Category Archives: WP Daily Post

profuse gratitude

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gratitude - williamarthurwardI have resisted my impulse to combine several days’ worth of one-word WP Daily Prompts into a single post, opting instead to focus my profuse gratitude for an ER physician into this single post.

Dr. Singh is an Emergency Room physician in a hospital south of Boston. It happened that my youngest had been having a remarkably rough sequence of events following an innocent cat bite…

Well, revise that: if you know about cat bites, you know they are anything but innocent. The string of unfortunate events is a shaggy dog story of its own. What brought her to the ER was the result of treatment, and plenty scary. Here, I want to focus on the extreme professionalism, compassion, and cut-to-the-chase sensitivity of this particular physician. He observed the late hour – the distraught parents – the millennial putting on her brave face – the boyfriend with overnight bag in tow – the month-long medical record of interventions and their impact – and, avoiding platitudes, unnecessary overviews or demeaning talking-down, simply addressed us as the concerned and aware people we are.

In turn, I was feeling especially vulnerable on his behalf. Although this was Boston, well-known for its cultural diversity, tolerance and inclusion – all my growing-up years I knew Boston as the ‘melting pot of the nation’ – it was also the first-year anniversary of this country’s most divisive, uninclusive, intolerant period in our modern history. All I could think, as I watched and listened to this soft-spoken man with extreme expertise and learning, as he looked at each of us with searching dark brown eyes between his black turban and thick black beard, was how grateful I was for him. It was only later I realized how grateful I was on his behalf that he is in Boston; and simultaneously, how outraged I felt at the daily confrontations with uncertainty and bias he must face as he goes about his work. After 30 years of dedicated medical practice and doubtless thousands of well-treated patients, he deserves better.

I want to acknowledge his presence at my daughter’s bedside the other evening; and thank him for giving us information, confidence and a caring experience that I will never forget.

soil

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WordPress Daily Prompt for July 18, 2017:

I spent much of the last two days with my hands in dirt. This is the kind of thing  only someone with obsessive tendencies, extreme motivation, or who is retired, would undertake. Yesterday it was pulling weeds – read grass, dandelions, and other assorted volunteers – which persist in populating the loose-stone-covered parking pull-out. Today it was multiple seasons’ worth of snow-plowed stone from the drive, layered and hiding in deep pockets in the ragged grass.

Now, this is a simple summer place. I have no opinion about the merits of grass in the rocks where I park my car, per se. But I AM highly motivated to prevent another mouse infestation in any part of the car whatever. [We’ll need to wait for a relevant WP Prompt to hear this tale.] And our ‘lawn’ is neither manicured nor fully grass. However, I do take umbrage at the shift of stone from drive to yard, on principle.

So yesterday was spent in the incredibly tedious task of pulling up small and large clumps of grass, one at a finger-pinched time, to ensure that all roots were fully removed. Masses of them covering just about every parkable inch of space available to my car. Today, it was the even more tedious task of liberating stone – ultimately, two wheelbarrow loads – from the grassy depths where it had piled and gathered over too many years. Each summer the vague notion of reuniting this errant collection of stone with its foundational partners has occurred to me. THIS year I acted upon it. Continue reading →

temporary

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credit – oikos blog

There is much in life that is temporary, despite our human desire to make it permanent. Think fleeting experiences like achievement, satiation, joy. Of course, the flip side is that grief, depression, anger are likewise temporary. Sometimes however the temporary can feel awfully permanent in spite of ourselves:

Sometimes it’s hard to awaken from a deep, deep rest,
the dense and soggy layers of sleep cocooning me
between pillow and quilt, oblivious to the sounds of day

and urgencies of pet eager for food, companion, relief.
Those heavy layers can pull me back, suck from me the energy to rise
willing me back to slumber, await the lightening of each layer peeled

by need and demand from my covered eyes
that will push me into the new day
open promises lining the way.

swb

none

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Joanna

I love it – yesterday’s Daily Prompt Challenge word was NONE. For one obvious thing, my writing output yesterday was … NONE. For another, NONE could summarize my presence here during the month of April. That’s about where it ends. For NONE could NOT summarize my activity over the past several weeks since my last post, ‘An Ordinary Day.’

I know I have a pass of the most compassionate kind. April was the month that ended with the interment of my sister’s ashes and the formal memorial service that celebrated her life. Which therefore means, the month that led up to those events filled with details and lots of communication back and forth among us four major planners.

None would have been more delighted than my sister herself at the results of all those weeks. It was a bursting-with-warmth-and-blossoms spring day. The entire extended family was in attendance – including grandchildren, grand-nieces and -nephews, and even the newest puppy among us. She would especially have loved that.

And none would be loved the choices of readings, music, food and pictures more. None would more have appreciated the convergence of classmates from high school, neighbors from our childhood, caretaker and clergy from her far-distant most recent three years. Above all, none will ever forget her.

an ordinary day

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Thanks to the Daily Challenge for the invitation to share this writing:

AN ORDINARY DAY

For ten days I lived the learning curve
of diabetes, partnering with my beloved son
to help his through maternal leave,
given the grace of time to relish
each extraordinary moment.

The first hour’s sing-song babbling
lifts from crib to giggled hugs and undercover
hide-and-seek en route to the day’s first blood glucose test
followed by calculations of insulin and carbs,
breakfast planned to even out
the hours to come.

This child, so gentle and joyful of spirit
accepts each poked finger and prodded thigh
with grace, a lesson I cannot fail to notice sets
the warp of our day through which we weave
our patterned way, each hour
a new adventure.

From Grandma’s blocks we build
to hold what he loved at the aquarium –
octopus by the elevator climbing glass walls,
his giant purple sac blowing up bigger then smaller
carefully reconstructed through his two-year
old imprint, giant tank within winding
ramp, sea lions sunning beyond.

He recalls with pride how he placed his hand
in the pool where flat rays swam shallow circles
requiring him to dip, lean and shriek with surprise
when the flappy gray surface floated beneath
outstretched fingers, feeling like velvet
fleet and brief, tickling his hand
again and again.

We chant the trains that took us there —
‘one train, two train, three train, blue train’
and back – ‘one train, two train, red train, bed train’
to test, insulin, lunch and rest. Later, we’ll
relive the adventure with Brio trains,
tunnels and bridges arcing us
back to the present.

Past supper the day’s reduced
to favorite books, moonlight and song
stories lingering among the family
of bears lining his crib, a round
of Dona Nobis Pacem circling
him in love’s embrace.

How the layers unfold like
an origami crane in flight; then settle
back to nest, each hour building bridges
between love and need, grace wrapping
itself around this wondrous gift
of an ordinary winter day.
swb ©2017