The Wormlips Scrapbook

When I got back from my backpacking trip on Thursday, an e-mail from Steve Nuñez awaited in my in-box. The subject was Down But Not Out.

I had the great misfortune of being thrown from my bike this past weekend resulting in a mild concussion (ALWAYS wear your helmet while riding, Kids!!!), a severely bruised shoulder, and a broken rib. Really, I’m fine for the most part, but not much can be done about the broken rib but to minimize my activity and try and manage the pain as best as possible while it mends by itself (I must admit, that’s a tough one).

Anyway, I’m home for the next couple of daze and may be able to do some work here (i.e. scheduling, travel arrangements, book orders, receive and respond to emails, etc.) Please don’t hesitate to call or email me if there’s anything I can assist you with.

Poor Steve. What a drag, I thought. I’ll call him tomorrow.

Tomorrow (Friday) he was in the ER with a ruptured spleen. That afternoon he was recovering from surgery in Room 337, expecting to be back on his feet in six weeks. Saturday morning when I called, he was in the ICU. His kidneys and liver had shut down. Saturday near midnight Bari phoned to say he wasn’t expected to make it through the night. He died early this morning.

It is cliché to say that Steve was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, but it’s true. His genuine sweetness and gentleness never ceased to impress me. Every time I saw him he always wrapped me in a bear hug. His standard phone greeting was a cheerful, Hello, Ginna-There. It’s Stevie-Here. During some work conversations he could be so linear and methodical I’d start to get impatient, but I always kept my feelings under wraps, because he was too well-intentioned to have to deal with my crankiness. I loved him for smuggling me M&Ms and Milano cookies during meetings. I saw him act stressed a few times, but never grumpy.

I still don’t get how someone can be so completely alive one moment and so irretrievably dead the next, and I am heartbroken that we have lost him.

Rest well, Steve. We will miss you more than you could ever have imagined.

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I’m a little more embarrassed than usual about writing here because my old boyfriend, after voting in my photo poll, said he might come back and read some of my other posts. My beloved regular readers already know how vacuous I am, but he might not have noticed yet. Oh well. I guess it had to happen sooner or later.

Speaking of loyal readers, Oleg visited from LA. He is quite adorable. He greeted Stella, pulled a spider from his pocket at the restaurant, got very shy, and then danced for joy.

I showed him some of my dance moves from the early seventies.

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Look who’s home from her year in the jungles of Central America.

I’m so glad you’re back, Jill. Cheryl just got back from Nepal, too. I get to see her later this week.

T’is also the season for parents to welcome home prodigal daughters from college. When prodigal daughters don’t drive, welcoming is an active process entailing several hours of travel time. I arrived in her town a night early so I could go to Monday night Irish dance class nearby. It’s been several years since I’ve done my solo steps in front of P, our beloved and brutally exacting teacher, and I was nervous. But afterwards P made of special point of telling me that I’d danced well. Since she does not dole out praise lightly — I’ve gotten it a handful of times in more than a decade — I’ve been cradling those words in my mind like brittle petals ever since.

I spent the night at Shirley’s and Scott’s. Meet their hounds, Bailey and Buddy.

They had a another overnight guest, a guy from North Carolina who sipped iced whiskey, played a shiny guitar and sang — in what was clearly the voice of experience — original songs about mighty hangovers. He had accompaniment during the choruses.

The following noon, upon my arrival on campus, my prodigal daughter was working frantically on a final essay about something linguistic. Her third-floor dorm room looked disturbingly lived-in, though she did have a stack of six packed boxes. Luckily I’d brought my laptop so I got to finish a two-hour work task (forgetting to unplug and bring home my computer’s power supply: an $85 error, it turned out). Then I wandered around the hallway, sightseeing. I was intrigued by the signs, particularly the one that begged its readers not to throw food in the stairwells, nor to spit on the walls or in the water fountains. There was a notice about a workshop on interracial dating and another poster asking students not to put objects bigger than the trash chute into the trash chute.

How much can one college student have accumulated in a mere nine months, you may ask? Let me answer the best way I can: five hours, a thousand stairs and one parking ticket’s worth. I was barely able to jam the final wee item — a bike — into my huge old station wagon.

We used the last credits on Lulu’s meal ticket to buy fifteen bags of M&Ms, two Pepsis and some Junior Mints. Before heading home we dropped some of her stuff at the house she’ll be sharing next year, only blocks from where we lived in 2000.

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