Sickbed notes

The brugman- sias by the pool have kept popping out their wimple- style flowers, which would sway like paper bells in the breeze if we had one, while I was curled into a little ball of pain upstairs in the den for the last few days.

I think it was redux, not reflux, from some tropical bug I had the misfortune to ingest 35 years ago in Nicaragua. It comes back in waves every decade or so.

But all is mending, if slowly. The Richter scale may be open-ended, but on the 1-to-10 pain scale, I've gone from spikes of 9 down to steady rumbles between 2 and 4; the real world can't be far behind.

And life has gone on. Out in California, my dear friend Lou put my discomfort in perspective with a crisis far more severe, being taken to the hospital in the middle of the night when her pulse dropped dangerously low. They knew she was better when a doctor, trying to see if she was finally lucid, asked her who the president was, and the response started with "God help us. . . ."

On the other end of the joy spectrum and the country, Ray has been conching out in Key West. When emails from there close with the line, "It's raining again, and the palms are doing their magical dance. I may just nap the day away," you know the therapy is working.