Pathways to Paradise: Meditations for the Spirit - Tapa blanda

Second collection of poetry from author Adrienne Ramsey-Harris

Adrienne Ramsey-Harris is the chosen nom-de-plume of Norvelle A. Harris, a still-practicing female physician who is now in her eighty-first year of life. Those years have been filled with the characteristic measure of triumphs and tragedies that are to be found in all human life. Twice engaged to be married, I was twice bereft by my fiancé’s premature and unexpected demise. Medical school in the early to mid-1950’s was, for a female student, its own particular form of baptism by fire. Internship and Residency thereafter were challenging, grueling but amazingly informative. AS a practicing pathologist in the California area I have learned much, both positive and negative, regarding both the human body and the human spirit. Throughout that multifaceted body of experience, I have always endeavored to live and practice the Hippocratic Oath and the Golden Rule. I have never regretted doing so. Personally, I have enjoyed the pleasure of acing as an amateur landscape gardener, successfully exhibiting landscape designs at the Los Angeles County Fair for thirty-five years, winning twenty-nine first prizes. In addition, I have been attracted to, studied and publicly exhibited numerous flower arrangements, both at the LA County Fair and at numerous flower shows and private parties. As a partially East-Indian woman who loves art, music and dance, I have studied and excelled in East Indian dance and have performed in settings as varied as hospital Christmas parties, the meeting hall of a Jewish synagogue and an American Rose Society Convention. All these, gratifying as they were, never truly filled the void left in my life by the loss of each of my beloved proposed life partners. Only God could do that.