Waiting Rooms.

I met a woman at a party on Sunday who wore a green sweater and a green scarf. She had long, wavy hair. We were at a “naked lady party” which isn’t quite as kinky as it sounds but not a sort of party I’d heard about before Portland. Everyone heard from a friend of a friend and brought a bag of clothes they did not want anymore, and realized, upon arrival, that they knew hardly anyone else there. So here we were, in a situation that has become all too familiar since this whole thing started (gatherings with lots of strangers) trying on each other’s clothes. Creating new piles and then bringing them home without any expectation of seeing the former wearer again.

But back to the woman in the sweater. She, by the way, brought the best clothes. The most clothes. A large variety of J Crew sweaters. She did not hold a glass of red wine in her hand, because she is now expecting. (Which she found out a month ago, and is just now feeling the sicknesses from it.) But even though her stomach revealed nothing I could see the joy in the way she talked about it. The need to find a midwife. The bathtub her husband built in the attic for the birth. Family names. Maternity clothes. The excitement of a new life that she will have so much to do with. It was refreshing, and strange, to hear so immersed in thought about a subject that has hardly crossed my mind.

But the week went on afterwards. I made my morning rounds and called 911 after opening the door on the seventh floor. No, I could not see sharp objects, I told the man on the other end of the line, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any. I printed off the patient’s information and handed it to the paramedics, my hands still shaking a bit when the papers transferred from my hold to theirs’. I watched them go up the elevator in their blue uniforms and then went back to the office, grabbed the basket of granola bars, and knocked on the rest of the doors. I labeled more post-its for patient appointments and stuck them to the large white board we have in the office.

Later on that day, I stopped at the food court Providence Hospital while waiting for another client to get out of his appointment. I ate the apple I’d brought from home and looked around at the people eating French fries and drinking diet soda through straws. There was a gift shop on the right and soft rock playing in the background. It reminded me of when my mom would take me to Children’s hospital in Boston for the check up on bone cyst on my index finger, or when my Dad and I stopped at Finagle a Bagel on the way back from getting the mole on my head removed. I must have known then that all of that was love—the hours my parents took out of their day, the choice junk food item, the drive through the city, the hour or two of school I missed. But now I know for sure. Maybe that’s one of the most beautiful things they did for me, buying me a bagel with cream cheese when I wasn’t sure what the mole meant, or sitting beside me in a waiting room of strangers. I guess that’s how I ended up here. I had someone to knock on my in the morning, drive me to my appointments. And someone to call the right person if things were to go wrong.

(Written 11/24/2009)

Mom's recommendation: a fat glass of wine.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.



-Hafiz



I think I have the potential to become a little bit obsessed with Hafiz. I'm discovering things about him now, or trying to, in the 20 minutes I have left to be in this coffeeshop before I walk home for dinner. It's raining out, and a guy just opened the door and asked if he could bring his bike in. The barista said yes, of course, "you don't want to bike in that." The biker hoisted the handle bars upward, and brought the wheel over the lone step. "I do, actually. But I'm meeting someone."

But Hafiz. I think, he is persian, or that's what this website says that I am looking at. The person who constructed the page says he is mystical. And beautiful. And from the 7 minutes I spent reading it, I would have to agree. It was Robert, a JV from Seattle, who visited our house last weekend, who first introduced me, as he sat at our kitchen table reading quotes from his anthology while the rest of us did dishes or ate the contents of our cabinents. So now, I'm happy to have his words in my life.

Today was a hard day. One of those frightening days that leaves you incredibly angry at a person for treating you like crap, no matter how ill they are, and then hopeless. How can you do anything in the midst of aggression? You can't, really. You can take a deep breath until your eyes fill with tears and you're directed to one of a small room in the back of the clinic where people who have been doing this a lot longer of you give you a small cup of water, and a hug, and tell you that it will all be okay.

So that was my first day back from the first JVC cascade region retreat. Which was beautiful, at a place where I could look out at the water and see tall trees stretching for miles. We ate lots of beans and fiber, talked about our personality types, and took fewer showers. It was good to get away for a few days. To be surrounded by flannel. To step back and remind myself there is still a lot to see when it's raining.