I have deep red bruising on my backside from having slipped down the stairs of a century-old building yesterday in my sandals. They’re fancy from a fancy Brooklyn boutique and have no tread, just as Jessie’s did not when she wiped out on a playground in Jerusalem in 1983 and knocked out those two front teef.
Earlier that morning—I mean yesterday—I’d woken thinking a mosquito had feasted on my flesh while I slept. The back of my thighs were riddled with itchy welts that. The pharmacy was closed still and I had no Benadryl, which Jonathan had recommended on the thinking that it might be some kind of allergic reaction and not a bug. The hives mostly calmed down within a few hours on their own. I hadn’t used any new soap or eaten any new food. The only new thing I’d recently ingested was contrast dye, I guess, on Thursday for an MRI I had to get of my liver, which had shown abnormalities the doctors wanted to know more about. But nobody’d said anything about possible skin irritation as a result.
The liver appears to be fine, after all and thank god, but that’s based on my—a non-medical person—reading the MyChart results before the doctor has weighed in. The MRI wasn’t terrible (it’s the second one I’ve ever had, the first was in grad school on my jaw the day before Thanksgiving in Boston). The tech gave me headphones to wear and told me to choose what I wanted to listen to, provided it didn’t inspire me to toe-tap or otherwise dance. Her Spotify must be the free version, though, because every now and again the music was interrupted by exceedingly long ads for juvenile cancer wards. Terminal illness isn’t quite the thing you want to think about while you’re undergoing an MRI on a vital organ, even if you are yourself nearly a senior citizen.
In spite of my fall and the bruising, I ran this morning, committed as I am to my 100 miles a month goal through the end of the year. Isaiah had slept at a friend’s and so I slept in and deeply before I set out. The running takes my eye off the general surrounding collapse of society, geopolitics, democracy, reason.
An Italian friend of mine sent me a WhassApp asking what is the heck going on here, but he failed to specify if he was referring to the ICE raids, the hilariously ill-attended military parade, the political assassinations, the attempted political assassinations, the anti-semitic violence, the contentious mayoral race, or the arrest of a sitting senator. He meant, it became clear, the now days-old war between Israel and Iran, putting it to me, I guess, because I’m a Jew. He means well, though I’m not Israeli. I have lived there on various different occasions. I want it to exist in perpetuity and in peace.
Last Sunday I went to a classical recital of a fellow parent from school who’s a pianist. She was playing duets with a cellist—a program of five different works and then a gorgeous encore. It was illumination—the music was—like a lilt or a heron or a wispy cloud, rejuvenation in that unique way music can be. Gorgeous. Precise.
People are talented and gracious in sharing those gifts.
Oh! To all the dads and grand-dads and dad-like figures and non-dads who have dad bods, and Walton Goggins, who has a DBILF, and uncles, and friends, and pop-adjacent people, I wish you a wonderful day today and every day.
Here’s a picture of my dad, Isaiah, and me in the NW corner of CT in 2012. My dad basically took care of us while I was on maternity leave, since my mom still worked in Manhattan and my dad had already retired from NYU.
And here’s an essay I wrote in the before times (before Covid, before Trump, before Tablet took a hard right) about Isaiah’s bio-dad. Forgive the mediocre hed and terrible dek (aka headline and sub-hed); someone else crafted those.
Finally, behold my parents, whose 67th anniversary is today. This photo is from about three years ago. They are diminished since then but we took them out last for dinner and had a very lovely time.
