Things Will Be Better

I knew the tour of Western canyons with my sister Mary and her family in September would test my back condition. By the time I reached the Grand Canyon, I was in a wheel chair.

Carli and Tom, who joined us in Las Vegas, were deeply disturbed at the collapse of their active mother. Fortunately my niece Katy, who has had severe back problems for years, inspired Tom to discuss my case with some of his medical associates at Stanford.

 

I was able to get away again for a week to spend Thanksgiving in Palo Alto with Carli and Tom and had appointments with Stanford doctors while I was there. Upshot, I return to Palo Alto in January for neurosurgery to relieve the pressure on the sciatic nerve from bone growth that has closed up the spinal column for several inches. While I look forward to the procedure with all the eagerness with which one approaches a knife aimed at one’s spinal cord, I expect to enjoy recuperating with Carli and Tom.

I really don’t have much choice. I can get along on my normal routine with only moderate pain. However anything extra pretty well finishes me off. I can’t lead the kind of life I enjoy, so I have to take the risk. Surgery should make it possible for me to travel again.

I am somewhat apprehensive because of my age and my history of blood clots. However, Dr. Shuer, the neurosurgeon, considers the surgery “straightforward.” I’ll probably sail through it and laugh at my own preoccupations.

 

In the meantime, I am gearing up for Christmas. I put the tree up this weekend, with help from María. I had confessed to her earlier that I no longer could do it alone. While she was draping the lights on the tree, Alex and María’s brother Elmer were stringing lights on the veranda across the front of the house. And Alex installed new icicle lights at the top of the grills on the front windows. The job was done in no time at all, thanks to the little “bundling” gadget he bought himself last summer, which secured the lines of lights with little plastic bands.

The Italian Nativity set my mother sent for Alex’s second birthday is in place on the buffet. The year is not complete until I get the beloved figures out of the same now-battered box they arrived in 49 years ago.

I feel properly Christmassy.

 

Since early spring I have had a succession of tiny doves nesting on a high ledge on my front porch. Number Fifteen took up residence just after New Year’s.

The bird who built the nest initially became agitated whenever I came or went, but she soon realized that she was safe from me and from my two great, galloping dogs. The next inhabitant cooed at me whenever I appeared, to my utter delight. The others have watched us with interest but without avian comment.

I got in the habit of cooing to my doves, hoping to strike up conversations. When Carli was here in the summer, she was deliciously amused by my performance: “What do you suppose the neighbors or passers-by think of my mother when they see her on her porch, face raised heavenward, apparently talking to herself?”

You would think I would have the sense to slip into dignified dowagerhood, as befits my years!

 

I am the luckiest person in the world with my in-laws. Alex’s wife María is a joy every day of my life, kind, considerate, fun to be with. She and Alex are happy and share cooking and garden activities in a way I find hard to believe in the son I thought I knew. Carli and Tom have as happy a marriage as Bucher and I had. They are almost embarrassingly concerned about me. They make me feel completely at home when I visit, and we have a delightful, laugh-filled time together.