Chronic Tonsillitis… Who wants to hear that at 19? I can honestly say I am not looking forward to having my tonsils removed. *sigh* But I can say I heard a few good things from going to the doctor this morning. I think people felt like talking today. Felt like talking about life, personal things- heavier things, or more importantly, Christ. It was and wasn’t a surprise all at once. I expect to hear about Christ because I am a follower myself, but I didn’t expect to hear it in a cramped and white-walled doctors’ office with one sink that had a leaky faucet nor did I expect a woman to start conversation with me in the card aisle of Seymour Pharmacy.
“Hard day?”
“Long day,” he said, looking up from his tablet that held the scratchy mess in which the name of my prescription was hidden. “Residency is always long…”
“The pay-off is nice though.”
“If you think so,” he began with a smirk, “but it is not what you think. After student loans, a mortgage, a wife, a decent car, and employees, the ‘pay-off’ isn’t enough.”
“Oh, well, as long as you love what you are doing-”
“I do. Very much. But if I were in it for the money, I wouldn’t have become a doctor. That is a common mistake.”
He asked me how school ended before the summer began, and I told him about transferring and a little about my major. I mentioned the fact that I was planning to go into PreMed myself and maybe even go into missions with it. He paused.
“You know, I have the best of both worlds- I just recently became Baptist. I was Catholic until I met my fiance. I was baptized not too long ago when I became a member of my church.”
“That’s great.”
“So, now that I am a Christian, I feel that I have the power to heal people- if they’re willing- spiritually as well as be able to heal them physically. I have always felt called by God to become a doctor, and if you feel called to do art, then do it. You don’t have to be a minister in order to spread the Word.”
Wise words from a wise man- who is now my designated family doctor…
Later that same day- within the same hour actually- we, as in my mother and I, were searching among Ivy’s so called Gifts for the perfect something to give to Brenna’s mother for her birthday. By the way, that is probably one of my weaker areas. I can never seem to find the right gift for people I care about… then I end up making something, which is supposed to be more sentimental, but it turns out to be one of those things that people keep for the sole reason that you made it to them and not necessarily because they actually like it. And so… there we were… slowing making our way to the card aisle… where my mother usually has about five choices and leaves me to make the final decision, and then suddenly- almost randomly but not quite-
“Do you know a wrestler? Or… uh… how did you get that?”
Me, looking at my shirt like everyone does after someone mentions it even though they usually know what is on it… (obviously) “Jeramy Webb?”
“Oh! You are his girlfriend… Uh, used to be- I am so-and-so’s mother (In an attempt to leave her identity unknown).”
“Oh, yeah?”
“He used to go to UT, right?”
“Still does.”
And that was the beginning of an interesting and unexpected conversation. She shared her children’s future college plans as I shared my own. And then she started talking about herself, and it slowly became more personal than I would have thought.
“I am just 40 years old, and I want to do something for me for once. I want to know that I did something with my life. Life is just too short to be unhappy, or better yet, life is just too short to neglect.”
Don’t most mothers do that? Give everything, take nothing- except the back seat. I very much appreciate my own mother and, from the beginning of the conversation until the final goodbye, this one. Great woman, and I wish I would have spent more time with her during wrestling season. The point of her story and the doctor’s? Well, besides giving me new hope next fall when I begin a new college for the major I should have began with, and a new appreciation for being young with so much opportunity and potential… as well as a great appreciation for the mothers… Nothing.
To be honest, those two people made my day. It was all I needed. It will be all I need for a while.
