Today was a mighty day for Tanja. She began with her first attempt at making the morning coffee since 3/3, an experiment that began well and ended with mixed results. The filter, and the grounds it contained, went on an unintended journey, creating a situation across the stovetop which Tanja found disheartening. The coffee however was excellent.

Next she went downtown for 8:00 PT followed by 9:00 OT. (Her driver holed up at Spielman’s bagel shop where, thanks to their generous rewards program, he is a quarter of the way to earning a free t-shirt. ) At OT, she again climbed aboard the Proprio machine and this time was more successful–though no one ever masters the Proprio. Her therapist noted the improvement and gave Tanja the encouragement that, these days, is so necessary to her.

In the afternoon it was back to the Pearl for a visit to the spa; again her first since 3/3. Here she met with her longtime and much beloved aesthetic professional for an epic sesh. She emerged from there simply glowing, carrying an orchid she’d been gifted.

“That’s lovely,” I said. “Is that part of the treatment?”

“It’s a get-well gift,” Tanja said, patiently.

“That’s pretty sweet,” I said.

“Well, she’s pretty sweet.”

One of the things Tanja has taught me, that I ought to have noticed on my own, is that people are, for the most part, pretty sweet when you meet them in their natural habitat, unstressed and unthreatened.

I found myself thinking for some reason of the first time I celebrated her birthday with her. She invited me to go with her to the house of long-time friends of hers–it was a small cottage, set back from the road, a kind of handcrafted hideaway, as efficient and tidy as a yacht, inhabited by these two quiet, thoughtful, watchful people. They did their best to put me at ease–and their best was quite good, as I recall– but I felt very much like a thing from another planet.

They had gifts for Tanja.

He had made a small box of dark oiled wood. It seemed to glow in her palm and her thumb naturally found the circular hole in the lid and lifted the snugly fitting top.

“I dunno,” he said. “For jewelry or whatever you womenfolk do with such things.”

“It’s beautiful,” Tanja said.

“Instead of nails,” his wife said, “He fixed the joints with small brass pins. You can see them there on the edge. Isn’t that cool?”

It was super cool.

Then she produced her gift for Tanja. It was a jar of cherries in dark liquid.

“Are these from your garden?”

“Yes,” she said. “They’ve spent the last six months in a liquor I made from squeezing the juice out of their siblings.”

“Look at the stems,” he encouraged.

On closer inspection, there was something distinctive about the line each stem.

“The actual stems came out during the soaking,” she admitted. “So I replaced them with fake stems I carved from the branches and dyed in the liquor.”

“Built-in toothpicks,” Tanja said. “I love it.”

Like a character in a b-movie, I felt in my pocket for the little box that held a piece of jewelry I’d bought in a mad rush the day before. It seemed best to wait a bit, like maybe forever, before giving it.

The idea of holding someone in your thoughts while you carve stems or fit brass pins for a gift that wouldn’t be due for months–it was new territory for me and I wanted to scoff at it. But I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it.

I don’t know what this has to do with Tanja’s recovery except that she has been the recipient of so very much kindness from the moment she was hurt. People have gone out of their way to help in all sorts of ways that have made a real difference to her. It has been wonderful. None of us are angels, of course–not even PFTanja–but she does a good job, just in the way she lives, of reminding one that it is pretty much always worth trying to be sweet.