I’m sitting in a waiting room at Methodist Hospital while Mike has some minor surgery. He tends to get cysts in his back that grow until they are pressing on nerves and they sometimes get infected opening the possibility of MRSA. He’s had a couple of the culprits removed over the years so it is a somewhat routine procedure but as we all know anything can happen whenever someone receives an anesthetic and goes under the knife. I suspect that we’ll be headed home in a few hours but I don’t take the process lightly given the seriousness of the pre-operative paperwork and preparation involved.
The family waiting room where I am is much more lighthearted than those where I have kept watch while loved ones were dying in ICU. Here nobody is particularly worried. There are no tears or anxious faces, no signs of people getting really bad news. I suspect that there are other areas in the hospital where those things are happening even as we speak. Coming to a hospital always reminds me to have gratitude for the good health that I mostly enjoy. It also helps me to have much more sympathy for families that are enduring very serious situations. Continue reading “Thoughts from a Waiting Room”
I have often visited Dallas. I’ve been to weddings, parties, and on shopping excursions to that city to the North of my home. Each of my daughters even resided there for a time. Never once have I been inclined to explore a location in the Big D for which it is quite possibly the most famous, the site of President John Kennedy’s assassination. After well over fifty years of avoidance I finally decided this week that it was time for me to make a pilgrimage to that terrible place. Thus Mike and I reserved tickets this past Monday for the one o’clock tour of the old Texas School Book Depository.
I don’t recall learning Texas history when I was a child. I suppose that my private school didn’t deem it necessary. It wasn’t until I was teaching fourth grade that I began to glean a bit of information about our state, but even then my knowledge was somewhat incomplete. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, was filled with stories of our great state. Her relatives came to Texas before it was even a Republic and settled on about three hundred acres just north of present day downtown Houston along what is now the I-45 corridor. She grew up in the days of the city’s growth, attending public school and learning how to proudly sing Texas Our Texas. She celebrated Texas Independence Day as though it was the fourth of July. She was quite proud to have descended from one of the pioneer families of our great state and often regaled anyone willing to listen with recitations of how the place we call Texas came to be and the part that her grandparents played in its earliest days.
With the exception of a few months I’ve lived in Houston for all of my life. I love the city and its suburbs but like many natives I have at times underestimated our fourth largest metropolitan area . Perhaps I have taken its assets for granted because I have been distracted by the demands of living. Only now that I am retired am I learning just how exciting our fair city and the little towns that surround it actually are. In fact, there are times when so much is happening on a given day that it is impossible to partake in all of the incredible events. At any moment there is more than enough to do and much of it is available at little or no cost. I particularly enjoy the historical aspects of my town that I have heretofore only superficially known.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 