A Wistful Parting...

What is it about news, once you get older? Seems to me that when I was younger, news was usually good or bad, but with time, shades of gray take on a whole new meaning.  (!)

How is that for a segue into the 2010 contender in the "quintessential mixed bag" category? We have sold our house.   Yes,  a contractor has bought the house and will retain the main part of it.  As you may know, we recently confirmed we are on two lots, so he will move the house, positioning it  so the land will accommodate another house also.  This guy is known for doing high quality work in preserving some semblance of old while accommodating  buyers needs for all the modern conveniences, and for that I am grateful.  But of course, there is the tug of leaving the house I have alternately loved and damned for all these years.  Snow thunders off the slate roof, roaring down two stories to hit the ground with an earth-shaking thud. The heating bills are astronomical.  If only we could have figured out a way to occupy the upper third of the rooms where all the heat went.  Lynn remembers our old house on Valley Road, but Laura came here at 6 months old and Matt was born here.

I always thought of it as a Christmas house, and we lovingly decorated it each year.  A Nutcracker  tree stood in the living room,  a small part of the veritable forest of trees that have been lugged in and lugged out over the 134 years the house has been standing.  Fondly remembered pets are buried out back in the garden, along with some mice for a hereafter snack, and the odd GI Joe action figure.

The kids and grandchildren have their own memories tied up in this place and emotions are running high.  All of them have called this house home, and we are enjoying a festival of flashbacks, like when  5-year-old Drew waxes poetic of things he remembers from "when I was a kid."

So for the moment, we free-float.  We need to be out in mid-June.  The purging of the attic and other nooks and crannies continues.  I vow I will be more discerning with what I keep, come the next house.  We would like to remain in Needham.  One particular house has caught my eye.  But it somehow seems ...um...disloyal, like meeting a great looking woman at your wife's wake.  For now, and for a long time in the future, my heart will linger here, where everyone was always coming and going, where there was room to house all four of our parents, all five grandchildren, at one point or another, and take in the occasional random wanderer.  Where everyone in town knew your business by sitting at the stop light.

This house has served us well.  I hope we have done likewise.

P.S.  Jim is doing okay.

Breaking News: Easter runs right into St. Paddy's Day

Of all the parts of the hospital I have comitted to memory, there is one I overlooked until now.  The ceiling.  But  that is over now.   I was just released from BIDMC Boston.  Came by ambulance around 10pm Tuesday evening after having a morning appointment with Jim earlier in the day, and a trip back to the city for an early evening with Matt. Symptoms started rather abruptly with tingly numbness one  gets when your leg falls asleep.  No big deal. Fingertips on right hand, then lips, spreading to tongue, face, and hand but all on one side.  But several hours later, I noticed my knee was buckling causing me to stagger drunkenly about.  Problem was, no wine was involved.  So off to Glover and an overnight on a pillow-less stretcher in at the ER from Hell.    Conclusion, it was a small stroke of an unusual kind.  (Would I have any other kind?)   All will be well,  but it is a sobering and enlightening experience.

Some random thoughts along the way.  Jim coped well and indeed seems to be rejuvenated, at least for now. The kids were at their very best, banding together to assure I was being attended to.  Since I have a catering job on Saturday, Lynn is heading up the volunteers, and getting it done.  Laura has taken the last three days off to be here for me, especially running errands.  Matt came home and took charge of getting the kitchen rearranged and back in order.

The care at BIDMC couldn't have been better.  A battery of tests kept my dance card pretty full, and each person  who arrived (promptly, even) from transport was friendly and efficient.  The array of faces one passes in a hospital provides as much diversity as a visit to Sesame Street.  People from different parts of the world come together to seek and give care.   At times I really wished I had a camera to capture this uniquely positive atmosphere.  The barriers that keep us from connecting with one another are instantly removed once you are a patient.  It is hard not to seek to befriend someone who has temporary control over your life... a genuinely humbling experience.  Even the bed was rigged to set off an alarm if I had the temerity to take myself to the loo without a guardian. My favorite memory was of a mature gent who visited with six students. All crowded around my bed, while he gleefully jabbed me with a tack all over my body, like Julia Child with a duck, all the while saying, "can you feel the little prick, can you feel the little prick?"  And me trying to compose my face.  "Ya, buddy..."  Still not sure he wasn't aware of and delighted with the double-entendre.  He had a mid-European accent, while my favorite nurse, Sree. was from southern India.  Discussed Iranian cooking with the Echo-cardio tech whose  mom who was from Iran, and a transport assistant asked me if Wendy, his baby daughter's name, struck me as American because he and his wife felt if the child was born here, she should have an American name.

Prognosis?  My symptoms are still with me.  Half of my tongue is numb even to hot and cold.  My fingers and face still are numb and tingly.  My handwriting is different.  But overall, this seems to be an isolated situation.  It wasn't the kind of stroke that is induced by a blood clot. This was a small corpuscle in my thalamus that developed a hole, as I understand it.  So the likelihood of recurrence is slim.

I have to pay more attention to my diabetes, which had fallen to the bottom of the priority list for a while now.  Consequently, until it is under control,  I have been ordered to take insulin, until it is well controlled, and then we can go back to the pills, hopefully, because testing and taking insulin is a pain in the neck.

File under Chocolate Easter Bunnies I can no longer eat.