The Patient Is Doing Well

Tuesday, 12/17/24

Separating the sheets of thawing phyllo dough was reminiscent of separating thin slats of shale but unlike shale, no fossils revealed themselves. Instead, the dough, thawing in the warmth of my hands, softened as long as I kept it damp, succumbing to gravity. I layered the phyllo dough into a ceramic dish, two strips lengthwise and one strip, folded in half, widthwise. Slather with butter. Next, a conglomerate layer of gritty, crushed walnuts mixed with cinnamon. Onward and upward this pattern of crust and pebbles, creating a stratigraphy of dessert that I later covered with a molten mixture of liquid sugar, water, honey, vanilla, and a hint of lemon. Be patient and each bite will taste like deep time.

Wednesday, 12/18/24

The world.

Every time lately when I sit down to write, this phrase is the first thing that comes to mind. I was beginning to think that it had something to do with muscle memory; however, another day it was flowers.

Years and years ago, when I tried to think about nothing, the first thing that came to mind was cats. Now it’s always cats when I try to think about nothing.

Because of a nightmare I had a long time ago, cracking egg shells, tomatoes, motor oil, and the desert have all been connected. 

Trauma creates quick interstates between opposing things. Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” and sexual assault. A comforting TV show and incredible illness. We are often a bit perturbed when happy-go-lucky songs are paired with horrific scenes in movies. Bridges are being built in our minds constantly.

Thursday, 12/19/24

It comes to me as if I am cresting a hill to the view of it. It comes like a storm cloud and I have to catch it with a net before it gets away. But sometimes, unlike a cloud, it settles like some warm thing, a lightning bug landing on my chest, its underside pulsing with light. And sometimes it washes over me—it’s so warm—like a dark water or water in the dark and it is quiet and I am awash in it, afloat in it. Tell me that something bad is about to happen and I am somehow still okay. Pinch me hard and instead of saying that I’m in pain, I say that I’m experiencing pain and move on with my floating. What is that called, that moment, that interlude of calmness? And why does it not stay? Why does it raise its wings like a laughing crow, threatening to take flight? Why does it burn holes through my net? How does its chitinous wings spread so flawlessly to take flight to glow elsewhere? Why can’t I keep it in this battered butter container with holes punched into the lid? Why does its smell still remain in there, damn ghost.

Friday, 12/20/24

My cell phone chimes as I sit in the hospital atrium, watching snow fall:

The patient is doing well.

At 2:07 pm, a wash of calm comes over me as if a gentle watercolorist, heavy on the water, scored me with a wide brush. The pigment would be a yellow-gray. As I sit near a window in the hospital’s atrium, I sit with facts that are hard and clunky in my brain. My husband has been ill for almost seven months. No amount of embraces, jokes, or distraction smooths the hard edges of facts. I want the facts to curve in on themselves like an orb shell. I want a soft flesh to inhabit the inside of it. I want for it to move steadily forward despite currents or obstacles. I want to hold it in my hand and protect it but instead I must root for it like one might root for a newly hatched sea turtle trying to reach the ocean in a documentary on TV. My desperate hands leave marks all over the screen of this.

I busy myself with writing, reading, and exchanging glances at strangers in the atrium as Brian undergoes his second hours-long surgery. Outside the window, the world is every shade of Pennsylvania Gray and snow has been falling for hours without accumulation, as if just for me, considering that I have precious cargo to take home tonight on the precarious interstate, in the dark with the trucks, salt spray, and deer.

The patient wife is doing well.

Saturday, 12/21/24

Winter Solstice.

The northern hemisphere of our blue marble tilts the farthest away from the sun like a loved one resisting a kiss. The sun therefore positions itself at the Tropic of Capricorn, slightly below the equator belt.

This day is romanced by many groups of people and with groups of people come rituals. This day has beautiful names like Saturnalia (named after the god of agriculture), Yalda (when light overcomes the darkness), and Soyal (when descends protective spirits). Most are aware of Yule, the days between the first day of winter and the first day of the new year. These days are celebrated with various hyggye-like rituals like meditation, burning a yule log, contributing to an altar, and going on a mindful saunter in the woods. Some stay awake all night to greet the sun. Candles and other aromatics are burned. A Yule tree may be decorated. It’s all very beautiful.

I did nothing of the kind today. I went to the gym. I went grocery shopping alone as Brian healed at home, still groggy from anesthesia. I got myself an iced coffee. I put the groceries in the wagon and walked it down our snowy sidewalk where I slipped, fell, and hurt my wrist. The wagon toppled over and most things spilled from their bags. A jar of pepperoncini magically opened, releasing all the brine. I cried for a moment more from fear of injury than from pain, but my wrist did hurt. After figuring that no bones were broken, I gathered everything back into the wagon, the smell of pepperoncini everywhere. I wheeled everything to the porch. Brian greeted me at the threshold, my arms carefully and painfully loaded with groceries, and I tearfully told him what happened.

I didn’t spill my coffee, though! I laughed through tears.

Sunday, 12/22/24

I just don’t get excited about things the way you do, Sarah.

Someone said that to me nine years ago after I asked them why they weren’t excited about something. It stung but it also flipped a light switch in my brain. Am I childish? Has something in me not matured? Is it embarrassing for people to be excited? Are people really just going about their lives not allowing themselves to be overcome with wonderful feelings? Over the past several years, when I’m excited about an upcoming holiday or vacation or what-have-you, I’ll ask Bran are you excited? and usually his response is something like not yet but I’ll get there and I’d deflate. I have a long history of deflating because other peoples’ feelings didn’t match mine. It’s a lonely course to follow and I’ve been wondering why I’ve been more anxious or chilly the past few years, especially around holidays. It’s because I’m tampering down my excitement. Now it’s getting to a point where I don’t know which is worse. Tampering it down or the disappointment of being joyous by myself

I think I’ll choose joy and hope that it’s contagious.

Monday, 12/23/24

Ancient hominin Lucy was a lousy runner, simulations show

Same, Lucy, same I thought to myself before the word lousy donned on me. Lucy, poor woman, has been poked, prodded, and simulated to determine a headline that includes the word lousy. Is this headline representative of Lucy as a woman or Lucy as her kin? Is Lucy synecdoche for her kind? And how dare we humans—the first to insult the unique physique of our feet by wearing shoes—insult Lucy or her kin? As a ground-dwelling, shade-loving species, how easy it is for us to say how apropos that Lucy died by falling from a tree.