Upon returning to the hospital.

Today, I drove with my son to the University Hospital. He was having a relatively minor procedure done, not surgical, precisely, but a procedure which nonetheless required anesthesia and someone to drive him home. I had planned to spend the day.

He checked in, then we went up to the Surgery Waiting Room. They showed us back to a room where he got into a hospital gown, then we waited for a nurse's assistant to take vitals, the anesthesiologist to give us the rundown. It was a room very much like the one the historian and I waited in last fall, for the very same reasons.

The procedure took place in an area I hadn't been to before, an area the anesthesiologist referred to as "the bowels" of the hospital. The route to it was convoluted, so much so that after we had spoken with the doctor, and I went to the adjacent waiting room, I was a bit nervous to leave. I sat in that waiting room along with a small family, who proceeded to have a quiet but intense meltdown right there. I was their witness. It reminded me of the families I saw during the historian's long stay, no doubt going through some of the worst days and nights of their lives, camping out in waiting rooms, trying not to lose it, hour after hour after hour.

After awhile, they left, and I sat there by myself, with my Ritz crackers and water bottle. The doctor came in maybe an hour after that. Everything had gone fine, was the gist. He explained this in some detail and then left. A little while later, I saw a hospital bed cruise by. My son was in it. His fluids were hanging on one bed pole, and he had an oxygen mask on his face. A woman in scrubs asked me if I wanted to follow. I stuffed my laptop back into my backpack and scrambled after them. My son kept talking groggily into his oxygen mask. I couldn't understand a word he was saying.

When finally they ushered me back to his recovery room, he was pretty well woken up. We compared notes with what the doctor had told him and what the doctor had told me. The longer we were there, the more lively he seemed, cracking jokes and clearly feeling relieved that it was over. We chatted with his girlfriend in Sweden. I updated the family via text and Facebook Messenger and email.

After some apple juice and graham crackers and some debriefing with the nurse, he got in a wheelchair and we went down stairs. Once we got outside, he told the orderly he thought he was okay to walk. "Up to you," the orderly said. So we walked to the parking structure, took the elevator down, and drove home while the sun in the west briefly flared, blinding us, then went down. I made him eggs and cheese in a tortilla, quesadilla style. The historian and I went out for Thai food. He's downstairs playing video games with his friends. All is well.

Short observations.

If you have, say, twelve videos to remake, by replacing sneakily screen-grabbed visuals with legit Creative Commons-licensed ones, and re-recording the voiceovers, and maybe making the overall content a little more substantial while you're at it, and also adding captions--

(damn if that's not a long if clause)

--to repeat: if the above are the conditions under which you decide that by god you're going to get some of those videos DONE, son, it does not follow that you should start four at the same time.

Because you're probably not going to finish any of them, and then you're going to feel panicky for days.

*

I'm not complaining. But this weather, it might actually be a little too cold for the middle of September.

And thus it was that I found myself thinking today, but it's okay: it's going to get warm again. It's going to get warm again? I ask you.

*

Days are not infinitely elastic. Poems are acting like strangers.

And here I thought I had less to do, and I still have lots. Lots and lots.

*

I am looking as if from afar--from a great, great distance--at the peaches and tomatoes at the farmer's market. With longing, I think that's implicit in from a great, great distance.

*

I sometimes feel like I've said all the things there are to say on a blog. Just a feeling, not a fact, although it sometimes feels like a fact.

*

This afternoon as we walked in the chill, before the sun went down, the light and air were perfect.

*

Grading is, like, an existential condition.

*

That is all.

Brief letters.

Dear quiet night at home,

I know that you occured in part because the historian has a cold and needs his rest, and also because there is an irresistible trifle of a novel that basically demanded to be finished, and also because there was leftover shrimp Vindaloo as well as leftover tortilla soup. And also because I have a powerful ability to procrastinate necessary tasks, such as grading. Even so, quiet night at home, how delightful, how restorative you have been. You have been the very fulfillment of a Tuesday, distilled to its quintessence. I cherish you.

Sincerely,

htms

*

Dear trifle of a novel,

How I adore you. You have, by virtue of your occasionally tart wit but also your surprisingly open-hearted address to the need of the reader to believe, at least sometimes, in happiness, entirely satisfied me. I know you are not brilliant, but you are good, for a trifle. In fact, dear trifle of a novel, you have caused me to brighten the aura surrounding the word "trifle." That's how entirely satisfactory you were.

gratefully,

htms

*

Dear grading,

Ugh, are you still there?

I am sorry, but we will never be friends.

I said good day,

htms

*

Dear tomorrow,

You are when I will grade.

I promise,

htms.