Information Such as This

My sister called today and informed me that my mom had taken my stepdad to the hospital.  Immediately after we left he reached for the banister on the stairs, heading up to the second floor, something he’s done many thousands of times before and he fell.  It was painful and he couldn’t easily get up.  He’s ninety-two so a fall is necessarily serious.  She asked her not to call me, as my mom had told my sister not to bother me with the details. 

 

I got the report towards the end of the day.  He’d visited the doctor today, had an x-ray and confirmed that nothing was broken.  He was simply bruised.  And in pain.  And unable now, to amble around.  Tomorrow then, after I drop my little one off at school, I’ll stop by to see how they’re doing.  For now, it seems they’ll be OK.  I don’t know how I would have managed information such as this when I was ten-thousand miles away, rather than ten. 

The Times had an article today about a hapless German businessman who did his requisite two weeks of verifiable quarantine before heading to China who then was quarantined in China for two weeks only to be errantly diagnosed as having Covid, and was swabbed and poked and measured until it was clear that it was a misdiagnosis, but he was stuck now and couldn’t easily leave his hotel, let alone the country.  I’m sure there are also one-thousand stories of people who made it all work without much fuss, but it certainly seems like a time-sink and regardless, there is clearly no room for a plea-for-sanity exasperation of “come-on!” the way one normally might have in China. 

A client asked me with more than a hint of expectation.  When will you be going back?  I laughed and shared with him what I’d read.  If they accept the validity of the Pfizer vaccine and that lets me not have to quarantine for two weeks, sure.  I’d love to.  But as it’s been since the start of this scourge, the next six months are certainly unclear.  I have been painting a little fantasy room in my mind however, with an imaginary visit to Spain, in August. Spain, it seems will be welcoming Americans. 

 

I made a pork loin for diner.  I did all the right things and got it seasoned and prepared the eggplant to go with it, tossed the salad, just in time to serve the meal, confirm that the taste was delicious and reluctantly move to the other room to join the conference call I was scheduled for.  It is so deceptive this time of year.  The sun doesn’t go down till 9:00PM and it is so easy to imagine it isn’t yet late.  Ahh, but the pork was juicy. 

 

 

 

Monday, 06/07/21