All of life feels to me like a succession of puddles that you step into always surprised to find how deep they go. You think you're on one track, but you step into a puddle and there you are, whoosh, transported to another world, like Alice or the children from the Faraway Tree. And being in one means it's hard to remember that there are others.
I am happy. Despite everything that is happening in the world (the government in the UK is suggesting we stockpile water, crisps, sardines, twiglets, borlotti beans). I think of the scene at Costco this morning after this announcement and I feign a faint, back of hand to brow.)
We need bigger maps by which to measure what is going on. But that is another topic. Note to self: Cynthia Bourgeault on this subject. If you're interested into a deeper dive, this conversation with Cynthia Bourgeault is worth a listen (aka transformational).
On the subject of pools you step into, I took my mother who is 91 to the hospital in Oxford yesterday for a biopsy on a skin rash she developed over the summer that seems to be confounding the GP. I imagined this to be a routine visit, but I was wrong. My mother has not left the retirement home where she lives in the whole year she has been there, except for a notable bicycle ride on a large tricycle with a seat at the front where the lovely Mary, who is Strong, Muscular and Brave, and usually the sous chef, took my mother, wrapped in a blanket to the local pub and back. She couldn't go in because she didn't have her wheelchair, but she loved the experience, wind blowing through her hair, smiling at passers by, getting a view of the village she lives in. Because of the wheelchair we had to order a special kind of taxi, and because I was nervous of helping her if she needed the loo, we were lucky enough to have a carer come along with us too. Vanessa is tiny and smiley and has just moved to England two years ago from Ghana. They refer to her as "little Vanessa." Grainne our driver is an Irish former teacher with two grown daughters in the arts. Her dark red van is customized with pulleys and clips, straps and carrabiners that pull the wheelchair up the ramp and set it in the back, looking out. Off we went on a sunny, crisp, blue October day, up into the Wessex Downs, to Blewbury, Upton, Abingdon and on to the city of dreaming spires. "Thank you, Bente," said Vanessa, "I've never been to Oxford before and because of you I'm going there today." The green fields and yellow and orange leaves whizzed by and other than a few whispy distant hill-looking clouds on the horizon, the sky was a relentless, glorious pale blue. The kind of sky you expect on Thanksgiving, the kind of sky you expect when you are off work and you are a little out of your routine, not unpleasantly. We were on an adventure. And had I known I would've brought a picnic and a thermos of tea.
The hospital waiting room was packed with all kinds of people, and the requisite woman with a large white bandage wrapped around her head, another man with stiches all over his face, a kind couple who offered us chairs next to each other. There is a certain generosity of spirit the English have in these situations. I am reminded of my late sister and the way she spoke to people she didn't know, with an intimate, conspiratorial tone.. A small boy in a jumper depicting sheep and tractors, who was with both his grandmother and his great-grandmother (his grandma and his nan) greeted everyone as they came in. "I like your shoes," my mother said. "They're waterproof," he replied, proudly. His nan came out of the consulting room, wobbling a little on her stick and he rushed towards her like a labrador puppy, shouting "Nan, Nan," and you are reminded of the big hearts of small children whose love has not yet shrunk. A nurse came out to tell us the doctor was running late ("How late?" "I can ask?") and sent us down to the Costa coffee place at the other end of the hospital. We navigated the wheelchair up and down ramps and through a glass corridor with fig and mulberry trees on either side of it, through a passage with framed pieces of Japanese wrapping paper, and then asked about the coffee which we could smell, (coffee like bacon is very inviting whether or not you like either) but not locate. "Oh there's a League of Friends upstairs" said a helpful woman in a lanyard. We took the elevator up and found ourselves in the most charming place which wouldn't have been out of place in 1961. Two slightly grumpy but very efficient ladies in pinnies serving tea and coffee out of enormous pots. Wartime sized pots. Handwritten signs on scraps of paper in leaky biro. No cappucino, no fancy teas, just good old English builder's, and the kind of weak, milky coffee we had at school or you can get at American diners, also doughnuts, KitKat bars, egg mayonnaise sandwiches on white bread, tomato cuppa soups and so on. My mother and I shared a cup of coffee and a doughnut (she generously refused to eat the jammy bits) and Vanessa nibbled on some chocolate. My ma, who as you know is Norwegian and forthright, and now a nonogenarian Norwegian with no filter and takes enormous pride in saying what she thinks no matter who hears, who had been complaining bitterly about the doctor running so far behind, now settled in at our little table and I realized she was enjoying our little adventure. We looked up Ghana on the map and found it was next to Côte D'Ivoire and many miles away from Senegal where I'd imagined it to be. North of it is a country I'd never heard of - Burkina Faso. A good geography lesson.
The doctor was lovely. An overachiever of a young woman, prone to anxiety, no doubt, who apologized at least five times for being and hour and a half late. My mother, in her typical fashion did not let her off the hook. But even my mother warmed. The best news was that the biopsy was ruled; no pesky and painful scraping of the skin. The doctor took my mother's face in her hands, gently, as if in prayer, as she scanned it. It was a loving gesture. She was genuinely invested in my mother's wellbeing, something you expect from a doctor but isn't alway present in the days of budget restrictions and a dirth of resources. I could feel my mother relaxing, knowing she was in these able hands. Imagine the indignities of realizing that your faculties, your movement, your decision making abilities are diminished. Imagine realizing that you can no longer make yourself some scrambled eggs, a cup of tea, that you are fully in the hands of people that aren't your family and that you have to trust for your wellbeing. I say "it must be awful, mamma." And she says "you don't know, you have no idea what it's like." I don't, it's true. But today, I saw her shoulders drop and the anxiety (which she keeps well masked, inside her little cashmere sweater and pearls) dissipate slightly.
Our journey home was epic; instead of taking the ring road from Headington, we drove into the city center on this bright blue day to point out to Vanessa South Parks, Magdalen, Christ Church Meadow, the Isis, Blackwells. Bustling tourists everywhere, with folded umbrellas and backpacks, the familiar and yet not so familiar buildings passing us by, a flicker of a memory from the Covered Market where John and I used to go for breakfast when we were barely twenty -- bacon, eggs and even fried bread. Dark brown tea from a massive silver or aluminum urn with a spigot, yellow and green formica tables. In our burgundy chariot, my mother in the back like Boedacea, we her underlings protecting her from the front, our magnificent warrior woman of a driver, we marched through the center of Oxford, a happy little band. "We really should have brought a picnic," I say. It was not as I expected it to turn out. We had not anticipated this unexpected joy.
Grace is an unearned kindness.
As Annie Lamott says:
“Grace is-well, it's a-it's a gold star, except you didn't earn it and you'll never be able to pay it back.”
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