lunch with relatives

Yesterday, my sister (half-sister actually and my favorite relative), brought her 90+ mother, my stepmother I think, west from the Boston area and the three of us had lunch. My stepmother wanted to see me and my sister is keeping an eye on her as time passes and age creeps up.

"Lunch" was pleasant and talkative and social ... the kind of affair that is at once pleasing and exhausting. Where once we sailed through the social niceties and bits of affection and points of interest, now there was some ghost as well, as if at the end of some exhalation, a time to relax and pay no more attention. In the mix somewhere was the understanding that this might be our last meeting ever and... well ... how had that happened when the mind was so full of memories and weavings of other times?

I found myself wanting to offer something -- some bit of social contribution -- and I did, but I really didn't have much and what I had hardly seemed of much use. Nor, for some weakened reason, did I really want to offer it -- to confect a social story when society had more important fish to fry.

Lunch was pleasant and interesting. It called me to an earlier time and I was not entirely sure I wanted to go.

Today I go to the pulmonary surgeon to get some reading on the lung-nodule she is treating as cancer until proved wrong. A biopsy is in the offing, but what to do once the biopsy is parsed is the topic of our meeting. Good news, bad news ... I do get tired of medical news.

As if hearing my whine, a squadron of Canada geese honked by this morning. I never get tired of them.

PS. Saw the surgeon. The agreement is to do a wedge-biopsy excision of the nodule and four days plus or minus in the hospital. The operation has a 95% batting average as I get it. Time spent in a hospital is right up there with firing squads in my book ... bad for your health.

So it goes.