Is it soup yet?

All day long, Dad thought it was Tuesday and was getting ready for a visit from the Home Health people. Even after I told him it was Monday, not Tuesday, a few hours later he would say, "Since today is Tuesday..." and I would have to remind him again that it was only Monday.

The neighbor across the street, Mrs. Brown, is so sweet. She called on the phone and asked Dad to come over because she had something for us. He returned a short while later with a bag containing one quart of homemade soup starter (stewed tomatoes, corn, and okra), a pint of stewed tomatoes, three potatoes, and a mess of freshly-picked okra. I washed, peeled, and chunked the potatoes and got them cooking in a soup pot while Dad washed and slicked the okra. Once the potatoes were cooked, I opened the home-canned goods and dumped them into the pot along with some water and a smidge of pepper. In very little time, we had a wonderful pot of soup!

Mom hasn't been in a frame of mind for us to discuss her surgeon's recommendation that she undergo a bit of chemotherapy to be certain that the cancer is gone. Since her scheduled appointment is tomorrow, Dad and I thought it best to try to talk to her. I explained to her that the surgeon removed all the cancer he could see, but that sometimes a few cancerous cells can remain undetected. She had trouble understanding this concept, so I used a gardening analogy, something with which she has had plenty of experience in her life. If one is pulling weeds, it is easy to miss a small piece of root or a seed that has dropped, and another weed plant might grow from it. A little weed-killer can go a long way to be sure nothing is missed. It seemed that she understood that analogy perfectly. She said that she would have to — and I quote — "think on this with my fingernails."  When I checked-in with her later in the day, she thought she needed more time to reach a decision. I, too, agree that decisions are not her forte with her present frame of mind, so I called the oncologist's office and asked that we defer the appointment until a later date when her mental and physical condition are more stable. Whether we ever reach that day remains to be seen.



A small, two-lane country road winds around the north face of Glassy Mountain. This is the view presented when one is approaching the mountain from the west.







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