In the Fik of it

I pushed her wheelchair down the hallway, trying to push on the handles with my elbows and hold her hands in mine at the same time.   I struggled to keep up with the wispy blue gown ahead of me – blue hair, blue shoe covers, yet thankfully a warm attitude.   As an operating room nurse she’d likely heard and seen everything before but even as she lead us down the hallway, I was certain she’d never seen this before.   I’m sure that when she turned around to check on my progress it was a view that would be hard to match.   I was wearing the same wispy blue gown, the same blue hair, identical blue shoe covers – the difference was the patient.   Bright yellow deflated ball on her head, a denim vest, a ripped "pokey ball" gripped in the left hand and a knitted dishtowel firmly attached to her index finger, trailing on the floor behind and decidedly underneath the bright purple roller-chair.   As we headed to surgery, the utterances of “Tawm ” could be h...

I’ve been asked to mentor someone at work.   In fact, over the last four years I’ve been asked numerous times to mentor someone at work.   This year it was formally added to my performance objectives to mentor someone at work – that’s the beauty of work, it defies logic. The troubling part for me is that basic elements are completely missing from the equation – “who” and “what” are never really explained and I can only guess that my corporate host wants some part of me to be infused into the lives and experiences of others and honestly, I don’t know where to begin. It was easier being a mentor to fifth grade boys, they learn by watching.   Take them camping, take them out for a hamburger, build a black powder rifle or a checkerboard with them...basically live with them and let them visually soak in every aspect of your life.   I’m not sure how to do that in an environment where you’re legally not even supposed to notice if you’re meeting with a man or a wom...

It’s at times like this in the middle of the night, that I wake up and quickly become torn between a peaceful beauty and a horrible reality.   Her seizures have become more frequent, her disposition less predictable, Sherry’s despondency – greater, and the biggest of all fears more looming; the realization that a full eighty percent of the things I once thought important are in reality, silly and worthless. To watch her roll into one of those incomprehensible “little seizures” is a lesson in powerlessness.   Her eyes roll back into her head, her body stiffens, her hands start to tremble like an old drunk in need of stiff drink.   Her voice becomes small and distant and her cries for help, more pathetic.   She wants to be both held and left alone and I never know if this typical behavior of a seizure or typical of behavior of a woman.   Perhaps its both, all I know is in either case its something I have no control over. I watch the snow falling in the d...

People keep talking about balancing work and home life as if were actually even a possibility.  I'm finding in my world, that balance looks more like an Alexander Calder mobile that didn't quite past muster. It hangs askew from the ceiling with a limp and peculiar air about it and I'm not sure if its pathetic for its planning or its execution, in either case - the vision before me is anything but glorious. There's not simply the question of two opposing forces balancing; in fact, the deadly component no one mentions are the dozens of little balancing acts within each topic.  Balancing the politics at work with the actual need to get something accomplished.  Balancing what gets accomplished and who looks to gain what, from it..well, you get the drift; balancing within a balance.  Watching Bethany get off the school bus the other day, I was suddenly overcome with a glimpse of all the poorly balanced items in my life.  For the eternity of one minute, I was full...

A young girl was going to commit suicide today.   I don’t even know her name, barely know where she lives – in fact, Google probably knows more about her than I do.   One thing Google doesn’t know though, it’s that she’s thinking suicide is the answer. I read the urgent note from the pastor; he was asking for prayer on her behalf, and before I even got to the end of the note, I was asking him for an address.   After I asked that critical question I began to pray.   In reflection, my prayers were more focused on NOT getting an address, as I’m neither qualified nor bilingual enough to carry on this level of intervention.   One thing I can do in any language though is to sit and pray with someone.   I was on the verge of leaving work to go sit with a stranger and offer what?   At best, some hope - what sort of fool does this?   Who is willing to risk a good paying job and career with ample responsibility for the sake of a stranger's bad day? ...

This past week I feel like I've been living the storyline from the movie "Lost in Translation" .   While I had assumed the movie to be a fictional encounter of an American abroad in Japan,  I'm now not so sure it was fiction. Many times I found myself laughing - they'd bow, then I'd bow in return only to have them re-bow again so of course, I'd bow back.  This courtship dance seemed to go on for an awkwardly long time  before I'd finally say "enough" and break the sacred cycle. After that little courtship dance we'd settle down to dinner. You know those awkward moments when you sit with strangers and then begin a conversation neutral enough not to offend anyone, yet focused enough that you don't end up " bornering " yourself in a dead conversation with no way out?   Try striking up a conversation when the only thing you can do is mime...  I typically do well in ambiguous situations but for me, with no language skills -...

I’m staring right down the barrel of yet another Michigan winter.    Last winter nearly crushed me both spiritually and physically and this winder will be no less harsh.  Every winter for the last 10 years has been a type of Russian roulette, how lucky will you be?  Will you make it though this one?  Roll the chamber, pull the trigger, see if January comes.  If it does, try it again with February. It’s not the darkness, the grey skies and the cold air and snow that strangle my heart – it’s the endless hours of moderating Bethany in a small house in a small town surrounded by a big world.   It’s the ever-present sound of screaming, hitting, smashing.   It’s the color of a saddened wife, the temperament of a frustrated son and the hopelessly infrequent spurts of laughter and joy. All the “self-actualized” people I meet in life, the ones who speak of balanced diet, meditation, rejuvenation spas, 8 hours of sleep a night, “me time”… they all ...