These are the last of the Muscat grapes. We harvested them last night or to be more precise, I held up a bucket while R stood on the ladder doing all the work. The wasp, hornet and blackbird community was not amused. But they had their fair share.
There is lots more to harvest. We have five different types of grapes in the garden: Muscat, Dornfelder, blue Venus whatever, the one Jack brought back from the US and the no-idea-what-it's-called. You have no idea how delicious the grapes are this year. Heat and drought, that's all it takes.
I've been eating them before and after meeting the immunologist. We didn't see eye to eye. Especially once she upped all the meds in one big swoop when only four months ago she had told me it was time to lower the dosage (of one of them). WTF, I asked, and she said, well, look at the shitty mess you are in (our actual exchange of words was somewhat more medical and distanced), didn't quite work out, didn't it.
She also had a few more stern warnings about work and travel and risks and life expectancy and I had to look at that stupid calendar on her wall really hard and blow my nose a few times while she wrote her copious notes and then she shook my hand and I said thank you, see you in two months time and I ran out of there and almost crashed into R who laughed and said, what's the hurry love, we have all the time in the world, don't we.
What a beautiful post. You have taken heat and drought and turned it into something so sweet.
ReplyDeleteBless your R.
Walken has the moves, doesn't he?
I am so moved by this post, Sabine.
ReplyDeleteAnd...have you ever made grape pie?
I suggested it and we argued whether this would be a waste or a sacrilege to mix the purest source of glucose with industrial white sugar (the man in my life is a science teacher) and before we reached an answer, we had eaten the lot.
DeleteI can't think of words to write that express how much this post moved me. Enjoy all the grapes, the sweetness and love of it all.
ReplyDeleteYou and R are dear to me.
ReplyDeleteYeah, when did the hand-shaking start? Not in my youth nor in my middle-age. Dentists do it too. I may have got it wrong (I'm terrible on etiquette) but I see hand-shaking as the prelude - or sequel - to a social relationship. From medicos I look for professionalism alone. Would you shake hands with the guy who repaired your car (forget whether his hands were dirty or not), served you a meal or delivered a parcel? Perhaps things are different in Germany, while in France hugging abounds.
ReplyDeleteWith our GPs no examination is supposed to last more than ten minutes and you're limited to only three defects. This all goes out of the window if I ask what they consider to be an interesting question, my only real talent. The men lean back in their chair and become expansive; women GPs are brisker.
I need to know why the calendar was stupid. Free from a drug company no doubt, but was it gold-plated or dripping diamonds?
Neither, pharma freebies are illegal here, esp. in publicly funded instititutions such as university clinics.
DeleteThis one is a glossy monster from a manufacturer of a medical device (Siemens), it's three years old, she never changes the page: a kitchy picture of a waterfall in Co. Mayo of all places. I am beyond sick of it.
She may be the last doctor willing to shake hands since we have very strict hygiene regulations now to avoid the spread of infection.
A rare disesae brings the dubious privilege of lengthy visits, this one lasted 40 minutes.
The question is: Is an aesthetic sense a requisite for doctors? Probably not. Their lives are governed by a form of symmetry - the whole patient (good) vs. the unwhole, imperfect patient (bad). Art has its own symmetries but far subtler than the left-equals-right, top-equals-bottom concepts most of us are more familiar with.
DeleteAnd I think you're "having your caking and eating it" when you slag off your leech-person, expecting her to turn the pages of a three-year-old calendar. Time for one of my aforementioned "interesting" questions. Batting your eyes and feigning an innocence you haven't visited since age three, you could ask: Might a three-year-old calendar suggest an outdated attitude to modern drug practice?
Come on, you've got the necessary moxie. I know, I've been its victim.
life expectancy...we never really know, do we, none of us. even those in seemingly good health drop dead with no notice. so eat grapes and dance.
ReplyDeletelove Christopher Walken.
I didn't know anything about autoimmune vasculitis so I had to look it up. It sounds painful and debilitating and hidden from the world. Mental illness is much the same. I have a friend with bipolar disorder who struggles, it is painful, debilitating and hidden as well and people judge her no end because they can't see it.
ReplyDeleteThe grapes look lovely and I loved that video.
Thank you for looking it up. Hardly anybody takes the time. It is not really painful most of the time, just physically exhausting and restricting.
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ReplyDeleteChristopher Walkin!!!
That last line just slayed me. Don't you hate it when you go home and argue with doctors in your head? Do you eat the grapes before and after the immunologist to soothe yourself?
ReplyDeleteAutoimmune diseases surely play havoc in people’s lives as I’ve learned in my families life and, coincidentally, a friend’s family cope — not specifically what you describe. Grapes look delicious! Never saw this video before and hadn’t realized he danced.
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