88) Of Relational Codings

January 9, 2007
Tuesday

El Milagro: As I walk in I touch base with Marilyn the Social Worker about a form the insurance has sent us and strongly suggested we send back ASAP. Their letter says, “We are constantly looking at opportunities to help control the costs of health care”… which really means, “We’d like to find a way to keep all the money you pay us and not let you have back one penny worth of service if we can discover just one little mistake or one crack of wiggle room to get out of paying anything at all for your care”. I show Marilyn the form and she says, “I think I’ve got it handled’” and gives me a copy of the same form already completed and signed by Dr. Doom…., I mean Moritz. So, I thank her and move on down the isle toward my chair.

Then there is Ms. Jennifer the Dietician just sitting there as cute as a bug… so I tell her the sad story of my nausea in the evenings and ask if it might be because of adding the Sensipar 30’s to my diet. She thinks not and asks questions that bring on definitional confusion: perhaps I have the dreaded acid reflux. “Is that when you feel this metallic tasting burp burbling up your pipe?”, I ask and she says something like “I’m not as doctor” and then it’s downhill from there. “You’re not a doctor?” I shriek. “Well why the Hell am I asking you anything?” “You started it” she says… or, something similar… and our voices quickly fade out and I move along down the isle to my seat, front row center for the dialysis machine. She yells after me down the isle… “This must be a topic for Dr. Moritz when we next see him.”

Tonight I’m listening to NPR on Shayna’s little pocket radio and reading more from Winik’s Above Us Only Sky. She is exploring ‘coding’… how our offspring have some of us inside them and how it pokes out at times and we recall the donor of the code and, in her case, miss them since they’ve departed this life. I too see parts of me in all my kids. Especially in Johnny since he is a boy, I think.

No. It’s not that I think he’s a boy. It’s that I recognize those codings from his mother and me more since he’s a boy….man…. whatever. On the one hand, there’s a way he looks around at times that could be his mother looking around. And there’s things he thinks that are JUST LIKE ME. Katie has codings from me too… in her obstinance about doing life her way. I hate that! She should be doing it MY way! Arughhhh! Really though… the results of her doing it her way are looking much better these days (good grades and money in the bank).

So, expanding ont the idea of these codings... there must be certain codings that could be discovered in all of us, or at least in those we consider to be our chosen family. When we go back far enough in our human history, we are all related, so the codings at some point evolutionarily are there. Although this is surely the case, those of us who are friends don't usually want to see ourselves in our friends nor do we seek to find codings of them in us. It's funny that we like to see ourselves in our offspring but reluctant to see ourselves in our buddies. There's something to ponder.

Over the holidays I’ve seen and heard from people I don’t usually have much contact with and I want to acknowledge that it is really neat to catch up with them. I only wish they would comment on this blog so we all have the enjoyment of hearing from them…. rather than me forwarding their emails to others of their ilk. Even though it might seem that sending a comment to my blog is like publicizing yourself to the whole world, there are really only about a few hundred people who read this, and most of you all know each other, or at least know of each other. Just a thought.

Notes: In at 75.9 and out at 72.7. We are adjusting my “dry weight” to account for the holidays… I have gained some few pounds, as does every happy person.