Tuesday

7 March 2017

— softly golden early light on Holly’s thirty-year-old cactus

Good Morning All,

I wish you could see this cactus. All its little barbs are lit up, as if it is sporting designer stubble. Holly got it for her seventh birth in a pot about the size of a tea cup. It might have been an inch tall then. Now it’s 21 inches and thanks to Esther last week lives in a large clay pot seven inches across.

The news this morning is particularly good! Lowell called promptly at 8:00 last night (2:00 his time) for our Tuesday Skype-and-backgammon session. I asked casually if he thought it wise we should play our Tuesday  game on Monday. He looked surprised. I suggested one of us was having a senior moment. He looked chagrinned and then laughed. I said, “Hey, better to be a day ahead than a day behind.”

And then—Holy mackerel!—he proceeded to upgrade my whole operating  system. Which—given that I have assiduously avoided updating anything for several years now—that turned out to be no easy matter. Using something called Team Viewer, he accessed my desktop while we Skyped and then switched to Face-time on our iPhones. We started at 8:00, got in two games of backgammon while waiting for stuff to boot up and reboot, and were done just before 12:30.

For me, honest to God, it was like watching a master surgeon performing open heart surgery. And listening, as well, for Lowell kept a running narrative of what he was doing now and why. Much of it I grasped about as well as your basic layman hearing about the deeper intricacies of photosynthesis, but it was such a pleasure and so fascinating to observe someone dancing through the steps of what he knew inside and outside and upside down side.

He was Brooks Robinson at third base. He was Joan Baez singing Silver Dagger. He was Nureyev at the Bolshoi. You just don’t get to witness that sort of stuff that often.

Of course when I got up this morning and came in here to my desk, there was the melted mass of what remained of my computer still smouldering slightly from obviously overheating in the night, such that this e-mail is now coming to you by way of my auxiliary … yes, of course I’m only kidding.

That scenario, certainly, was what I feared when I came down the hallway this morning, feeling a little shivery in the knees, and peeked around the corner. Everything here on my desk looked normal. The little green charging light was on. I tapped the mouse. The screen lit up. I typed in my password, and within two seconds it was all there, and everything all morning has worked perfectly!

Tusind tak, Lowell! If and when I get to Detroit, I shall gladly take you and Susan to the restaurant of your choice!

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron