Tonight we had a delightful and delicious dinner at the site of Tanja’s great fall just five weeks ago.

She evinced some anxiety about the return, but as this was also the site of literally countless childhood memories, as well as perhaps the crowning achievement of my adult life (we were married here by the authority of my brother-in-law who was, coincidentally, born on this day, in the foggy past)— in short, it was important and inevitable that she reclaim this spot, which, to my mind, she accomplished categorically by, with nary a prompt, reclining herself on the very spot where she’d landed on that now distant evening.

It is probably the one point on this journey I remember better than she. And I began to coach her on how she ought to lay. But it felt exceedingly morbid. This wasn’t a reenactment, not at all about where she’d been but about where she is now.

Look how high those hands are reaching!

Later in the evening she sat at her mother’s piano and played a few bars of something, first on the right hand, then on the left…I’m sorry, what’s that? Oh, I think it was by Bach, the German composer. Nice piece.

Now, to be transparent, tonight is also a night of strange sensations and phantom pains. There’s the sense that one is not the same as one’s body. There is frustration, which is just fear turned into something more active.

Five weeks ago, you were a baby. Now look at you! You are battling for more and more and more. And that is, to my mind, exactly right. Let other people breathe a sigh of relief and say “at least this” or “at least that.” I am right there with them, here in my body that works exactly as I expect it to, for better or worse.

But you! You need more. You need progress.

I came downstairs today just in time to hear a plaintive sound from behind the bathroom door.

“What’s going on?”

“I fell.”

“You fell! Are you alright?”

“It wasn’t much. I was already on the floor.”

“Why were you on the floor?”

“I was cleaning the toilet.”

There followed a strange moment of something like fury. Why am I, glorious, wonderful Jed Alger, of the Osterville Algers, doing all this stuff if you’re just going to die cleaning the toilet first time I turn my back?

Then I remembered something I read in an advice column. It was about a guy who didn’t cancel a family vacation when his wife was diagnosed with cancer and her chemo coincided with the trip. The columnist said that, mostly, “People do what they want to do,” and that tells you who they are.

Tanja, in my experience, does sweet things. Kind things. Loving things. And she also cleans the toilet so that when Wren’s friends arrive for D&D the bathroom will be on point, because that’s what 15 year-old boys are focused on.

And, you know what? If that’s what she needs, so be it. I have learned to trust her even when I don’t understand.

Happy Easter, all:)

https://youtu.be/F_FM4s14JDg