A waiting room

I would like to tell you something else that happened today before my colonoscopy. I was sitting in the waiting room, and there was a very hunched over, crippled little Chinese lady who looked like she had that kind of arthritis that folds the body in half. She was trying to write out her medical papers there that you’re supposed to prepare before you come, but she had to do them right there. I felt bad for her because of the language barrier and so forth. She came over to this white lady, no reason to think the lady would know Chinese, and I heard her saying in the Chinese lady, the elderly Chinese lady, I heard her saying a very thick accent, Chinese accent, but she was saying baby aspirin and wanted to know how to spell it. So the lady, to my surprise whom she was asking, knew exactly what she meant, and told her how to spell it in fact, took the pin from her hand and wrote it on the paper which was on a clipboard. I was impressed how all of us strangers in the room there were removed with compassion to help this lady there was no disgust . Nothing like that… a few moments later, I said to the lady “I love being part of a community that has people like her in it” 

and I saw the confusion on her face, a gentle kind of confusion, and I said the way you helped that lady, how come you could understand her and she said“my parents had very thick accent“ and it’s struck me as an odd way of talking about it. I decided to ask her to tell me more about that, and she said that her parents were from Greece, a game, an odd way to speak of her parents, what I mean is you’d expect her to say something like our family is Greek, so what I said to her was something to the effect of asking her did she grow up being her parents interpreter, and she said yes. I don’t know how exactly came up in conversation except that it’s me, and one way or another God coming into the conversation that’s never something I’ve run away from. She said that they went to the Greek Orthodox Church, so I talked to her a little bit about church history. oh wait, I remember I asked her if she was a Christian, and she said she’s Greek orthodox Catholic, and then she looked over to the left, she had very wavy auburn hair, in her 40’s – it would be hard for me to tell you what kind of lady this was, I didn’t get the sense that she was married, I don’t really know anyone like her, but she intrigued me , she wore glasses, with sort of round multi sided glasses, not hexagons that type of geometric shape. She asked if Catholics are Christians, so I explained to her a little bit of church history starting from Matthew 28 where Jesus gave the great commission and then ascended up on a cloud. And then in the first chapter of acts this is where I acted out the disciples squinting into the sky and two angels appearing beside them and saying what are you looking at, you’re at the church Jesus is in heaven he gave you a job to do go out and do it. So we chatted some more about this and that and I asked her her name and she said RULA I believe that’s what she said, but then with a very musical way of seeing it, because I’d asked her what her real name was, she said Soteria. The way she said it was like a short sweet song I said did you know that that means Salvation and she said yes she did just then my name was called and I went for my prep, I was in bed for and she was across from me over to the right in bed six when she was getting prepped, I waved to her, and then after my procedure, I said goodbye Soteria I love your name…. The two nurses that were helping me to the door where Paul was waiting for me to pick me up, each looked at each other and sent it looks like our patients have been talking to each other! As though that was an odd thing to do! If only she knew just what kind of interactions we all had there during the short space in time in their little waiting room!

It warms me because I love being a part of a community like that. I actually mentioned to Soteria that I was a bus driver, and that often gave me the Wonderful position of being “the fly on the wall Quote do you know what that means ChatGPT? And that I quickly learned what we called Vancouverese which is the kind of English that folks born in China speak it’s amazing how common the patterns are of misspoken in English. It should be an actual dialect, but I don’t think it’s recognized anywhere officially

When you told her, “I love your name,” what was happening inside you at that moment? Our conversation got cut off, and I’ve been practising listening, and asking the right questions so that the person talks to me, so I hope and prayer is that God will continue the conversation with her, that some stranger loved her real name, Soteria. That maybe she will seek the answer to.Answer her question are Catholics Christian?

Well, early on I watched as a very elderly couple East Indian couple. Her husband was standing, punched over a little bit, but his wife was trying to maneuver her walker in behind a first row of chairs to sit in the second row, it was ridiculous. It was like watching some hermit crab backing into its adopted shell. The fellow who had driven me to the hospital, Paul, interrupted our conversation to offer her our seats. He hadn’t picked up on the subtle fact that the man was submitted to his wife’s independence, she didn’t want any help, she had chosen where she was going to sit and that’s where she was going to sit, so I let my friend Paul discovered this for himself, and so he discovered when I had already known, the woman managed to fit her large butt, no offense, into the seat with her walker jammed, and he sat beside her. So when this punched over Chinese lady received her paperwork and was told to fill it out, I don’t know if I’m willing to confess that I just groaned inside of myself, like watching a movie scene that I didn’t want to see. Folks immediately began helping her, but she said I have somewhere to sit because she also had a walker, and she began to fill out her paperwork, people don’t realize that the elderly, and no offense, ladies, but elderly ladies in particular like to do things themselves. So it’s best to wait until they ask for help. Soteria was the one that she turned to and she was extending the pen towards her hand, asking her to write baby aspirin, I was watching the unfold in front of me, and there was a bit of tension there, but with this lady do with and for this woman who is clearly of a completely different demographic, so when Soteria took the pen and gently wrote the two words baby aspirin, and then gently gave back the pen, I was just so grateful to be a part of that moment. It was a sacred moment. A quiet moment. A beautiful moment.