Finding the Story
Even in a hospital at Thanksgiving
I want to share with you a photo sent to me by Vermont friends Dave Brown & Ann Ingerson, who spend their summers canoeing in the Canadian wilderness. This photo was taken in Maine, I believe. For many years Dave ran the Wildbranch Workshop for Environmental Writing, which is how I met him, many years ago. Ann studies the effects of climate on trees and trees on climate.
When Things Don't Turn Out as Expected
On Tuesday I had to take my mom to the ER for shortness of breath. For her immediate issues to resolve required a couple of days, so she was admitted to the hospital, and that’s where I spent Thanksgiving. My mom didn’t have much of an appetite, and she grimaced every time cafeteria staff delivered a meal. On Thanksgiving it was sliced turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, and green beans. She ate a few bites and pushed the plate away.
By then a friend from Cobbtown, Ga. had texted me a photo of her neighborhood feast. Not one but two tables were loaded with serving dishes. Desserts took up another entire buffet, and I counted 11 desserts on that table, including pumpkin pie, pecan pie, pound cake, Chocolate Delight, lemon meringue pie, and a really tall cake with cream-cheese-like frosting and chopped walnuts sprinkled on top.
My friend Leeann texted a photo of three pies she made—apple, pecan, and pumpkin.
I was starving. I have to chuckle when I think of how happily I polished off my mom’s cafeteria lunch.
~
I hope you were one of the ones at the feast.
~
The hospital serves a rural region, and many of its staff-people come from neighboring towns. During the four days I spent there I managed to get into riveting conversations with almost every staff-person who came into the room. I was reminded of how interesting human beings are, and how many of those hospital workers would make great characters for novels.
One older, tan respiratory therapist is a horse breeder who raises quarter horses for barrel racing. He showed me cell-phone photos of his horses, and they were some of the most beautiful animals I’ve seen, I mean really unbelievable, power-chested, rich-coated horses, and it didn’t surprise me that they sold for tens of thousands of dollars. The man told me about going to a race one time and taking a young horse who got spooked in the arena by a lot of fluttering flags. The horse started spinning in circles, dumped the respiratory therapist, and raced back outside. The man said the field was full of trucks and horse trailers, but the horse went straight back to his own trailer. The therapist dusted off, walked out and got his horse, and rode him in again. The man said he won a pot of money that day.
A CT technician told me that he and his wife are getting a new Kangal puppy in a couple of weeks. I asked him how much they’re paying for it. He said $800. I told him that our dogs have always been rescue animals. He said, “Same for us, but my wife really wants a Kangal.” I only know what a Kangal is because we have one. She was a rescue and we named her Sequoyah, although we found out that she has a chip and her original name was Esme. She was dumped when she began to show signs of hip dysplasia, a common problem with those large canines. She’s about 900 years old now, and she spends her days lying in the sun in a large pile of soft hay down by the sheep pen.
One evening about 10 pm I had a long conversation with another respiratory therapist who had just returned from a vacation in Puerto Rico. We talked about her bucket list. Number 1, she wants to travel to Jamaica. Number 2, she wants to travel to Bermuda. Number 3, Alaska. “Funny thing is,” she said, “I can’t swim. I’m afraid of drowning, so I don’t want to get anywhere near water. I’m okay in a plane above water. But nowhere near the water.”
“You should take swim lessons,” I said, “and get rid of that fear permanently.”
“I know,” she said, “but I doubt I will. I won’t even fill a bathtub all the way.”
~
Mama’s daytime nurse was a young Indian woman with a first name so hard for Americans to pronounce and spell that she goes by the initial “B.” She has been in the U.S. for just over a year. She’s here because her husband is Indian-American.
“How did you meet him?” I asked.
“Arranged marriage,” she said. That stunned me to silence. B is the first Hindu woman I’ve known who has an arranged marriage. She’s not even 25 years old.
“Is it working out well for you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s good.”
“What did you think the first time you saw your husband?”
“Good,” she said. Her English was limited.
“Did you think he was handsome?”
“He’s okay,” she said.
I find so many people boring. However, stuck in a hospital for the better part of four days, I realize that many people aren’t boring at all. Instead, life cuts us off from each other. We keep our cards close. We keep our mouths shut. We insulate.
Most people respond so warmly and fulsomely to my real and too-personal questions that it’s obvious they want to be heard. They want to talk, to correspond. There’s not enough of this kind of talk. There is such a thing as people minding their own business a little too much. I have a habit of reading the obituaries from my little town, and often as not I find out things about strangers that I never knew while they were living. Wow, there was a ham radio operator right here in town. Or, that woman was born in Kazakhstan. Or, that person was a falconer. Had I known, I might have sought out the person. I would definitely have been more interested in this little place I live.
More reserved people find my questions intimidating. Those kinds of folks will not meet your eyes, or they’ll mumble something and begin to study the chart, or they will turn the tables immediately, saying something like, “I thought he was cute. What did you think when you first met yours?” That is my signal to back off.
I’m deeply curious about people. I don’t have to pretend to be interested. I am sincerely interested. In about 5 questions I can find out something truly fascinating or remarkable or even mind-blowing about someone. I just said to you that I’m curious about people, but the bigger truth is that we’re deeply curious about each other. We are social creatures, community-driven. I tell my writing classes that this is why creative nonfiction matters, because we want to know what someone else has learned about life, so that we might make our lives go better.
It seems to me that we need less impermeable barriers between us. We need to know more about each other.
~
Another night in the hospital a young nursing assistant showed us photos of her toddler daughter. As an infant the child had become ill with meningitis. Treatment included brain surgery that entailed a scar from ear to ear. Now her hair has grown in thick and full of curls, and you can’t see the scar. The child kept all her faculties, except she lost her hearing from the antibiotics. She wears hearing aids, although she keeps pulling them out. This nursing assistant is single. She has always been single. She was alone when she gave birth. She didn’t even want a doula. She wanted to go it alone. She doesn’t plan to marry. She doesn’t plan to have more children.
On the television was a week of horrific shootings, unsolved knifings, and the politics of meanness and blame.
But in the room, one after the other, were fascinating, caring people, a custodian with a VW tattooed on her arm, a dietician with invisible eyelashes and eyebrows who memorized the day’s menus and served up meals as if she worked at a 5-star restaurant. There was a doctor with the best bedside manner I’ve ever seen—kind, patient, generous, even affectionate.
I asked them questions. I listened to the answers. I asked clarifying questions. I thought about the things they told me.
You can tell how grateful I am to all the staff-people who lingered a few minutes in my mom’s room, opening a window to their inner life, letting us see for a moment a fuller view.
P.S.
Remember the pumpkin pie that Leeann made, which I mentioned at the top of this newsletter? A cat walked through it. Leeann’s husband, Albert, sent us this photo. The pie was covered with a cloth, Albert said, so the pie wasn’t ruined and the cat didn’t get hurt. This is just a reminder that things don’t always turn out the way you imagined they would.
I hope your mother is feeling better. Your story resonated with me because it seems I have spent ever so many holidays sitting by hospital bedsides. It takes a special kind of person to work in health care, particularly in hospitals. Bless you for your curiosity and your caring about people and their stories.
The cat walking through the pie made me chuckle. Back when we had house cats similar things happened, but without the saving grace of the food being covered with a cloth. Hope your mom stays well for a long time.