Wherein spring arrives and my throat is slit...

Spring is trying to spring in Tennessee, as it always does, with sudden leaps backward into winter and tantalizing forays into summer, with much rain in between. After the drought, you would think the rain would be welcome, but this is Tennessee spring rain, which means flash floods, and people having to boil their drinking water. HUZZAH!! No gift lacks a punishment in this state where spring truly is the cruelest month.

But, hey, spring is the season we live for. Winter wears on grayly and coldly until one despairs of the sun- and then summer comes and again we despair of the sun which now, instead of being absent, is all too present and trying to reduce us to cinders. Spring is the gentle month when the birds return, the trees and flowers bud out, and hope is as thick in the air as chlorophyll and pollen.

So it is in this hopeful season I shall have my throat slit. Alas, a throat cutting seems an inevitable end for an old pirate like myself, but I have hopes of surviving this one. An extremely competent- one might almost say ostentatiously competent- neurosurgeon is going to attempt to repair 30 years of disintegration in my neck (one too many hangings, perhaps- it's a rough life being a pirate), and possibly put an end to the pain. Eight years ago this surgical solution to a drastically deteriorated cervical area would not have been possible. Now it has become almost routine. Frankly, I am more than a little hopeful that all will be well in the end.

Imagine being able to raise my arms over my head, to lift something that weighs more than 10 pounds; imagine no longer having a gooseneck, and horrible muscle spasms. What if the feeling returns to my hands? I have so many hopes and very few fears.

That hasn't stopped me from writing a new will. Hey, I am a realist! But this is the season of hope.

Spring!