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#4. The Adirondacks

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I felt a minor key descending. I missed her like going through a breakup. There’s always that double edged sword, guardian angel or not. Shadows swaying ephemeral like smoke; puppets pulled and jerked by chronic loneliness and fear of open hearted love that might unleash the fearful flood. These currents run deep and you need a cosmic dowsing stick to find them before they take you over the edge.  Summer was fading fast and the last days had been splendid.  Walking on a path by a blue lake that went to the horizon, through scrubby forests with sinew roots that gnarled and curled and squirmed under foot and you could hear a woodpecker. On a cobblestone cemetery path, deep shadows and oak trees, sidewalks and late summer sunflowers and milkweed for Monarch butterflies in front yards and in the sidewalk cracks.  Near the end we found a boutique pizza place on a shaded street. You could see the fire wood burning in the pizza oven and a young man with a large wooden spatula watching. Once w
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#3. The White Lady

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“It’s the finale”, she said. Last appointment with the Rochester Urologist.  It had been all summer long back and forth, each trip another chapter. He’d become used to sitting beside her in the Ford truck cruising the highway and now the golden rod was here and summer was ending. Carpets of it shining in the sun, mile after mile of open country and blazing golden rod here in upstate New York and the Canadian border about four hours north and Ohio ten hours west on the way to Rochester again. The appointment was 2:15 that afternoon and we took our time stopping for gas on the edge of Cortland near where we’d rendezvoused a few week earlier. I went in for coffee while she pumped the gas.   You know how you used to get hot coffee out of a glass beaker or a dispenser with a faucet or sometimes a thermos? First you find the cups and the half-and-half and sugar. Also the stirrers. Then you pour the coffee and you’re in charge. Usually no spill. All ok.Sometimes the milk’s in a carton
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#2. The American Hotel

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A couple of weeks later she pulled up outside his house. It was 9AM late summer and the sun shone and its warmth infused the day. The Rochester Urologist ordered another ultrasound. And the catheter was due for its monthly replacement and check-up. Like a car service. He wanted to look inside too for signs of cancer. And this meant injection of a radioactive tracer isotope and a PET scan. I wasn’t too sure about that. The kidney condition was  improving but the doctor wanted more images, graphs and numbers to trace the path forward. This is high-end search and destroy western medicine: Find the culprit, cut it out, poison it with chemo or radiate the bastard. Maybe all three. Western medicine has diagnostic tools, technicians  and machines. Chinese medicine has rhythm, timbre and texture, the pulsing throb of the pulsing body under three  fingers on your wrist  reporting the inside story. It was a quarter century ago in this small cubicle deep in China Town, New York. Dr Wong has three
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