Ears at the Ready

I haven’t reported in for a while; I haven’t, in truth, had much of anything positive to report. I staggered into the hospital last Tuesday, coffeeless. Although my anesthetist had allowed that I could have a black coffee, none was available since my check-in time was six in the morning. Nothing in the hospital was open and we were in a motel next to the hospital with no coffee-making apparatus in the room. If I ever have to do something similar again, I am going to remember my thermos. The operation was, as they say, a success. I came out with four small holes and a drain, in good time. And minus the tumour and some lymph nodes. Then the fun started.

To recover from surgery that removes part of a lung, the patient is required to cough up the residue of the surgery remaining in the lung. This is, I am sure, more than you want to know. It is certainly more than I wanted to know, as I have a poor cough reflex. Accordingly, a large and muscular respiratory therapist pummelled, jerked and exhorted. It was a grim couple of days, especially since the hospital food service supplies tea and coffee on alternate days. Luckily for me, my ward mate hates coffee as much as I hate tea and so we were able to exchange cups, quietly.

I recovered quickly, as I do, and have been home for a week or so. What is a bummer is that I have been adjudged to be getting insufficient oxygen into my system and so I was sent home ‘on oxygen’. This means that there is a pump in the basement thumping away condensing the air that is supplied to me via a plastic hose and a nose-piece. You know how we tether dogs to a running leash so they can get around the yard? Well, Mary is on a leash. If I walk around the house, I trail tubing behind me for the family to trip on. If I leave home, I do so accompanied by a small pump that I can carry that hisses and thumps extra oxy into me. Next week we go back for the post-op assessment, and I am really, really hoping to be unleashed.

The tough bit is no cigarettes. I hope that no one reading this has an addiction and will therefore not understand that statement, will shake their head and think that no cigarettes is A Good Thing. Maybe. But it, like the coughing, is not fun. And unlike the coughing, it does not improve.

However, the snow has disappeared, all but a few lumps where the plow left it. And my YD is home for two whole weeks, has been here looking after her decrepit mom and cooking, laundering and amusing her parents. She is taking this opportunity to plan some renovations to her house before resuming living there; a new kitchen and a bathroom re-do, in fact. The choice of countertop materials is, as far as I can tell, endless. As I recall, when choosing finishes for our kitchen, I went to one location and held down the budget. The YD has a large budget and a lot of places to go and graphite to see. As well as graphing out where she wants the cupboards. All this has been most interesting, as those of you who have done renos will know.

The ED is also in renovation mode. In fact, their home is undergoing upgrades to all three of the bathrooms. In series, I am assured, so that there is one working shower and toilet somewhere in the house. All is not going smoothly, however. The construction crew has a truck with a trailer. Yesterday the ED and partner were informed that a film crew is in the neighbourhood and all on-street parking is banned for the next, I think, three weeks. This means that the ED will probably have to take their car to work and park, expensively. How partner will be able to get around I did not enquire.

I did get the chocolate bunnies purchased at Village Treats before I got tethered, so Easter is allowed to arrive. There is something about biting the ears off a chocolate bunny that is like no other treat.

Wind from the West

The weather changed a few days ago, on the last, leap day of February in fact. We had been having unseasonably warm temperatures for days and the clouds, as I watched them, were streaming from southeast to northwest. Then the wind, and with it the weather, changed overnight and on that Thursday was howling a bitter, vicious blow. The temperature dropped like a stone into the minus numbers. The sky cleared to a bright, pale blue. And walking into that wind brought tears to the eyes. “Blowing in the Wind,” said my weirdly echoing brain.

Bob Dylan’s lyrics are very apt today. “Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?”  I have heard those questions most of my adult life and I cannot answer any of them.

Our generation has not done well by future generations. I have been reading a book about the influence of the very aptly named Quiet Generation on culture, behaviour and beliefs. The thesis is that a small number of influencers led the way into the rebellious days of the Baby Boomers, the Vietnam War protesters, the so-called ‘Beat Generation’. Personally, I was not part of that. I was at home working part time and raising two children to school age. I paid little attention to what seemed to me an American problem, not ours. And I happily adopted any and all of the petroleum-based solutions to housekeeping chores that were then available. Plastic pants over the cloth diapers – excellent. Plastic sippy cups, Melamine plates, nylon snowsuits – all very useful.  Plastic wrap – a fine replacement for waxed paper and elastic bands. Smog was something that happened in London, England. Climate just was. It varied, but so what.

“Westron wynde when wyll thow blow. The smalle rayne downe can Rayne” is the medieval original of another popular song of the sixties. “Oh western wind …” It is the sad cry of someone far from family and familiarity, from safety.  Cryst yf my love were in my Armys And I yn my bed Agayne.  The words tie in my mind to a Mansfield poem that I think most of us learned in school.

“It’s a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds’ cries. …” the verses start and go on to describe the spring as 'merry'.  “The young corn is green, brother, where the rabbits run. It's blue sky, and white clouds, and warm rain and sun.”

 This year there may not be a merry spring. There may never be a merry spring again.

The warm and loving western wind may never blow again and a small rain hearten the crops. Instead we have unseasonable warmth, weather ‘events’, fire and flood.  The birds are not coming to our feeders as they used to do. Our native trees are not thriving. We are not thriving. In the words of the old Anglican prayer, ‘there is no health in us’.

 Perhaps if, instead of ‘flower power’ and all of that, we had put our minds to preserving our world, we might have avoided the worst that now will come. And to say, now, that I am sorry or that I was unaware is completely useless.  I am afraid that there are no answers, that too many people will die. When I look up, I see no blue in the sky.

 I have been writing and editing this post for almost a week now. It is one of the group I write with my granddaughter in mind as an audience. I started doing this when she was a baby blowing purple bubbles and now she is almost twenty-one, the age of majority everywhere. I am sorry for and unhappy about the world she will inherit and how she will find her way in it. But if I don’t post this now, I will lose the courage to do so.

 It is what it is. Sad.