"The Call" usually comes with a lengthy Latin-based diagnosis, a medical mystery shrouded in grafted syllables of a dead language. Anyone who's done any amount of living has gotten "the Call" and has paused.
Work can wait. Errands will keep. Inhale. Listen. A nearby spring bird declaring its sole right to the elm. A distant motor accelerates and fades. The fabric of the draperies lets loose a gentle shimmy in recognition of the invisible force of the wind upon it. Email will be there later. It's not going anywhere. Inhale.
Elle's surgery is scheduled; what dates are we available for a pre-surgical party to give love? Calendars, usually the boss, can be cleared. We'll be there. Y'know, we have a guest room if Elle needs a recovery place; I work from home; I can be here; feeble, desperate bids for uniting against the C word - recurring at 46 - inhale.
I'm much more comfortable with my own mortality than I am the mortality of friends. It's a control thing I guess. I joke with my husband on lazy weeknights as we Tivo through commercials that he can just put me down like Old Yeller if I crumble.
The crumbling of others, though, digs deep into my gut, into that adolescent stick-girl obsessed with fairness, fists clenched, ready to show you all when she grows up. A call for justice, sunburned shoulders and scabbed elbows, lacking in life experience to see the big wheel, to know that fortunes ebb and flow.
Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty pass. I'll do the next thing, the next work of my workday. It matters. Being able to create a path for others to continue creating, that matters. Carefully formulating a way to connect the disconnected matters. Giving love through the difficulties matters.
Giving love matters.
Love matters.
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