The Waiting Room

While driving through the countryside to the doctor’s office this morning for my annual physical exam, I passed a tree standing in the middle of an otherwise farmer’s barren field. It was huge, possibly a maple, with beautifully spreading boughs totally devoid of leaves. The symmetry of the branches seemed almost perfect, and beneath them, in a ring-around-the-rosie circle, stood eager saplings – not just first-season ones, but teenagers, all still with bright yellow fall foliage intact. I had to stare – there were just too many lessons there. Old and new. Growth and shelter. Modeling, mentoring, and…looking up.

The sedate image of wisdom stood over the vibrant.

In the office waiting room sat a handsome young man, maybe in his early 20’s, with blue tattoos winding in coiling snakes up both arms. He stared into space from beneath a billed cap, seemingly focusing on the far wall. During my entire wait (around 20 minutes) I never saw him blink, flinch, or move any part of his body even slightly. It was as if he'd been frozen in place, transfixed, staring at some spot beyond the room the rest of us could not see. I felt more than a little anxious for him, and wondered if he was drugged.

Another patient caught my eye, an older woman (maybe 90) with the whitest-white skin I’d ever seen. If her eyes hadn’t been brown, I would have thought her to be an albino. She seemed fragile to the extreme; her eyes met mine a couple of times with a fleeting, imploring look as if to say, “Life is hard and I don’t know what to do.” I almost thought she would break and shatter into a heap on the floor if someone touched her. Hugging her would be out of the question; I’d be afraid she might turn to baby powder right there in my arms.

At one point the door to the patient rooms opened and a couple emerged, probably around the age of 80. They both wore huge smiles, and I thought, “Wow, they must have gotten good news today!” However, as I watched them the smiles seemed to be permanently etched, even as they got their coats independently without talking with each other. Finally, on the way out the door, the woman approached another patient – a fairly pathetic-looking 40-ish woman wearing sweat pants (what happened to you, Eve?) who was seriously overweight, mousy, dull-in-the-eyes. “Say, you don’t know me,” Smiley said while tapping the blank-faced woman on the shoulder from behind, “but I have a walker almost exactly like yours at home.”

“Really?” The mousy woman turned (with some degree of pain since she was so large) and seemed genuinely shocked and pleased by Smiley’s gesture.

“Yes, but mine isn’t RED.” Smiley flashed a gigantic smile and her eyes twinkled.

“Oh? What color is yours?” (Was it my imagination, or did I see a spark of life jump...?)

“Just plain old silver.” (giggle) “Now…you have a nice day.”

All the while Smiley’s husband smiled too, a hunched-over, skinny gentleman with skiffs of stiff, white hair who stood by the door and waited with a genuinely enraptured look on his face, as if the only thing that mattered was this once-in-a-lifetime chance for his wife to talk with the woman who had the red walker. Meanwhile, the young guy with the fixed gaze kept staring into space, and the albino-like woman fidgeted nervously in her chair - her beady, dark eyes darting like a caged hamster’s. The woman with the walker suddenly began chattering amiably with her companion (presumably her mother) as if she'd been waiting for someone to pull the plug and release whatever had been stifled.

I felt like a fly on the wall observing the gamut of humanity right there in the waiting room with lessons very similar to those offered by the trees: lessons about life and growth, age and maturity, strength and fragility, wisdom and insecurity, survival and living fully. Also, I wished, just for a moment, that I could get to know all these players of the waiting room scene, if only because visual appearances aren’t always what they seem to be.