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)