Something is happening all around me Something unpleasant is creeping around I trust that feeling, that core that is free I go quiet and listen, I will stand my ground I am told no problem, this is routine Nothing to worry about, averting their eyes Lay down and be walked on, take it for the team Blind-sided, I walk through a jungle of lies. I walk very slowly then take to the trees. I swing on a vine past the river of tears. Wave to the gators with teeth to eat me, Routine bad treatment not surprising nor feared. In the treetops I sing to the stars quite alone I am happy and making my quiet way home.
Suddenly I am thinking about home. Travel does that sometimes.
I call a friend yesterday and sing, “Happy Day Before Your Birthday to You”. It sounds silly. She has just gotten Covid and this cheers her up.
She is telling me about her summer and about a class at a camp. Some for adults and some for children, but one where people really dropped their masks and just got to be themselves.
What identity is your deepest self? She is talking about her nine year old self. I think mine is more like four and rebellious and skeptical of adults, adulthood and all of their rules. I don’t think I am ever out of touch with this identity, though I don’t let it talk out loud in clinic. Mostly. A rebellious four year old informed by medical school and years of experience is a pretty frightening thought, isn’t it? Or the basis for a great cartoon.
That part of me is very observant and quite smart. It does not care what we are supposed to see or the cues people give. Growing up in an alcohol household, it looks for what people do not say. This can be terribly helpful in clinic and also a bit weird. It is body language and tone of voice and what questions a person shies away from answering and the puzzle pieces that do not fit.
Last week I see a small child with her parents for vomiting and coughing and fever. I am interviewing the child and asking if things hurt. “Do your ears hurt?” I ask. She shakes her head no. I point to my throat next and she nods. Yes, that part hurts. Her toes do not. I include toes or something silly to find out if the child is saying yes to all of it. I tell the parents that we will do a strep test, that mostly people don’t cough with strep except when they do. The strep is positive. My medical assistant grumbles, “They didn’t tell me that,” but I think the parents were more worried about the vomiting and she may not have complained about her throat.
Are the masks we wear always bad? I don’t think so. I think it is frustrating if we believe our mask or never ever get to drop it. There is some formality to my role in clinic and I tend to get more formal when I am worried about someone. That has been interpreted as anger or brusqueness, but it isn’t. I am wearing a real mask with all patients because we are seeing at least one person with Covid every week. The literal mask does not help me connect with people, but sometimes I can anyhow. I have to take it off for the 90 year olds because most of them are hard of hearing and lip reading helps.
No, Elwha has not been found. I have lots of photographs. He was a funny cat. Ate too much and then tried to trade toys for food when I decreased what I fed him. He loved boxes and he loved tummy rubs. He seemed to think about food, tummy rubs and sleep, mostly. He would like to catch birds. He was not sedentary but was expert level at relaxing.
Sometimes clinic feels a bit like Sisyphus must feel. Rolling the stone of illness up the hill but it is eternally rolling back down. I can’t stop it. People age and people die and otherwise there would be no room for young ones.
The last two weeks of clinic has worn me out a bit. A friend says that I take too much of it home, worrying about people. How to let go of this?
I make connections in clinic. Not all the time. Sometimes I fail. I made a connection with more than one person with diabetes this week, but one was funny. The connection is that he mentioned that he is an elk hunter. Oh, and flies to California to fish and has a very lot of fish. I said that I’ve had elk and like it. That was when the connection engaged: he was very pleased that I am not horrified by hunting. Hunting elk is not at all easy or cheap and cleaning the animal and carrying it out, well. He is coming back about his diabetes and left cheerful.
If I go home trailing those connections and spend my time worrying about this people, I’ll wear out. I don’t want pneumonia number five. So how do I connect but let it go when I go home?
I will think of the connection as much smaller than the boulder that Sisyphus deals will. Not a boulder. A small piece of the rock. I can suggest how the person can lighten the load a little. Then I must stand aside and let them go. They have to decide what to do about their health. It is between them and the Beloved, they can try what I say or not.
Now it is not a boulder that I am trying to keep from rolling down a mountain. Each person has their own mountain to climb in their life, their own habits and histories, good or bad, trailing them like Marley’s Ghost in A Christmas Carol. I can suggest a tool to loosen a link of diabetes, or a slightly different trail up the mountain. Then it is up to them. I can’t carry them and should not carry them. Maybe they are approaching a patch of scree and I can suggest an easier or safer path. And then stand aside, stand down, let the people go.
Now I am not pushing a huge rock. I am standing on my own mountain, quiet, and looking at the path behind. I am resting a little and on my own path. I don’t know what will be around the next bend in the path. But I love the mountain and the forests and the birds and the ocean. All of it.
A friend and I travel to Hawaii in March 2018. The lava in the caldera had dropped on the volcano and the road around it was closed because of the gases. The changing eruption happened over the next few months. We found a place to wait for nightfall to take photographs. It is way more dramatic in the night, isn’t it? We could see fire rising up in the day too, but at night the smoke is lit up as well by the lava below. A scene on fire, beautiful and terrifying.
The smoke from forest fires has dissipated in Grand Junction. I stayed mostly inside for a few days, which is not hard on work days. The clothes I wear are backwards from the ones I wear on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. There I have a windbreaker and layers for outside and I think my heat pump has had the air conditioning on once ever. Here I need the warmer clothes for the air conditioned inside. I get cold at work by lunch time and go outside to warm up! Very strange.
Traveling from Washington to Colorado, Elwha did not like the car and the unfamiliar places. I took the cat carrier apart in the hotel room and he decided that it was safer inside it than out, even if it was in pieces. Sol Duc did not enjoy the car but is less worried about it all.
And here is Sol Duc in a virtual cage, a shadow cage. She likes the back yard a lot. I have had the house closed up because of the smoke for the last two days, but there is less today.
Do you know the poem by Ogden Nash, The Tale of Custard the Dragon? The chorus is as follows:
Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears, And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs, Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage, But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.
I love that poem! And I love the lines:
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda, For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.
Ogden Nash was perfectly happy to bend words to fit the rhyming scheme and to heck with spelling!
I still have not heard about Elwha. I hope that he has moved in with an older couple and spends most of his time on their laps. I can see him crying for a nice safe cage.
I thought there must be a song of it, but so far I like this tenth grade rap version best!
Yesterday I hiked Echo Canyon in the Colorado National Monument. The first part is a shared hike, with the Devil’s Kitchen Trail, No Thoroughfare Canyon Trail and Old Gordon Trail. Old Gordon and Echo split off and then they split.
I did not start hiking until ten yesterday and it was already heating up. Echo Canyon is partly shady, once I am in the canyon. The rocks are gorgeous and there is a plethora of stripes. How beautiful!
At the head of the canyon and all through it, you can see where water carves. It would be amazing to see this waterfall, but since there are flood bits in the tops of trees, it is probably way too dangerous.
There is a pool at the base now and there was a small stream above ground in part of the canyon and a swampy bit.
The photograph is from one of my hikes in Palisade in the last few weeks. The rocks are gorgeous.
The title is from an old joke.
I climbed at the gym again yesterday after work. I really like the immediacy of the walls. I do not like the auto-belays. The ones at this gym let you down pretty quickly. I climbed up one wall and then down. I tried the easiest boulder route for the second time and made it! I am a bit stiff this morning but not too bad.
I am a slacker on Tuesday’s Ragtag Daily Prompt! Not really, it’s just that that is my back to work day and I am getting ready in the morning and I think, “I will do it later.” Last night I cooked a pork tenderloin with peaches, kale and green beans, but then afterwards I fell asleep by 7:30. I guess Tuesday particularly tires me out. I met the new doctor yesterday and I had two patients who took nearly an hour each.
I found another farm stand this weekend and bought tons of vegetables and some fruit. I am still trying to do half vegetables at each meal. It takes time. I bought more pattypan squash to roast, it turns sweet and delicious. Quick, while the summer squash is available!
I also took four books to the library and took out eight more. I switched cookbooks because I did not like the one I had. This one looks much better. And a smattering of nonfiction, science fiction and fiction and silly romances or fantasy romance for when my brain is tired. I avoid the horror aisle, there’s enough of that in the news.
A friend and I did a hike in Palisade this morning. It goes up, up and then there is a loop at the top. This is the fabulous view from the top, towards the west, with the Colorado River and the rest of Grand Junction.
On the loop we look for these:
Petroglyphs! And the bottom one really looks like an elk. Most looked like deer.
This is the canyon on our right on the way down, but I would bet that there is a wash at the base. These amazing mesas and rocks are carved by water and time.
And here is the mesa across from us to the north, from the top again.
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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