Waiting Room Writing. (Day Three/Four)

Been spending a lot of time in waiting rooms again. I haven’t spent this much time on a faux leather chair with wooden armrests since my cancer treatments between Fall 2019 into early 2020. Before then, I simply never went to the doctor. So to be back in what feels like one endless stream of waiting rooms again has my blood pressure up. It’s a place, physically and emotionally, that I don’t care to spend a large portion of my day, however that’s my reality for the time being. The only difference now is – the wait isn’t for me, it’s for my mother.

So today I’m sitting in the waiting room of St. Joe’s Hospital. And instead of staring at the dull gray carpet with beige designs, I decided to bring my laptop along and look at a screen instead. She’ll be in physical therapy for at least another half an hour, giving me time to do my morning writing. I tried to wake up earlier to write before I drove the 45 minutes from my house to my mom’s – but the fact that it’s pitch black and below 40 degrees in the morning, makes it hard to motivate and be a functional person before the sun is up. But I rallied and by noon today, I will have completed what I committed to do this morning.

After this session, my youngest sister will be at Mom’s with my youngest niece. I will then shake off all the adulting I had to do this morning and run around the house chasing a 3 year old like a kid on the playground. I have found that being with my little nieces and nephews is the quickest way to lift me out of the heaviness. The only problem is, the moment I leave them I feel the weight of all there is to do again.

Yesterday I talked to someone from Mayo Clinic on how to finalize my mother’s submission. It sounds like we could be heading to Minnesota way faster than any of us expected. It’s only natural that my family would want to slow it down and take a little more time to prepare, but I’m not giving us that option. Because the longer we stay at the yellow light, the faster it turns red again…and who knows how long it’ll stay on red this time. So I have to be the “fearless leader” even though the fear is very real. But I know that out of everyone, I’m the one who can feel the fear and still do what needs to get done.

After the phone call, I felt such relief and pressure, all at the same time. I paced around the house, did all the laundry that has accumulated in our dissembled house. But I still felt a restlessness.

So I sat down at the piano in my living room and just started clunking chords. Then I’d stop and listen to notes linger – paying attention to the buzz, the vibration within the piano that fades with the note. Pianos are magical like that.

I started singing words that were inspired by a sentence I’d written in blog earlier this week, making things up as I sang along. After a few minutes, I got choked up to the point where the words could barely get out. Honestly, I was scared to keep going because the lyrics that were flowing out of me were things I didn’t even know I could come up with. They were so fucking real and deep that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what else I could say. I was quite literally shocking myself so I paused and allowed myself a few deep breaths. But I knew. So I jumped up from the piano and sprinted to the shed to get my laptop, ran it back inside and propped it on top of the piano. And I got it out. Not all of it, but enough to know exactly what this song wants to say. I don’t remember the last time something has jolted through me like that. It makes me thankful – which, I’m not gonna lie – has been a difficult feeling to muster up here lately.

I’m thankful for that reminder that creativity is here to make sense of what my head cannot, I just have to tap in and trust.

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