Waiting...

I began my day waiting. I put leftovers in the microwave for breakfast and waited for things to heat up. I thought about waiting as I waited. It seems that I have waited for something most of my life. Today is no exception. Today I will wait for something that I consider important. Today is not an ordinary day for me. Today I spend another day at the hospital waiting to find out if I get to hang on for a bit longer to a concept that I have always known…yet as I ponder the thing, I find that perhaps I know nothing about it. I am speaking of my father.

I think about how we seldom know much about other things. Observation being what it is, we all see the same thing, but our experience of it is different. My father, when he was in college, was diagramming cells and drew a structure that wasn’t there. The professor questioned the invalid structure and my father showed him how if you tweaked the focus of the microscope back and forth you could see a structure that you could not see while holding a single focus--only a shifted focus revealed this truth. It had always been there, but no one had noticed.

So I am waiting; and while I am waiting I am finding that my focus shifts enough to see things that I have never seen before.  I am examining myself. I am wondering exactly why I wait. I don’t need to wait quite so much.

Oddly, I am not anxious today. I thought I would be. I was the last time and for good reason. He’s been in surgery for 7 hours at this point and I am ‘blogging’ long hand. The conversation is good. My little brother and I are discussing neo-Darwinism. He’s a quick wit with a sharp mind. We’re laughing. We are all waiting. I wonder if any of us truly knows what we are really waiting for…is it really for some news, some relief, some bit of information that will tell us there is still time to figure out just a little more…another chance to say I love you? Why do we wait for that? The phone rings…”Any news?” Everyone is waiting for something.

The surgeon just came in and told us that everything went well…it was a very long day but he was pleased with what he saw…a technological tour-de-force...in about three months he would have a real idea as to how successful the surgery was…so we’ll wait and see how things shake out.

I wait another hour or two and they bring my father into a room. He’s awake and making jokes…still in a slight stupor from the anesthesia and still has five or six IVs stuck in him. He will have to wait at least 5 hours before they will allow him to move. He is uncomfortable and wants to move. I try to make him a little more comfortable. We wait. He looks good--the best I‘ve seen him in quite a while. He’s still making jokes. It helps to pass the time as we wait…together.