The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it. (Arnold Glasow)
My husband and I are sitting in a customer service office in our bank. Jay says that we are trying to get some financial business started early because he will be out of town for a few days. His mother is ill, in hospice. He is going to visit her. The bank’s representative listens and understands what he is trying to do.
Jay adds that our youngest granddaughter was supposed to have open heart surgery at the end of this month. That was postponed. Our little one contracted bronchitis. She will be at too high a risk for complications to proceed with the operation now.
The bank representative pauses and then asks, “Is it okay if I pray for your mother and granddaughter?”
I’m surprised, taken aback in a pleasant way.
“Of course,” I answer, tears in check. “We’ll take all the positive energy we can get.”
Our entire family and Ella’s many friends wait with reluctance for Ella’s surgery because we want the ordeal to be completed. Done. Part of a long-ago past. We want results now. Preferably yesterday. Ella’s power is awesome to watch. At the age of five she has admirers of all ages. Down syndrome may prevent her from developing an over-sized ego. It does not prevent her from spreading joy. She needs a membrane removed that is interfering with the function of her physical heart. Her social heart is intact.
My mother-in-law’s family and friends wait for her passing and hold onto the memories of all she has given as well as celebrate all she is and was: Mary, the strong outspoken woman who was director of social services at a now-closed psychiatric hospital; the social activist; the woman who took people into her home and gave free counseling; the grandmother who bonded with my boys while I worked at a hospital pharmacy.
She will be 95 on February 28 ½ if she rallies. Yes, she was a leap-year baby who learned to turn elongated celebration into an art form.
I talk to her on the phone and she thanks me for the soup I sent.
“You made this?” she asks. “What’s in it?”
“It comes from boiled turkey bones with some extra chicken broth. Plenty of garlic. Rice. Glad you like it.” I don’t go into detail about all of the ingredients. They don’t matter. This isn’t a how-to discussion.
I give soup to heal. In this case it would take more than broth-simmered-all-day to repair a body too worn to journey any longer. I sent the soup for taste and warmth, a hug in a mug. True, chicken soup does provide electrolytes as well as the protein, carnosine. Homemade soup is a potent liquid. But it won’t add a significant number of days to my mother-in-law’s life.
Waiting—for a passing and for a surgery. Very few people win patience awards. And no one can see inside the fertilized egg for tomorrow’s possibilities. Even the chicken doesn’t know what the outside world looks like.
I don’t drink alcohol, so I lift my coffee cup for a toast to today, to whatever blessings it brings. To hope, serendipity, rain, rainbows, and the unseen. Since waiting is inevitable, may it be blessed.
terrypetersen 