Words. I’ve always loved words. Loved understanding their meanings, their history, and the way sayings can be so different across languages. One of my favorites in Spanish is that someone thinks they’re the “ombligo del mundo” or “the bellybutton of the world.” In English we’d say they think they’re the center of the universe… but there’s just something so much more poetic about bellybuttons.
Over the last four months, certain words have taken on new meaning, or become more pronounced in some way. I never spent much time contemplating the word scan, until it became a somewhat ominous addition to our vocabulary. I’d never given much thought to margins, until I was in the audience at a live performance of A Christmas Story and Miss Shields kept shrieking her line about watching your margins. Radiant and radiation come from the same root, yet conjure such different feelings. I still remember when I was a child and I found out my mom’s astrological sign was cancer. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. And then years later, I married another zodiac crab.
This week the latest word is granularity. Maybe I’ve used some such word when describing a bad photograph… or the qualities of sugar? Maybe? In any case it seems to be like scar tissue. And unfortunately, James’ last surgery has healed with a bit of granularity that is preventing his vocal cords from closing entirely. So his surgeon has him scheduled for his third surgery on Friday, April 7th.
James was pretty disappointed today after his appointment at Stanford– he was really hoping to avoid another surgery. The poor guy has been poked and prodded and has been trying to heal and recover for the last four months. Hopefully this one will be much quicker with just a few days of voice rest. Otherwise his throat is healing beautifully and he is feeling better day by day. Which is good news since he’s most certainly our ombligo del mundo.