Ten-Finger Exercises

signs

I have just a minute before Bill is finished painting on the living room for the night and time to get dinner on the table.

Oops, I didn't have a minute after all, and now it's after 9. Oh well.

The pathology report has not yet come back, but, for now, I am not worrying. I have no good, reasonable reason for not worrying, mind you, but I'm not.

When her twins were born at 24 weeks, almost certainly not to live, her husband called me crying. "The doctor said he has to take them," he said. To me, the line was like one from an old movie, "Take the baby to save the mother." I was distraught and sure that they would die.

On the way to Spokane we passed the paper mill where Lenore's father used to work. The smoke (or maybe it's steam) from it was going straight up, not headed inland or to the east as usual. For no known reason I felt a great relief, sure that the twins would be born alive. And so they were.

The Saturday after I received the phone call from my daughter telling me about the brain tumor-- in other words the following day-- Bill and I had promised to sit at a home on the annual Hospice Pond and Garden Tour and greet the guests. Mid afternoon the hostess came with glasses of ice tea with mint. We talked about the mint, and how I'd had it growing once but it froze out. I'd been unsuccessful getting it to grow again.

She gave me a piece she had rooted in water, along with a handful of some fresh cut leaves for a mojito that night. I planted the rooted piece on Sunday, and put the leaves in the fridge. Monday, the mint I'd planted, even though I'd watered it generously, was thoroughly wilted, beyond return I thought. I watered it more and left it, sad. Dying things were not welcome.

The next morning it had rejuvenated, and I rejoiced. I took it as a sign, a la Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the violets her husband gave her when they first met. They were crushed, but also recuperated with water, and she saw that as a sign of their love.

I cautioned Bill to water it liberally when he came back from Spokane the day after the surgery, and he did so; but when I returned several days later, it was clearly dead. Completely, this time. I knew it didn't mean anything about my daughter, but it made me depressed. After another two days, I jerked it out of the dirt and threw it away.

The next day I found the leaves still in the refrigerator drawer, and I unwrapped them from their paper towel and put them in a crystal violet jar of water. Two days later they too had died. They were dry and crumbly. But I persevered, and added water.

Yesterday the dry and crumbly plants showed the beginnings of new, green leaves at the tips, and today they look even better. I can almost see a root forming on a stem. Silly or not, I'm feeling a little less stressed.