Dentists

I had a tooth pulled today.  They offered me headphones and gas.  I said, “No, thank you.  I’m not nervous.  I had a great dentist as a kid.”

Bless Dr. Ryan, my childhood dentist.  He was wonderful.  I used to watch him work on my teeth in his glasses.  He inspired trust and confidence.  He shook your lip when he gave you the shot . . . I had no idea there was a needle involved until I was much older.

He had short dark hair and big dark framed glasses.  He had a gentle manner and made me glad to be a brave girl.  He set me up for a lifetime of confidence that has rarely been misplaced.

Thank you Dr. Ryan (and thank you to my parents for the great dental work that I’m sure was tough to afford as young parents)!

Promises

I’ve been thinking about promises. . .

. . .  specifically the reprehensible kind.

If you make a promise and, upon reflection, realize that it’s not an honorable promise:  what is your responsibility then?  Keep it?  Regardless of it’s impact on others?

I’m not sure.

I’ve made some promises that I regretted.  Broken some that I shouldn’t have and some that needed breaking.  Had some broken that were made to me. 

Permit me some background on these thoughts. 

My mother painted a picture of the beautiful place where she placed her father’s ashes.  It meant enough to her that she memorialized it in color.  She pasted a detailed map on the back of exactly the vista where she consecrated him.  That says, to me, that the spot meant something for her.

The man to whom her husband entrusted everything they owned and her remains promised never to reveal where he interred her to our family.  Feels the definition of a reprehensible promise to me.  So, not only is that information lost to me.  It’s lost to my family forever.

Is that not the definition of reprehensible?

Grandpa's Spot

Dad's Touchstone

I sent my father a new Petoskey stone.   Some years ago I gave him one that someone I had helped gave to me.  He carried it in his pocket.  It was unpolished but Dad polished it, over time, just touching it. 


He recently lost it . . . I found him another. Mailing it made me think about my touchstone.  What brings me peace in the times when things are hardest?  


One of the best for me is his voice. It’s simply the sound of Dad’s voice.  Certainly, we disagree about many, many things.  It’s not what he says, more just the deep timbre and cadence of the way he talks. 


That voice has always been there and I followed it home. 


Once from the brink of blackness, that fuzzy edge where the world drops away.

Once from real blackness . . . . softly speaking to me in ICU.



Often, unknown to him, in the night when the aloneness reigns.


So, Dad has his new stone to polish, and as often as his fingers touch the stone to put it in his pocket, I will hear his voice in my head.

A Day at the Dog Park

We are not an experts but these are a few things that Dexter, Wilbur and I have learned:

• Dog park people are easy to know.  I think that's probably because there are subjects for conversation swirling around you all the time.
• The little dogs are not the safest to play with.
• You must not stand there oblivious while they play or you can be plowed over as if you've been hit by a truck.
• The dog park has no class system.  Your dog doesn't care who anyone is or whether the people like each other.
• Immediate clean up on aisle . . . everywhere. . . all the time!
• Please squirrels - stay away.  It can really, really ruin a good time if you get brave.
• A ball, thrown over the fence, can be a fun "team building" exercise.
• Wearing 3 sets of sweatpants and 2 sweaters with a coat that looks like a sofa and your hair slopped up on your head is the height of fashion!  
• Talented dogs are applauded at the dog park.

How can something disappear that quickly?

I've been looking for my glasses . . . all morning.  Finally put my contacts in - still no sign of them.  How can I have them one moment and they are ether the next?  

I've lost my keys, my ipod, my phone and a candy bar that I KNOW I bought last time I was in the store.  


One of my favorite books for awhile, as a child, was The Borrowers.  It had charming, tiny people who lived about the house and "borrowed" things that seemingly disappeared.  A button, a key, a thimble?  They've taken it to close a purse, use for a table or bed.  I loved the idea of making sense from the senseless.


I have been looking for one set of keys for about a month.  I know they are here . . . somewhere . . . mocking me.  They will be in the last place I look.  Just love that expression.  What kind of person will keep looking after they've found something?


I believe that the keys and the glasses have joined forces and are gaslighting me.  They chortle, they are amused at my befuddled searching.  


They should be joined by the fog that lives in the kitchen.  Sometimes I enter and it steals the very thing I planned to do right from my brain.