An elevating encounter

Center of my universe!

I'm going down the elevator at the hospital the other day after holding my beautiful granddaughter for the first time when this scruffy-looking old guy, obviously impaired and accompanied by some sort of law-enforcement officer, makes a rather pointed proposition. And suddenly I realize that the world doesn't stop turning just because I'm hiding out in babyland.

Two years ago I spent a few weeks hanging out in hospitals and rehab centers while my mother was sick and now I'm hanging out in the hospital while my daughter recovers from a C-section. I've seen both my mother and my daughter struggle with hospital gowns, hospital food, and hospital nonsense, and I've helped both of them celebrate the return of basic bodily functions. ("You've passed gas! Terrific!") I've cleaned my mother's house and my daughter's house, done their laundry, vacuumed their floors, prepared carefully for their eventual return.

And while I've been consumed with these not unpleasant chores, other people have been living their lives normally, as if utterly unaware that a certain hospital room is the center of my universe. And that's okay. Every day and everywhere people have babies or suffer strokes, fall off ladders or endure major surgery, and every day the world keeps on turning and life goes on. Loss and gain, life and death intersect daily, sometimes even in a single elevator. 

When the doors open, the scruffy-looking man and the law-enforcement officer stay inside to ride to another floor, but I walk through those open doors and step back into the real world, which, oddly enough, just keeps turning.