Tag: homefront

Spin Cycle

laundry piling out of the washing machine. what a drag.

Laundry.

Admit it. You had a reaction when you saw that word. While thoughts of laundry could conjure the sweet smell of clean and the warmth of a towel pulled out of the dryer, that’s not the conjure that hits me first.

When I started doing laundry as a Young Doc, it was about moving piles to the basement in the dorm, waiting for the machines and returning at the end of the cycle to see someone had pulled your clothes out and put theirs in. Grrrrr.

Absconding with the community car, a few of us discovered the wonders of the laundry assembly line, the laundromat. We’d hit it up Sunday morning, slightly hungover, filling up three or four washers at a time. To save coin, we’d combine the wash into two dryer cycles. The big dryers were more expensive per cycle, but not per load. Completely done in two hours.

Fast forward to daily laundry. Doing one load every day kept the piles at bay. Mondays towels. Tuesdays jeans and tees. Wednesdays whites. Thursdays perma-press. Fridays sheets. Saturdays whatever’s left. Daily meant that while you were never done, the piles didn’t grow. Family laundry tamed. I think I only stuck to it a few months. Although, it could have been a few years since there was so much laundry that needed to be done for so long and memories get muddled like that.

Next phase was roll your own. The every-man-for-himself model spread the burden family wide. The Boys had uniforms for school and sports. There were specific soccer socks, then baseball socks, then football socks, that needed timely cleaning. Mixing with household laundry slowed things down. Happy to say I had no blame for a game-day fail. Sometimes they wore dirty jerseys. So be it.

All last week I was searching for three tees. They were long-sleeved and I needed them for our unseasonable weather snap. I couldn’t find them in the drawer. I looked on top of the dresser, nope. I went in the hamper with the folded clothes that never make it to the drawers. Not there. I put the folded clothes in the drawer. I looked in the other hamper with the clean clothes that I didn’t fold. While I was there I folded some of the bigger items. Did find those wool socks. No tees, though.

As I sorted clothes for washing today, I found the tees. How could they be dirty?  I hadn’t worn them in like six weeks. Going through my clothing pile, I’m thinking maybe I haven’t done my laundry for a while. Like a long while. I’ve done household laundry, but haven’t touched my hamper. Oopsie. I’m now thinking I need to cut the laundry lament.

Laundry and it’s process could be a metaphor for cycles in life, for picking yourself up, for cleansing, for mindfulness, for handling with care, for studies in timing, for sorting things out.

I’m not feeling any depth in the lessons of laundry, today. As I walk up and down the stairs, reading labels to catch the line-dries, all I can think of is spin, lather rinse and repeat. Not much there but the task.

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Handle with Care

Holding hands. It's very nice.

She looked at her hands. They were holding each other, restless in her lap. Her long fingers on her right hand tried to comfort the fingers on her left. Her signature well-groomed nails were now some long and some short. Her cuticles were encroaching. She needed a cotton ball and some remover to clean up the chipped polish. She hadn’t for a while, so there was fairly little left to remove.

Her right hand and her left hand rolled around themselves in her lap. She was unsettled–to look at the ring or to look away? She turned her left hand so she could see the stone. The diamond was much bigger than she should have. It was long and tapered at the ends–a fancy marquise cut diamond. It was slightly yellow but with so many surfaces it could always catch and reflect light. She wanted light to reflect on her. The reflections in her head were not light.

She was tired, she thought, but that wasn’t it. Yes, she was tired, but it was like she was a little stupider than she was before. Maybe not stupider, but certainly very much less sharp. She couldn’t hold onto thoughts that could become a plan. She needed a way forward. The only thoughts she could hold were the thoughts that she wanted to lose. She held the thoughts about the press of debt from medical bills and the services–and the income void. But she didn’t think of the void as nothing. She thought about her youngest. How to make prom happen? She needed a plan. She needed her partner.

Yes, her crazy enterprising partner of decades. The one for whom everything was possible. The one who led their roller coaster adventure. The one who would figure out how to take care of things–sometimes three or four things at a time–while she used her smarts and her heart to home school the babies. The one who had infinite energy and who made the most outrageous asks and would not hear “No.” The one who shared her strong faith. The one without life insurance.

* * * *

She looked at her hands. She held them under the faucet. The warm water rinsed off the soil and the soap. She looked at her cuticles and saw that there was still some dirt. There was dirt under the nails on the last three fingers of her left hand. She picked up the vegetable brush to dislodge the lurking loam.

He wouldn’t like her washing off the gardening in the kitchen sink. Even though strawberries and rhubarb and bibb lettuce and even carrots pulled from that ground would be washed in that same sink. He had a lot of rules for her to follow. He stopped her from painting the dining room because he didn’t have time to select the right shade of blue-gray. He didn’t like the one with too much green undertone and the other seemed too purple. He didn’t make time. He just stopped her.

She scrubbed the fingers on her left hand and stopped at her empty ring finger. She left the ring in a box in her dresser upstairs. Looking at the ring made her sad. Looking at where the ring was made her sad.

She was worried about her baby-girl’s choices for school. He was supposed to pay, but based on his rules. He wouldn’t say what his rules were. They seemed to shift, at least to her and the baby-girl. He said he was being clear. He didn’t have time to explain. He knew he was supposed to pay. It was part of the agreement. He wouldn’t actually agree to the agreement, though. It was all like the paint.

* * * *

She looked at her hands. There was a burn on the back of her hand where she brushed the top rack in the oven when she was shaking the roasted cauliflower. If she was smarter, she would have removed the top rack before she started. If she was smarter, she would have pulled the bottom rack out before tending the cruciferous veg. Maybe it wasn’t smart she needed. Maybe she should be less lazy.

Her hands were full of scars from sloppy cooking and scars from lazy cooking. The nail on her left index finger had a nick from a misplaced knife blade. Two knuckles on that hand had burns on the way to being healed.

She sat down at the table. She adjusted her ring that was always sliding around her finger. She righted the stone and put her hand on the table.  He put his hand on hers. They said grace.

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ESCAPE!!

So for today, all I can do at this point is say, my dog ran away twice.

The second time was in a sleeting squall. I chased him up and down the side of the train. The nice man who called found me at the metro police where we aren’t allowed and gave me back the collar that he found in his hand when The Beast wrested away. Very nice man, by the way. He had nothing to be sorry about. He is my hero.

I took the collar with a pathetically perfunctory thanks–he deserved gushes of praise–and pulled my hood over my rain splattered glasses so I could walk into the wind to the train and maybe spy him.

I was screaming The Beast’s name in as cheery a way as I could. I bet it was bad. But I sprinkled the word “cookie” every second or third word in case a familiar sound would make it through the gale.

I found him on the bridge over the train–where I expected him. He was in the street, though. Not my expectation. I chased him from one side of the overpass to the other, cooing treats. I really had none, but he wasn’t listening anyway. Per expectations.

Cars were stopping and cautiously going around. He came toward me and I was able to grab the generous folds of his hound dog neck. He’s so lean, I’m grateful for his necklace.

He was tired from his chase with the train. I think that he ran one up, one down and another up. Could have been more. Actually, likely was more.

I’m standing in the middle of the road trying to get his collar on. I have only one hand to do it, since the other is full of neck. I spy a chicken bone on the street, next to the jersey wall that protects pedestrians but is currently serving the role of blocking us from the sidewalk and forcing us into oncoming traffic.

I pick up the chicken bone with my free-ish hand, the one with the collar I can’t quite get over his nose. I pause for less than a blink and offer the bone. He takes it and I collar him. I pray he doesn’t choke on a splinter, but it was all I had.

Miraculously, as in a gift from heaven, nobody is honking. Everybody stops or drives slowly as we stagger our way back across the lanes of traffic. I have my right  wrist inside of the loop of his martingale collar and my left hand outside the loop holding for dear life. Or maybe fear life. I realize the rain is still pelting us, and we go back to our illegal parking spot.

The Beast doesn’t hesitate when I lift the hatch. He jumps in. We drive along the hateful tracks. I don’t know why he hates the train but I know I hate that he hates it. I call the Nice Man and tell him we’re safe. I babble my gratitude. I hope he forgives us.

I park in front of the house and leave The Beast in the car. Taking no chances, I grab his training collar and his leash. I get in the backseat to clip it on. Wasn’t opening the hatch until I knew he was under lock.

He didn’t bolt. He looked toward the train tracks and shook his head. Maybe he was trying to get out of the collar. Maybe he was just shaking off the sleet. He doesn’t like the wet cold. We went in the house, and I gave him a cookie.

We’re drying off now. I’m beyond even wanting a whiskey.

So that’s my excuse for not writing a real post today. I’m just being contemporaneous. And done.

Posted on by docthink 1

Eau de Toilette

Mint tea. And a sprig of mint.

So before, when I was having chemo, some days–some days at a time, to be honest–I would feel like I had to throw up. They call it a “side-effect.”

Now, let me be super clear. Feeling like you are going to puke, even for hours, even for days, is much better than being dead. So, my statement above is just conveying a fact. I am NOT complaining. [Please note if there are any cancer gods reading this, I am super grateful. This is not a post about tweaking you all. You did great by me!]

So that clarified, feeling like the contents of your stomach will soon be leaving via an overpass from your mouth is not great. It stops you from eating. It stops you from talking. It encourages you to roll up in as little a ball as you can, and to sit very, very quietly because you believe that if you move it would cause the volcano inside you to erupt.

There’s a difference between feeling like you have to barf when you’re hungover, for example, and feeling like you have to barf because of chemo. If you’re hungover and you let it go, you almost always feel better. Nausea gone. Eat a hotdog and drink a fountain coke and be on with your day. With chemo-induced queasiness, there is no such relief. You just feel like crap. Always. Seriously, so much better to have had too much whiskey last night. And for those of you keeping score at home, I can’t tell you how this compares to pregnancy-induced nausea. I feel quite blessed by that ignorance, thank you very much.

So here I am, curled up like my own little Poké Ball, giving a whole new meaning to Squirtle. Someone gifted me a handfull of a fluffy white bear. Let me tell you, new fluffy stuffed animals are amazing and surprisingly comforting. Anyway, holding that bear close, next to my chest,  under my chin and not moving a single muscle seemed to help keep the upchuck at bay.

I couldn’t drink it, but the smell of peppermint tea improved my stomach roils by orders of magnitude. I soon recognized that making tea that I couldn’t drink was less effective than just holding the peppermint tea bag directly in my nostrils. That was crazy effective. Summing up, if I didn’t move a muscle, held the fluffy stuffed bear under my chin and breathed in the tea bag, I was fine. I could fall asleep, which despite the chemo-exhaustion was blocked by feeling wretched or that I might just retch.

I could reuse that teabag for a few pre-snoozing sessions, but I manhandled my way through the box of Twinings Peppermint Tea. Gah!

“Doc,” said the boys, “you need anything?” Normally, there wasn’t much that they could do, but today, but today! I had a mission.

Almost before I could say, “Can you go up to the drugstore and get me some peppermint tea bags?” they were off.

I sat waiting with my legs tucked underneath me, perched on the arm of the couch. The dog-beast assumed his nurse’s position just on top of my feet. I was vewy vewy still, keeping the bear pressed to my breastbone awaiting their return.

They had gone to the drugstore to find no peppermint tea. Undaunted, they braved the late December cold five more blocks to the organic market. Surely there would be peppermint tea in the hippie-haven. They found many organic options including loose tea by the scoop. Pushing on, they rifled through boxes and boxes of rosehips, camomile, zingers–red and yellow, sleepytime, berry, ginger latte, revive, pomegranate pizazz, I<3Lemon, grateful heart, peach tranquility and citrus lavender sage herbal tea. There might have been more. There were more.

The voila! moment came when they ferreted the Candy Cane. It wasn’t pure mint, but, it seemed to them close to mission fulfilling.

They brought the tea home in a bag and with the story of their explore. When they took the plastic wrap off the box and handed me a fresh bag, I can tell you honestly that nothing ever before was that effective in quelling my quease. I propped the bag under my nose, squeezed the bear and sniffed deeply.

What nice boys. What a fluffy bear. What a scent. What a relief.

I had been told to not eat my favorite foods during chemotherapy. The association of those foods with nausea ruins a good relationship. I skipped some of my comfort foods so that they could comfort me into the future. Fortunately dark chocolate with hazelnuts was not spoiled. And, fortunately, I can still enjoy peppermint tea. Like I did tonight when it delivered this memory via it’s perfumed aroma.

 

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Monkey Shines

Trees at the subway. Washington DC

The boy dropped his dad’s hand at the top of the escalator. He was barely a boy, really, more like just-past baby. It was the end of the day and the rush hour throng was thinning. They, the boy and his dad, had just walked the half-mile from school.

School was what they called where he spent his day. The curriculum was directed by the kids. It included many games that they made up, some reading of stories, much playing outside and eating. The boy liked the eating. He liked the other parts, but he liked the eating.

They would cut through the subway on the way home, coming down the escalator on the west side, walking underneath the tracks and out the other side up the escalator. The boy liked to run through the in between tunnel with his dad.

It was early spring so the shadows were long. The boy wore his green zip up fleece. It wasn’t a bright green, more like a pine green. The cap that he wore over his titian hair was a contrasting blue. This blue was between light blue and aqua blue. More blue than green and more bright and vibrant than light. His cap was also fleecy, but baseball style. It sat on his head with the bill a bit to the left, not centered over his nose.

His nose had the mark of a run-in with a tree. A few days before, he was running–he ran a lot–and forgot to look where he was going. A tree reminded him of where he was. You could still see where the tree stopped him, but the wound was covered with a brown scab on his otherwise smooth, porcelain skin.

He took off down the sidewalk. He ran past the double metal fence that created an unnecessary walkway that only kids used. He didn’t use it today. He ran around it. He didn’t see that the cherry trees lining the walkway were starting to bud. He buzzed past the low evergreen shrubs. They weren’t low to him, though. He couldn’t see above them. Maybe that’s why he missed the cherries behind them.

He ran toward the street, but there was no worry that he would run out into it. He was going to his tree. His dad lengthened his step and reached the tree just as the boy was climbing one of the low branches. The old tree trunk was almost split, so the boy didn’t have to struggle to find his place in it’s arms. This was an apple tree–maybe crabapple–so it was behind the cherry trees in blooming. He perched himself in the tree, about four and a half feet above the ground.

“Daddy, I’m Hans the monkey. And this is my Hans tree.”

Nobody knew where the name Hans came from. There were no monkeys named Hans in his books or in his songs or in his movies. None of his friends or relatives had the name Hans. But there he was, Hans the Monkey, nesting in the tree.

He was close to face level with his dad, as his dad sidled up under the tree and placed his face near his. They shared some nonsense and then his dad started to walk up the rise to the street.

“Come on, Hans.”

The little monkey scampered down the tree and grabbed his dad’s hand. They walked the rest of the way home.

Nobody ever asked who Hans was. That would break the spell.

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Puzzled Solution

Pile of old crosswords in the Sunday Magazine appropriately piled in the recycling basket.

Got a confirmation query. We were going to get lunch, but hadn’t zeroed in where.

FRiend: I know I said that cool new place, but I couldn’t find it. I can’t find the review of the restaurant I was looking at and I don’t remember the name.  Where do YOU want to go tomorrow?

ME: Did you really look?? Was it in the Post? Give me a clue.

FR: I went to the pile of stuff where I tossed the Magazine.  Yeah, online.  Duh.  It was in the Magazine week before last.  Local organic stuff.  Touchy feely in all the right ways

ME: The Magazine? I bet it’s over here. Spouse prolly has it since he hates to throw away the Magazine after he has completed the puzzle.

Yes, The Spouse completes the Sunday crossword puzzle at some point in the future that is not Sunday. He leaves the completed artifact laying around. He’s like some proud Tom Cat strewing small animal carcasses around like trophies. But it’s the strew that should go in the newspaper recycling bin.

If this was a cartoon–and it’s close, cuz that’s the Doc’s life–you would now see a light bulb pop over my head.

The Spouse had just triumphantly completed a puzzle not 20 minutes before.

I knew this to be true because he chortled. Really, a weird sound. Chortling. And he slapped down his pencil like a basketball dunk.

He never uses pens when he does his hallowed puzzle. He can barely conceal his exasperation with my nonchalant use of a pen. Okay, truth? He doesn’t hide that he finds my use of an ink pen in a crossword puzzle positively philistine. Also, I don’t care.

ME: Got it. If it was The Dabney. It’s not open for lunch.

FR: Yeah, that was it.  OK, where to Magellan?

Down
28.  See 36 Across.

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Wedded Abyss

FLOTUS and POTUS looking fly.

I hear that The Spouse and I look amazingly happy on Facebook. One friend asked me, “How could two people be so ‘lovey-dovey’?”

And I’m all like, “So you think I’m gonna to post pictures of us fighting?”

That would be the most vainglorious of selfies. Imagine me: eyes bulging, spit flying from angry lips, hair akimbo’d by angry electrical pulses emitting from my head? And The Spouse with a sneer, egging on my insane wrath with an infuriating indifference.

Yeah, let me just whip out the camera for that one.

Seriously, that day I yelled The Spouse out of the house? I’m running barefoot down the porch steps after the jeep, hurling profanity as it drives away leaving me standing in the middle of the street with no target for my denigration but plenty of fuel to continue the tirade.

Nope. No camera for that one either. And, let me tell you, if someone else filmed it, I sure as hell would not post it, tag us and type #LOL with a smiley emoji.

So, I can’t tell you if two people can have a sustained level of the “lovey-dovies.”
You never know what actually goes on between two people. We’ve had friends who shocked us all when they announced their divorce. Contrast that with me and The Spouse whose friends have likely been waiting on our announcement–all bets off for decades now.

Makes me think about the fetishized relationship between Michelle and Barack Obama. People project their ideals of a “good marriage” on the first couple. They’re so in love. They have a great relationship. They have such a great time together. Blah. Blah. Blah.

I expect that sometimes they disagree and may even find the other disagreeable. I bet that more than once someone has been accused by the other of being inconsiderate or even selfish. I would not be surprised if there’s an occasional few hours, or even few days, when iciness surrounds home and hearth, when two people are in the same room and are not together. Somebody may harbor uncharitable thoughts. Someone may even voice them.

Does that make the relationship a bad one? A good one? I don’t know, but it sounds like a real one.

I don’t want a marriage like the Obamas’–or anyone else’s. I have enough trouble with the one I have. The one that’s mine. That’s ours. That’ll do.

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Too Much Blues

A huge pile of like nine pairs of jeans.

When I was fat, I had too many pairs of jeans.

Not like I had three different sizes in my drawer. I didn’t have the typical menu of fat jeans, jeans jeans and skinny jeans. Wherein the fat jeans were the ones you actually wore, and the jeans jeans are the ones you wore before you got stuck in the fat size and aspire to wear that day after a fast which will be the beginning of getting control over your eating, and the skinny jeans which are totally ridiculous and way past the point of aspirational to the point of downright laughable.

I only had the fat jeans. Just too many of them.

How many jeans can a Doc wear? First, you can only wear one pair at a time. Second, there isn’t much diversity in the style; it’s like five pocket or five pocket. Third, the color variation consisted of blue, blue-black, black-blue and black. And, fourth, if you were lazy and let them all get dirty, you’d end up washing two very large loads of denim and drying them all day.

As I was defatting myself, I didn’t buy interim jeans. This translated, over a period of many months, to pants that began to slip down and were held by my hips, then drooping past my hips until I had to keep hiking them up as they literally fell off my ass.

I got to delay buying jeans over the summer since I don’t wear jeans during swamp season. So, in the fall at the confluence of clothing absurdity and reducing to my goal, I went to Target and bought a cheap pair of new bootcut jeans. They were blue. I know, right?

They were fine, but I wanted a pair of Levis. I bought an olive green pair. About that same time, I loaded up bags of bigger sized clothes, including a shitton of jeans and put the bags on the porch for the nice driver to take to the thrift store.

My dressers and closet were amazingly unstuffed. I wondered why I had so many pairs of jeans (and elastic waist pants and granny panties and t-shirts). Enough!

I bought stuff because it was on sale, because it was a “new season,” because there was a color I didn’t have, because I like that label, because I’m bored and shopping. And because I’ve been programmed to buy via a bombardment of ads featuring skinny models in high heels and a good weave.

I’m over it. I did buy a 3rd pair of jeans to fit in my boots. And that’s it. The new rule is one in and one out. No more retail therapy. Instead I’ll take a walk. To the brewpub.

Beer is my shopping methadone. Hmmmm. Might need to rethink that.

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Tour de DC

Man and Horse sculpture at FTC

Met a friend and her delightfully punky son at the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery last weekend. There was beer. There was space for a crazed toddler with a full nappy to terrorize tourists. There was amazing art. Not all at the same time, though, but parts were concurrent.

After our parley, I gave her a hug and the sweet imp a kiss and exited the museum. I strolled past the Spy Museum even though it was drizzling. My hair didn’t care and it wasn’t too cold. I walked past the Shake Shack to my jalopy, which was expertly parked across the street from that cement monstrosity also known as F.B.I. headquarters.

I foolishly did a u-turn  (“Srsly, Doc! Have you no shame?” you ask. “Right in front of the heat?”) so I could circle the block to Pennsylvania Avenue. I drove away from the White House–that’s about six blocks in the other direction.

Instead I went left and passed the Department of Justice and the Archives. My whip  wheeled past originals of our nation’s founding documents like the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. They are just there.

Next on the right is the Federal Trade Commission. I have no idea what they do, but they have an amazing stone statue of a beefy guy trying to tame an even beefier horse. I love this sculpture.

I drive by the Canadian embassy guarded by Mounties on the left and on my right is the National Gallery of Art. The West wing has those beautiful Monets as well as the bronze cast and canvas ballerinas of Degas. Crossing 4th St, I pass the East Wing  of the Gallery where they hang the red and black triangles balanced on the Calder mobile.

Where Pennsylvania Ave merges with Constitution, I see the sometimes infamous U.S. District Court. It’s infamous when there are are dozens of reporters with their satellite sticks jutting in the air like a field of unwelcome windmills in Nantucket Sound.

If I look straight ahead, which really is the right thing to do since I’m driving, I see The Capitol. I’m grateful that it sits at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue because I get to drive and walk by it all the time–even now as it’s covered in scaffolding. It makes me feel so patriotic, so American. Like somehow I’m a founding father. It’s one of the best sites in our beautiful city.

On this trip as I jogged left onto Louisiana Avenue, I see three round blue orbs. The helmets on top of Capitol Police motorcycle cops. All three bikes have sidecars, too. I never see passengers in the police sidecars. Never. There are, however, covers on them. I imagine that they have an arsenal, like Detective Billy Rosewood from Beverly Hills Cop, underneath those hoods. The three follow Louisana Ave to North Cap Street, then they peel off towards the trains at Union Station.

I went up a a few streets then made a right on H Street, behind the station. I took the arched bridge across the tracks. At the end of the bridge is this crazy set of accidents waiting to happen where the new trolley will cross into traffic. The street cars aren’t starting up until next week. No street cars; no accidents; so no traffic jam. Not today.

I made a left at Sixth Street, NE. This is the corner for the new Whole Foods.

I’m on my way to Union Market to stop at the bread guy for tonite’s dinner and at DC Fishwife for tomorrow’s.

As I head up Brentwood Road to home, I can see the blue dome and spire of the Shrine. The same Basilica that Justice Scalia was laid to rest the day before and that we walked to for Easter Mass that time Baby Bear was two and his pants fell down around his ankles as he was walking to the pew. He was likely singing, too.

Welcome to my town. This Sunday drive was all of twenty minutes (including the 5 minutes in the market). Yup. This is where I live.

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Recursive Storm

bunches of beautiful green spearming

You look across the blue cloudless sky. There’s a bit of heaviness in the air, as you’d expect for this time of year.

It’s a pretty blue, both deep and true sky. There’s just a whisper of a breeze. Not a relief from the heavy, but as you’d expect.

Something feels a little off. The hair on your arms becomes attentive. Maybe there’s a murmur of an echo of that broken ankle or a low drone in your right ear.

You shake it off but empty the overfull ashtray on the porch. You don’t put the ashtray back on the table in the middle of the porch.  You put it on the shelf next to the house. You grab the rake and walk it back to the garage, picking up a few empty flower pots on the way. You stack them just inside the garage and put the rake up.

As you walk up the back porch steps, you realize that nobody picked up after that last party. There are beer caps on the table and an empty box that has a deflated bag of ice. Ice gone for months. You put the cover back on the Weber. You moved a chair and see an old crumpled napkin skip across the deck. Looks like the breeze is picking up and the color of the sky is getting deeper. You pull the red and white awning striped umbrella in the house.

Occasional big fat drops bomb the sidewalk and burst on the metal roof. It’s windy now and the sky darkens behind you. You run upstairs and pull the windows shut. Your fingers make sure the latches catch.

You step onto the front porch to welcome the monster storm and as the rain pounds you are sprayed. Flashes of light and crackles of thunder give way to sideways gale and the popcorn of hail.

You see the sky get that sickening color and close the door behind you. Crouch down in a safe place and listen as the freight train tears by above you. As you crawl out, you don’t know what to expect. You peep out to assess the damage. You pause. You’re okay. It’s a mess, but you’re okay. You begin to clean up and move along. It’s over except for the healing, and you beat that storm.

The weatherman tells you that the further you get from the disaster, the less likely it is to recur. It’s been two years, he said. Five is the magic number. See you in six months.

And this is where my analogy breaks down. It doesn’t totally work.

You are disquieted at the reminder that the danger is both random and maybe even brewing.  After you leave, you find yourself scanning the sky again for the portent. You will carefully search the sky for the next few days and then, hopefully, right a few picture frames and plant some mint.

Posted on by docthink 1