Outside of my study there is a little balcony with a mango tree in a pot. We bought it in the flower market in town a year ago — mangoes, to me, are such a symbol of exoticism and the tropics. Since I haven’t properly been to my study since I was diagnosed with cancer in July, I haven’t looked at the pot. Today after taking a slightly awkward cat-bath of a shower, I suddenly noticed the tree had a new plume of bright green leaves. I filled up a bucket with water and poured over it. It drank greedily. It’s still warm outside — over 30 Celsius — but the sun is less powerful than a month ago. The earth in the pot smelled heavy and rich, like the earth where I used to dig for worms as a kid back in Sweden. I gave the mango another dousing of water.
I thought about those sprouting green leaves all through the radiation today. Water, water, water — and new life.