April 30, 2004

11:25 p.m.

Frog Tales

Good day, sunshine. I opted to hike instead of cycle today, down at my old stomping grounds near the U. of CT. It was originally an agricultural school, and borders a huge chunk of state forest with walking trails. I spent countless hours there when I was a 30-year-old student, either hiking, running, or moping in a field over some unavailable guy, trying to write sappy songs about him on my guitar. On the way home I was inspired to stop at a garden center and collect annuals and soil for my deck boxes. The choices were pretty simple, so I ended up with just geraniums, violas, miniature petunias and nasturtiums. But a nice color scheme, and THIS year I didn't plant them too close together.

While I was on the balcony later, doing my dirty little alchemy, Downstairs Bass-Playing Neighbor was out in the parking lot, riding his bike with the toddler in the baby seat. School bus comes; seven year old son emerges, changes into playclothes, and joins dad & weenie on his bike. I watched them secretly for a while through the railing, and then my upstairs neighbor drove up with his son and started chatting with Bass Neighbor, and then saw me and called hello, and the short of it is that I went down and actually introduced myself to Bass Neighbor, whose name is Gary, and learned Ukranian Wife's name, which is Galina, and now we're all properly met. I feel much better about it all now.

But some little part of my brain (and I'm only realizing this now, as I type it) was trying to imagine the youngish (maybe late 30s), nice guy I was talking to, yelling at his kids and his wife and being the asshole I used to hear him become under my floor. They must have gone through a long bad patch; I haven't heard any arguments in quite a while. He told me about last Christmas when they were visiting Galina's parents in Russia, and on the LAST night there, her mom had a stroke. They spent the whole night at the hospital, and it's a totally different experience from here. If you think you've had a bad time in the emergency room, how about going to a "new" facility that isn't even finished, and you have to duck the electrical wires draped from the ceiling as you make your way down the hall. Your mother is taken into a room to be examined, and given some injection that's supposed to stabilize her heart, but it makes her vomit and have diarrhea, and when this begins the nurse just leaves the room and YOU'RE expected to deal with it. I gather in the end she was able to go home, but I suspect "caregiving" isn't in the Russian medical community's lexicon.

I also learned that Galina and the kids go for 3 months back to visit in the summer. So my last summer here will at least be devoid of kid-yelling. And as for bass playing... maybe I can lend him my pocket rock-it (a little box you plug into the bass and attach to headphones); at least we're on a first name basis now.

^^^^^^^^

I had a long talk with Will this morning; he called because he was opening my box and wanted to do it with me. His dad and dad's wife had been visiting all week, so he'd put off opening it until he had some privacy. Anyway, he loved the CD, already had the book (my engineer friend Sig sent it to him in the hospital!), and flipped over the origami. We had a laugh about the frog; after you fold up the frog, there's a little hole at the butt (there's that butt theme again; what's with that?) and you're supposed to blow into it, to inflate the frog. Well, I made it so small it was really hard to inflate. I had to blow in it about a dozen times until I was dizzy, and then poke a broken toothpick inside to coax the folds open. We made several jokes about it during the conversation and I just know that every time he looks at it, he'll have this irresistibly erotic vision of me blowing into its ass.

So he talked more about the hospital experience -- my goddess, I'm glad he's not in Russia -- and about things like how he can't ride in the front seat of a car yet because of the airbags, and what it feels like to wipe the counter with limited range of motion, AND how, because the nerves to his heart have been severed, he's no longer likely to feel things like stage fright or anxiousness in the way he may have done before. And how his DNA is residing next to someone else's DNA, and he talks to his T cells every morning when he takes his meds, and tells them to just settle down, and just because there's a new kid in town doesn't mean they have to pick a fight.

He also said he treasured our friendship. Well, that's better than a stick in the eye, isn't it?

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I saw two bits of wildlife this week. One was a female wild turkey, hanging out in the trees by the rail trail; the other was a nice big frog, passing time by the river where I walked today. He looked adequately inflated, so I let him be.