Facing the Mirror

I think about that old mirror often.

It was, at least, five feet long, and two feet high at it’s tallest point, which featured painstakingly carved intricate flowers and filigree. Two wooden slats divided the glass into three separate mirrors, and, long ago, someone had burnished the wooden frame golden.

I came upon it while helping my elderly next-door neighbor, Ruby, remove years of flea-market finds, incredible buys, and assorted debris from what was to have been a spare room. Ruby was everything her name implies. She was also a packrat.

As I pulled the awkwardly shaped mirror out from behind a crib mattress Ruby was sure she might need one day, I immediately noticed the craftsmanship. The detail, the inaccuracies, and the aged brown paper, stretched across the back of the frame, proclaimed “hand-crafted”.

Turning it to once again admire the carvings, I caught Ruby’s reflection in one of the panels. She stood behind me, and a little away; and, on her face, a look of adoration, usually reserved for my children.. Glancing at her, I asked the question without words, and she began to tell the story.

The mirror had been in her family as long as she could remember, which was a very long time. It had been the centerpiece of her grandmother’s dining room, and then, later, her mother’s “front room”. She wasn’t clear as to whose hands had done the carving, but she knew he had presented it to the family as a treasured heirloom, and they had treated it as such, for decades. Regret replaced delight as she explained it’s present home.

“I used to have a place to hang such things, but I don’t anymore.”

Coming closer, she raised one gnarled hand towards the apex of the frame and rested it upon the most elaborate of it’s decoration. After several seconds, she used the same hand to retrieve the ever-present tissue from the pocket of her shapeless sweater, and dabbed tobacco juice from one corner of her lined, colorless mouth.

“I want you to have it.”, she proclaimed, and turned back to the box she had been pillaging before my find.

I stared at her bent back for several seconds, before challenging her decision by suggesting she consider making a gift to one of her two daughters.

“Do you see either one of them here today?”, she barked as she rose creakily, turning slanted eyes in my direction. “Huh? Do ya?”

Several seconds passed in uncomfortable silence before she closed, quietly, with “Alright, then.”

I hung the mirror, that evening, over the sofa in my living room, and it was, once again, the centerpiece it was meant to be. It hung there for several years, until the size of my family exhausted the space inside the little house next door to Ruby, forcing us to leave our friend. But, her mirror made the trip. In total, I moved the mirror to three different homes. Ruby would see the mirror hung in all but the last, but, somehow, I’m sure she knew it was there.

During my most recent move, light packing, invoked by emergent situations, left the mirror hanging for the next occupants to admire. And, I hope they did. I hope the decades of love and care stroked into it’s wood demanded the respect it, and she deserved. And, Ruby, who was everything that name implies, understands.

>Facing the Mirror

>
I think about that old mirror often.

“I used to have a place to hang such things, but I don’t anymore.”

“I want you to have it.”, she proclaimed, and turned back to the box she had been pillaging before my find.

I stared at her bent back for several seconds, before challenging her decision by suggesting she consider making a gift to one of her two daughters.

“Do you see either one of them here today?”, she barked as she rose creakily, turning slanted eyes in my direction. “Huh? Do ya?”

Several seconds passed in uncomfortable silence before she closed, quietly, with “Alright, then.”

Watching….and Waiting

Steam from my bath still filled my pajamas as I prepared to reap my reward of curling up with a book in preparation for bed, when one of my more apolitical friends called to tell me to turn on CNN. It didn’t strike me, at first, the aberrance of her behavior, as she gushed excitedly about a report on the cost of making Sarah Palin a presentable Republican candidate, because as plasma filled the television screen I saw she was giving an interview, minus prepared remarks, and my attention became focused in hopes of witnessing, yet another, blunder.

Whereas her words were not particularly polished, neither were they foolish, as she stumbled through her efforts to give the appearance of answering a question, while directing as many barbs as possible at her running mate’s opposition. I became bored quickly when it became apparent she would say nothing I could use as fodder around the water-cooler next day. But, I didn’t change the channel, or turn off the set.

In my ennui, I noticed her appearance. Her perpetually carefully coiffed hair lacked it’s usual luster, as it hung below her shoulders in strands shaped by the length of her day. Dark eyes, known to sparkle and snap, appeared somewhat dull behind the glare on her designer glasses. Her voice was tired, and her posture strained.

I began to reflect on the many faces of Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin, wife, may have had an argument with her husband, just before sitting down for another, in a long line of interviews. Sarah Palin, mother of 4, and soon-to-be grandmother, may have just had to bandage a knee, or discuss a report card, or quiet the histrionics of her pregnant daughter, or settle an argument between siblings, or diaper her baby. She may have come from an appointment with her son’s doctor, and the news may not have been good. Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, may have had to deal with unhappy legislators, or worse, disgruntled constituents. She might have just flown cross country after attending a ribbon-cutting, or spent hours shuffling through official government documents requiring the governor’s signature. Sarah Palin, Vice-Presidential candidate, may have slogged through all of these things; a disagreement with her husband, fights between her children, insecurity in her daughter, dirty diapers, doctor’s appointments, complaining constituents, cross-country flights, and reams of paper, only to end her day in a cheap vinyl chair across from a news reporter asking impossible questions. Because Sarah Palin is all of these things; Wife, Mother, Governor, and, Vice-Presidential candidate.

And this is why we watch. This is why, at the end of a Presidential campaign that seems to gone have on forever, we still sit in front of our television sets, mouths agape, watching, and waiting.

As the interview ended, the anchor teased the following segment which was to detail the cost of making Sarah presentable, and, in a country whose primary source of entertainment is contained inside digital video recorders, we sat through commercials to watch an unprecedented piece. And it is unprecedented, because we, as a nation, have never been in this place before.

Kicking her gender aside, I wondered as I waited, why they hadn’t done the same kind of piece on Joe Biden, and then I remembered. Joe Biden has been presentable, and present, forever. I ticked through a list of others who might have been profiled, and realized that none actually qualified for this kind of attention. Given that, and the marketability of her gender, which was, after all, the motivating factor in her choice as a candidate, I feel the piece was fair.

I’m not bothered by the fact that Republican supporters footed a $4000.00 bill for her coiffure, or shuffled her off to Neiman Marcus with a blank check with which to purchase her form-fitting suits. Realistically, one could not expect them to trot out an Alaskan housewife/hockey mom-turned Governor without a little sprucing up. It is, after all, the American way, and “when in Rome….”

Pundits, and even John McCain, himself, have been quoted as saying Sarah Palin was brought on board to breathe new life into the Republican party. Some are even going so far as to say she is the “new face” of the Republican Party.

Pundits aside, I am convinced that Sarah Palin, wife, mother, Governor, and Vice-Presidential candidate, has breathed new life into a Presidential campaign that had already gone on too long before she became involved. And, regardless on what side of the aisle we sit, SHE is why we are still watching…

>Watching….and Waiting

>
Steam from my bath still filled my pajamas as I prepared to reap my reward of curling up with a book in preparation for bed, when one of my more apolitical friends called to tell me to turn on CNN. It didn’t strike me, at first, the aberrance of her behavior, as she gushed excitedly about a report on the cost of making Sarah Palin a presentable Republican candidate, because as plasma filled the television screen I saw she was giving an interview, minus prepared remarks, and my attention became focused in hopes of witnessing, yet another, blunder.

And this is why we watch. This is why, at the end of a Presidential campaign that seems to gone have on forever, we still sit in front of our television sets, mouths agape, watching, and waiting.

Some Things Just Never Go Away….

It may have been precipitated by sharing war stories with Sylvia, in between plays, at our sons’ football game. I hadn’t seen her since she graduated, and it was interesting hearing her take on things, especially since she ended up on a cardiac floor, where I, too, spent my first year in nursing. It was amazing to hear how little had really changed in the last, twenty-plus, years.

She finds the work less than stimulating, and the politics, driven by a matriarchal dominated hierarchy, maddening. I suggested a change of venue, as it had taken me almost ten years to find my niche in maternal-child medicine. She countered, by sharing that she had told her husband she didn’t know how much longer she could help make ends meet by emptying bedpans, to the accompaniment of a whining baby-boomer showing no compassion for the octogenarian occupying the neighboring bed. Many of her patients are there for open-heart surgery, and she cares for them before, and after.

“The older ones are quiet and appreciative. It’s the younger ones; you know, the forty-year-olds, who whine all the time.”

“The kick is up,,,,, and, it’s good!”

As I listened, I envisioned the floor I had worked on, so long ago.

Most graduate nurses drew the night shift. The lighting was soft, and respectful, against rust carpeting that covered every available surface, in an effort to muffle the sound of crash carts rolling, and the inevitable herd of rubber soled feet running towards the door of a patient “in trouble”.

Our environment called for lowered, softly feminine voices, which I always imagined offered extra comfort to a predominantly male population.

The patient load has not changed. Like my friend Sylvia, I usually cared for four or five every night. But, I remember one, in particular.

He was young. I suppose Sylvia would have thought of him as a complainer. I remember him as large; large and dark, almost bear-like. I can’t remember his reason for being there, but I’ll never forget his presence.

Working nights, if you are lucky, you see your patients only twice; once at rounds, when you begin your shift, and next, as you turn your wards over to an older crew, who have earned the right to sleep at night.

I entered his room on the third night of his stay. He lay, as always, hulking, and wide-awake, on a bed made tiny by his mass. As I padded inside, he turned; reaching for the chair his wife must have occupied only hours ago.

“Hey…” Gravel garbled his unused voice, as I rounded the opposite side of the bed.

I stopped, and bent forward to find his brown-bearded face in the swath of light provided by the door, left ajar for this purpose.

“Yes?”, I whispered.

“Take this.”, he offered.

Laboriously, he maneuvered his bulk in my direction. I struggled to make out a mass of fabric swinging from his outstretched hand. Taking it without speaking, I moved towards the door, and light.

Folds of Carolina-blue knit fell about my hands, as I struggled to shape the mass into a form I could recognize. Not until I saw the tiny, green, alligator emblem, did I understand what I held.

I turned, startled, away from the light to face him sitting amongst a web of tubes and wires.

“No!” My whisper was strident. “No, I couldn’t!” And, as I turned, my hands, without direction, began to fold the valued garment, reverently, in preparation for placement back in the chair. It was 1980, and Izod was king…

“But, you’re always so cold! I want you to have it!” The energy it took to whisper the words seemed to have sapped him, as he sunk back against the pillows, where his distended abdomen rose and fell, rapidly. One meaty hand rose to brush his curly, dark mane off his brow; and he sighed.

I stood in the cylinder of light for several seconds, feeling the expensive weight of the sweater in my hands, before I turned, and, observing his frustration, made the decision.

It was easily four sizes too big. Stretched to it’s full capacity, it encircled me, more than once. And I gave thanks, repeatedly, for ribbing on the end of the sleeves that kept the voluminous knit above my hands, and out of my way, as I entered data on patients that came after him.

Today, as I left the office, Don met me, circling cubicles in an effort to assure himself that all our computers were detached from the main-frame.

“You might want to check the ultrasound computer!”, I called as I turned the corner.

Realizing my blunder, I stopped, and turned to see him looking at me, quizzically.

“I guess some things just never go away!”, I said with a laugh and a wave, as I hefted my bags onto my shoulder, and headed for the door.

>Some Things Just Never Go Away….

>
It may have been precipitated by sharing war stories with Sylvia, in between plays, at our sons’ football game. I hadn’t seen her since she graduated, and it was interesting hearing her take on things, especially since she ended up on a cardiac floor, where I, too, spent my first year in nursing. It was amazing to hear how little had really changed in the last, twenty-plus, years.

“The older ones are quiet and appreciative. It’s the younger ones; you know, the forty-year-olds, who whine all the time.”

“The kick is up,,,,, and, it’s good!”