The shadow knows!

Sue and I had our regular meeting with our beloved therapist on this perfectly beautiful late-spring day, leaves rustling and flower petals tossed at our feet by a light breeze. On the way we spotted this calendar, written on the glass window of a wine shop. The words are more visible in the shadow than on the glass. Seemed like a metaphor.

I spent nine months of my childhood in an isolation cell in an Air Force hospital, being treated for rheumatic fever. The year was 1952, I was seven, and I’d been told I would never walk again, that the cartilage in my knees had "dissolved." A radio was my chief companion, after the warm-hearted Black women who bathed me with kind hands and dealt uncomplainingly with the bed pan. On Sunday mornings I listened to The Great Gildersleeve, and on Sunday evenings I thrilled to a radio murder mystery called The Shadow. Each episode began with a maniacal laugh and a man asking, “"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" How could I, many years later, knee cartilage regained, not study Drama?

I’m trying to write a new Medium piece that I promised others I’d have done two months ago. So focused work, no comments till I get it done. But thanks for looking in.