1. Goddess
2. My father’s surgery went well yesterday, grateful for all the doctors and nurses that took care of him. He was groggy, and somewhat disoriented, and thankfully stayed in the hospital overnight. We hope to have him home today. It will be a few days at least before we know if the surgery accomplished for him what was intended.
2. Waiting with my mother at the hospital during my father’s surgery. We would read and talk. She told me stories from her childhood, and described her mother’s conversation as frequently consisting of “quotes punctuated by ellipses.”
3. She talked about her occasional indulgences. “Life is not what you wish it to be. How about some raspberries?”
4. There was some moment when I thought with the two of us sitting together with our heavy tomes laughing, how ridiculous we may have looked to some people, but we were who we were in that moment.
5. Extended bird song
6. Doubt in the waking hours, helped by writing it down.
“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, ‘Oh, nothing.’ Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch