One of the many doors at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral. There are no repeats of ornamentation.Whenever Sarah comes to town, we tour the area, adhering to my tenet of not traveling further than 20 minutes from home. I promise if you come to town, I'll take you too.
As we drove along, passing the houses of suburbia, I said I enjoy the personality of each house. Big houses, little houses, ugly houses, many-windowed houses, houses on hills, houses down valleys that flood. Took me six months to find my own house. I keep my swimsuit on the doorknob in the living room. I keep my tennis racket behind the living room couch. I have pennies on the wall in the first art project I ever did.
I see clients in my living room. I serve them freezing cold water in beautiful (!) Starbucks plastic cups. I wear shoes during all my sessions, tho sometimes my clients slip off their shoes.
Sometimes you can smell the basil plant on the windowsill.
Sarah and I often begin our day with yoga. We might go to my sister Donna's in Hatboro and all do yoga together with Sarah leading. She was trained at Kripalu, a converted Jesuit monestary, where I visited her once and had a brief psychotic episode, gone quickly with a timely ingestion of the antipsychotic of the day.
I called up the NIMH to ask about statistics for bipolar disorder and the information specialist told me how to find them. Incidentally, I told her I no longer had bipolar disorder and she gave me the ridiculous response: Maybe you were given the wrong diagnosis.
Why is it that people are so unlikely to entertain new ideas?
I occasionally fantasize that I'll be the first person in the world whose failing kidneys regenerate and reverse my stage 5 kidney disease. I accept it. Vat else can you do, she said in a Yiddish accent.
We'll have a conference about my impending death in a couple weeks when Ethan comes to town. It probly won't happen for a couple years. I have so much to live for! But, guess what? I'm not going to live for YOU. I'm living for myself. My kids are grown. I'm not gonna live for my granddaughter. As in, "Let's go visit Bubby. She'll be at home tethered to her dialysis machine."
However, I don't know what I'll do when the moment is upon me. Perhaps I'll surrender to the machine.
Okay, let's celebrate and go on a tour of the Bryn Athyn Cathedral.
Sarah and Donna
The spectacular door outside the main sanctuary, made from the alloy Monel (mostly nickel and copper) by the late Mr. Walter.
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