March 16, 2010
Yesterday was March 15th, with the title “Ides of March”* and its dark meaning still thought about after all the years. Alphie and I walked in the afternoon when the sun actually made a bit of a showing as a pale white orb behind a fast moving grey curtain. For just a few seconds, I saw my shadow moving in front of me, then it was back to our sunless sky, and today it continued to be cool and cloud covered. It has been a very long and dark time here; the overheard public conversations in the stores and at the gas station are all about “Where is the sun”, “It’s never been this cold and grey before”, “There’s not going to be a spring at all this year” and so forth.
Last week, the temperatures finally got into the 40’s, causing most of the snow to thaw, and this seemed to release great hordes of bronchial germs from frozen storage. Sniffing, snuffling, or deep, hollow coughing has commenced in every place where “two or more are gathered together”. I stayed home but somehow this unseen plague found me anyway. I was given antibiotics immediately, (6 Tablets of 250 mg. Azithromycin – two on the first day, then one a day for the next four days). I took the last one yesterday, and I think I am better, though my voice still comes and goes and my lungs hurt intermittently. Last week, daughter Janna responded to my answering the telephone with these words, “Hello, Lauren Bacall? Is my Mother there?”
*Beware the Ides of March! Julius Caesar was said to have been assassinated on this date in 44 B.C. by followers of Cassius and Brutus. In Shakespeare’s play, Caesar, betrayed by his friend, dies with the words, “Et tu, Brute? Then fall Caesar!” The Ides falls on the 15th day of March, May, July and October; in the rest of the months, it is the 13th.