You Could Have #5: Waiting Rooms

Katherine, you made my day on Tuesday….

Sitting in the intimidating, cold, dreary waiting room at the hospital, waiting for them to take yet another 4 tubes of blood, because they hadn’t taken enough the FIRST time I was there… I probably looked like I had just been told the world was going to end.  Crabby.  Unhappy.  and definitely, “PLEASE don’t bother ME with YOUR pesky problems--I have my own, thank you” kind of look.

Like everyone else who waits, I picked up my book, looked at the TV, looked around the room, looked down at my book again… Not a word spoken.  Like everyone else, I didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone, yet truthfully wondered why everyone else wast there, too.  I was miserable.

I heard my mother’s voice loud and clear, “Keep pouting and your face is gonna freeze that way!” ….. 20 some odd years later, I think my face froze.

A girl walked into the waiting room.  She walked with a bit of a stumble, between the brace around her leg and the hobble from her hip, I wasn’t sure what her diagnosis was but it was clear she had a small handicap.  As I looked down from the TV and followed her limp around the room, she stopped at the table, picked up a magazine and shrieked, and is if she’d seen her live in person said, “LOOK MOM!  Look who it is.”

Dolly.

Good ‘ole Dolly P. brings such joy into a room.

But that’s not what made me smile.

As Katherine’s mom left the room to go talk to the doctor, she got up and went to the drinking fountain.  And it wasn’t but a second she stopped, stood in front of me, face to face, direct eye contact and said… the words I still hear in my daydreams and thoughts at night,

“You. are. beautiful.  Your hair and your smile.  You have such pretty eyes.  I wouldn’t change a thing about you.  Not a thing.  You could be… a … a.. Princess.”

…. Katherine, the way you spoke to your mom.  The way you interacted with everyone in that room.  Your smile and your attitude.  It’s not because you told me I was pretty that day.  And I’m definitely not writing this as a stroke on my ego, to tell the world what you said.  Because if anything, it completely shamed and humbled me.  Almost embarrassed me by how ‘unpretty’ I actually felt and acted like that day.  You made my heart raw all over again.

Katherine, you sat down, started flippin through Dolly’s magazine, again looked up at me and said, “I don’t know why you think you need to, but you don’t need to change a thing.  Nothing.”…… and continued to flip your pages.  As if it was nothing.


But it was something.

I managed a smile and a meek, “you are so sweet, thank you, what is your name”…. but really, all I wanted to do was cry.

It was as if you could see right through my heart that day.  Could read everything floating around my head that day.  And for some reason, drilled a hole right through my soul.

Katherine, you and your spark.  Thank you.

Your pure joy for such small pleasures.

Your excitement and honesty.

Your boldness.

Katherine, you could have sat down, waited for your lab like the rest of us, silent and solemn, ignoring the joys of life around you, too…..

But you didn’t.

You could have kept to yourself, worried about what everyone else in the room was thinking.

But you didn’t.

YOU COULD HAVE influenced my attitude adjustment.
YOU COULD HAVE made me, too, want to dance around life…

and you did.