The nail clipper con

For some reason, no one in the hospital is allowed to cut my mother-in-law’s fingernails. This doesn’t really make sense to me. They did surgery on her hip, cut into her stomach to insert a feeding tube, stuck a catheter tube inside her, and poked her with needles so many times that she has the arms of a heroin addict. But apparently, cutting her fingernails might be crossing some kind of line.

Even though the rest of her body is getting weaker, my mother-in-law’s fingernails seem, ironically, to be growing faster and stronger than ever. I knew that if they grew much longer, she was going to look like that comic book superhero with the adamantine claws. She kept moving her fingers against her face, because her dry skin was itchy, and I was afraid she was going to scratch herself.

“I’ll bring a nail clipper and cut your nails tomorrow,” I assured her. She smiled and looked relieved. It wasn’t until I was leaving the hospital that I began to wonder about my promise. The hospital has the kind of high security that I normally associate with airports, including a metal detector and a receptionist who won’t let you through unless you give them your driver’s license to make into a name badge. It’s possible that they wouldn’t let nail clippers through.

But last winter, With-a-Why and I watched multiple episodes of White Collar, a show about a con man who works as an FBI consultant. With-a-Why liked the show because the writing was smart, and I liked it because I’d always wanted to learn how to be a con artist. I’d seen enough episodes to know that smuggling nail clippers into a hospital was definitely do-able.

So the next day, when I walked through the hospital doors with nail clippers in my pocket, I didn’t walk straight through the security area like I usually do. Instead, I veered over to the coffee-and-muffin stand, muttering, “Oh, coffee” as if I were an addict in need of a fix. For the record, I don’t even drink coffee, but I’ve seen the way my conference friends act when they finally come upon a coffee shop in a strange city so I was able to do a convincing impression. It was a fine bit of acting.

I bought a muffin, which came in a little paper bag, and an orange juice. I knew a true con artist would buy some coffee to stay in character, and I considered that, but I was afraid I would gag if I had to actually drink the stuff. Then – and here’s the part where I imagined television cameras zooming in for a close-up – I sat down on a nearby bench, slipped the nail clippers into the muffin bag, drank my orange juice, and then walked away, leaving the muffin bag on the bench. Dramatic music was playing the whole time. But only in my head, of course.

I went back to the entrance, walked through the metal detectors, and then handed my driver’s license to the bored receptionist, who ran it through the machine and gave me the label to stick on my shirt. That’s when I looked down at the orange juice in my hand and muttered, “Hey, where’s my muffin?” in a distracted sort of way. Another fine bit of acting that was mostly missed by the receptionist, who had already turned back to her computer.

I slapped the label on my shirt, walked back to the bench to pick up the muffin bag that held the illicit nail clippers, and then went straight to the elevators, walking right past the security guard. As crimes go, it was almost too easy.

Once I was in my mother-in-law’s room, I whispered, “Don’t tell anyone,” and pulled out the nail clippers. “What are you going to do with the clippings?” she whispered. I shrugged. That’s a detail that I hadn’t considered but I figured I’d improvise.

I’d just finished with her right hand when I heard the footsteps of an approaching nurse. This looked bad. One hand with long nails – and the other newly cut. If I didn’t move quickly, I was going to be caught in the act. Thinking fast, I slid the nail clipper under the blanket and put my hands over my mother-in-law’s right hand, cleverly covering up her fingernails. I shifted our hands to cover the little pile of clippings. “It’s going to be okay,” I murmured sympathetically, as if I were comforting her. I hoped my mother-in-law would pick up on the cue and look properly distraught, but instead she looked amused.

The nurse ignored me. Her attention was focused on the little machine that makes beeping noises so often that we’ve learned to ignore it. She replaced the IV bag, pushed some buttons to make the machine stop beeping, said something cheerful, and left. Quickly, I finished cutting my mother-in-law’s fingernails, and then swept the clippings off the sheet and onto the floor, where they disappeared from sight in the speckled linoleum.

Mission accomplished.

The frayed edges of spring

For the last couple of months, the weather has been shifting unpredictably. We had hot, sunny days in mid-March, and then snow in late April. Farmers are worried about what this might do to the fruit crop, since the orchards were sent into bloom early, then subjected to frigid temperatures. No one seems able to predict what summer will bring.

All of us under its spell

Soon Boy-in-Black and Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter will be moving back home for the summer. The house will be full. Smiley Girl will be here live here part of the time, Sailor Boy will come for a few visits, Film Guy will be in town, and other extras will drift in, home from college. By this time next week, we'll have laptop computers on every table, cups on every window sill, and Ultimate jerseys hanging from the curtain rods to dry.

But tonight, it’s just With-a-Why and me. I drove him to a statewide music competition this afternoon — he sang a solo — and now he’s relaxing on the couch, doing something on his laptop. Shaggy Hair Boy has gone off on a camping expedition with Smiley Girl and some friends. My husband is texting me from the hospital, where he is spending time with his mother. She’s got a broken hip, advanced Parkinson’s, and a host of other problems. He’s been working on arrangements to transfer her to a nursing home near us, and he updates me with the details via cell phone.

A crystal hanging in the window makes rainbows on the ceiling. I’m sitting at the piano, working on the song I’m learning. I stop playing to read the latest texts about my mother-in-law and then sit staring at my cell phone for a few minutes before sending a reply.

In the silence, With-a-Why looks up from his computer. Without hesitation, he begins singing the song that I’ve been trying to play on the piano. He knows the words: it’s a song he likes, although he favors the Peter Cincotti version over the Kermit the Frog version.

Why are there so many songs about rainbows 
And what's on the other side? 
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions 
And rainbows have nothing to hide 
So we've been told and some choose to believe it 
I know they're wrong, wait and see 
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection 
The lovers, the dreamers and me 

 What's so amazing that keeps us star gazing 
And what do we think we might see? 
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection 
The lovers, the dreamers and me 

 I sit on the piano bench, listening, while his strong, seventeen-year-old voice continues.

 All of us under its spell. We know that it's probably magic 

 Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices? 
I've heard them calling my name 
Is this the sweet sound that called the young sailors 
The voice might be one and the same 
I've heard it too many times to ignore it 
It's something that I'm supposed to be 
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection 
The lovers, the dreamers and me.

When he finishes, we smile at each other. He looks back down at his computer. And I turn back to the piano.

Lost

Huge parking garages confuse me. And make me slightly panicky. It’s a logical fear. Think about it. Close your eyes and imagine a person walking through a parking garage. She might be a beautiful woman distracted by a love triangle, her hair uplifted by the wind of passing cars. Or perhaps he is a smart and charming con man about to escape a sticky situation. We all know what will happen next. Someone with a gun shows up, there’s a bit of clever dialogue, and then a chase scene ensues. Parking garages are filled with mobsters holding guns, just waiting for the chance to utter some pithy aside before giving chase. I know it’s true because I’ve seen it happen every time a character in a movie walks into a parking garage.

I’ve been thinking about this while visiting my mother-in-law in the hospital this week. The parking garage is huge, and I’ve gotten lost every single time I’ve been in it. I’ve manage to quell my fears about Hollywood mobsters, but I still get that panicky feeling when I walk away from my car. That’s because I know, deep down, it will take me forever to find it again.

It’s not that I don’t try. When I leave my car, I dutifully stop and look around for identifying features that will help me find my way back. But since every level of the parking garage looks EXACTLY the same, this method doesn’t really work. Once when I went with my daughter and her friends – all in ninth grade at the time – to the state fair, I solved the problem by taking fluorescent orange surveyor tape out of my glove compartment and tying it to the nearest electric pole. This not only worked, but apparently made quite an impression on my daughter’s friends. They’d bring it up years later as if I’d done something weird.

What makes parking garages so confusing, I think, is that you can’t just retrace your steps. I’ve tried that. The first time I paid careful attention as I drove in, looping around and around past handicapped spots and places reserved for medical staff, and parking eventually on what was the seventh level. (Or maybe the eighth). Then I tried walking down through the parking garage the way I had come. But that seemed dangerous since cars coming were headed directly at me as they swerved around blind corners. And it took forever.

The next time, I tried to look for EXIT signs. But the exit signs seemed directed toward cars rather than pedestrians, since they were mostly up high right in the middle of the garage. So I just took the nearest staircase. I stood at the top of the stairs, looked over to where my car was, and memorized the spot. Then I counted carefully as I walked down the stairs: six flights. As I walked out the door, I felt triumphant. On the way back, I’d just go in the door, up six flights, and find my car.

As the door closed behind me, I noticed that there wasn’t a handle on the outside. “Weird,” I thought. The sign read, “Emergency exit. No re-entrance.” There I was, out on the street, staring at a restaurant instead of the hospital. I knew if I just walked around the block, I could manage to find the hospital. It’s a pretty big building. But finding my car again? Impossible.

I’ve given up. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to keep getting lost in the parking garage. I know that every hospital visit will end with me wandering through the parking labyrinth, pressing the panic button on my car key chain in hopes that a vehicle will suddenly blink its lights at me. I try to think of it as a walking meditation, giving me a chance to clear my mind of all the swirling anxious thoughts that accompany stressful hospital visits. Besides, I tell myself, it could be worse. At least I haven’t yet been attacked by mobsters with guns.

Hospital blogging

There are some things about hospitals you can depend on. The elevators will take forever. The food in the cafeteria will be terrible. The machine that holds the IV will make weird beeping noises whenever the nurse leaves the room. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in hospitals – as a visitor, not a patient – and I know what to expect.

It’s my 85-year-old mother-in-law who is in the hospital right now, after falling and breaking a hip. Unfortunately, the injury seems to have stirred up a host of medical issues, and she’s in pretty bad shape. It’s been tough for her to keep up her spirits, since every piece of news she gets about her health seems to be bad news.

But brings me to the other thing that you can depend on in hospitals: cheerful, energetic hospital nurses. Seriously, I don’t know how these nurses do it. The young woman who was taking care of my mother-in-law yesterday was working a sixteen-hour shift and yet, she remained upbeat and smiling the whole time I was there. This afternoon, the nurse on duty bounced into the room as if she was coming to a party, smiling and chattering with my mother-in-law as she checked her vital signs. That’s been my experience with nurses: in addition to doing their jobs, they bring such positive energy into the room. I am so grateful for their presence.

Baby sheep!

I know what to expect when I go to the monastery for my April retreat. And I was not disappointed. 

The daffodils that Brother Joking planted years ago were blooming along the bank by the old hay barn. The woman with the lovely British accent made us delicious meals, served on the sunny porch of the women’s guesthouse. Retreat Friend and I stayed in the old stone farmhouse, where we drank tea and ate chocolate while we read each other’s books, wrote in our journals, and talked about our lives. At Compline, Brother Tractor played the harp in the candlelit chapel while the other monks sang the evening prayer.

But best of all, April is lambing season. The southeast end of the barn was set up with pens for laboring ewes. “About 180 sheep born so far,” Brother Beekeeper told me. “And 24 ewes still to go.”

The babies, when they’re born, come out front hooves first. “Like a dive,” Brother Tractor will say. They’re often covered with yellow slime or blood, their wool matted down, and their first steps are often wobbly. Sometimes a newborn will walk around on his knees for a few minutes before he gets the hang of using his legs. But amazingly, within hours, each newborn is transformed into a cuddly white lamb who looks just like the stereotype of what a lamb should be.

 

A bit of August

In early August, concrete sidewalks rub warm against bare feet, breezes fan sweat against the hair that hangs down my back, and not even a teenage boy can eat an ice cream cold fast enough before it drips. In early August, my body relaxes even when the wind rises, because it’s just warm air and more warm air, smelling like pine needles and asphalt and ripened fruit.

Going to Southern Sunshine State meant experiencing a bit of August four months early. Summer thunderstorms rolled through the area, waking up the sleepy alligators and drenching the anhinga who had been holding out her lovely feathered laundry. But the storm came and went, and the next day, sunshine warmed the benches and the roadways along the coastal islands. As we waded in the shallow warm water, we could see little fish swimming up to our toes.

Exploring the river of grass

The nice thing about the rain is that it keeps other tourists away. Through most of the Everglades, my husband and I had the trails and boardwalks to ourselves. It was a warm, misty rain that left sparkling drops on the sawgrass. After a couple of hours of walking through lush vegetation, tromping over boardwalks to look down at the alligators in the canals, and walking through endless sawgrass, my sneakers were soaking wet and my hair was curly.

In the wind

On Sunday morning in the Sunshine State, we finally got some sun. So we did something I’ve been wanting to do – we drove to a state park at the edge of an island to go kayaking through the mangroves.

The weather forecast called for more thunderstorms and isolated tornadoes. Signs at the entrance to the park warned “Boat trips cancelled.” But the young man at the kayak rental place squinted at the sky, shrugged his shoulders, and handed us life jackets. My husband, in an optimistic move, put on sunscreen.

Despite the rising wind, the sun was still shining as we paddled past a marina and then into a creek that wound through a maze of mangroves. I kept leaving the main channel to follow smaller creeks, ducking my head to fit the kayak under the branches. The sun shone down through the branches, a greenish filtered light. As I looked at the branches over my head, I wondered if snakes lived in mangrove trees. That’s the cool thing about exploring far from home: you don’t know what to expect. Having a snake drop onto my shoulders from overhead would have been terrifying, but it would have made a great story. 

We paddled through the mangroves, happily lost, until my husband looked at his watch and said, “I think we’re supposed to get the kayaks back.” We wound our way back through the little creeks and into the main channel. By then the weather was changing, and we had to paddle hard to fight the wind. We made it back to the kayak rental just as the rain began.

After flying south ...

I'm spending the weekend in Sunshine State where, ironically, it's raining. Severe thunderstorms rolled through the Everglades this morning. Last time I was here the sleepy alligators seemed like logs, basking in the sun, but in this rainy weather, they seem more lively, swimming through the canals, eyes just above the surface, their powerful bodies moving fast. I didn't bring my laptop so I can't post photos until I get home, but mostly I've been taking pictures of birds, alligators, and palm trees. I so love the palm trees.