Spring                                   Waxing Flower Moon

As the moon makes its circuit from its crescent form in the west to its fullness in the east, it passes over the skylight in our living room, at about half full.  It was there tonight, shining and visible to me as I sat in my chair.

To get my sunglasses back I had to park in University parking, then wend my way through skyways and the labyrinth that is the University of Minnesota’s medical complex.  In several buildings there is the school of dentistry, the medical school, a hospital, a heart hospital and a children’s hospital plus numerous organizations that have some relationship to the world of medicine.

There were kids with backpacks leaning against stoplights, chatting in small groups, a girl sitting cross-legged on a high wall reading a novel, signs:  Are you bipolar?  Pediatric Grand Rounds.  University Brain Tumor Center.  What a time, those university years.  Hormones on high, ambition oozing, a heady mix of freedom and new ideas all combine to create the combustible reality that is and has been college for several decades, perhaps even centuries.

A grand time and one I wouldn’t revisit.  Getting older has much to commend it and among its sweeter pleasures is a certain calmness, a centeredness impossible, at least for me, to obtain when I was in college.

Kate came back from work tonight with sad news.  Her colleague Dick Mestrich, who has been battling multiple myeloma for 2 years plus, has begun to die.  He’s Kate’s age and had just begun retirement when he got sick.