The Joys of Small

I've been home this week more by accident than design. I intended to accompany my wife when she visited her primary care physician on Tuesday for the fist time since suffering a heart attack and to be with her yesterday for her first visit to her cardiologist who is also my cardiologist and the man who saved my life in March.

Instead, a sore throat and a headache that I had near the end of last week spent all this past weekend kicking my ass and helping me to have a dry cough by Sunday night that sounded like I was going to bring up a lung. I decided to stay home on Monday, got into see my doctor a day early and ended up with more drugs to treat bronchitis that, spirit of helpfulness that I am, I also managed to share with my wife, complicating no doubt her recovery.

So instead of striding purposely through this week, I've been stepping cautiously and somewhat diffidently. It's Thursday and shaping up to be the first day I've gone to work (not that many of my colleagues are complaining about the void in their lives my absence has created). I'm not sure as I look at that line, it's quite the achievement on the screen that it felt like in my head.

I've been feeding the birds every morning this week as I wait for my coffee to cool. I fill the feeder and they stand on the wires and roof of the garage until I go back into the house  and then they descend. Sparrows, titmice, some cardinals, a few starlings and even some of the very young squirrels who eat  the seeds that get knocked to the ground.

I've struggled for years to do big things but maybe it's the little ones, done well, that should be my area of concentration. And maybe when the roar of the work week is back full in my ears, I'll forget I wrote these words and stumble along again until I fall off the path and have to retrace my steps to remember where I was going.
- bill kenny