Wisdom Teeth and Other Graces

Biscuit, our house’s chief blanket stealer. He has at least two in this picture. 

Today there is rain and a candle burning on the table and sweet Biscuit at my feet on a blanket. If I sit down at the table here and only have one blanket, he invariably pulls it off my lap onto the floor so he can curl up on it. I’ve learned not to settle in unless I have two blankets, one for him, one for me.

I’m grateful that my son was able to get his wisdom teeth out today, that it was not traumatic, that he doesn’t remember a thing. He had oxygen and an IV and the doctor said, “Don’t look too long at my ugly face,” and then he was out and then he was back. He has a Velcro contraption with ice packs around his head now, one ice pack nestled neatly against each cheek. He is supposed to leave it on most of the time for the next 48 hours, they said. Twenty minutes on, ten minutes off. He just ate a yogurt, a Jello cup, and a push pop. The doctor called to check on him and said that today, the goal is to manage pain, stop the bleeding, and eat. So far, so good on all counts.

It is raining, a light rain. I am trying to walk at least 6500 steps a day, but I give myself a day off now and then when it feels like a treat. Today, it is a treat. I am happy to stay in when it is cold and wet outside, and it is a gift to be able to focus on my boy, who is happily ensconced on the couch, playing a video game on his game player and watching Yu-Gi-Oh on Netflix at the same time. Next up? I’m going to join him for a Disney movie, since we have Disney Plus for a few more weeks, a freebie from our cell phone plan. Awhile back, I had him watch “the Apple Dumpling” gang with me, because I remembered loving it so much when I was little, and I was excited to see that they had it on the channel. We didn’t make it all the way through. Somehow, it wasn’t as good as I remembered. Maybe my taste in movies has changed in the last 45 years.

I drove to town to do two appointments today. I stopped at the store on the way home to buy Jello and pudding mixes and apple juice. Also, two more pocket sized containers of hand sanitizer, because I seem to have lost a few somewhere, and this is something that I do not want to be without when I am out in the world these days.

I have trees to plant tomorrow that arrived from the Arbor Day Foundation. They do not look like trees, actually. They look like sticks with teeny, tiny roots attached. There are ten, and though they take up almost no room in the shipping bag, planting ten trees is a bit overwhelming, especially here where the soil is so rocky, and half of my yard is fill dirt. So I texted another neighbor who has a beautiful yard and also loves native plants, and she said she would be happy to take some. There are five American Redbud trees and five white flowering dogwoods, which are native to these parts. Another neighbor just dropped by and brought a sample of her latest Keto baking creations. Old fashioned peanut butter cookies with a dark chocolate center. Delicious and low carb, too.

What a world, eh friends?

So much going on out there beyond the walls of my home, where I sit with the computer and the candle, the dog and the tea, the fire in the wood stove. There is Georgia! Blessed be the voters of Georgia who rose up to bring back hope. There is Washington and Joe Biden’s inauguration, which cannot come soon enough. There is President Trump and his hateful Twitter account. There are viral photos of Representative Andy Kim, a Korean-American lawmaker, cleaning up the trash left by white supremacists who rioted in our capitol building earlier this week. There are doctors and dentists who invest years in their education and work at their craft so they can save others from toothaches. There are neighbors who bake and neighbors who plant. There are people who come for bodywork. There are workers who serve at stores so I can buy foods that will help my son heal. There are the companies that manufacture the hand sanitizers, the massage lotions.

There is all this. There is kindness and goodness. There is evil and horror. It is not easy to hold it, to understand how all of it coexists. Why does it seem like there are people who want to build and heal and people who want to harm and destroy? How can Representative Kim and President Trump show up in the world so differently? Except I know that I also have the capacity to hurt, to ruin, to demolish. All of us are broken, no? And all of us are loved. It’s hard to believe on a day like today, when the news cycle spins me down toward chaos. It’s where I try to stay, though. In hope. With mercy for all that is broken in me, in all of us. Sitting at the table, candle burning, tea growing cold, Biscuit at my feet.