Whatever Gets You Through the Night

Another patient today, an older African-American woman named Ella walked in the room. She looked frail; thin hair and face. Told me, as if picking up a conversation we'd never had,

"They can't tell you when it's time. Only God knows that."

Taking the power she doesn't have away from the doctor and putting it on Jesus.

Receiving comfort in that. And, for her, and in that moment for me, too, I said I full-heartedly agreed.

Stillness of Esme

lying between us in bed, in as deep a darkness as this

communality with street lights allows.

This is the profile of a girl calmed after a bad dream

Long neck.

Golden (her word), hair swooped aristocratically over a high forehead.

Tiny nose, delicate and
maybe--eyes still open? 

Her breathing has slowed from its earlier panicked pace.

Is she thinking and not sleeping?

That's when I realize,
grateful it's her, not him:  

This is the difference between girls and boys.

(I generalize here for the sake of sleep).

Simon could never lie so still even at 4:45 in the morning.

Deeply sleepy comes out in him as

Hilarious, if only to him.

Sideways smile slips out a happy “No,” tone tilting upwards at the end of the word

to show he means it but it’s not personal. 

Instead of sleep he would offer us his great corporeality, roiling waves of legs

swinging down up CRASH on the bed

Heavy head seesawing its turn to do the same.

Ouch! Everyone says, eventually.

Even him, at the backdoor of tears, as it gets 

way too late to be up so long, Love.

But Esme.

Her inner life as strong as his legs.

Esme’s silence, her Esmeness

maddening during the day when questions go unacknowledged

a not quite guileless look up, surprised, What?

is the what which allows this quiet form, this elegance to lie between us in our bed.

Now in the deep dark early morning I remember:

She has her own world we don’t know about
the one we hoped she would create.

I fail first, fall asleep.

She touches me reassuringly on the leg

as I drift off.  

"Thumbnail" is the new "nutshell."

Health, Life, and Equality

Perhaps one day there will be a stem-cell treatment that can double one’s life expectancy by slowing the aging process, making a centenarian as spry as a quinquagenarian. But if such a serum benefits only the few who can afford it, our national life expectancy will hardly budge — it’s an average, after all. In 19th-century Sweden, the figure was dragged down by infant mortality. Today in the United States, it grows slowly because of the premature deaths of the less fortunate. Thanks to this vast inequality, even a high-tech fountain of youth would hardly move the needle.

“Look at the countries with the highest average life expectancy,” says Denney, referring to places like Japan, Australia, Canada and, yes, Sweden — nations that distribute their health resources more evenly. “Ultimately,” he says, “life expectancy is a measure of quality of life.”

By Maggie Koerth-Baker, science editor at BoingBoing.net and author of “Before the Lights Go Out,” on the future of energy production and consumption.

Published March 19, 2013 in the Magazine section of The New York Times.

The Seasons of the Bay Area As Noted By the Five Senses

Newcomers, naysayers: This is how we tell our quintuplets apart.  

Spring: Taste. Bitter flowers on children's tongues. Feta cheese (goat).

Summer: Touch. Cotton blend sweaters. Fog on faces, in lungs.

Bay Area Summer: Vision. Orange moon. Brown hills. Sutro Tower partially obscura.

Fall: Hearing. The leaves blow fiercer, and pause. The trees are in a hurry all of a sudden.

Winter: Smell. The bay, two miles inland. Rotting humos. 

One Second

Monday, September 23, 2013 7:34pm

I’m savoring the sweet summer air. Especially during either end, the tails of the day. Early early morning, and now, at twilight. In the middle of the night or la madrugada, sometimes I pause at a low open window, double over to put my face inches from the screen and inhale.  The moist coolness brings a relief that is not only physical, but as I dodge and worry about global warming, the relief is also mental, emotional. We still have coolness. I no longer take it for granted.

Musings

Cuddling with my six year old daughter last night, I’m both amazed and grateful that she still wants to. I imagine another mom, one who is happily ignorant of her own date of doom, wondering, “Will she still want to cuddle with me at 32?” I try and imagine it too, try and imagine me with her in bed as my grandma sometimes was. Me at 67. “Ha.” I gently re-align myself.