Dear Friends:

It's snowing as I write. On the tulips. A winter storm warning is broadcast. The world feels out of sorts, large and small.

I'm writing this from Jeanie's hospital bedside. She collapsed on Wednesday (4/20) and came in by way of EMS (the drivers and staff were great, but ER is still a slow and exhausting way in, believe me). At first they worried us about the possibility of a stroke, but bloodwork and CAT scan came back clear on that score. She's sporadically absent and confused, even wandering off the floor into other units, leading them to suspect low-grade sub-clinical sparking. Essentially, constant seizuring, but under the radar. They hold her while they monitor and get meds adjusted. Lydia is emotionally spent at her college distance and sending off more of her poetic copings (might as well append another if I get her permission). Lucy holds her own, cuddling and dozing with Jeanie in the hospital bed. One grace is that this happened just before I was to catch a plane for Chicago (that trip and those meetings kebashed for me), elsewise the crash management woulda been on Lucy and our downstairs neighbor friend, Maryanne, to cope. In the course of things Jeanie had a couple lapses of "dysphasia" - like speaking in tongues. Inventing a language as she went or stringing together regular words in an incoherence. At first she was oblivious, spieling away, presuming she made sense. When she caught on, we giggled to the point of tears, she speaking for the fun of it - like someone breathing helium and talking in a falsetto voice. I do love this woman so. But then frustrations set in - sentences ending with a face, or Oh Boy, or even Never Mind. Happily, those episodes were brief and passing. MRI and EEGs have since all come back clear - which is to say, nothing definitive (no new tumor; no major seizuring). All confusions slipping under the radar.

Finally ready to send. It's Stringfellow's birthday. He'd have been 77 today. Jeanie came home yesterday (Monday 4/25) with new meds and med levels, and requiring a further level of attentiveness in care.

As for myself, I manage. I hit a wall and crash in sleep when she finally comes home. I write on the laptop at her bedside, or on the plane, and get a few things accomplished if a tad behind the great curve of life. Exhausted and eternally grateful.

Bill