Living-Deliberately.com

Interesting title? Today we are in the midst of getting ready for tomorrow…a very “not fun” process called “bowel prep”. I’ll spare ya the details. The last two nights have been almost completely sleepless (part of an upcoming post on being your child’s advocate to be sure) and I’m in a little bit of a fog. Doing funny things like pouring coffee on my salad instead of the chili right next to the coffee cup and walking away from the cash register without my debit card. I’m on auto pilot away from my element and life is a little rough around the edges for it.

I was getting my coffee this morning at the Starbucks that is right next door, drinking a few moments of sunshine while the nurse upstairs went through her morning routine with W. Here is this coffee shop in the middle of a college enviroment…everyone is a little lazy and relaxed; traffic is less than it was on the weekdays. The NY Times is nearby and smart people are hanging out on the porch, oblivious to the fact that there’s a whole ‘nother world one block over.  But I stood in a dusty sunbeam ordering my cup of brewed beauty and lo and behold Dave Matthews’ song Where Are You Going came on. I love, love, love that song on a normal day and on this morning, I felt a little jolt…a shocking kind of comfort of life on the outside and that in time, whatever legnth of time it ends up being, real life will resume again. One where I won’t be spending sleepless nights and hazy days in a disinfected, music-less building watching my boy try to be brave but rather will collect the heavy tomatoes off the garden vines, cook supper in the midst of a busy day, and referree fighting siblings and their many wars.

On the walk back up I remembered when Clara was in the hospital there was a respitory therapist who served as that reminder for me. He was a big, burly guy who had longish hair and a beard like some New England stalwart and was partial to creamy fisherman’s cableknit sweaters. He wore cologne. Every day this strong guy strode up to table looking baby beds holding teeny infants and he helped them breathe. And without knowing it, he had the same effect on the parents. The environment that always smelled of cleaners, latex, paper gowns, medicine, and occassionaly take out or old coffee, was now and then brightened by the tiny wiff of civility. One moment taken to splash a little on in the morning by someone who had no clue the effect he was having, served on more than one occassion to give me hope and perspective that the world we found ourselves in was not the end.

Strange but true. Little things matter; sometimes so much more than we could ever imagine.

I’ve had two really neat run-ins involving Ron Paul’s campaign since being here. On the day we got here I was honked at by a guy in a HUMONGOUS Hummer. He motioned for me to roll down my window and he said, “I LOVE your Ron Paul sticker!! Go Ron Paul!”

The next one was today in the Target parking lot. A mom with three kids, there to do her school shopping, stopped me and said, “Yours is the second Ron Paul sticker I’ve seen today and I don’t know who he is; can you tell me about him?” So I got to tell her all about his ideas, history, consistency, honesty….she’s a registered democrat and willing to change in order to vote someone like him in! I haven’t had time to go do homework while I’ve been here but David said he heard that Ron won both the Alabama and New Hampshire straw polls by a landslide.  Go Ron Paul!

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