Pieces of London

*I’m republishing this from a previous blog. I wrote this piece three years ago, about a trip that happened 4 years ago next week. Enjoy!*

 

I sat in the small, white waiting room, not doing anything.  I had been talking to my mom some, sitting to my left.  My dad and sister sat across and a little down from us.  We had just taken whatever seats were open when we arrived.  I found myself barely nodding and mostly ignoring what my mom had to say.  I wasn’t interested, it was not distracting me from the pain I was in, and I knew every word only marked us as Americans, foreigners.  I hated feeling foreign.  My sister had stuck her nose in a book upon our arrival two hours prior, barely lifting it out all that time.  If I felt uncomfortable being foreign, I knew she was afraid to be.

We were fortunate that, being in London, the language was familiar.  And soon after our arrival at the Chelsea-Westminster Emergency Room, we discovered the medical system was also similar.  I was grateful.  I had been in Emergency Rooms plenty of times prior to this: once with my sister who had been bitten by a dog, twice driving friends to get stitched up.  My parents had been in them so many times with grandparents, and I was so familiar with those stories, I feel like it had been even more often.

This was my first time being The Patient in the ER.

I sat in a wheelchair.  This was in part because I could not walk from the taxi to the entrance and in part because of how few open seats there were.  I was also able to keep my right foot extended away from, perpendicular, to the rest of my body.  This helped somewhat with the pain, somewhat being a very relative term.  Taking Tylenol twice as frequently as was technically permitted so that I could even be sitting up, as opposed to lying in bed, my foot elevated on a giant stack of pillows, indicated the pain was bad.  On a scale of one to ten in terms of my lifetime experience of pain, it was a ten.  When the triage nurse had asked me to rate my pain, I said six.  She offered me a stronger painkiller but I said no.  There’s too much family history there.  I refuse take anything stronger than what you can get over the counter if I can possibly stand it.  Apparently even this level of pain qualified.

So What About an Elephant?

My lunchtime spot for musing, photo from earlier this fall

When I sat down in Arena Theater, in the black box where I had acted and built sets and stage managed for my four years at Wheaton College, I looked up at the man that had brought me there. He looked at me too. He didn’t smile. Well, at least not in the broad, welcoming sort of way. There was a hint of it at the corner of his cheek. Although, that may have been imagined. His eyes were smiling and open-hearted.

He didn’t greet me in any way. But we did share that look for longer than most folks would feel comfortable with.

To be honest, I was a little uncomfortable. I did feel the need to make him feel more at home; it was, after all, his first time in this place that was a second home to me. Yet, I was left without a way to do that, besides smile, which I did. And then I just continued to hold his gaze for a minute or so longer.

It was new, and uncomfortable, but not foreign. Arena Theater had been for me, and continues to be for others, a place of open-hearted gazing. Relationships were built on this idea that we looked at each other with intention, even wonder. What is going on with you today? I see you. I notice you. Notice your tears or smiles or giggles or inability to sit still for more than moment.

It was actors’ work. We were actors, after all. We tried to look around with a sense of curiosity. To notice things with intention, with interest. Not assuming the person or situation was the same as the last time we had looked at it.

He told us about the “gaze of the elephant.” I don’t remember whose story it was, perhaps he didn’t say, but someone had told him to look out at the world in the way an elephant does.

Yes’s and No’s

 

 

 

 

Things this blog is:

1. 1. A place to work things out.
   2. A place to remember little moments. Big moments too.
   3. A place to share the things I find delight in.
   4. A tiny corner of my inner life (pretentious, I know).
   5. My rehearsals as a writer.
   6. An intersection of everyday life and theology and being a woman and food. There will definitely be thoughts about food.
   7. Honest. (If not, call me out on it.)
   8. Imperfect (ideas, format, grammar and more!).
   9. A conversation.

Things this blog is not:

1. A finished product.
2. A polished writing sample.
3. Neat and tidy.
4. Political (Lord save us).
5. Any type of authority. Especially in the theology department.

 

But come, and read. It’s not that bad.