That was the strong feeling.
Urgent Care had told my husband to follow up with a podiatrist on Tuesday and he wasn’t up to driving yet so I was there, too.
Three different medical specialties use the same check-in desk, which is why that familiar face of a perfect stranger was there. I sat down by her. She was about my mom’s age.
We instantly started talking as if we’d known each other forever. I told her, You live on our street! We go past and kind of wave at you all the time, you’re where the road does that steep turn. Do you remember Larry and Terry? We bought their house almost 30 years ago.
She did, and she was pleased to find out why we looked so familiar and exclaimed, I just love our neighborhood!
I do too!
It was only natural in that setting for her to soon start telling me a little of why she was there. First she told me the good parts: that she’d discovered some kind of pooper scooper where she could keep walking her dog without having to bend over.
Does that help?
Oh yes! She told me of some half-way measure her doctor had been doing for her–because she (clearly very much) didn’t want to have a knee replacement.
My mom had that! I told her. She was, let’s see, 83 and it’s been a couple of years; she’s always taken long walks every day and she couldn’t and now she can again and she loves it. No pain!
At that the woman stopped and looked at me like that was something she’d been afraid could never be, so sure of it, had not let herself see how badly she wanted it. I think she’d needed not a doctor but someone who’d been there (if only via second hand.) Someone else who liked to take walks, someone who had made it through the difficulty of surgery and downtime and physical therapy and recovery at that age, who knew it had been worth it. There was this sudden fierce hope in her eyes that didn’t want to let mine go.
Right then they called Richard and I told her how glad I was to finally get to meet her and hurried off after him.