22 December 2010

Art Card #212 

watercolor and ink 

(c) 2010 Amanda Millay Hughes 

Yesterday was the big old biopsy at the hospital. The test went well enough - not too hard - just the way it goes, I guess, when you have to go ahead and do it. Something comes over me when I have to do a hard thing.  A kind of grace, I guess.  No matter how much I might want to talk myself out of it, oversleep, or run away, there is nothing to be done but get up on time, take a shower, put on clothes, a little makeup, shoes, coat, hat, grab the keys, and go. 

But I don't have to like it.

I am not the one who had a little slice of my liver pulled out, cut in half, and sent off to the lab.   


I have spent a lot of time in hospitals, more often than not as the companion to mothers,  father, children, friends, extended family, and partner. Time spent standing still, waiting, listening, making small talk, making as little noise as possible so one can rest, making the time pass with needlework, crossword puzzles, and books. And as these kinds of things go, yesterday was short - yesterday was, dare I say it, easy.  In the course of only four and a half hours: the check in, the first wait, the paperwork, the consent forms, the second wait, the doctor visit and talk, the procedure, the walk to the cafeteria, the breakfast, the pager buzzing, the wait, the release.  And when we left, we left with no news, no new information at all. We arrived together and we left together - me, Kirsten, and Emily...that will have to be enough for now. 

We don't know what will happen next - what the results will be: good, bad, or inconsequential.  For now, it is almost Christmas and all we can do is say yes and thank you.

These are the patterns of this little life - hard and easy, yes and thank you, up and down, back and forth. We make comfort and we make waves.  We sleep and we get up.   

Our pleasure is to do every day the work of that day, to cut our hair and not want blue eyes and to be reasonable and obedient. To obey and not split hairs. This is our duty and our pleasure… Every day we get up and say we are awake today. By this we mean that we are up early and we are up late. We eat our breakfast and smoke a cigar.


That is what Gertrude Stein said to Alice.  I say it, too. Emily must have been listening as it is listed as one of Emily's favorite quotes on one of her online profile pages. After all, it is the pattern of a life that matters. Not the single incident, not the lone test, but the pattern of a life...and as near as I can tell, patterns emerge slowly with their own strange beauty.  Our task - if there is a task at all - is to live these patterns, see them emerge, and find in them some whisper of God nestled in the duty and the pleasure of it all.