Spring and the Snow Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shadow and the deconstructed bed. Ruth at 19. Almost. Sushi Den. Ruth driving. The Black Bag. Gabe. His junior year. Tom, Chris, Calvin, Joseph. Men. Learning about men. CBE men’s group. Psylocibin. Miso Soup. Warmer weather. For now. Reading. Movies.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

Week Kavannah:  Ratzon. Will, desire, pleasure

One brief shining: Ruth, whisper thin, engaged and thoughtful, nearing her April 4th 19th birthday, poised between the teen years and young adulthood, presented yesterday with her great-grandfather’s black bag which contained Kate’s stethoscopes, otoscope, small rubber hammer, tuning fork, and other essentials of the general practitioner’s craft.

 

Ruth drove up here yesterday and stayed the night so she could drive us both into Denver to Sushi Den.

We ate there for her sixteenth birthday. I asked the waiter to have the sushi chefs give us what was special that evening. Ended up being the most expensive meal I’ve ever paid for. But so fun.

She was with Cord, her first boyfriend. Jon and Gabe were there, too. Kate had died the April before. The first of Ruth’s birthdays that she missed.

Three years later, her father Jon is dead, and two years ago the relationship with Cord ended.

She and I sat down in a booth for two near the bar. Dining with ghosts. We ordered a Shrimp tempura appetizer in honor of Kate who happily watched the rest of us eat raw fish while dining on tempura. Ruth remembered her dad ordering communal sushi.

We offered tempura and sushi to the memory of Kate and Jon, mother and son, wife and father. In the way of ghosts they ate only the invisible essence of the food, leaving the rest to nourish the bodies of the living, the left behind.

Starting next year in a new major, Integrative Physiology-as I mentioned in an earlier post-Ruth has set herself on the path of her childhood dreams. Becoming the third generation of Johnson-Olsons to become a doctor.

Hence my decision to gift her the black bag which I have, up till now, featured on my mantle as a memory of Kate.

May she live long and prosper.

 

Just a moment: Gee. The clown cars on Pennsylvania Avenue have so many red and orange haired folks sticking out, horns honking, big feet flapping, noses bulbous that a guy can’t help feeling entertained.

Until that moment. Wait a minute. These clowns, these very clowns have their hands on the controls of the world’s most powerful military. Not to mention the economy. And the regular checks for our country’s most impoverished citizens. And, and, and.

Not to mention. Sealing the deal honk, honk. Throw confetti in the air. Why not invite the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine into a nuts and bolts discussion about bombing Yemenites further back into yesterday? Seemed like a good idea at the time?

Thought this line from Timothy Snyder, quoted by Heather Richardson on March 24th captures the truth: “Foreign policy scholar Timothy Snyder posted: “These guys inherited one of the most functional state apparatus in the history of the world and they are inhabiting it like a crack house.””