A difficult ending to a good week

I am not quite sure where the time has flown in the week since I last sat down to post! I wish I could say that I have found cures for illness, poverty, and political oppression, but unfortunately I have had to be satisfied busying myself with much less weighty matters.

Last Wednesday evening Barry and I had dinner at Candle 79, an organic vegan restaurant on the Upper East Side, with one of his former residents in radiation oncology. He had joined the Mount Sinai faculty after finishing the residency, treating patients and conducting research in Barry's laboratory, before joining a large, multisite private radiation oncology practice, and is now spending most of his time on the business end of that group. It is a long way from basic radiation biology, but we still found quite a bit to discuss. He and his family (wife and 3 children a bit older than our grandchildren) are now living in Florida, where Disney World has almost become their backyard playground. So he is quite the expert, and we had fun learning more about the rides and things to do. He and Barry did take some time to chat about research and caught up on news of former colleagues, and of course we talked a bit about my illness. It was a very nice evening.

I also called an old friend I had been thinking about because this month was the 10^th anniversary of her husband’s untimely and sudden death. I have tried every year to call her before the fall holidays and before Passover, but obviously missed an entire cycle this past year, so when her name just popped into my head I had to call her. She has relocated and we no longer share any common friends, hence she had no way of knowing that I had been ill.  We had a wonderful chat, catching up on our children and grandchildren (she has two sons and 9 grandchildren).

On Thursday our writing class met. We had three in-class assignments, three topics for which we were given 15 minutes each to write. We then took turns sharing what we had written. The first topic was friends, the second was an early memory, and the third was radio. The idea here is to just let your mind guide you, but then to use these pieces as springboards for more outside of class. Unfortunately I keep getting sidetracked with other activities so I have not “done my homework” as conscientiously as I should be. This week Barry has a very long day of work on Wednesday so I plan to use the time trying to write. I’ll see how that goes.

On Friday we headed back up to Sharon. Early that morning I had seen an e-mail message from the Rabbi of the synagogue telling that there had been smoke in the building; fortunately not a full-blown fire, but the fire department was summoned and the students at the day school, which is housed in the synagogue building, were evacuated into the cold for over a half hour. This is the school in which our younger daughter teaches and our three older grandchildren are students. Fortunately no one was hurt. But because of a lingering smoke smell and my pulmonary problems, we all agreed it would be best for me to sit out services on Saturday. We had made plans to have the whole family at our apartment for lunch, so I knew we would all see each other. It was the first time Barry and I hosted lunch for the whole gang since before my illness, and we had a wonderful time. Saturday night, Eliana and Maya slept over at our apartment while their parents went to a party. We had fun with Maya making pancakes for breakfast while Eliana watched “ET” for a second time.

Sunday was a “ladies day out shopping.” Simmie, Dina, Eliana, Gabriella, and I headed off to the Wrentham Village outlet mall not far from Sharon. Barry spent the day with Joshua, much of it playing with hex bugs and baseballs. Ronen stayed with Maya, who is a bit too young to be as enthused about shopping for clothes as the older girls are, but we did buy her some things and she liked the nightgowns and headbands we selected. We had a great time and the girls bought some adorable clothing for the spring. And of course we had ice cream! We came back to Simmie and Ronen’s house, where Ronen had prepared a barbeque for the whole gang. It was an exhausting but very nice day.

Having just been in the Boston area, we have been glued to the television coverage of the horrible events at the Boston Marathon today. Once again, we are left asking ourselves what good can possibly come from such a heinous act.

Everyone please stay safe!

Love,

Rebecca