“And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came
And go round and round and round, in the circle game”
-Joni Mitchell
To be honest I never listened to Joni Mitchell much. Sure I heard “Big Yellow Taxi” on the radio over the years in it’s various versions, but only recently did I get a “Greatest Hits” album. I pick up these when I want a sampling of an artist’s work rather than diving into a specific album. I had watched Coda on Apple TV which was a great film based on a French film. It is the story of a girl who grows up hearing in a family where the parents and her brother are deaf. She sings to herself while helping them with the family fishing business. In the story she ends up taking choir at school and is mentored by a teacher to sing. In it she sings a Joni Mitchell song but not the excerpt above.
I have been so sporadic on this site lately it is really quite sad. I just haven’t taken the time to write as I have in the past. I’ve been caught up in life and all its joys and challenges. The latest being my dear Mom in the hospital. We are still going through it at the moment, but I am now cautiously optimistic she will come through it. It has just cast this light over everything for me and how so much of what I do in life is really not that interesting. The people and things I love most have nothing to do with my day to day and that strikes me as such a waste. I’ve been able to spend time with my Mom and my brother over the last week. Often times just sitting in the same room saying nothing. Just being there for each other. That oddly seems so much more valuable than the things I do on a daily basis for “work”. I clearly am not currently following my passion. I don’t think my “passion” though is easily categorized, nor can it be easily monetized. So I steal my moments to write and listen and learn in my daily interactions.
When someone you love is ill and in a hospital, it is exhausting. You aren’t really doing much except gathering data, being there for them and waiting. There is a lot of waiting in hospitals. During this time of Covid, the hospital my Mom is at only allows one visitor per patient, per day. My brother an I have been taking turns. He isn’t working though so he has been able to visit more than I, but then he comes home to my family instead of his own. This is his own challenge right now. Today he has flown back to Los Angeles to trade out some clothing and then turn around and drive back. It makes me quite grateful that we all live relatively close to each other.
Tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow my Mom has a procedure to change out a heart valve. 10 years ago this procedure wasn’t available for her in the sense that the way they did it and we would probably be looking at the next two months as the time she has left in this world. But she has lived a good life and is relatively healthy for 97 and it seems she has a good shot at least improving these later years should this all work out. I’m grateful for that but the testing process to make sure she is a candidate has sure been challenging emotionally. Hell, hospitals are challenging emotionally as it is.
Hopefully the next time I type here will be to tell you how well she is doing. Ultimately I don’t know though. I just am living in today. I can only look back on what we have lived through. Life is so precious. It is amazing how often we take the simplest things for granted.