Monday, November 30, 2009

From the Sickbed: Greetings and Apologies

Dear All,

I'm here--just not able to write very much at present. For going on two weeks now, I have been struggling through my annual bout of bronchitis, which has been more enervating this year than ever before. Today, I finally broke down and went to the doctor (after a week of night coughing that prevents much sleep), only to learn that, yep, I have bronchitis--a nasty case of it.

Rest. Fluids. Aspirin. All those good remedies, along with some cough medicine that, I hope, will now let me get a night's rest and restore my energy.

I haven't been blogging these days because I'm frankly too tired to do much at all except read (or try to do so) and nap. We did carry through on plans to visit a friend in North Carolina at Thanksgiving time, and I'm glad we did so, though it was a stretch to travel. It's a while since we've seen this wonderful friend, and being with him over Thanksgiving was a gift.

And en route, I had the additional gift of bumping into a high school classmate whom I haven't seen in 41 years. It was a privilege to reconnect and share our stories from high school to the present. I had known that Bob went on from high school to become a distinguished educator and writer in the field of geriatric psychiatry. When I recognized him in Atlanta, I was a bit abashed to introduce myself, since I have far less to show for my life and the years since high school then he does.

I'm glad I screwed up my courage and approached him, though. We shared memories of experiences unique to our little time and place in the late 1960s, and were able to add to and correct each other's memory of the gruesome murder of an African-American youth in our last year of school, for which several of our classmates were charged, and of the assassination of Martin Luther King and, Bob reminds me, the jubilation most of our classmates seemed to feel at that horrendous event.

And now I'm going to focus on getting over the bronchitis, and will then return to blogging on a regular basis. I apologize for leaving readers in the lurch, but it's not as if I really say much that's unique here, in any case.

I hope no readers of this blog are dealing with this same nasty bug, which seems to be making the rounds in our area. If so, please take care of yourselves. It can leave you feeling pretty drained, if you don't combat it with a bit of rest.