The BananaBlueberry Bits Book – Chapter 2 – A View Out a Window
Being in a hospital is lame. LIVING in a hospital is worse.
One night in particular sticks out in my mind-
I was settling in after my family left for the day. Visiting hours were over, and the phone rang.
It was my two college roommates. They called to say hi. I asked them about school, good old Miami University. One went into a rant about a bothersome exam. The other complained about a professor. Not much else was going on at school, they told me I wasn’t missing much. They were just going to classes, parties on the weekends, the usual.
I knew what they were doing. They were trying to make me feel like a part of Miami. I listened gratefully.
We hung up a little while later. My heart ached.
‘Give me feeling! Give me pain, anything!’
I felt so fuzzy still; I couldn’t form an individual thought. Everything in my brain kind of melded together. I was the embodiment of melancholy… not because our conversation was over, but because I didn’t, I couldn’t, have their difficulties.
‘I would love those problems,’ I thought.
‘I would love to be cramming for an exam. I would love to be at the library, up late studying, walking over to the vending machine, getting a soda, seeing someone else I knew down the studying corridor, nodding my head to them, grinning,
and secretly relishing being able to do all those things on my own…’
Wow.
What a dream.
As I lay in my hospital bed, unable to move the right side of my body, I turned my head to the left.
I could now see out the window of my hospital room. What an amazing view! Washington, D.C. seemed to be sparkling. The Capitol dome glistened in the background, looking like an elderly statesman, surveying his kingdom. It was all right outside my window… But it was so far away.
“God, let me have those problems again,” I pleaded.
I repeated it many times. I begged God to let me experience life again. All I wanted was to go back to college, back to a routine, back to normalcy.
Going begging to God to give you a problem is a humbling act. It hurt. I’ve never been as humble in my life as I was in that hospital bed. All of the times I wanted to move, but couldn’t or I wanted to say something, but couldn’t; all of those moments changed me.
We only need to experience it for a moment to look at life differently.
I just wanted to be independent again. But as I hung up the phone receiver I honestly could not imagine that yet.
I wished I had just broken a bone or two, or all of my bones. I reasoned that even if I had broken all of my bones they would mend eventually and people wouldn’t question my intelligence, my reactions or my mind… Or maybe it was me who was questioning…
With bones it’s one or the other, it’s broken or fixed, it’s still tender or it’s cured.
I remembered what my parents had told me about my coma. They said the nurses in the Intensive Care Unit called me ‘Sleeping Beauty’. I didn’t have a scratch on me, not one scratch. My hair lay perfectly, just curling up a little on the ends. I hadn’t even chipped a nail.
They told my mother I looked like I was taking a nap and would wake up at any moment.
‘Sleeping Beauty’, what a caustic description. I appeared fine on the outside, but inside I was so messed up.
I guess I had that in common with many people at different moments in their lives. So many human beings go through some kind of heartache at one point or another, yet they look fine when we see them, as we talk to them. The depiction I gave of vibrant health merely resting is a lesson in itself.
We must be mindful of how we treat people, for although they look great, they may not be great on the inside.
What I wouldn’t have given during that time for every inch of my skin to be scratched and torn instead of my insides, my brain, my mind being scratched and torn…
I didn’t want to just look out a window…
And then, I started to fight.
How dare someone think that I couldn’t make it back. It was my life! This was my only shot. I was only going around once. I had to make it count.
I knew this was going to be hard… Yet, for all the hardship, I already knew that I was blessed to be in a very elite club.
Everybody in our club understands the Catch-22 of human existence.
This Catch-22 is suffering, in order to appreciate every detail of life and accomplish greatness.
We are all reluctant members of this club. For to gain membership, we have all traipsed through hell. Having been in that literally, God forsaken place, we now truly appreciate-
The beauty of a bullfrog,
A breeze at our backs,
The sound of a wave crashing,
People,
Magic shows,
A funny song,
Tasting peanut butter and potato chip sandwiches,
Tears,
A kind word,
A tender movie,
A genuine belly laugh,
A birthday party,
Snow,
Our families,
Our children,
and
Ourselves.
Copyright © Nicole Weber Crowley 2010
*Click On The BananaBlueberry Bits Book in my Navigation Bar Above,
to read previous chapters and the Introduction*
Disney Books are now Online!
My last post was about Disney On Ice. This is completely separate Disney news- and very good news at that!
Disney has put it’s HUGE Library of Books online, for the 1st time ever!
What’s even better is that there are no games and mass advertising on this site,
it’s just books.
Your child ‘turns’ the pages; they can be read to, or read themselves. They can move their ‘pen’ over a word to get the pronunciation, or even the definition.
I LOVE this idea!
But- this is not free. I believe it is reasonable, however.
Go to Disney Digital Books, and see for yourself-
You can get a month subscription for $8.95 (this is for up to 3 children) or an annual membership for $79.95 (also for up to 3 children).
You can also go to Digital Disney Books and get a FREE look at the site right now
AND read 7 books for FREE.
Again, I love this idea=
The magic of Disney + reading= Priceless
-
I ALSO BLOG AT
-
-
Design Credit:
