His pre-op required an EKG at a satellite cardiology clinic.
Did he want me to come with?
Up to you, he said.
Carpool lanes?
I always like having you with me, you’re welcome to come.
Hah! Waze said take the surface streets.
When we arrived, the others in the waiting room were quite elderly. But that quickly changed: suddenly we were the elderly ones by comparison. In cardiology!
First, a woman (an older mom or a younger grandmother) with a girl of about three and a boy of about five wearing a patka. They were in a strange place, it was close to dinner time, the front of the building was partly boarded up in plywood due to some remodeling and you know how little kids pick up on their parents’ worries no matter how hard you try–and without the understanding to know how to handle those big feelings.
The place just didn’t look friendly to her. She started whining. Then, despite the woman’s best efforts at loving her into being okay, the escalating began.
Excuse me? I asked.
Surely I couldn’t be talking to her–but finally the woman turned to me.
Next thing you know the two littles were transformed by those little finger puppets, playing happily together with them, the big brother clearly looking out for his little sister and her responding in kind.
A man of about 45 had come in in the meantime and everything in his posture and face shouted stress. But although he still was not making eye contact with anyone in the room, there was this small smile that had sneaked onto his now more relaxed face.
Another man about that age came in and sat down alone and hunched up. A few minutes later what turned out to be his wife and daughter showed up to join him, and soon the daughter, about seven, was watching the littler kids playing as her mom checked in.
She totally lit up when I asked her dad if would she like one, too?
He had looked like the weight of the world was on his shoulders and I knew so well that fear of major illness when you desperately want both of you to get to see your kids grow up. And hey, to grow older together, too. That was the plan. Remember?
Their daughter got a soft bright black and yellow bee, deliberately chosen (I didn’t say this) because she could wear it on her finger but she could also run a yarn through the wing loop from the way it had been knitted so that she could wear it as a necklace or bracelet later if she wanted to, to keep it with her without having to hold it all the time. She was old enough to take care of it and keep track of it.
A honeybee! Yay!
It broke the logjam of fear in his face and everything was now about his beloved daughter’s delight and his wife’s joy at their daughter being loved in the world. All that was left was love, and you could feel it extending to everybody in the room.
Everything in me wished healing for everybody else. I was so glad that in that place of anticipating what you can’t yet know, they got to take a little bit of tangible goodness home to see them through whatever may come.
If only, if only the women who make these could know the profound effects their work does for good in the world.