this moribund frame

Heather gray sweatshirt sleeves dab hot tears, the most I've cried in awhile. I'm watching Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, the Diving Bell and the Butterfly, about the French editor of Elle who suffered a brainstem stroke, rendering him able to communicate only by blinking his left eye. So eloquent, so beautifully envisioned, the book, dictated by that eye, recalls his life replete with trips he took, women he loved and couldn't love, his vibrant children, literary works he recalls with peerless detail and with which he weighs against his current and ultimate lot in life. The film, vivid, perfectly portrayed, brings the most rudimentary of daily tasks alive: a humiliating dunk in the bathtub, the complete frustration of life in that body, unable to yell at a man who turns off the TV at the culmination of an important soccer match, unable to soothe his elderly father who cries on the unanswered end of the phone. Still, and I think this was Jean-Dominique Bauby's intention, I am reminded of the resolute power of memory, of passion, of imagination, of human relationships, of physical touch, of what being present means, and this is something to incorporate into my job, where locked-in syndrome isn't uncommon, every day.

Anna, my coworker, opened a padded envelope at work yesterday. In it were two small 2011 calendars, one of songbirds and one of World Wonders or something, and imprinted on them was the name of an adult family home. Ironic and sad, I took the latter of the two as a sign of places to visit, to imprint pictures and videos of life in my memory, before I am stuck in a home or stuck in this body. Stonehenge and the Colosseum (check!) and the Taj Mahal and Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China and the CN Tower and the Chichen Itza and the Great Barrier Reef (will check in March!) and the Pyramids of Egypt and the Northern Lights (check!) and Angel Falls. And of course you'll use what's there, way back there in your mind; the sound of your mom whistling her way into the house, the smell of a Beacon apple pie baking, the burn of your fingers after splitting wood on a frigid day, the way it feels to be enveloped in someone's arms, the way it feels to hold your child.

There's a lot to be thankful for. There's a lot of life to live.

"Today is Father's Day. Until my stroke, we had felt no need to fit this made-up holiday into our emotional calendar. But today we spend the whole of the symbolic day together, affirming that even a rough sketch, a shadow, a tiny fragment of a dad is still a dad".