Solstice

December 21, 2024

OK. Sorry. I think we can agree that the last post was a bit too dark of a place to leave the tale hanging. That, in fact, was hopefully the darkest hour. Fitting, because it’s winter solstice. Days are getting longer, so let’s see if we can’t start working our way back to the good light again.

On that note let’s take the day out of sequence and start with this photo I took on my second walk along the river, north this time toward and beyond the Fremont Bridge because I know that locally at least that’s where the cormorants hang out. I always see cormorants out here when I’m out in midwinter.

Here we’re looking forward to the end of the riverfront walkway before it ends at the start of the industrial zone.

Along the Willamette, north of the Fremont Bridge.

Very nice, yes? Especially with that bright yellow steel sculpture brightening up the morning. That’s certainly a cheerful way to welcome back the lengthening days.

But look again, because this photograph is probably the most encouraging, hopeful thing I’ve experienced in a month. Two things to point out:

The photo is unzoomed. This is essentially the view I’m seeing as I stand at this point.
Zoom in. Zoom way, way in - beyond the sculpture, beyond the end of the walkway, and focus on that baby blue bollard straight ahead. What do you see?

This is the spot where I can first see what I believe are the cormorants. They’re still essentially a row of black dots, but I’m pretty confident that they’re cormorants. And when I get closer, it doesn’t take long until I know I’m right.

Pretty terrific, right? That’s what - maybe three city blocks? There’s quite a bit of eye functionality to work with even if we hold the line here. Its not 20/20 (yet) but many things are still possible.

____________

So hold that thought and let’s go back a few hours to the top of the day and bring it forward. Today starts with essentially the same routine as yesterday: a starter breakfast with steroids at our tiny table in the apartment, followed by a walk back down to Caffe Umbria. I’m out the door maybe a half hour earlier this time, and when I get close to the coffee shop the sky suddenly erupts in a cacophonous explosion. It’s the crows. Their time has come, and even though it’s too dark to see them I can visualize them rising up in a raucous cloud of hundreds or even a thousand as they begin their morning by dispersing across the valley. A thrilling way to start the day.

But this morning is difficult and I’m concerned and maybe even somewhat depressed. Because I’m not doing as well this morning. The vision’s a notch worse than it was yesterday, it’s a little harder walking to the coffee shop this morning, and once I’m there I ask one of the servers to deliver the coffee to my table because I don’t quite trust myself. And it’s more of a challenge to write the blog, read the mail, and all that. I’m a little frightened, wondering if yesterday was the high-water mark and the left eye might be starting to slowly close down. It’s like the day back in hospital when in the morning I was elated to be able to make out the word WELCOME at the top of the day but not by the end of it.

It’s unnerving, but one of the patterns here is that progress isn’t linear for some reason. Visual acuity improves, then regresses, then improves again. Overall though, the trend is upward; and somewhere during the morning visibility improves, and it continues improving hour after hour for much of the day. It’s the best sight functionality I’ve had in over a week. In that eye anyway.

Afterwards I walk back to the apartment and check in with Rachael whose plotting out her own day, including a trek over to Fred Meyers to pick up a half ton of groceries and get her weight-bearing exercise on the way back. For myself though, I’m delighted that the day is turning up drier than expected so I head back to the river to walk north to see what’s out that way. Spoiler alert: there be cormorants, and more.

This is new development since last winter. This whole stretch of the walkway is fairly recent development, and now they’ve added lighting to make it a more comfortable place to stroll at the edges of the day.

#11: Glaucous-winged gull, a lucky find. He’s the only gull I’ve seen here so far.

#12: California scrub jay. I won’t have to count that fleeting sight on the way to the airport Thursday, I’ve got evidence now.

#13: Dark-eyed junco. Not a great shot, but he’s a smallish bird and I’m slow on the focus still.

And we even get some blue sky. I consider hanging around a while to see if there’s any chance that Mount Hood will break through, but I don’t have the time. I’ve got a date to get back for.

Most of the afternoon gets spent in a long, and long overdue visit with my sister Elizabeth. We didn’t meet at all before we left for California because I didn’t know what was happening with me and whether I might be contagious. We get a table back in the back at Via Delizia and do our best to hear each other over the din of a boisterous table of 24, members of a party of some sort.

It’s really an excellent visit, one that gets off to a good start when I correctly note that she has new earrings. She got them when she went with a friend out to Edgewater to see a Pink Martini concert that got rained out so they browsed the shops instead. She really likes them, and said they’re made from bottle caps.

I’d say this is the best visit we’ve had in a few years. There is so much to catch up on, between her own news and updates on how dad is doing, and then of course our difficult situation. There’s a lot of frank talk about the disease, my status, the prognosis, and all the hairy details we’ve been subjecting you to for the last weeks. At the end I tell her if she really wants to get a better sense of what it’s been like she should read the blog, starting probably with Friday the 13th. She does, and I’ll hear back later on how harrowing it was for her to follow along. She’ll probably be glad to see this more upbeat episode come out too, but then she’s already gotten that because she’s seeing me at what’s likely another high water mark. When we leave we agree to get together for coffee when she’s back in town after Christmas, and we make plans to attend a piano concert together in a few weeks.

The evening takes a strange turn when Rachael encourages me to go upstairs with her to check out the ‘Amenity Room’ on the seventh floor that’s a small social space where we can spread out for our gin game rather than in our cramped apartment. She was up earlier, liked its looks, and liked the fact that when it’s light out we’ll get a nice aerie view across the neighborhood.

And she’s right. It is a welcoming little space, one I should revisit with the camera during the day. Its not welcoming this evening though, because there’s one other person here already - a somewhat crazed looking man at the end of the long table, manically bobbing and weaving as he stares intently at his laptop screen. Maybe he’s engrossed in a computer game?

We sit down at the opposite end of the table and break out the deck. A few minutes later our eardrums are almost shattered when he suddenly cranks the volume up full stop, after bobbing and weaving silently with his headphones up until now. It takes a minute to figure out that this perhaps drug-crazed young man is mad that we’ve entered his space and had the audacity to have sat at the opposite end of his table right in his line of sight.

Rachael, who’s stiffer spined than me by a good deal, takes offense and starts urging him to just put his headphones back on and turn the volume down. It just enrages him further though, and it takes a few minutes for me to nudge her out the door and back to our room. Not the right battlefield to take a stand on.

We retire to the room, she beats me on two out of three hands of gin, and then we watch the next episode of Broadchurch. It’s a dark episode because that’s how Broadchurch is, but I have no trouble seeing the faces this time. An excellent day.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	6
Comment on this entry	Comment	0