Blue Skies, Shinin' on Me

I've been listening to lots of Dinah Washington lately.

Especially the old Gershwin song, Blue Skies. Just last week, while ambling over to some enchiladas for lunch, I was singing the bit about

"Never saw the sun shinin' so bright,

Never saw things goin' so right"

Obviously, I was riding for a fall, at least that's what I thought looking back on my carefree, humming along days when we discovered on Wednesday that R Man has a tumor in his lung.

Since we bought our house 13 years ago, R Man has had to endure cancer, pancreatitis, open heart surgery, and George Bush. I think I can be excused for thinking "Isn't it somebody else's turn?" Apparently not. We're scheduled for a biopsy on Tuesday to see what's up in lungland.

I know from past experience when I'm confronted with bad news, I immediately panic, flailing around mentally the better to imagine all sorts of terrible things; once that passes (fortunately, pretty quickly. It's just lucky that I don't have the attention span for long term consternation,) I drop into a sort of myopic numbness. One step at a time, just focusing on what I have to get through right now.

I also start cleaning. By the time R Man recovered from his heart surgery, our house gleamed, the envy of Martha Stewart. At one point, I vacuumed the window screens. And not just our little home. While trapped in various waiting rooms, I will straighten magazines, throw away trash and, if stuck there long enough, rearrange the furniture to my liking. I have, more than once, considered asking for a hammer so that I could re-hang the art. Receptionists all over San Francisco look at me warily when we show up now.

Do I think everything is going to be OK? Oddly, I do, sincerely. The good thing about getting through bad times is that you're sort of toughened up for new ones. We'll see. Anyway, I gotta go, I think I need to scour the bathtub.