Saint Patrick's Day Gratitude

Not that we confuse football with religion

Benedict Ambrose was discharged from the hospital last Friday, and here it is Friday again. That's a week we might not have had together, but we did, thanks to Providence and a handful of Edinburgh doctors who were on the ball.

Life is returning to normal. Yesterday morning I waved good-bye to my brother from the platform of the local railway station, and yesterday evening I went to Polish class. In the break I was invited to tell everyone where I had been for the past several weeks, and my narrative went (in Polish): I was in Canada, and then I had jet lag, and then I was angry because I hadn't done any homework, and then I was sick, and then my husband was VERY sick in the hospital. "Benign tumour" in Polish is  nowotwór łagodny. You're welcome. (Interestingly, "monster" is  potwór.)

The general opinion of my Polish class was that we were unusually lucky that the gears of the Edinburgh medical establishment moved so quickly for us, and when I suggested it might be because B.A. is relatively young, there was general agreement.

The past week has been full of gifts for which to be grateful. First, Benedict Ambrose was at home and cheerful, if tired. Second, Nulli arrived on Thursday--how glad I was to see him!--and was a comforting, dinner-making, dish-washing presence. Some afternoons we did a little sightseeing, which got me out of the house and left B.A. to a cozy, quiet afternoon of reading, and in the evenings we watched episodes of Season One from "Scarecrow and Mrs King" on Nulli's snazzy Mac laptop.

"It's very cute how you two giggle together," said B.A., who had heard us from his scholarly bed, and his curiosity was piqued enough to join us for subsequent viewings of "SMK".  Nulli and I watched it when it aired in the mid-eighties, and I marvel now that all the "adult humour" went over our young heads. Neither did I notice that every episode involves Scarecrow getting beaten up and Mrs King being kidnapped. I had quite the crush on Bruce Boxleitner although my preteen brain understood he belonged mystically to Kate Jackson. Now I would happily steal Scarecrow from her if it were 1983, and I wasn't married to B.A., and I was over 18, and it weren't all fiction.

All four seasons of SMK cost £37 on amazon.co.uk, and I am thinking about it. I am only thinking, not buying, because (third great gift of the week) we all went to the local mall on Wednesday and bought a King-sized mattress and then a King-sized bed. The mattress was the gift of B.A.'s mother, who seized on my remark that we had thought B.A.'s sore neck was down to needing a new mattress and stuffed mattress-money into our bank account. The bed came from the change and our savings, so I am not in a terribly spendthrift mood. There are also King-sized linens and duvet to buy, and I am frog-marching B.A. to Pilates class after Easter, so he finally gets some muscle-building exercise. However, I must say that I very much enjoyed watching "Scarecrow and Mrs King" en famille as if it were the Eighties again.

This post is not particularly Lenten, but it is Saint Patrick's Day, which I still keep, if in a very minor way now. (SPD is not such a big deal in Edinburgh.)  My friends over at Laodicea have posted a rousing version of Saint Patrick's Breastplate, which is one of the most powerful prayers I have ever encountered. When I dress, I shall don my rhinestone-studded green Edinburgh Hibernians T-shirt. My father's food traditions are German, not Irish, however, so I think we'll just be eating our usual (and, in Edinburgh, ubiquitous) salmon for supper.

Having embraced life in Scotland, I ask myself annually if I should bother wearing green for Saint Patrick, but then I think about my father's fathers (and his mother's mothers) and acknowledge that his Catholicism, and my Toronto Catholicism, is of a what used to be a very Irish order. So I'm wearing green for my fathers and the faith of my fathers. My convert mother's people were actual Orangemen. Hee hee hee!

Blood Sugar Diet Update: Still plodding away on about 800 - 900 calories a day.  No bread, no potatoes, no rice, very little sugar. I eat tons of veg, particularly dark leafy greens--but I keep catching colds. Four weeks to go!

Polish Arts Update: Thoughtful Polish response to the beauty of the pear-shaped :