Fourth of July Weekend – 2011

Thanks for the email, the note, the phone call, the voice message, the visit, the sharing of breakfast and the walking of the dogs. You know who you are, you know what you do. Thanks for paying attention while drawing blood, for the smiles passing the doorway, thanks for the ginger ale on ice and the big bowl of chocolate ice cream. Thanks for the rain check on dinner, the invitations, the beautiful pillow cases, the Gatorade, the Kiel’s lotion, the new music, the TV show recommendations and warnings, the honest opinions, the laughing out loud, the reading, the writing, those things that you do.

I have enjoyed the molasses out of today and this week. Because the treatment Ofatumamab is good enough to be continued at least through July, I had one today, posted three more on the calendar, and -then Mom drove me and the dogs across this great State to Richland Oregon -- population not more than 300 I’d guess. A valley with rivers running through it and creeks like the one called Eagle. Where the black and white photograph of my Grandma Moody stands straddling the Eagle Creek, her red hair, invisible in color cascading down her shoulders which are steadied across the rambling water. The same Eagle Creek we crossed over on our way to the well built, double-wide, turquoise and white house nested up against a garden fenced off from deer and a healthy apricot tree. The weed-less sod fenced around itself too, leaving wide space for a tent big enough to fit Uncle Jon’s family of six, a hand-woven hammock Mom bought in the Yucatan from the old woman who wove it, a steady picnic table ferried to Richland in the back of Uncle Karl’s boat, room for at least ten more chairs and three giddy dogs.

Neighbors and local family came over for an impromptu pizza feed and family stories spilled over. In my family, as they spread across eastern Oregon from Baker City, Richland, and onto Portland, they married in pairs. Brothers married cousins at least twice that I can see. Brothers in one family married sisters in another at least once in our immediate family, maybe twice down the line. So family reunions are complex places full of the fine art of shit grinning’ stories as they run around like legs avoiding flies filling in the mysteries of another time and place.

We called Richland home this time around for four nights and woke up this morning in time to make the six hour drive to be at OHSU in time for treatment. The treatment injected into my body was followed by cranial sacral treatment. I think they are both working. Time will tell. In the meantime, I’m working on writing some new songs. I learned a couple of songs this weekend thanks to Uncle Jon. Writing and playing music is like writing in that, it’s the process of doing the creating that is the most rewarding part of it which is saying a lot because singing for others to hear and writing for others to absorb is more than just a little rewarding.