I can't go. It's a bad cold and that waiting room is usually crowded with a lot of kids and old people. It would be wrong. Damn.
On the other hand, Jonathan and I have been looking through his late aunt's jewelry box. She passed away shortly after we were married, but Uncle Dick threw nothing out, ever.
I regret I never got to meet the lady as she'd been. By the time I knew the family, she'd had a series of small strokes that was slowly destroying her brilliant mind. She was still able to hold a conversation and such when I met her, but I could tell she was nothing like she had been - I could see the remants of wit and humor and intelligence. She never did get to finish her book on Gallileo (her doctorate was in History of Science.) And I never got to talk to her about her career in the state department in Afganistan, either. And she'd deteriorated very quickly after that.
So we were looking at her jewelry. I felt very strange doing that, but. I took two necklaces, one of irregular turquoise beads, and one of jade. I left another, of large round jade beads, for my mother-in-law, because it's her taste and she can carry that sort of thing off. And she loved her sister-in-law. None of this was worth very much. Apparently, Aunt Win also liked the odd and strange, and Jonathan said she never wore much. Much like me.
I wish I had known her when she was herself.
