Stagnancy

I wrote more when I had children tumbling all around me- laughing and crying and messing things up. When I could not possibly concentrate. More than now, sitting alone at the computer, the only noise the hum of the machine I am typing on. This makes no sense to me. There is something missing that I must recapture.

Driving down 5th street yesterday, I saw 3 boys on skateboards. The skaters don't look much different than they used to: caps turned backward, Vans, sinewy arms in tshirts. As one of them hopped the curb I felt like I could feel their live teenaged energy. I wanted to reach my finger out and stick my finger in that socket and get a jolt of it.

Because although I feel happy, I also feel stagnant. I need to move. I feel old.

Easy to think about things, but not as easy to do them.

One reason I work in medical: seeing someone pull back from the brink of death is priceless.

Seeing a patient come in for a checkup gripping the pill box I gave her at the last visit, seeing the lettering worn off the little flip-doors because she has been using it and it's working and her viral load is way down and she is smiling. She feels better.

And I feel better.

We take for granted our ability to keep ourselves relatively stable and healthy. Some folks need a little extra help.

Oatmeal

Oatmeal is a good food. It is warm and soothing in the belly. I am sitting in the kitchen floor with a bowl of the maple and brown sugar kind, feeding it to my grandson. He has the cabinet open. The mixing bowls have been pulled out and he is nesting and un-nesting them. After each rotation of movements, he turns toward me and opens his mouth so that I may spoon in another bite. He is busily content with the monotony of this moment, as am I. He is a beautful child. Eyes that seem to be staying hazel and golden hair which is smooth in the morning, but as the day goes on springs into tiny curls. Some days I cannot stop staring at him, at his preciousness and his relationship to me.

Now he has found the skillets, three stacked together, and the process continues. Stack. Bite. Unstack. Bite. Then the bowl is empty and the spell is broken. He stands up and totters over to his favorite window, the one he can see out of in the kitchen. He shrieks greetings to the tree and the birds. He knows this place, this house his mother never lived in.