In the affluent suburbs

Today was the fourth consecutive day of this migraine. It started before the Trans March, continued through the Pride Parade, made me vomit after the vigil, and is still with me as I write this. It does drag my body down. So I put on my dark glasses and hauled out to the suburbs to see a physician who specializes in allergy, sinusitis, and migraine. My very constellation. So far my insurance covers enough of the expense that I can hazard going forward. 

The doctor’s office is near where these children were were leaping and squealing in the fountain. It took four hours of driving there and back through hideous traffic, but I’m cautiously optimistic. I’ll have more testing and measuring in July, and maybe in August a small surgical procedure that could be helpful, but I’m not counting any chickens. 

Meanwhile the summer sky is perfectly blue, the sun is golden, the breeze is cool, and Extinction Rebellion is gearing up for a direct action in Portland on Friday.

I leave you with these lovely words:

One day a woman picked a small thing from the world she knew, a bunch of blue forget-me-nots, and carefully embroidered them onto the edge of a part of a world that would go right on without her, this pillowcase that once, rinsed fresh with blueing and pinned on her clothesline, must have been bright as a window thrown open on the moon, and felt like pressing her cheek to a garden of stars. —Ted Kooser in The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book (2014).