The best medicine

Pie fight

Jack with coin collection

      My son Paul called last week, and he made me laugh.  I was deep in sadness and fear about Judy's decline, and Paul was just getting his head above water after a month of screamingly sick children.  But  Paul cracked jokes, and I howled with delight when he told me about how he tried to distract little Jack from his misery.
      Jack, at 9, is the toughest of Paul's three boys, and the most stoic about sickness and medical procedures.   The aftermath of the family's bout with norovirus left him with terrific stomach pains.  Many trips to doctors and emergency rooms eliminated the worst possible explanations.  He now has  a prescription for a drug to  relieve the pain somewhat before tincture of time takes care of it.   Meanwhile, Paul and Jack watched  the Three Stooges, running the action forward and backward.  When you are 9 years old, a pie in the face is really funny.

Charlie

    I laughed even harder when Paul told me the next adventure of his boys.   Jack was well  enough to   to help his younger brother Charlie apply for the job of head coach of the Oregon Ducks.    After all, it is a government  job and the applications have to be open to the public.  So Jack helped Charlie e-mail the Ducks football team.  Charlie wrote:

Go Ducks!

"I'm only seven, but I think I would make a pretty good coach or at least Offensive Coordinator.  I know more plays than my dad and have been playing football since I was three (not tackle).  I know basically all of the rules. Could I please have the head coach job (or at least an assistant job)?
Go Ducks!"
     The sky  here in Oregon is a thick gray and the light is dim when Sheila and I walk in the mornings.  I've learned to appreciate the scenes as silhouettes:  The black outlines of birds nesting in the bare branches of maples, the flapping motion of 15 geese forming a black V low in the gray sky.

Paul

     Last week we watched a crow flying just above our heads with nut in his mouth.  He would swoop down close to us,  and then soar up to an apex.  From that point he  dropped the nut onto the blacktop of the road.  He landed near  the nut,   and followed it as it rolled  almost to a stop.  Then he picked it up again in his mouth, soared up, and perched on the telephone wires.  It looked like he was surveying the road.  He flew up again, and, at the height of his arc, dropped the nut onto a different stretch of pavement.  I know the crow  was just cleverly trying to crack the nut and get something to eat, but it looked to us like a slapstick routine.  Sheila and I laughed. We creatures can be pretty funny in all the ways we get through the winter.