jumpingfish

It was in the low 40s, which to be honest almost passes for a “hard freeze” in Central Texas. Break out the winter gear! 

It was drizzling, and my glasses were speckled with raindrops. I was coming back from a 4 mile run, heading downhill. In the distance, I saw a man walking the other way.

As he got close, I could see that he had red lips and pink cheeks and was huddled in a meager (albeit unzipped) jacket. He was walking briskly. His eyes were tearing slightly, likely due to the breeze. He looked up and smiled.

“Good for you getting out in it!” he said. “Rock on, brother!”

I smiled and mumbled “Thanks” and headed home.

One of the students in class was holding her throat. She had a look on her face as if she hurt. I asked her if her throat was sore. She nodded, squinting her eyes to milk the moment as much as she could.

“It’s the little round things,” she said.

“Lymph nodes?” I asked.

“That’s it,” she said.

A student standing nearby said, “I had mine removed.”

I gasped. “You had your lymph nodes removed!? I don’t think so. You must mean your tonsils.”

I pointed to the scar on my neck. “If you had your lymph nodes removed, your neck would look like this.”

“Wrinkles?”

Well… yeah. That, too.

At the end of the day on Friday, they called the faculty together. Afterwards, I walked slowly down the hall. Someone was walking next to me, but we were both silent. I was looking at the floor. I don’t know who it was. And when I got to my room, I wasn’t sure what to do. I stood at my desk for a while. My head was in my hands. I stared blankly at the desktop and then turned on some music. 

School was over. The kids were gone. I turned the speakers up, so that I might swim in the harmony, hoping that this might help, which it did a bit. After a couple songs, someone came into my room, and we spoke briefly.

R was supposed to come back soon. He hadn’t been in my classroom for a while, but he was coming back. I was looking forward to it, because he used to sit in the back and make direct eye contact and ask a good question every once in a while and sometimes even smile. Questions are a good thing. Smiles are better. I wanted him back.

But he won’t be coming back. Not to my classroom. Not to his friends. Not to his sisters or his mother or father. He won’t be coming back. And although the music helped me a bit. I can’t imagine how hard it is on them.

The strings of gravity are attenuated out there. Out at ultima Thule. Yet celestial music plays even in those farthest reaches.

On New Year’s Eve 2018, the spacecraft that visited Pluto approached, encountered and promptly left behind a second celestial body orbiting our sun in the distant, primordial quiet. A body beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt. They call it MU69. They call it Ultima Thule. On that New Year’s Eve, New Horizons was there.

At the appointed hour on New Year’s Day, a DSN dish in Spain, scheduled with care, locked onto a stream of downlinking data. The mission operations team confirmed that the spacecraft was healthy. C&DH reported that the SSR pointer was as expected. The data recorder was full.

With luck, there will be pictures to follow. Happy 2019!

I went to Ottawa during Thanksgiving to visit my dad. Mainly just to visit. To spend time.

I wasn’t much help doing anything other than putting dishes in the dishwasher and carrying stuff out to the car from where they had been staying. But there was one day when my dad and I went to have coffee.

My original plan was to walk around the corner to the Tim Horton’s. It’s very close to where they live. And I was chomping at the bit to get outside in the Canadian snow and cold. 

Ok, that picture comes from a walk I took later. I provide it here as evidence that, “Yes it was cold and there was snow.” That walk involved bus tickets and walking downtown. But on this occasion, I was merely contemplating a walk around the corner.

“I can drive you,” Dad said. 

“No thanks,” I said. “It’s close. I can walk.” 

During the course of the morning, he offered again. I repeated my plan to walk.

“Perhaps you should go with your dad,” Khadija said.

Well, ok. She didn’t actually say that. She is more gentle and discrete than to phrase something quite like that. (Message to self: It’s not too late; emulate this!) But I finally figured out that perhaps I should accept my father’s proposal. So we drove.

Dad paid. We drank hot coffee. He had a donut. I managed to resist.

We sat. We talked. For a good long time.