Waiting

After the accident in which her car was destroyed and in which she almost lost her left arm, Sue did not buy another car. She has stopped driving. On those days when we can coordinate our schedules to spend time together, I am happy to take her on various errands. One such errand was her quest for the ever-elusive Shingrix (Shingles vaccine). There is apparently a shortage of the vaccine (or perhaps it is a way for the pharmaceutical industry to raise the price and the demand for it). So we were waiting--for about an hour--in this barren little room, so that Sue could get her second vaccine. At least we had some time together. It has been hard for us to coordinate schedules since mid-October.

Back at her house, she started baking an enormous loaf of levain, to be completed on Saturday, and then when she left it to prove, she read aloud to me from Deray McKesson's book, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope. He writes, "It was in the safety of my first kiss that I learned that men's bodies could do more than break me. It was in the gentle power of the last man I loved that I learned that the words of men could find parts of me to build, parts of me to love that I had not always seen as worthwhile or valuable...." 

McKesson says if we are going to build a more equitable, sustainable, compassionate world, we must make space for those who have been unseen, suppressed, ignored, marginalized. For gay black men, for Puerto Rican Transwomen, for deaf lesbians, for bisexual people with MS who need mobility scooters, for gray hairs and no-hairs, and for all the people whose bodies don't resemble the sleek, perfect, muscular young heterosexual white bodies on most billboards. I say amen to all that. 

I am beaming good will and good health on WalkingMarj, who had a total knee replacement today. May it go well for her.