Tuesday Dec. 20th

This morning I was a little tardy in arriving, as I had been waiting on the post, which was late. It was worth the wait though, for it contained both cards and CDs for Greg. Many of you know that music is one of his greatest loves (indeed his wished for -- and granted -- Christmas gift this year was a small keyboard with which he can sit in bed and play. He, like many, has always regretted giving up piano lessons.) And the CDs some of you have sent in the post have delighted him -- how he loves discovering new music. And now he also can associate friends with that music. He hasn't had a lot of energy to listen to it yet, but he was very keen that I download them onto his laptop immediately, and then bring it in, so that he could listen.

When I arrived, he was fast asleep, but without the bandage that had been wrapped all around his head. So now, if you sit and look at him from the left side, you couldn't even tell a thing had happened. And the right looks pretty good too. All swelling and most bruising is gone. The stitches of the right eye are not dramatic, and his lop-sided smile is even, dare I say it, kind of cute. He has always had such a big smile anyways, that half a smile for him is still more than some folks pull off with a full mouth. He made sure to point out to me too that, now that his right eyebrow doesn't move, his left one raises to soaring heights -- "look, I beat Adrienne even!" he says, proud that he can now raise his eyebrow more dramatically than my sister (eyebrow raising is part of the Jeffrey family lore).

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Several hours have passed since I wrote the first section of this blog. It is very late, and so I won't write much more tonight, but I did want to write a bit more about Greg's face. On the whole Greg is so positive, but there are things which he needs to mourn, too. And this afternoon was hard for him. He sat in front of the mirror for a very long time, watching the differences between the two sides of his face -- and when his face is animated, they *are* dramatic, for the paralyzed side simply does not move. Also, he pointed out that already the right side is looking a bit different when the full face is relaxed because his wrinkles are already fading on the right side. We belong to that strange group of people who rather like wrinkles in the face, for the character that can be read in them, and it is a bit disturbing for Greg to see them disappearing and the alteration it causes. For a while he was angry that anyone would say he doesn't look much different -- but of course he will notice the difference more than anyone. And as he is often so tired when people visit, they don't see his face as animated as it was today when he was making faces at the mirror. It was a reminder to us both of what the doctor said to us both two days ago: "at first each day will have a big change. But after a while things will slow down, and it will seem like nothing is changing at all. This is when patience, perseverance, and determination will be required." And now to bed -- until tomorrow, Kirstin