But Why??? in Everyday Ramblings

It is overcast and misty now and we are expecting rain for about three more days. I predict by the beginning of next week we will see our first daffodils unfurl. Yesterday was also overcast but dry and Charity and I walked through the downtown area in the late morning and back. Considering that it is winter in the middle of a pandemic the sidewalks require a judgment call on each block.

Does it look or feel safe? We basically agreed on most blocks, although I was a little more familiar with some than she is after all my years walking to class. It was a bit of a crazy zig zag pattern but much less effortful in terms of up and down compared to some of the walks we had been doing lately.

I told her that this pandemic stuff was getting a little old, when she asked how I was doing. We talked about many other things, not about the restrictions, or mask design, or lockdown protocols or the mess that is our vaccine distribution system. But they were all there behind the scenes hovering in our thoughts as we avoided drug markets and unhoused encampments.

This morning I had my annual melanoma check at the specialty clinic of our cancer center. This is high end medical care; I don’t think I waited more than 5 minutes. I had my double masks on. My new doctor is amazing, I adore her. I met her last year. She is a professor of medicine and there was a medical student and a resident and sometimes an LPN in the room. A big room with a view.

They were kind and funny and engaged and interested and this is a full body check, they look at everything so that means they touched me. They also zapped my forehead in four places with liquid nitrogen.

Everything is good, I got the all clear for reoccurrence. Not that I was worried, but it was reassuring.

(I just finished listening to Tana French’s The Searcher in audiobook format and I am resisting the urge to write in an Irish accent.)

When I got home on this gray dull day my mood took a serious nosedive.

I was like… why???

Do you think it might have had something to do with just being in a room with three (sometimes four) caring people in proper gear for the first time in months and months?

This is hard folks, what we are going through is challenging and there is so much uncertainty and anxiety and longing and…

I think we all need to try a little tenderness.

As if I might have been telegraphing this…maybe an hour after I got home the doorbell rang twice and on the floor in front of my door (after I managed to get a mask on) was a dark chocolate bar with a yellow post-it note attached that says in big blue letters…

“Helps Reduce the Blues”

Oh yeah.

Last updated February 05, 2021