Transition Carrots

"Transitions are a time for reflection, and a time for looking forward." -Roy Cooper

"The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution." -Paul Cezanne

First thing every morning we walk downstairs, my dog and I, and head straight to the fridge. Gracie almost always gets there first, and parks herself with a tidy sit. She watches breathlessly as I open the door, dip my fingers into the cool water inside a certain red bowl, and extract a small handful of carrot slices. With rapt attention, Gracie perfects her position, wriggling with uncontrollable delight but holding remarkably still as I close the door and consider her. 

She waits for it.

"Good dog," I say and offer the first slice.

Thus begins another day, and a ritual we have come to call "transition carrots.'

As our day unfolds, we dance back and forth with one another. 

She goes outdoors for a potty break.

I slip off for a few hours to meet with students.

I go out to work in the yard for a few minutes.

We go out for a walk together and return home, joyously, together.

Each one of these partings and reunions is graced with another round of transition carrots. Just a few delicious bites remind us both that, yes, this day is on track and going well. We are together and all is right in our world.

Sharing a few crunchy carrots is a wonderful way to celebrate our happy life together.

Reading | Tiny Beautiful Things + The Marriage Portrait

Tiny Beautiful Things | Cheryl Strayed

Neat

Discrete

Modular bits of honesty

Packaged in the form of an advice column,

Dear Sugar takes on questions about relationships, parenting, and other details of our life in the cosmos.

She responds with clarity and sensitivity,

Often sharing intimate glimpses into her own life,

Always with a generous serving of compassion.

The book ticks through a number of Dear Sugar questions and answers.

The author responds to each one in a naturally conversational and disarmingly affectionate style.

The result is comfortingly orderly and satisfyingly sweet. 

The Marriage Portrait | Maggie O'Farrell

Lush and rich, exotically paced and luxuriantly detailed, this story is a sumptuous dream of what might have been. The truth is that the famous Medici family of Renaissance Florence did indeed produce a daughter Lucretia who was indeed married off to a duke at a shockingly young age and mysteriously perished not much more that one year later. Along with a handful of other factual details, the author, Maggie O'Farrell, has used her considerable imagination to embroider a story of what may have happened; a fanciful series of events that fill in the holes between the facts; to lead us, her breathless readers, on a whirlwind of coincidences and surprises that delivers us a very different ending that we may have expected.

Along the way, O'Farrell unfolds her story at a luxurious pace, detailing the tiny animals that gentle Lucretia loves to draw, the claustrophobic confines of her extravagantly designed and detailed wedding dress, every twitch and twinge of her husband's muscular body as rage overwhelms him. To be sure, some readers find O'Farrell's thorough attention to detail, her careful accounting of every possible fact, her patient recitation of Lucretia's every thought, to be a bit, well, overdone. Others argue that the sumptuous language perfectly befits a story about a complex and compassionate Renaissance duchess caught in the grip of a highly dangerous marriage.  

* * * * *

I rarely think much about the order of the books I read. To be honest, I'll google around a bit, come up with a handful of new titles, reserve them on my library app, and read them in whatever order they drop into my phone. There's no rhyme or reason to my flow, which is fine with me. I rarely think about it. 

But reading these two books back to back was a gift. Their very different styles and story lines create a radical contrast that intensifies the beauty of each book. Tiny Beautiful Things washes me in a clean white light; Dear Sugar's kind words fill my heart with the music of emotional care and remind me of how much we all gain when we treat one another with kindness and compassion. 

Alternatively, The Marriage Portrait launches me into a nightmare of the many horrible ways that power corrupts humans, and particularly, how women - young girls! - have been used throughout history in men's games of control and domination without any regard for their own wishes, their own safety, their own lives. But still, in the midst of Lucretia's darkest moments, she discovers helpers, people even more powerless than she who still find ways to lend her a hand. And she is grateful.

And that is perhaps the most beautiful treasure of reading these two books in sequence - the soul tie between Dear Sugar and Lucretia. Both kind-hearted women remind me that of all the things we can choose to offer this world, compassion is the best, most necessary gift. 

* * * * *

My 2023 book reviews:

Demon Copperhead 

Tiny Beautiful Things + The Marriage Portrait

Would I Rather?

 Look! It's the latest this-or-that MySpace-style quiz to flounce around the internet and I'm here to play along.

I am also never mad about banana cream.

Favorite Pie?

Loaded question, right off the bat. My husband comes from a family of serious pie aficionados, and I have yielded to his preferences from the get go. He likes his pies fruity (cherry and apple reign supreme), simple (no spices or other add-ins) and often. I usually respect that formula and bake as instructed. However, about five years ago, he mentioned to me that his mom liked a slice of coconut cream pie for her Mother's Day dessert, and I've decided that's a splendid tradition to uphold.

Steak and kale is another fine pairing.

Steak or seafood?

Why would anyone force themselves to choose? This is exact conundrum that the iconic surf''n'turf entree was invented to solve and I can think of few things more delicious than a beautifully grilled New York strip topped with a pile of garlic butter shrimp. Sign me up.

Asian Coke on ice is the most magical elixir of all.

Pepsi or Coke:

Coke. The end.

How many tattoos?

When I was a waitress at a diner style restaurant during college, we often served a heavily tatted dude who came with his lady for eggs and coffee. Now by today's standards, he was no huge outlier but during the 70s, when anyone with more than a Navy style anchor or an "I love mom" banner on the bicep rose eyebrows, this guy's sleeve and neck tatts were one of a kind. And what amuses me now is that we college girls all used to run when this guy and his woman walked in the door. Oh, we ran alright, to grab menus and seat these two in someone else's section so we wouldn't have to deal with serving Mr. Xtreme Tatt who we considered mightly creepy. There was just something about the deep blue-green ink and the sallow taint of the surrounding skin that set us all on edge. Fast forward to today and I'm way more accepting of heavily tatted types but I have to say, I still don't get it. No matter how aesthetic the design, I find the color of tattoo inks to be unflattering to human skin, and that is why I have zero tattoos.

The windscreen of this NSU is approximately the size of a full-grown deer's torso from

chest to rump. Imagine my mother and me with huge WTF faces inside.

Ever hit a deer?

I grew up deep in Michigan's deer country and lived shoulder to shoulder with the little darlings through all my childhood. One had to come to terms with the annual hunting season, during which cars laden with dead deer roped across their rooftops were a dime a dozen. I still shudder to recall the dazed, dead eyes staring back at me as we passed each other on the road. And while we never hit a deer, there was a day when my mom and I were driving into town in our tiny German import when a huge deer flashed out from the roadside forest, saw our car at the last minute, and with no other options available, had the lovely good sense to leap over our miniature vehicle. To this day, I can perfectly recall how its huge body filled our windscreen as it hurdled the hood of the car, and how my mother's eyes filled with terror and then miraculous relief as the deer bounded across the other lane, off the road, and into the woods on the other side.

Last text from:

My eldest daughter, who took public transportation to meet some friends for a show tonight, and asked me to check in with her as she made her way back alone. Sadly, I accidentally left my phone on the charger and didn't respond to her until after she was all the back to her car and driving home from the parking garage. Oops. Mom fail. It happens.

Tulips. The harbingers of spring.

Favorite season:

Ok look. If you can't find something to love about every season, then you're not trying hard enough. They are all delicious and miraculous in their own ways. Now normally, spring is the one I choose as my favorite because it feels to me like the beginning of all things, the time of year when dear Mother Nature hits reset, and the cycle of nature is reborn. But just yesterday, I was grumping about how I'm still loving the drippy cold mess of winter, so I guess my answer is a work in progress.

Broken Bones:

None. Though I once fell down a creek hole while skiing and well deserved a broken leg if not a fractured spine. Lucky me, I came out in one piece.

One good thing about gall bladder surgery: more wristbands than a weekend at Coachella.

Surgeries:

In 2013 I had eye surgery to remove my genetic cataracts and replace my cruddy lenses with new superpowered Kristalenses. In a snap - well, two snaps scheduled two weeks apart - my lifetime of nearsightedness ended and I suddenly had nearly perfect vision. In 2014, with laproscopic surgery and plenty of high drama, my evil gall bladder was removed. And while they certainly do not count as surgeries, I would wager that four cases of natural childbirth warrant an honorable mention.

Kind of obsessed with every color in this tulip.

Favorite color:

I love the intersection of pink and orange - coral, I suppose - as the intersection of orange and red. Tomato.

If I can splash my feet, I'm happy.

Mountains or beach?

Mountains or beach? I choose water. So if that's a mountain stream worth wading, or a glacier fed lake, or a rocky Pacific Northwest beach or even a basic beige beach in the tropics, I am always opting for water.

 Irish charm aplenty. I cannot resist.

Dogs or cats?

Well. Impossible to choose. But dogs. And Irish Setters at that.

Early morning person?

Yes, I am an early morning person because early morning is my favorite time to go to bed.

How can you not love a holiday that involves bringing actual trees into your house?!

Favorite holiday season:

Oh, if I didn't say Christmas, I'd be a big far liar.

Beer or wine?

Alcohol puts me to sleep and I've seen too much alcoholism to consider it fun to drink. So I don't.

Creamy or crunchy peanut butter?

I can't work up much of an argument about this one. Creamy is fine, but how could adding MORE peanuts not make it even better?

Pancakes or waffles?

As long as we're pouring real maple syrup, either is fine.

Android or Apple?

Apple.

P.S. If you want to pick a fight with my husband, just ask him this question. He's sworn to serve and protect the honor of Lord Android, and will lop off the heads of any and all nonbelievers.

April Showers

"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. 

Let the rain sing you a lullaby." -Langston Hughes

My magnolia's spring blossoms are irrepressibly cheerful, even in the rain. 

Flowers are blooming

Song birds are twittering.

Golden sunbeams fill the late afternoon air

And you know what? Gracie and I are just not having it.

Oh, I know. Spring is leaping into our lives as a joyful gift and as the skies in the Pacific Northwest finally begin to lose their grey ache, my dog and I can't help but kick up our heels a little bit.

But seriously. Our daily walks are so much easier when it's cold and gloomy outside.

Good weather brings out the walkers and the joggers and the families on bicycles and the intermittent dog walkers and the groups of kids milling about and the young lovers looking for a place to kiss and the baseball players and the high school marching band and the Little League moms and dads with their flocks of folding chairs and everyone else who is excited to be out of doors in the sweet promise of the April sunshine.

Bless every single one of their opportunistic hearts. 

Yet that's exactly why good ol' Gracie and I don't mind the days when our hair drips with raindrops and we splash through puddles and I curl my wet fingers up inside the sleeves of my jacket and my cheeks sting from the cold and we both watch the dark clouds scuttle across the sky.

We don't have anything against other people, but man, we absolutely love having the streets to ourselves on the rainy grey days. 

And that's why my dog and I are both happy to let the April showers fall. 

Reading | Demon Copperhead

Damon Copperhead | Barbara Kingsolver

Deep in the mountains of rural Virginia, a boy named Damon is born into a life of trouble. His daddy's long gone, his mama struggles to provide for the boy, and at a tender age, Damon learns that no one is going to look out for him but himself. As his life goes from bad to worse to wretched, Damon stares down the foster care system, child abuse, addiction culture, and a host of other evils. No wonder his friends start to calling him Demon. 

The story is told in breathless first person, as if we are sitting on the front stoop listening to Damon spin his yarn and he needs to wrap it up before the first star comes out. Though he relates his life adventures with an unemotional nonchalance, we feel Damon's heart break again and again, and we celebrate his few-and-far-between successes with soaring happiness. Barbara Kingsolver's ability to wrap the reader into Damon's world is exhilarating, and the 546 pages spin by in a whirl.

Charles Dickens' classic, David Copperfield, inspired the author to pen this story as an updated tale about the dangers of institutional poverty and its effect on children. Though Dickens first warned us a century and a half ago of the abuses children face in our society, Kingsolver reminds us that we still have much work to do.

* * * * *

I love a person who is addicted to drugs. Not just a little bit. All the way, as ferociously addicted as anyone can possibly be. He uses Oxycodone, heroin, Fentanyl, Xanax, and meth. At the same time. And I'm well aware that there are plenty of people in this world who would write him off, consider him worthless, throw him in the trash.

But I know him.

 

I know his story. 

At the time, I thought my life couldn't get any worse. Here's some advice: Don't ever think that.

I know the heartbreak that has tormented him all his life, that knitted together his growing brain, that baked into his cells since the moment of his conception. 

I know the unrelenting stories of loss and tragedy and abuse that make up his life. 

I know how hard he has tried to break free of the drugs that provide him a certain amount of relief from the trauma.

I know how desperately he has failed to stay sober.

We both lay back down, and she looked me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while. I'll never forget how that felt. Like not being hungry.

Now I'm not going to sit here and say that none of this is his fault, that he's an innocent victim, that the world is to blame for his tragedies. He would not want me to say that.

But I will say that our society fails children every day. 

Children like Damon. 

Children like my friend.

And while I could point a finger at the schools, the foster care system, and every other institution that is supposed to protect kids from danger, I know they can't do it alone.

People love to believe in danger, as long as it's you in harm's way and them saying, "Bless your heart."

It's up to all of us - every you and me - to watch out for the vulnerable children in our midst.

Children like Damon.

Children like my friend.

We need to love them.

Protect them.

Speak up on their behalf.

Take risks for them.

Feed them.

Read to them.

Put coats on their backs and shoes on their feet.

Talk to them and listen as they talk back.

Love on them some more.

Protect them.

And pray that someday our world will be kinder to all of its children.

Los Animales

"Everything you do, take it one step further. It makes it even better. And it becomes the unexpected." 

-Lady in a random house tour video I just watched. 

It was a rainy winter day in the heart of Covid lockdown, and I was in a mood to draw.

Nothing fancy. I wanted simple, cute, and fast. And you know, I was in the mood for some watercoloring too, so a quick Sharpie sketch with plenty of space to paint would be just my cup of tea.

I had zero expectations about this project. Just a way to kill some time.

But my imagination had other ideas.

As I rounded up supplies and got myself settled, the vision of my table littered with scraps of doodles tossed here and there felt a bit unsettling.

A book! my brain suggested. Organize the paintings as pages, and in the end, you'll have a tidy collection of your work instead of an unruly mess and won't that be pleasing. 

And so I decided to make a book. 

I finished today!

Happily, I keep files of simple images for drawing inspiration so I quickly settled on a collection of animals. 

Animal faces, to be exact. 

And you know, once I got started, I just went to town.

First, I drew all the faces. Real quick - I took no time to fuss. I kept the pen moving fast and loose because I didn't want to try too hard. This was just for fun, right?

Then the watercolors came out. On a few of the animals, I did a bit of crayon work first, to add details or texture, before splashing color across the pages. Oh, I was having a high old time. 

But wait. If this is a book, then a book needs a cover. Ooo, a burst of inspiration hit me and in a moment, I'd whipped together a grid of lines to complement all the circley faces. Well. Wasn't this all going swimmingly?!

And then...I stopped.

My project languished for weeks, and then months. Then years.

* * * * *

I'd run across my book-in-progress every now and then, and felt pangs of remorse for ignoring my half-baked baby. Not sure why I had dropped this project; I guess I wasn't sure exactly how to proceed. 

Yes, I could easily stitch up the pages to bind the book. But then what?

Did I give it a title? Write a story? Or even put a simple word or phrase on each of the pages?

I knew the book needed one more little push to completion, to give me the satisfaction of an idea fully played out, an impulse brought to full fruit. But darned if I knew what to do.

Today, I lost patience with myself and decided to take action. I still didn't have any direction for my stalled-out imagination, so I decided to sew the book together first and see what happened.

With needle in hand, weaving in and out through the center of the pages, my brain fell into the simple rhythms that often kick my imagination into overdrive. And here's what happened next.

As my eye fell on this animal and that, my Duolingo-addled mind automatically supplied the Spanish word for each animal.

El leon.

La rana.

El gato. 

And in an instant, I realized, that's it! It's a Spanish picture book of animals.

Without hesitation, I wrote out each animal's name on a scrap of paper and pasted it to the proper page.

This was the finishing touch I'd been waiting for. 

As a final flourish, I added a title to the cover of my entirely unexpected but now sweetly satisfying book: Los Animales.

Please enjoy this digital version of my hand-painted primer.

^ The first of three lions to grace the pages, this one looks like a not-too-fierce flower to me. 

^ Ribbet. The secret to drawing a successful frog is to get those weird eye bumps in the right place. 

^ Senor Gato. Meow. So cute. 

^ Though his Spanish name is literally Zorro, I will always think of him as Fantastic Mr. Fox.

^ Way cuter than the dudes who creep around my neighborhood at night. And I'm so satisfied that his eyes can be seen through his furry mask. 

^ For my money, this tiger is all Tigger. Which is of course a lovely way to be. 

^ The Malay word for owl is burung hantu (which means ghost bird) and in my mind, the Spanish word looks almost like an abbreviation. 

^ These kooky eyes do not give this bear the dignity he well deserves. Hang on, there's another.

^ Isn't that nose everything? You'd know he was a koala even if I didn't say a single word about it. 

^ It never dawned on me before that pandas have such big, blocky heads but this guy's noggin looks surprisingly realistic. Considering it's just a big white lump.

^ This lion looks more like a sun than a flower, which is slightly fiercer than the first one. 

^ A dog with floppy ears. Woof.

^ The Spanish say zebra as cebra which sounds vaguely British to me. 

^ Moo.

^ This is the better bear...and he has a fringe. How cute is that.

^ Another dog with bitty little "up" ears. He looks like Astro from The Jetsons to me. 

^ The third lion looks like a Valentine heart surrounded by a lacy mane. Cute, but entirely nonthreatening. 

^ A rosy cheeked panda. How huggable. 

^ Last, but most certainly not least, a Spanish-speaking horsie who is clearly employed to herd cattle on an Argentinian estancia.

^ Goodbye, my friends! Thank you for reading. 

Well Worth The Wait

"Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act." -Paul Coelho

Welcome to the family, kids! We're glad you're finally here. 

What if I told you that our dryer died over the summer and we just now got around to replacing it.

Okay, wait. There's more.

Don't worry, little wooden rack. Your sweet low-tech self will always have a place in my heart. 

What if I told you that the summer during which said dryer died was actually the summer of 2020?

Oh, the shame. 

But really, I need to say that life without a dryer is not so bad. Our Asian travels have taught us that an entire continent (I'm making that up but certainly a lot of people) go without dryers all the time and are no worse for the wear.

In lieu of mechanized heat and tumbling action, we've been drying our clothes all these years on wood drying racks. One of our four models poses above in its resting mode; when in action, it stands about four feet tall and holds a full load of wash. During warm weather (so like six weeks in late summer) we carry the racks of clothes outside to dry in the sun; during the rest of the year, we stand them near heating vents upstairs. In times of desperate need, we crank up a box fan or two and stand them nearby.

And honestly, this system has worded surprisingly well. 

But alas. I'm desperate for the snap of a bed sheet fresh from the dryer, the soft snuggle of a machine-dried towel, the firm fibers of a cotton t-shirt that has been dried just past the point of dampness and will hang in the closet in a perfect wrinkle-free state. I also would not be mad about a washer that does not leak..

So we finally decided it was time to take out that second mortgage and pull the trigger.

For tonight's first load in the new machines, I'm running a half-dozen so-called "dog towels;" cast-off bath towels used to rub down my furry friend after rainy walks, or laid on the floor as impromptu beds for the soggy pup. Not only will they be washed hard and dried to fluffy perfection, but the fuzzy balls of stray dog hair will end up in the lint tray where they belong, instead of clinging insidiously to the air-dried fabric.

So yes, for all the fun of our Little House on the Prairie years of air-dried laundry, I am ready to re-enter the age of the Industrial Revolution with my new washer and dryer. 

I am certain they will prove to be well worth the wait. 

It's Your Move

Twelve years ago, my friend Heidi and I went out to lunch. As the first one to arrive at our table, I sent her the obligatory "I'm here!" text along with a photo of our table for two. 

A few days later, she turned that tabletop photo into a custom thank-you card.

Then I took a photo of her card, tweaked and twisted it a bit, and sent that new image back to her. 

She printed out a hard copy, framed it, took a photo of the framed image, and send me the photo.

And so it's gone for over a decade now that we have bounced this ever more complicated and constantly evolving image back and forth to each other. At times, we've fired it off rapid fire, multiple times in a single evening. Other times - and I take responsibility for this - the image has rested peacefully for up to a year before launching again.

All in all, this game has been great fun and I'm happy to say that over the Easter weekend, we were at it again.

^ Heidi sent me this card for Easter 2022; deep inside those black and white checkers squares are the layers upon layers of images we've built, one upon the other, over the years.My task was to take this flower and flip into something new for this year's Easter greeting to my friend. First off, I had to shuffle through a few piles of paperwork to find the card again, which was a neat challenge all its own, and then I got to work

1) Without any sort of plan in mind, I began by copying the face of Heidi's card, both in color and black and white, in various sizes onto both regular printer paper and white cardstock. When I had four or five different options, I spread them across my desk, and pondered.

2) My brain connected the six flower petals with the six letters in the word, "Easter," and an idea was born. Why not use one of the larger cardstock reproductions of Heidi's card to cut letters from the flower petals and fashion a garland proclaiming "Happy Easter"?

3) As I happily trimmed out the letters, I realized I did not have enough checkered yardage to spell out "Happy," which was a fairly essential part of the message Sure, I could have used the checkered petals from one of my other copies of the card, but I preferred the challenge of just sticking with the one. I'd noticed that the background of the image that I was using had somehow picked up a peachy pink coloration in the printing process, and I decided that blush-colored part of the page would serve well for the word, "Happy."

4) As I snipped the letters and slid them into place on my desk, another image jumped in my mind. Rather than stringing the letters on one piece of cord, I saw the image of two layered gold necklaces, where one word - "Happy" - would hang from one cord above the other word - "Easter" - just as a trendy lady or, you know, a blinged out baseballer - would wear multiple gold necklaces of varying length. I dove into my stash of various cords and strings, as one does, and pulled out a flashy gold cord that could quite possibly stand in for 24 karat. 

^ Ta daaa! Finished. 

Now all that was left to do was to wrap up my little creation, and deliver it to my dear friend.

And Heidi, gracious friend that she is, soon sent me back this photo of my Happy Easter banner hanging in her very own kitchen window.

Ah, sweet success.

So now, dare I say, Heidi, it's your move!

* * * * *

P.S. Since our collaborative project was waiting for my next move, Heidi found other inspiration for her Easter greeting to me. And while it may not be based on a twelve-year bounty of back-and-forth creativity, her gift is every bit as sweetly successful as mine. 

* * * * *

Here are all the details of how our project has evolved. 

Start at the top of this list for a chronological report:

The Creative Adventures of Heidi and Diane

The Adventures Continue

Heidi Strikes Again!

It's Your Move

Another Chapter

Easter: Learning To Love

"I really do believe that God is love, one of deep affection and grace and forgiveness and inspiration.' -William P. Young

Easter dinner: Spinach salad, deviled eggs, grilled salmon, grilled flank steak, and scalloped potatoes. 

Easter confuses me.

Yes, it's meant to be the day of all days when we bask in the assurances that God loves us. 

I'm good with that idea.

But God's way of proving his love to us is to hang a mortal human by nails and leave him to die?

And then to claim that this man is bearing the punishment that we deserve for our mistakes and missteps in our own lives?

Ugh. That doesn't feel like redemption to me. Sometimes, Easter feels like violence, gore, and a sickening disregard for human life. 

It feels, in a word, like suffering.

As Easter once more whirls around, I find myself struggling knee-deep through this same familiar swamp of confusion.

If God loves us so much, why does he allow us to suffer?

* * * * *

Mmm, let me start at the beginning. Here's what I think I know:

This life is not meant to be a picnic in the park. 

That's what heaven is.  

We'll get to that lovely life after this one is done.

But this life is for learning to love. 

I do believe that's true.

And while suffering is not the same as loving,

Suffering is very helpful for learning to love. 

Stick with me. I'll explain.

* * * * *

Easter dessert: Pound cake, whipped cream, strawberries. 

After what was supposed to be a quick and easy half-day dance through laproscopic gall bladder surgery, complications in my case landed me in the microscopic 3% minority and a bed upstairs in the main hospital. I was in absolutely miserable pain. Like a wounded animal, I craved dark and cold; I demanded that the curtains and shades be pulled to seal off every trace of sunlight, and a window opened to let in a steady blast of cold winter air. I lay in an agonized heap in my bed, listening to my phone blow up with text messages about the latest mishaps in my mother's Lewy Body Dementia-driven life - and yes, I really did have to read and respond to them. I could not eat, could not sleep, and for the next 12 hours, did not respond to the pain meds. 

In a word, I suffered. 

Several hours into this nightmare, the door to my room swung open. The light from the hall stung my eyes as I glanced over to see a vaguely familiar face. Ugh. My surgeon. I had no desire to talk to anyone, much less the person who had dealt me this misery, and I determined to get rid of him as quickly as possible.

"Oh, wow!" he chattered cheerfully. "It's like a cave in here! Aren't you freezing?"

"This is how I like it," I muttered into my pillow. 

"Alright, fair enough," he agreed, stepping to the head of my bed and pulling up a stool. "Tell me how you're feeling. Let's talk about what's going on."

I talked while he listened.

He talked while I listened.

He couldn't do anything right then and there to ease my pain, he admitted, but he was going to get me through this misery. He took his time to carefully explain what had gone wrong in my procedure, and what he was going to do to fix it. He promised to keep adjusting my pain meds until I felt better. And he promised me that he was going to stay with me until we got through this. Together.

And, you know what, that's exactly what he did. 

Over the course of that afternoon and early evening, he checked in on me multiple times. With just the right balance between cheery confidence and respect for my agony, he delivered the message to me over and again: We were in this together. I was not alone. 

All of my doctor's promises eventually came true. Sometime around midnight, the pain medications finally kicked in. He instructed the nurses to bring me food whenever I was ready to eat, and even at that late hour, they rustled up a lovely assortment of jello and applesauce cups. And the next morning, as I headed back into surgery, he stopped by to explain that he was leaving me in the capable hands of one of his team members, and if all went well (it did) I would never have to see his face again (I didn't.)

He is risen indeed.

And now, ten years later, I look back at this wretched day in my life and I smile. 

Yes, I suffered. 

But in my suffering, I wasn't alone. A fellow human being came alongside me and showed me love in the most direct and concrete ways. He brought me to a new, deeper understanding of compassion, and his care has left a mark on me to this day.

Now here's the fifty-dollar question: Could I have learned these same lessons without the ugly suffering I endured?

Maybe.

But without the darkness of my pain, my doctor's gifts of light and love would have not shone so brightly.

I know that sounds corny, and maybe even a tad masochistic, but I think it's true. 

Suffering sharpens our ability to experience love, and to learn from it.

And for that, dear God, I am grateful.