Steve
Thursday morning.
Chemo tomorrow. Round three. So far, Gabrielle is weathering this week
quite nicely. The kids, along with
Karissa, made us a wonderful meal of pan-fried petrale sole, mashed potatoes
and broccoli along with cherry pie for dessert.
Gabrielle had an impressive amount, but she is still thin…almost 20
pounds down from when this all began. I
am making up for her weight loss, big time, but will soon put the brakes on
that. Still, I want to be a good example
to her, so I shovel it in. Nothing like
leading by example, right?
Daniel and Gabrielle had a nice outing to Northgate
as well…four hours. She even took
advantage of her birthday month and had lunch at Red Robin. I am so jealous!
Well, I’ll have to leave the rest of the details to
the others. I just have time for one
quick story before hopping on my bike on this blustery morning and heading off
to the salt mines (that’s where Ward Cleaver always told June he was going)…
So, now, my little aside.
On Sunday, I was booted out of the house by
Gabrielle and Daniel and told to get some exercise as I needed it. Perhaps they were sick of seeing me eating
all the treats that were supposed to be for someone else. In any event, I went down to the beach and
went for a run during low tide. It was
quite pleasant as I had a chance to find more beach glass and saw all sorts of
wonderful things: waves, birds
(cormorants, buffleheads, gulls and such), and even got a little exercise to
boot, though it was kind of hard to run and eat ginger cookies and pick up
beach glass all at the same time. One of
the delights about being at the beach is that you never know what you’ll
see. I looked the waves, the clouds as
they scudded across the sky (the poet types love that word ‘scud’, so thought
I’d throw it in just for good measure).
So as I scudded across the beach, the ginger cookies scudded down my
gullet, the clouds scudded as well. So
much for scudding.
As I ran, I was struck by a massive barnacle shell
and picked it up. At first I thought of
discarding it, as I didn’t know what to do with it once I got it back home. But as I held it in my one free hand (see
reference to beach glass and cookies above), I was drawn to it all the more and
just couldn’t send it scudding across the water like a skipped stone. So now it’s in my collection of seashells and
beach glass. Here’s a picture of it:
You will notice that it totally dwarfs the previous
biggie that I snagged a couple of weeks back.
And, no, I didn’t find the quarter.
I just threw that on the table to give you a reference as to the
size.
So, today’s aside is about barnacles. I think they have gotten a bad rap over the
years. What do you do if you have a
boat? You scrape the barnacles off. Barnacles slow you down, are crusty and
rough. I know of one dermatologist who
told a patient that all her spots and moles were just “barnacles on the ship of
life”. Patient didn’t like getting told
she had barnacles, and I don’t suppose I would either.
But take a closer look at the big one above. It has a massive exterior that shelters a
very soft organism from the ravages of the wind, the tides, the various sea
creatures that want to eat it for lunch.
When it is hungry, it opens up its hatch (gotta be a better term than
hatch, but that’s the best I can do right now) and extends its feather-like arm
into the current pulling in nutrients and even more calcium to add to the
shell. Piece by piece, the shell is
made. On any one day, you wouldn’t
notice the half dozen or so calcium bits stuck on the rim, but over time they
add up, and the soft little critter on the inside is nestled deeper inside,
safer than before.
I like shells.
They protect the vulnerable soft spots.
But unlike the barnacle, I can’t be all hard and crusty. Softness lends itself to being open and
receiving the gifts of kindness of others.
Sure, it is possible to get hurt, but I’ll take that chance. Nevertheless, there is something nice about
that barnacle.
