Feeling Kinda’ Squirrelly

Squirrel Advice:

Always keep your eyes open and watch where you are going.

Even though you have food stored, always come to the table with an empty stomach.

…and if there is no food on the table, dance on it!

Living in the Gap

February 29, 2012 – Portrait of a Hospital Waiting Room

The scent of coffee permeated the air, breaking up the hospital scents of flowers, bandages, and antiseptics. The room was lined with rows of chairs connected by wooden armrests. The choices were the groups of teal with crisscrossed lines of aqua and tangerine or the more chaotic pattern of grey, beige, brown, mauve, and purple squares with likewise opposing circle colors in them connecting into stripes. Irregular lines of teal, brown, and beige of the carpet were constructed to hide the dust of our lives. We each thought we blended into the sea of waiting people, waiting for news. Actually, we might have had that in common, but we each had our own story. The middle age man with the dark green baseball cap with gold NRA letters, the middle-aged woman with smoke lines beneath her hollow cheeks, the plump elderly woman with the red scarf and book and her husband in the wheel chair, the old man in blue/green plaid p.js attached to a cane, the golden-jeweled lady sneaking food from her McDonalds bag stuffed in her purse, the young girl wrapped in a leopard print fluffy blanket…who were these people and who were they waiting and praying for?

Kindles, ipods, cell phones, earphones, and computers were as prominent as the people behind them. Ruffling of magazines and shuffling of book pages drifted as conversations floated among us. Some were between us and others to some invisible person on the other side of our cell phones. Cell phones rang and beeped as the morning news shows chattered and slipped into the water color pictures of daffodils, lilacs, and rivers that hung upon the walls; the walls that held us while we were waiting, waiting for news.

Each of us was different yet connected by white bags stuffed with patient contents, name neatly typed on a label and carefully placed on the bag. Each name, someone loved by the person carrying the bag. We have all become clock watchers; minute by minute, hour by hour, we watch the hands on the wall clock slowly move.  The chipper British accented lady and tall graying gentleman with red shirts escorted us “waiters” to and from the areas for news…patient preps, doctor consults, and patient rooms. They became our hope; hope that we’d be the next one called with news… And we each sat, white bags within reach, ready to grab when hope came.