Quintessential Summer

I went to the park with a book. It was a gorgeous day – no longer hot as dragon’s breath, but nicely warm. Compared to most of this summer, 30 degrees Celcius (86F) is only warm. In a lot of countries that would be sveltering, but not in Toronto, not this year.

I went to the middle of the field, an expanse of grass, left long-ish by the Parks people and I like it that way. The scent of it, the intensely green smell was all around me, enveloped me, carried me off to a place of leafy heaven.

I closed my eyes, turned my face towards the sun and basked. There’s no other word for it: I basked. The light suffused the world, bathed me in its yellow warmth, flowed through my skin, into my body, all the way through to the bones, warming, relaxing, healing. I felt aglow with it. A drop of sweat trickled down the back of my neck, taking with it all my worries, leaving only sun.

The wind was perfect, too. Enough to refresh and that was all. Lazy waves of air lapping against my sunkissed skin, leaving the smell of summer on me, to take home, a transient memory of this.

Only one more thing to make this a flawless moment. And ah… there it was:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Farber’s Disease: Could Your Child’s Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Be Misdiagnosed?

Image
Joint inflammation or contractures. Nodules (small lumps under the skin or in other tissues). A weakened or hoarse voice. Children with these symptoms may have been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or other types of juvenile arthritis . But do they actually have JIA or do they have Farber’s disease? An equine digression When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. This is an adage in the medical world that encourages doctors to not wander off exploring rare and esoteric reasons for a patient’s symptoms. Because most of the time, that hoof beat of a rash likely isn’t the plague, the joint pain more likely a type of arthritis than the bends (especially if the person has never scuba dived) and you get the picture. But once in a while, it actually is a zebra. And even if it’s first identified as a horse, eventually, the stripes come through. It took five years of my parents running around to different doctors before one finally recognized that I had
Read more

13 Things to Know for Rheumatoid Arthritis Newbies + Facebook Live

Image
Getting a diagnosis of any type of chronic illness can throw you for loop. There is so much to know and you have so little energy. My new slideshow for HealthCentral collects 13 things you need to know as an RA newbie : "Receiving a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a moment of strange duality. On one hand, you may be relieved to finally have answers for the symptoms you’ve been experiencing. On the other, it can be incredibly overwhelming to find out you have a chronic illness. Wrapping your head around all the new factors RA brings into your life is a long-term process. Here are some of the things you need to know." See the slideshow on HealthCentral . And in case you missed it, here is the Facebook Live I did yesterday talking about this topic:   
Read more