is more comfortable before she leaves. She brought the feelings out and I was not horrified and I did not shame her. They weren’t so bad after all, when she brought them out in the light of day. It’s when they are fighting to be felt and heard that they feel so dark and dangerous and frightening.
I leave the room. She will be back in a week, sooner if she needs to. One of her monsters smiles at me tremulously as it clings to her. I smile back and nod. I think they will be ok.
Yesterday on our early morning walk, Sol Duc rushed up a driveway, all fierce hunter, and attacked the pile beside a garage. Not our garage. I wondered if it was a mouse? Nope. She lost interest once she’d flushed the prey. The tailless prey was quite relieved.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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