Good to know

So last night I had an appointment with a podiatrist. I'm trying to figure out why I keep having stabbing pains in my feet. (Yes, I am officially 150 years old.) They took some X-rays of my feet and determined that I just have a weird bone structure that can sometimes lead to joint pain in the feet. I explained that my primary care doctor referred me there to rule out any condition that would need surgery, or any other similarly drastic thing.

"Well, family doctors hear about foot pain, and they usually think it's gout," the podiatrist said. "You definitely don't have gout."

Well Jesus, that's good to know. I don't want to have any disease that Dick Cheney has.

More toddler friendship

So as I've mentioned, the Peanut has a best buddy at day care (which I guess I now need to call "pre-school"!) This little boy has completely stolen my heart. I can't get enough of this kid.

And he can't get enough of the Peanut. When I dropped her off at pre-school yesterday after the long Memorial Day weekend, one of the teachers picked the Peanut up to give her a hug. The boy, C., came over and started tugging on the Peanut's leg as the teacher held her.

"I missed you!" he shouted up at her.

I imagine that one day in 2024, C. will be hanging around his college dorm room musing on the fact that he always falls for vivacious brunettes with dark, dark eyes. He's going to wonder how this came about. Why never the blondes? Always the brown-eyed ones with cute giggles and mischievous streaks.

Enigma

Once in April I walked with someone I could speak to without words through an endless field of daffodils carpeting the grass under the English sky. The first line of my favorite poem read: "Had we but world enough, and time..." The sunlight had a quality like water, glowing on the trees and the emerald grass. The skyline of Oxford encircled us like an embrace.

Death notices

My first newspaper job was writing obituaries. This was about as ghoulish and weird an undertaking (no pun intended) as you might expect. What always struck me was how odd, and unfair, it seemed to try and encapsulate someone's entire life in a couple of paragraphs.

Death notices, which are even shorter versions of obits provided for people scanning the newspaper to find out when and where a funeral will be held, are even more stark. How much information lies behind these tiny fragments of a person's life.

Through the wonders of the Intertubes, even the very elderly who never touched a computer in their lives, such as my late Aunt Angie, can be immortalized online forever through their death notices in local papers.

DiMARZO, Angelina "Angie" (nee Seminerio) age 84, of Clifton died Wednesday, May 2, 2007 at St. Mary's Hospital, Passaic. Born in Paterson, she lived there before moving to Clifton forty-five years ago.

What this doesn't tell you is how she looked in the photos from her youth, posing in a leopard-print bikini next to her weight-lifter husband. How, with her broad smile and her cascading curls, she was a dead ringer for Rita Hayworth. How she loved her only child, her son. How she was often so frightened, pursued by fears, real and imaginary.

I hope you've found peace where you are now, Angie.