Thursday, April 02, 2009

"April, come she will . . .

when streams are ripe and swelled with rain."
simon and garfunkel


My birthday month. It is the month when, for me, spring really begins. It starts with that flourescent green and works its way into rhodies and azaleas and tulips and all the riot of spring flowers that makes Oregon's rain worthwhile.

Happy Birthday, today, to my friend, P. It was exactly a year ago that I stopped by her house with a pot of flowers for her birthday. I expected her to be at work and thought I would leave the flowers and a card on her front porch, but she came to the door and said she had left work, feeling really sick—flu she thought. A year later she has no memory of my being there, of her birthday or many days that followed. Within days she was in the hospital with a viral brain infection. As she recovered from the virus, one of the drugs she was being treated with caused a reaction even more painful and life-threatening than the original illness. April was a sad and frightening month. I will see her on Sunday, which is my birthday. We have been celebrating our birthdays together for nearly 50 years and her recovery makes it all the more worthy of celebration!

Today I am doing jobs that I have been procrastinating over, but I took my camera when I went out awhile ago. I hoped to see the pair of mallards that have been hanging out in our creek, but they were not around today. The earlier rain has made everything clean and shiny and oh, so green.

Even Gracie's eyes seem a little brighter green this time of year.

7 comments:

  1. Please tell her how happy I am that she is here to celebrate another year with you. It was weird and scary but hopefully this year will be uneventful!

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  2. You said you have been celebrating your birthday together? So is yours today?

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  3. Oh, my -- what is it that T.S. Eliot said? April is the cruelest month. I am so glad your friend P. is still here to celebrate your b.d.s together.

    Sorry to take up bandwidth here but the server where I am staying will let me receive but not send mail. However, I can go on the Internet. Would you do me a favor and copy/paste this into an e-mail and post it to QA?

    I HATE when I see work that looks like mine after I have taught a class - that is NOT what I intend to see; esp. since it is a process class.

    And I thought I had discovered construction fence for printing: I started using it in 2000 without ever having heard of Jeanne Williamson; I don't know when she started using it but she took off and ran with it while I still only use it as one of my design elements rather than the only one. Synchonicity. Jeanne does not "own" fence but she has taken it to new levels.

    On the other hand - I had taken a photo in Paris of a homeless woman in 1999 and before I had a chance to use her, up popped Linda Colsh's almost identical woman. So I have never used her because in my mind, Linda owns that character. Makes me sad, but that is the way it goes. Synchronicity rears its head again.
    Rayna

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  4. How good that a year on you are able to celebrate together again. Happy birthday to you this month too.

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  5. Ih ope your friend made a full recovery from such a devastating illness!

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  6. I hope this April will be a more positive one than last years.' I'm glad your friend conquered her illness and continues to celebrate birthdays with you. :-)

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  7. Happy Birthday to you and your friend and I was humming that song all day!

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