February 19th: I had pre-planned today’s gratitude post to coincide with last night’s book club. Our book, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, made me grateful for authors whose words and metaphors invited me to linger on the page and who exposed me to unfamiliar situations, people and feelings. Through the eyes of a good author I learn to imagine, for just a moment, what it must be like to live in someone else’s shoes. I learn empathy and compassion. I see possibility. I understand fear. Books teach me that which I cannot experience first hand.
There were many important themes in the book, but the one that caught my attention was the experience of the refugee, a topic as relevant today with Syrian refugees as it was in 1975 with Vietnamese refugees. My intent was to get at the heart of my gratitude — to write about my reasons for being thankful to know this information, but then life, as it often does, interrupted and re-directed.
Earlier in the day I sat in this very same spot ready to work on the blog. My work space is at the front of the house and I heard someone outside yelling. I didn’t think anything of it; my husband was working in the garage and whatever it was, if it needed attention he would attend to it. Then the doorbell rang incessantly and the words that were being yelled came into focus — my name over and over again. My husband, with a blood soaked towel wrapped around his hand, needed to go to the ER.
The immediate crisis was over once the bleeding stopped and a determination made that all fingers were intact. After that we waited. I talked about book club in an effort to distract my husband. I showed him photos of the yummy dishes we had for dinner and caught him up on book club gossip and eventually asked him to help me understand the end of the book, specifically a theme built around this riddle – while nothing is more precious than independence and freedom, nothing is also more precious than independence and freedom. I couldn’t wrap my head around this philosophical statement and was on a mission to find someone to explain it to me in terms I could understand. My husband often amazed me with his insight and since I had his undivided attention in the emergency room I thought, why not.
A bit later the doctor came in and very apologetically told us we had not been forgotten, that a few critical cases had come in that required his immediate attention. How happy we were to wait because waiting meant we were not critical. And it is this for which I am grateful. My husband will require surgery and maybe a month’s recuperation but he should regain full use of his hand. He did not lose any fingers. He did not lose his hand. He did not bleed excessively. He was not in a lot of pain. The nurses and doctors were competent and accommodating. We have decent insurance. This is all manageable with the right attitude. So at the moment, nothing is more important or more deserving of gratitude than the outcome of today’s events.
I’ll come back to Viet Thanh Nguyen another time, there will be another opportunity to do so as he’s just now promoting his short story collection called The Refugees. It’s on my reading list.
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