The Lesson

Jill is a big hearted woman, too much so. She has a knack for finding a lost cause and devoting herself to it until she gets used up and spit out. The universe gave her a brilliant lesson in this pattern as we went floating down the river last week.

There was a bee in the current, who was more dead than alive. Jill spotted him immediately, and began devising ways to enact a rescue. She decided a leaf could make a good life raft, so I paddled over, snatched a dogwood leaf from a gentle eddy and gave it to her. Jill placed him on top, but he had other ideas. He might have been a suicidal little guy cause he kept working to get back in the water. I was eager to continue our float but Jill had abandoned the idea and was now completely obsessed with saving the life of the bee.

Here is the way Jill saw it:

“He clung tenaciously to the stem of his life raft, waterlogged and exhausted. I was slightly unnerved, paddling to shore against the current, belly flop style with one hand, while holding a leaf with a very possibly irate bee in the other. I made it to shore and because it was an extremely hot day, searched the bank for the perfect spot to deposit him. I gently placed him in the shade of a cool river rock, so as not to scorch his little bee feet. Yes, I actually went that far. I know.

Karen felt the need to point out, in an amused sort of way, that my behavior with the bee was strangely reminiscent of my behavior with men. I find them drowning, struggling and then I, as rescuer, spring into action. Not only do I make the save, but I make the save my life’s work. We giggled at the analogy, but I had to agree. How many men have I gone out on a limb for at my own peril?  

The bee was now safely deposited in the shade of the river bank, so I continued the float. I was relieved as I basked in the hot sun, the cold water and the knowledge that I had done a wonderful deed. But not for long. Barely 15 minutes had passed before another bee spotted me, singled me out in that vast landscape, and out of the hundreds of people who lined the shore, landed and plunged his stinger deep inside my arm!  

Karen roared with laughter at the irony of it, because the story always ends the same! But I learned a valuable lesson, so the next pathetic creature that floats my way, be it animal, mineral, vegetable, or cute guy, I will look into the depths of my heart, and find that cold spot that I know must be in there somewhere, suck it up, turn a blind eye, and for once in my life, paddle by and save myself. Sometimes, the life worth saving just might be my own.’

Jill is currently looking for work in the court system where her desire to serve can be directed towards a more positive outcome. Let’s wish her well.

Friends – old and new

I had a long talk with my friend, Joy, today. We’ve been friends for 38 years. She is in Ohio and I am in Oregon but as soon as I hear her voice on the phone, distance dissolves and we are young again, remembering what it was like when we lived together and stayed up all night talking, laughing and trying to find direction for our lives. We were single mothers, poor, divorced and determined. I found work singing with a classical guitarist, while Joy modeled and kept us in groceries by distributing Leggs pantyhose, which were displayed in little silver egg-shaped cartons in her delivery van.

I’ve heard you can count the truly close friends you have on one hand. That has been true for me. I wondered today, after we hung up, exactly what made the quality of our friendship so rich and lasting. We have a shared history, yes, but also an openness of heart and an ease in conversation. There is a quality of feeling safe and understood, but the big one for me is having a give and take in discussions that does not involve me being the sole listener. There is a natural easy flow between us and an ability to pepper any discussion with heartfelt laughter.

Our conversation filled my thoughts as I began my walk up the driveway, which I do every evening, (well, that’s a lie! The intention is every evening, but the reality is more like two evenings a week) because my exercise ratio is off. I sit 90 percent of the time and exercise ten percent. Not good, so I walk, and to amuse myself, I sing. Tonight I sang a song one of my clients wrote:

Please carry me over to the opposite side of where I’m standing

cause I’m looking at something that’s brighter than halogen.

A small deer walked out of the forest as I sang. I was not sure what to do, because I didn’t want to scare her, so we stood frozen for a few minutes watching each other. Then I began to sing again and to my surprise she did not run away, she walked towards me. That’s what we did for awhile, I sang and she got closer. Then I continued up the drive, which is really long and steep and a pain in the butt to climb.

On my way back she came out of the woods again, I sang again and she walked toward me, stopped a short yard away and ate some grass. Her wild spirit told me that she was as close as she could risk. I acknowledged her and sat down. Deer are such an expression of gentle innocence. I will never understand how anyone can pick up a rifle and end their lives. I sat on the ground with my back to her, hoping she would come closer, but when I turned she had gone. Instead the black cat appeared rubbing her dirt-covered coat against my sleeve, encouraging me to walk home. I was grateful for the company. 

Inside I fixed tea, changed into my nightdress and finished making Joy’s birthday card. Joy works as an actress and teaches film making.  She will be 67 on Monday.

God Karen, she’d told me, I just received a new script. They want me to play a 50 year old woman!  Do you think I look that old?

 

Waiting for Mr. Right

We ate lazily, a sun warmed strawberry bursting with flavor for me, a sip of ginger tea for Kim.

Here he is again, she said, placing the chariot card in the center of my tarot reading.

He is still coming, getting closer.

Kim doesn’t read cards for anyone but me, believing she can’t really do it, but Kim can’t read tarot cards the way Michelangelo can’t paint the Sistine Chapel. Her readings have always been spot-on.

I listened getting a little angry. This guy’s been showing up for the past two years. Whoever he is, he’s taking his good sweet time. I wiped strawberry juice from the corner of my mouth, staining my napkin red. Don’t you think it’s odd he’s been showing up in the cards and not showing up in my life…at all?

She didn’t look up, busy placing a second card against golden patterns of grain on the coffee table. Patience is not your strong point Karen, he’s on his way or the cards wouldn’t be so consistent. You know that, you were my teacher!

The two of pentacles was the next card down, followed by the king, then the lovers. 

Seconds ticked, quiet moments as the cards lit in her eyes, revealed themselves and invited us forward. A gaping stretch of unhurried time.

He holds your dreams, she continued. He’s a traveler, well-educated, confident but weary. Looks like there is an entanglement he needs to free himself from first, perhaps another marriage but the two of pentacles, the change card, means he is close now, very close.

There it was, the image of the snake wearing a golden crown, making a figure eight by holding his tail against a purple and blue background. The word change printed boldly at the bottom.

Do you think he’s only a business man and not a partner? I asked, afraid of the answer.

She didn’t hesitate. No, not just a businessman. He is your husband, this will be good for you. Life changing. 

She drained the last drops of tea from her Staffordshire cup, the one I save just for her, wiped crumbs of chocolate from her lap, rose and carried her dishes to the sink.

My shift at the hosptial starts at 5 tonight, she said gathering her ample purse and notepad. I still have to get Dylan from school, so I’d better be off. 

She flung her arms around my waist, gathering me into her feminine presence, the same loving warmth offered to the babies on the lactation unit more than sixty hours a week.

My readings for Kim have been about working fewer hours, resting and the need to integrate her gifts as a singer and harpist into the fabric of her life. You must do more than work, I lecture through the medium of the cards.

Her readings for me have been about patience and good things coming in career and romance. Success is coming, believe it!

Kim and I have both made strides. I’ve had my man tucked into my life for five years now. He makes me crazy, but we’re well-suited. What does that say about me? I’ve given up my ideas of how marriage should be and have learned to embrace how it is.

 Kim is weaving a tapestry with voice and harp these days, as she becomes a medical music-thanatologist. That means she sings and plays for dying patients and their loved ones. Kim is a saint among us. She consistently turns toward the face of suffering and not away, as she opens her big compassionate heart to all of us lucky enough to know her.

Feed Yourself Beauty

Robin was a fellow performer from Storefront Theater who taught me to use a loom.  Her weavings, like many of her paintings, looked like she had reached into the sunrise and convinced every shimmering hue to come to life through her hands. Threads sparkled, wools blended, and fuzzy threads adhered to make a radiant representation. Anyone fortunate enough to own one of her winter scarves could plan on being stopped several times on the street, so strangers could touch and admire her work. There has never been an artist who could touch my heart and sense of wonder the way Robin could.

When I first started lessons, I wanted to purchase inexpensive threads because I was a beginner. I reasoned that no one, including myself, would want my products for some time, so why waste money? But Robin stopped me immediately. No, she counseled, buy yourself the most beautiful threads you can find, no matter the cost, because part of weaving is nurturing your senses with what you see and what you touch. Feed yourself beauty. You will handle each thread several times, beginning with the warping board, then while dressing the loom, and finally passing the shuttle back and forth to completion. Everything you feel and think goes into your work. Your products radiate your touch and energy, so it’s important to understand the unique power of each weaving.

A friend knew of a loom stored in a studio space. After several phone calls the owner agreed to let me use it. I had a studio and loom without cost. I’d tune in Oregon Public Radio and fill the space, and my spirit with classical music. It was an uplifting time with Mozart drifting back and forth among the fibers, gently encouraging both inner peace and inspiration.

Weaving was one of the few places that invited my voice into song. I was comforted by sitting alone and filling the space with the years of music I’d learned but rarely sang. It was in one of these precious moods that I reached inside my apron and opened the letter I’d stuffed in my pocket, as I ran from the house in the morning. It was from my mother. She had enclosed an article about brain tumors and strongly suggested that I have a physician look at me. It would explain your behavior, she wrote. You’ve never been quite right.

I was on the verge of tears for a week from the innocence and malevolence of such a letter. My weaving was full of sorrow for days. I couldn’t look at it when I cut it from the loom, and didn’t feel it was fair to place such energy in someone else’s hands, so I walked outside and placed it in the garbage. 

Although never approaching the majesty of Robin’s work, my skill became marketable. I fashioned purses, scarves, table runners and wall hangings. Robin had a tailor’s skill, so her fibers became jackets and dresses displayed in Portland and Seattle galleries. I used my weavings to trade for health care and fire wood.

I took an expensive class at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, but never finished. The faculty made weaving business-like and mathematical. I realized that if I had begun with formal instruction, instead of Robin’s loving hand, I would have never become a weaver. I could not follow directions. I could create a free flowing design in my head, but following a pattern laid out on graph paper in tiny blue colored boxes was hopeless. 

I stopped weaving when my allergy to wool became unbearable. Tiny flecks of fibers floated in the air whenever I worked, and wearing a mask felt wrong. I changed to cottons threads, but felt too limited. It was a sad day when I sold the loom I had finally managed to buy, but Robin’s lessons remained. Feed yourself beauty at any cost.

Oh, you animal!

My massage therapist, Jean, recommended a book by Crowley and Lodge called, Younger Next Year.  She said it inspired her to eat well, and set her on a course of regular exercise.

Being inspired to exercise sounded good to me, since I find it difficult to do anything but work, write, cook, see clients and watch some BBC. Jean did not mention, nor did the title, that the book came in two versions, one for men and one for women.

I searched my library and was glad to see the bright yellow book jacket resting happily on the top shelf, waiting for me to tuck it under my arm and take it home, which I did.

The book started out innocently enough, two men talking about the importance of staying fit, one man a physician, the other a 70 year old attorney, who traversed from aliments and retirement, to trim and energetic.

I did wonder if I wanted to read a book written by two men, since I’m not inclined to take advice from men. I find them a little alien and male for my literary tastes, but I forged ahead.

As I turned the pages, I began to wonder how Jean could have felt so excited about the information, and questioned our compatibility as readers. In one chapter, I was jolted out of all propriety when I read, “Get off the couch and exercise, you lazy son of a bitch.”

In another chapter, I learned that nose hair could become a real problem as I got older, and that I’d better plan to find a way of clipping it before my nostrils looked like a home for wolverines.

That was followed by a piece that said I should never neglect shaving in my later years, lest I start looking like Yasir Arafat. It did not end there.

I read that my ears would need tending as well. They advised finding a barber who was good at that, unless I wanted to look old and furry.

I began to have alarming ideas about age. The last straw was a paragraph that told me that guys in their 50 or 60’s could be surprised by suddenly having a penis that curled up like a chow’s tail when erect. “Imagine,” it said, “straight ahead and true for 50 years. And now, it’s looking ever so slightly up at the sky.”

Must I be warned about the future of my husband’s penis?

I closed the book and reached for the phone. Jean! What were you thinking to recommend such a book to me? I can’t believe you even liked it.

When I told her what I had read she began to laugh her lovely light Jean laugh. You must have the book for men, she said. There is a similar one for women. I’ll lend you mine, if you’d like.  At that point I was nearly finished so I declined. Besides, I had not read the chapter titled:

YOU ARE AN ENDURANCE PREDATOR, ACT LIKE ONE!

Henley

Henley continued to move through our lives with regularity. Utterly oblivious to the material world, he became a serious student of metaphysics. He also became convinced that I had special healing powers, which I certainly did not, at least not the kind he imagined. In the evening he knocked on the door to request a healing treatment for his balding head. This consisted of seating himself in front of the woodstove and offering non-stop conversation, while I placed my hands above his head, and sent the heat from my palms into his thinning patches of remaining hair. I had no faith in my abilities, but he was positive I had powers from another world. It couldn’t hurt and his conversation was interesting, so I became his healer. (His hair never did grow, by the way.)

Henley never entered or left a room in the usual manner. Most people have rituals which consist of entering or leaving talk. For instance, how nice to see you, how have you been? Or in leaving, I think it’s about time to go, it’s been great. Henley, however, entered a room like he’d been there all day, and had just gotten up to get a drink. He launched into full blown conversation without warning and left by simply disappearing. He just rose from his chair and walked out. This always left Kristen and I baffled, and looking at each other questioning, is he gone? Do you think he’s done now?

The other bizarre puzzle was that one of the young skaters he had coached had matured and was on her way to a silver medal. Because he didn’t have a phone, I would receive his calls and retrieve him from the far corners of the house. The calls came from all over the world. When he took them, he stopped being the eccentric Henley I knew, and became the authority in his field. His voice lowered as he dispensed advice, and gave long distance suggestions on winning strategies. My jaw always dropped to the floor during these conversations. I privately mused, who are you Mr. Henley, who lives in there?

We lived in Henley’s house for five years, then left for Seattle. His mother passed away shortly after Kristen and I moved out, leaving him a large settlement. He gave B’Lou one of his mother’s mink coats, paid his back debts, sold his house and moved to Tacoma. I lost track of him after that. But where ever he is, I’m sure he continues to be optimistic, has maintained his status as a world class trasher, and is pursuing his love of learning. If I am wrong, and his inheritance has run out, you might look closely into the eyes of the next tall thin man you see bending into the garbage to retrieve bottles. Could be Henley, who is not really a bad guy at all. I think you’d like him.

Artistic Community

I had a friend named B’Lou, short for Betty Lou, who was an incredibly gifted, intense and sharp-edged woman. I met her when I sang in a Rock Opera at Storefront Theater. We became fast friends. B’Lou cut her hair short, smoked long brown cigarettes and had the lean styled body of the professional dancer she was. She was aloof, elegant, and both baffled and alienated by the culture she lived in. We shared a background in the arts and many long afternoons in her costume closet.

B’Lou either liked you or she didn’t, there was no middle ground. If a person had artistic qualities, or if the men were gay, she sensed a potential friend and playmate, then her world was welcoming and wide. But if people were not on her preferred list, she could be rude and distant. They were greeted like a bug in her caviar.

 B’Lou always had strange and unusual ideas. For instance she thought it was great fun to put on a costume and parade with friends down the street like Princess Di, smiling and waving a mindless regal wave. She taught movement classes and encouraged students to go to a near-by shopping center to create as many variations of walking as they could think of. Ultimately, security guards arrested her for walking backwards too long; they found it threatening and unnatural.

I made my way through prize dahlias and artfully sculpted foliage to seek her advice. I needed a place to live but had no income. I don’t know how to move without money, I told her, but I have to leave. The only place I’d found to stay when I came back from touring was in the house of an x-husband. She looked intently at the end of her long brown cigarette. You obviously need to leave, she said, we have to figure out the funding. Her face lit with an idea. Henley is having his house foreclosed, but that could take a very long time with the legal procedures. Maybe you could move in there. It would not be ideal but it would buy you some time.

I don’t even know Henley, How can I introduce myself and say that I’m interested in living in his house rent-free, until his life self-destructs? Seems a bit much, don’t you think?

No, not really. I’ll take care of explaining it to him.

Henley had the corner house next to B’Lou. I liked the idea of being neighbors. Of course you’ll have to clean it, she said. Henley is a trasher of the highest order. Be prepared for that. She knocked an ash into a large crystal bowl and welcomed her Siamese cat into the folds of her sweater. The other reason this could work, she continued, is because Henley is interested in metaphysics. You could teach him in exchange for rent, if you are both in agreement.

When I showed up for our meeting, I met a man whom I can only describe as alarming. He looked like he’d been foraging through garbage cans all morning, the zipper of his trousers was undone and he was dirty and smelled. I was not impressed. As I sat across from him, I thought I would sooner land in the gutter than share a space with such a man, free or not.

To my surprise, when he spoke I discovered an intellect that bordered on genius. He was regal in his mannerisms and remarkably knowledgeable. I wondered how such a man could have fallen so low. Henley had been an internationally known ice skating coach, who still received calls from Olympic hopefuls. He had lost his father, thought he had cancer and completely bottomed out. Something snapped and he stopped functioning, stopped working and thoroughly neglected his appearance. The ironic part was that he was totally optimistic.

Henley lived on the second floor and told me I could have the first, which had its own entrance and plenty of privacy. The furnace was hopelessly broken but a woodstove in the main room provided heat. The building was a lovely vintage home which had fallen into the same disrepair as its owner. Uncontrolled blackberry bushes covered the sidewalk; the front porch was piled with garbage, old magazines and official looking threats from the city. He opened the door to a black and white tiled entryway, a large living room, two bedrooms and a kitchen. The backyard looked like the front, overgrown and untended. He had junk, refuse, discarded garbage, dirty clothes, and smelly debris knee-high inside.

What should I do with your things, I asked while trying a new technique of breathing out and not in. I’ll throw everything away unless it looks valuable.  

He moved through the space as if he were in a meadow. I don’t care, he told me, do what you like.

The next two weeks were spent hauling away garbage, scrubbing walls and tiles and waging a battle with blackberries. I made my way through the lower part of the house, while Henley studied philosophy and metaphysics. It was hard not to hate him for the squalor I worked in. I scrubbed and disinfected while saying to myself, Henley, you Idiot. How could you let his happen? How could you live like this? How can you stand the odor?  I’d fill great black garbage bags with untouchable belongings and he’d come up behind me, thrust a tarot card over my shoulder and say, What does this one mean? He was oblivious.

This is not the best time for me, Henley, I’d explain gritting my teeth. Could you wait a few minutes? He was obsessed with curiosity.

If I got money from a reading or from the rare arrival of a child support check, we’d go shopping. I’d buy him shoes that didn’t leak, warm socks and food. The first time I took him to dinner, I told him to order anything he wanted.

Do you mean it, he asked.

Anything!

He ordered three separate meals plus dessert. He hadn’t eaten in a long time. I knew that B’lou also fed him but most of the time he lived on coffee, and the mental pleasure of books. I wasn’t paying rent, couldn’t afford to, but shared what I had with him, and he was good to me.

One afternoon sitting in B’Lou’s hot tub I inquired. Why do you think Henley is the way he is? He’s so smart but completely checked out. I care for him but don’t understand him at all. We were soaking in evening air underneath a cedar tree. The yard was lit with candles. B’lou’s eyes reflected light as she answered. Karen, we’re all case studies of sorts. Henley’s file is just a little thicker than ours, that’s all.

Eventually things turned around. Henley owned several pieces of professional work-out equipment. I talked him into selling them so he could use the money to live on. He had a friend who began making arrangements to save his house. I cleaned and rented the attic space to a chiropractor who could afford to pay rent. Things were looking up, Kristen and I settled in.

B’Lou managed to place friends in bordering houses when they came up for lease, so we had a community. We gathered at her house on Sundays to share food, talk about our lives and the latest creative projects that might save us all from poverty.

Revolution

When I noticed the light what I saw was promise, candles lined up dancing and flickering. Nest again, they advised. Remove yourself from the go-too-fast, be-too-busy place and center.

We perch in this place, in this hovering above the world place to gain perspective and a way of knowing ourselves and one another. Life feels raw without it. My days have a razors edge where gentleness should be. Why is that? Too much work and not enough community, too much staying up late and pushing to create a way out of a box I have built to live in.

I need change, a big one. My life needs a new foundation, new wiring.

There is a revolution happening in my heart and it throws me off balance, as any overthrow of the existing regime must.

I don’t always know how to be with this kind of change. I breathe and center, and do what is inside me to be done one day at a time. Today it is my place to come home to the candlelight and my community of sisters, who discover themselves by moving pens across paper. It’s been two months since we’ve gathered, and I have missed it.

Linda Hefferman

 It was such a relief when Linda came forward to help me. The woman is a gift from the Gods. Her willingness lifted me up and put me back in the game.

Dearest Linda, took all my creative projects off the shelf and gave them life. She is my most personal assistant, and the managing editor of Yorkshire Press. She is handling business details I have no capacity to understand, making phone calls to people I would not pursue and filling in the fine print of bank forms and publishing contracts. She is, in short, the left brain I don’t have. She is willing, eager, intelligent, artistic, affordable, responsive, well-traveled and mine. Obama would steal her if he knew.

Last year I had several of my projects ready to go, but no way to launch them. My marketing person, Anthony, decided to focus elsewhere, Gib got caught up in a pallet company, and I was the only one left to birth my dreams, but there were parts of it, I literally could not do.

I had a dream one night that I was riding a horse in the desert with Anthony and Gib. We were all riding happily along when the horse collapsed from thirst. The men got up and walked away, leaving me alone to figure it out. I was really angry when I woke up because the dream was such a clear statement of where we were. Seemed like a good idea at the time, Karen, but now we’re out of here!

Then came Linda – months later – a referral from a friend. She rode into my life on a strong steady horse, pulled me to my feet, and has carried me ever since.

I don’t forget something like that, because without her I would still be on that broken down steed in the desert, watching the well-intended men in my life high-tailing it for greener pastures.  

Linda is birthing my dreams. She and her friends are midwife to my souls expression. I overflow with gratitude.

Not my job

I am not a nurse. My father thought I should be. He saw my gentle ways and compassionate heart and declared me nurse material, but he was dead wrong.

Before that, he thought I should be an airline stewardess. In 1955 airline travel was all the rage. He was a world class flight instructor and had visions of me dressed in high heeled shoes, white gloves and a smart little tailored uniform serving gourmet meals to the elite few who could afford to fly. I tried to comply, but each time we became airborne, I turned white and threw up all over his career plans. We tried this repeatedly, thinking perhaps my queasy stomach and loss of breakfast was a fluke, but nope: airplane up, vomit, airplane down. I was predictable. No waitress in the sky job for me. 

I flew back and forth to a Vermont boarding school on holidays. I climbed the steep steps of a puddle jumper, the name given to a small plane with such a short distance to travel, (500 miles) that it didn’t bother with altitude. These flights were filled with business men in dark suits and polished shoes. They moved their fine leather brief cases out of range as I filled one barf bag after the next. When I finally stepped from the plane I was ill, weak and embarrassed.

These planes still exist, if you are ever in the mood to torture yourself. Anyone going into the Elmira airport can find themselves on a plane so small that there are no overhead compartments, one seat on each side of the aisle, and a flight crew that graduated at the bottom of their class. No matter what seat you were assigned, you’ll be asked to move to the rear, so the plane will have enough weight for take off.

The stewardesses and pilots assigned to Elmira flights are a different breed and take some getting used to, lest you think you are standing in front of a renegade nun brandishing a ruler that looks like a microphone.

On my last flight from Philadelphia the stewardess made the following announcements:

“If you have to go to the bathroom, I want you to hold it. If you get up and head to the toilet while we are in line for take off, the pilot is required to go to the back of the line. That would be bad for everyone involved. You don’t want to be responsible for that happening, so hold it.

Check for personal belongings before you get off the plane. On the last flight a man named Tom Harris forgot his divorce papers, left them right there in the second row seat. Don’t tell me he’s not going to miss those!

You’ll be happy to know the pilot did a real good job on take off last time and brought it down just fine too. He’s doing real well today, so don’t worry about a thing.

Soft drinks will be served after we reach maximum altitude, if you have exact change. Don’t ask before I offer. Also, hang on to them during turbulence, because the liquid jumps right out of the cup. Stay in your seats and you’ll have a nice flight.”

 I am tending my friend Susan today, who has been my non-biological sister and closest, dearest ally for 35 years. She just had a hip replacement and needs a live-in friend. Her attitude is always top-notch, even in recovery. She is a big Swedish optimist, whose laughter fills the house and whose love for me has never faltered.

I, on the other hand, am anxious and grumpy. I am a poor queasy excuse for a nurse, being traumatized by the sight of anything medical. The pill bottles, hospital bed in the living room and changing of bandages leave me nauseated.

This morning I took her chamber pot from her bedside (totally gross) and spilled half of it on my feet as I poured it in the upstairs toilet. That was lovely, both the moment and the cleaning up after.

A nurse will visit to draw blood this afternoon, take her temperature, blood pressure and peer into her raw incision. I’ll take a long walk around the block, breathe some fresh air and think that maybe being an airline stewardess on an Elmira flight might not be so bad after all.