Holding it down

My neighborhood, which is a university neighborhood, empties out in the summer when the students leave. The streets are quieter, the days slower, and the sense is that almost everyone is at the lake somewhere, leaving those who couldn't get away to wander in the concrete and asphalt lands and find seats in restaurants that usually have long wait times and hail empty yellow cabs at will.

Further downtown, it's a different story. I don't go to midtown that much these days. When I used to work in the heart of Rockefeller Center, right across the street from Radio City Music Hall, I'd go outside for lunch and meld into the crush of office workers and tourists, and the sense there was that everyone had come from the lake to the city, leaving working stiffs to dream of escape to less hectic locales.

I went to midtown yesterday for MRIs of some problematic joints. I lay on the table for one-and-a-half hours, the machine clicking away, a discordant music as I daydreamed. A reader said in comments here recently that people taking care of her medically makes her "crack along [her] fault lines." Oh, how that resonated. I am now in a round of doctors appointments and follow ups with specialists and on and on and on. It really is time consuming to get on top of one's health when one is not in perfect health. But the trickier part is the way all this is making me feel so breakable, and I swear seeing inside my body has made the pain flare. I feel glued together lately. But with old, cracking, worn-out glue. I sometimes wonder if I wasn't doing better when I was just pushing through, ignoring the body's whimpers. I felt mentally tougher then.

My son has surgery scheduled on his torn ACL, which didn't stop him from hiking three miles up the Flatiron in Boulder, Colorado with friends this weekend past. And he rides his bike to work every day. The leg muscles around his knee are so strong they support him. He probably could have passed the fire department physical endurance and agility test but then he'd have needed surgery right after being hired, and he thought that would be in poor faith. So his dream has been delayed a bit. I am sure there is a larger purpose to all of this, though I have no idea what it is.

Full house this weekend: Family friends from St. Lucia—people who my kids grew up with during their summers with Grandma—will be in town and staying with us, plus my daughter will be home to do another one of her guest chef gigs and my niece arrives on Sunday to stay for the rest of summer. My son also arrived home from his trip to Denver yesterday, so all the young people will be back under my roof, plus assorted significant others visiting. Cue music. The babies are coming home.

Photos: 1) Thai Market restaurant during a Friday afternoon business lunch was oddly empty. My daughter doesn't like the idea of umbrellas indoors, but I'm a sucker for the color red, especially paired with gold. 2) A lovely chamber chamber trio practiced during set-up for St. Mary's garden party and silent movie fundraiser last Thursday. My husband was The Man.