Indulgence

I have frequented the hospital.  Enough so that I am familiar to the after hours gatekeepers at the Emergency Room entrance who just smile and nod to me as I stride past the "All Visitors Stop Here" sign.  This is not a familiarity I sought, yet it is nice to be known as I walk into mystery; into so much that I don't know.

Yesterday morning, I came home after spending a couple of hours with Sherry in her room.  I began to feel like I was in a perpetual dance with the RN, the CNA, Transport, Custodial, the Student Nurse, and the KMC Auxiliary volunteers.  I don't think I stepped on any toes, but I knew I was in the way.

After returning home I began to settle into things that needed doing, I wanted to re-ink our return address stamp.  Our address was growing faint in the middle.  I thought the ink was in the catchall drawer.  It wasn't.  When I woke up that day the thought of cleaning out the catchall drawer in the kitchen did not cross my mind.  Yet in the process of looking for the ink I began to empty the drawer and sort its contents.  I wondered at the volume of the squirmy pile of rubber bands:  thick blue ones from bunches of broccoli, blue narrow ones from green onions, red ones from newspapers, and a rainbow of others whose origin I had forgotten.  The most interesting pile was that of the unknown objects.  The only sure thing about its contents was that as soon as any of it goes out with the trash its essential function will be revealed.

I sorted and stacked, washed the drawer and its dividers, then carefully placed like things together.   It felt good to close the drawer, confident in its contents.  I thought about what attracted me to this superfluous task when the choices included so many more important ones.  Bringing order to a small drawer full of chaos was a comfort in face of the cosmic chaos swirling about.  I thought about how the flutter of the butterfly's wings changes everything in our universe where everything is connected to everything else. and everything matters  Surely, my orderly drawer must be weightier than that fluttering butterfly.

I also recognized my indulgence.  Sherry was left in the middle of the hospital dance of endless procedures where her greatest intellectual stimulation came from choosing from the menu for her meals.  I realized that she needed wider horizons, and mine needed to be wider than the junk drawer.

I returned to the hospital.  We listened to a Billy Collins CD that I had downloaded onto my I-Phone.  We laughed and wondered anew at the poems that have become familiar.  We nodded knowingly to each other as he began to read our favorites.  We thought of friends with whom we would like to share selected poems with the hope they would find the pleasure and meaning we were finding.

We were transported out of the hospital into the cosmic dance, grateful for the gentle, joyous hinging of that Monarch's wings.