Days in the life – Berkeley, 2025

In the end we’re just carrying the water, tending the fire, planting and harvesting…

I was prompted to make this post by contact with a distant relative and a question from a friend near Point Reyes. My friend had asked, “What do you do?” (as I live my life). (Click photos to make big; then back arrow.)

Saturday. Got up at 6:30, fixed coffee and a little fruit bowl for Jean to have before her medications, and brought these to her. We drank coffee together, watched the sky and the distance from bed, and talked. From Jean’s place in bed she can see SF Bay and Golden Gate Bridge; I can see the Bay, Marin headlands, and Mt. Tamalpais. We call what we see in the mornings “the today show.” ♥

A little after 8:00 Jean got up and bathed and I fixed breakfast. This morning it was the usual: fruit bowl with yogurt and granola for Jean and toast and almond butter for me. We’re close to California’s Central Valley and Oregon’s orchards, so the fruit here is exemplary. This morning we had a mix of pear, apple, orange, strawberries, blueberries, banana, and grapes. When I was in Dallas I baked all our bread for quite a few years. Now here, there are several great bakeries, selling levain, spelt, and other crusty, coarse, tasty loaves that are even better than what I baked. Today’s bread is levain from the Cheeseboard Collective.

We ate together in the living room, and talked, again with the view. I showered and Jean did Pilates. I tended the plants on the deck (again, the view) and Jean made some phone calls. The way we live with the Bay, the City (SF), Marin, and the sky and clouds and sun and fog and garden all right here means that outside and inside are not separate. When it’s just a little warmer we’ll sleep with the French doors in the bedroom open to the outside – “one door nights” and “two door nights.”

Jean is working in the kitchen, getting a to-go lunch together for a friend who is unwell. Someone is coming over in a few minutes to help with the irrigation system. He came – thank you! We planned on a walk at the nearby middle school track, but didn’t do it. With my iPhone I’m in my third year of counting steps. In year two I increased steps by about a quarter mile and in year three, by another quarter mile.

Watered front garden for an hour. Plants in bloom right now are thyme, nasturtium, sweet alyssum, two kinds of alstroemeria, two kinds of California poppy, calla lily, three kinds of iris – including from Jean’s father, butterfly sage, borage, tansy, agapanthus, columbine, lavender, rose geranium, yellow tagetes, coreopsis, impatiens aloe vera, day lilies, and the lime tree.

Jean has had a contractor working on the downstairs bathroom. To start the job she had to move quite a bit of fabric and artwork out because the bathroom was basically used as a large storage area with a toilet and sink. There were many remnants of dyed and felted wool, which Jean sorted and bundled according to colors, and then stacked in the downstairs bedroom. Somehow, to me anyway, the stack of bundles became an art installation. Some of the textiles went to art schools or artists collectives. It’s like the extras from a lifetime of textile art.

Right now, she’s in her studio, working on the third in a series of self-portraits related to health challenges over the past few years. This one is heart-related. Others include the spine/pain and the neurological challenges of dysautonomia. I’m unsure about how long she’s been working on this series – a month, at least.

The house is kind a kind of unassuming one-story bungalow on the outside (with an extravagant garden). Inside it is like in the song, “hangings rich of many strange designs” very beautiful. The hidden away downstairs down winding stairs has a small room for Jean’s archives, a laundry room, a bedroom, a storage room, a bathroom, and a large bright, high-ceiling studio opening out on a deck and more garden. The deck reminds me of a Thai or Cambodian artisan area with its bamboo poles for hanging fabric.

Being as old as we are means (among other things) spending a lot of time taking care of our bodies. We’re like athletes, always working out, dealing with injuries and infirmities, eating special diets, trying to stay in shape…

Tonight we picked up our friend, Susan and went to dinner at Kiku Japanese restaurant.

Jean and Susan split some sushi and I had yakisoba noodles. Not unlike pad Thai.

I always look forward to going to bed with Jean in the evening. The goal is to get there before 9 pm and we usually make it. We take turns deciding on “the entertainment” (computer TV) which basically lasts for an hour. Right now it’s kind of rotating among White Lotus, the Americans, This is Us, and some mash-up of Seinfeld, Colbert, Midnight Diner, and Mark Wiens. For us, TV is one of the outcomes of the pandemic, i.e., something that changed as a result of the pandemic and lockdown. Other changes include having as much mayonnaise and butter as I want, because, you know, we could all die at any time. I’m out there on the edge again, man.

Sunday. Up at 6:15, fix coffee, meds together, small fruit bowl for Jean so meds won’t be on empty stomach (I always put it in the plastic bowl I got on a Cathay-Pacific flight about 25 years ago). Lying in bed watching the sky and sea and land. We did a short “grateful” – in which we set an alarm for five minutes and lie there quietly thinking of things for which we are grateful.

Breakfast was poached egg and toast. My secrets to poached eggs is very light oil to skillet, cold water brought to boil, slip egg sloooowly into the water so that it cooks a little as it goes in, cover to skillet. When they’re about done, use spatula to loosen eggs. Turn over if wanted (I sometimes make a mess doing this.) and poach to desired doneness. Serve on toasted levain or spelt. Trader Joe fresh “medium” salsa from cold case. In this and all other matters, no salt cooking or serving. Tastes great!

Walked at Martin Luther King Middle School track. There were people of every age – old and young – and every physical ability, walkers, runners, fast and slow, and soccer teams playing. When the soccer game is over there will be a volleyball game on the field.

Lunch together. I had a sandwich made from leftover bun bo xao beef and Jean had leftover sushi.

Nap.

I worked on the sprinkler system in the garden. As always I got soaked but finally got things set up for the dry season. Jean worked on her “Kona’s rug,” which was just cleaned. Kona was her well-loved black Labrador. We talk about getting a dog, but it doesn’t seem practical at our age. Still…

Obsolete: 25 years ago I realized that one of the major disconnects between the healthcare system and refugees and immigrants was that patients from foreign lands were worked up like patients from the US (except of course that there were more barriers for foreigners). Despite a high probability of parasites among patients from developing nations, parasitic infection was a distant differential so there was always months of delay before getting to the cause of a problem. And, at least in primary care, emergency care, and elsewhere there was a general lack of awareness of infectious and tropical diseases. Thus was the book Infectious and Tropical Diseases conceived.

I developed the differential diagnosis sections of the book and then two colleagues and I worked on diseases sections for over a year and in 2006 it was published by Elsevier Science. A unique characteristic of the book was that diseases, symptoms, and geography were extensively cross-referenced, so that readers could quickly zero in on symptoms/diseases endemic to particular locales. It was a good book and we got good reports from practitioners working in refugee and international health. Yesterday I had the jarring realization that the innovative cross-referencing concept has been made obsolete by AI. Of course, the book has been out-of-date since a few years after publication, but the concept!

Here is what Chat GPT said in response to the query “50-year old Kurdish male from Iraq with abdominal pain 10 years duration:” “The diagnostic approach should consider both common global causes and region-specific infectious, environmental, and psychosocial factors, particularly given the Kurdish population’s potential exposure to trauma, limited healthcare access, and endemic infections.” Hydatid disease, strongyloides, and schistosomiasis were noted as risks by ChatGPT.

If this all seems irrelevant, recall the 2014 Ebola case undetected for several days at a major Dallas hospital. Now that was scary, at least among ER staff, refugee health workers, and people living near the sick man! Three cheers to AI!

I lost track of keeping track of everything. Getting a little random.

From my last trip to the bathroom about 0500 I saw through the deck door the yellow/orange moon hanging low over the Bay. It was beautiful but not enough to wake Jean.

I’m thinking there’s a certain sameness to life these days. There is love, there is surpassing beauty in life, lots of gratitude, some seriously good times and seriously hard times. I feel like I understand life better. I think of the challenges of the day. I think often about David and Leslie and Jean. I think about traveling, war, working with refugees, the clinic, friends, people who have helped me (and people who have hindered me, people I’ve worked with, writing, teaching, hospice, life, the end of life, the house in Dallas. I’m happy I worked so hard and accomplished what I accomplished. We do social things 2-4 x week like dinner with friends, lunches out, museum trips (Jean does the museums; me, not so much.

Another day: Tracking in detail.

Coffee in bed – Jean’s mug is from a gallery in Red Lodge when we went to see Courtney in Montana and my mug I bought from a Chinese dollar store during David’s and my first trip to San Francisco. Fruit snack in a Cathay Pacific mini-bowl from long ago. ♥

Talking

Breakfast – JC smoked salmon and cream cheese on spelt, fruit salad (orange, apple, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, banana); CK fruit salad with yogurt and toast (levain and spelt) with almond butter from Berkeley Bowl – all served on plates from Jean’s Mom and bowls made by a neighborhood potter, James Newton, and I’m eating with my spoon from Cathay Pacific. 

We go to a bayside art and nature place (“The Bulb”), but the wind off the Bay was so strong and cold we left and went to our usual weekend walking place, the MLK Middle School track. On the way stopped at Monterey Market for the first fresh corn of the year and a big bunch of chard. On to the track.

The other night I made stuffed small new potatoes like we had at the Amet Haveli hotel in Udaipur (this time I stuffed with cheese, chives, ham, z’atar). Baked, split, scooped out, mix cream cheese, lots of chives, tiny pieces of a small slice ham, potato and stuff the little potatoes. Top with cheese – used provolone. Re-baked ~10 minutes.

This week Jean has been to a women’s gathering in Sonoma, I’ve had lunch with Peter N-R, and we’ve had dinner with Nancy and Peter and with Susan.

Jean finished an art piece: The Heart. See above re series. 

Challenges faced: Pain, feeling tired, medication side effects, the complexities of navigating the health care system even when things are going pretty well, rising prices, the moral decline/the corruptionof America, the gutting of values of decency, honor, honesty, and so on.

Back to the photo of the morning sky:

Morning has broken, like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning.
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word

“Baby, ain’t it all worthwhile.”