Nice Sunday visit

We had a happy visit this afternoon at the hospital. Marina and her great friend Luana came along. Luanna took photos -- we are making fun of the pictures that the young Brazilian couples get done when they are celebrating their pregnancies. I am supposed to be bragging here about my masculinity, I suppose. Anyway, you can see we are pretty happy (and silly). Luciana is in good shape, very cheerful and full of ideas and preoccupations. We all went down to the only restaurant in the hospital, an abysmally operated Au Bon Pain. Luciana had to stay in a wheelchair. I wanted to get her some fresh air and tried to push her outside through the revolving door, which occasioned a good deal of hilarity. Luana showed us how to use the Blackberry Messenger service, which is pretty much the same as IMing. We are getting to be very digital. It was a happy time.

I see this picture and think of the innocence of these two creatures. To be in our fifties and still able to jump into life with the innocence of young adults. I'm sure this is madness and folly - and essential Life itself. What choice do you have? Keep living or start dying.

Writing this blog, I often have the uncomfortable impression that I will "look at this someday" and feel very differently. I suppose, I fear feeling regret, I fear feeling foolish. So I am going to respond to myself by quoting myself -- this comes from an email I sent my son Felix this morning.

Felix had told me Friday that he was going to participate in a school academic competition on Saturday -- for people who know Felix, the idea of him taking part in an academic (or any) competition is a bit startling. He had to get up at 6 am to catch a 7 am bus. This morning (Sunday) I got in touch to ask how the competition went. "I didn't make it. My alarm didn't wake me up. No one called me until 11 am. I told them how bad I felt for missing it because I really do feel bad."

I IM'ed back a few short phrases, because the MMS message system only allows brief thoughts. I like it because it forces me to come up with fortune cookies:

• Regret is a feeling that passes with time
• Opportunities come and go, never to return
• People remember who shows up for them
• Their memory of you is all they know of you

My effort in life is just to keep showing up when I can, and to take the opportunities as they come, and to let the regret wash past me in waves just as it likes to do.