Breakfast Pictures

Today I read on a food blog that I’ve come to enjoy reading (despite my lack of interested in cooking) that if you are into making pancakes, to keep a constant supply of butter milk in your refrigerator. It was the middle of the day before lunch and I had two minutes to spare before going to some important place to complete some important task that I can’t remember at moment. So I looked at a picture of pancakes, and from the shot you could see the steam coming off of them. There was a large heap of blueberry syrup, and some thoughts on the meal organized in bullet points.
So now, the year is starting to come to an endpoint, which was made clearer to me when I answered “next Friday,” after someone asked me “when’s your last day.” Next. Friday. No need to refer to the date. No need for further labeling of, “two months,” or “a while.” No need to think: “how the hell am I going to do this for another______?” It’s almost here. I will fly away and our staff will still drive around the wheelchair van picking up patients, people will still line up at the Starbucks next to my work in the morning, and there will still be a gang of tenants and ex-tenants circled around the bridal shop on the other side.
Also, I decided to go to the doctors this week. It was a last minute appointment, one that I successfully squeezed to soak up the last of my health insurance. I’d gone a few months before, in January, in the later morning after completing the rounds to have one patient, practically sitting in his own poop, scream at me that he didn’t want a granola bar and he didn’t want to go to his appointment and he didn’t want me to open his door and say hello. But this time, I was in a better space. It felt nice after all of the visits I’d made to hospitals this year, to be able to go seek some care for myself—have my own dull patterned robe, my own bench to sit on, to sit in the silence of that room with the white tiled floor. To know my height, my weight, my blood pressure, and to have someone else record the numbers on a form to be referred to later. What a treat.
Also, the house has been a bit quieter with people tending to their new commitments, which allows for more spontaneous trips and less lengthy decision making. On Monday we went to Dairy Queen in Southeast Portland. It was warm, and we’d eaten dinner, and the whole thing felt right. Red picnic benches, blizzard specials, the beeping of the cash register. Afterwards we took a walk in Clinton Park, across the street, overlooking one of the area high schools. It was getting dark. So we walked and we looked at the field and the stadium surrounding it. We thought of the desks that must be in there, all of the bodies that have occupied those desks over the years, and the desks that our own bodies have occupied. That came to an ending once too. We moved on, remembered what was important, and have since turned out okay.

Summer

It is a Tuesday, and downstairs a few housemates of mine are laughing. They are brushing their teeth. Sneaking after dinner bowls of granola. Shutting doors and opening them again. I got home later tonight, ate quickly, and now I have a bit of a stomach ache, and decided to come sit on my bed.

The heat came to Portland this past week (finally) and I’ve changed my bike route to the Steel Bridge. Surprising things can make you feel liberated, and for me, the bridge change is one of them. I realized, after avoiding this route for the entire year due to not being entirely sure where to turn off after the Rose Quarter, that I’m not one to take small risks. For fear of different hills or being five minutes late. But it feels very good now that I’ve made the switch. Less traffic, the special pedestrian path on a lower level. It’s very nice to start your day close to the water. It makes me think of Maine, so I thought I would mention it.

Yesterday I drove one of the patients to his doctor’s appointment. He waited for me on the on the sidewalk as I finished paperwork in the office and grabbed the van keys. He dug his cane into the pavement, and nodded and those who passed by. He insisted that he didn’t need help getting in the front door or buckling his seatbelt. After setting his plastic bag of papers and medications on his lap he pulled out a book, and started to read. What a great feeling that is—to have a book good enough to hold in your hands during a 5 minute car ride, good enough to show the driver that you’ve hardly spoken two words too. It was a graphic novel, and I can’t remember the name. He said he’s gotten into them lately, and that they seem to bring him out of a world that he is not sure will ever get better.

In other news, I’ve purchased a plane ticket home, and on August 4th at 6:19 pm (if all goes well) I will land in Boston. When I was waiting for the bus today a former patient walked by. She was with a friend. They were smoking their cigarettes, and she smiled and called out from 10 feet away: “So, you going home then?”

“Yep,” I said, “Beginning of August.”

She laughed. “You’ll miss Portland.”

I nodded and we talked for a few more minutes. It was good to see her. I thought of our car rides, of her stories of her father, and how she couldn’t help but pick up that I had made a wrong turn on the way to her doctor’s appointment. I thought of how messy her room was, how she never seemed to want lunch when I brought it around. And when my supervisor and I picked her up at the hospital and went through her intake paperwork, she couldn’t stop from falling asleep. There is plenty of crap that has happened since then. Plenty of things I will never know or understand. But I guess that’s not what this whole thing is about. Hearing that laugh, knowing that it came from her heart and up through her throat, and letting that be a sign. A promise that the world will never go completely dark.

(written on 07/13/10)