A moment of Zen: Walk a mile-or six-in his shoes

     I survived Houston's Ice-Pocalypse just this last week. Friday and then again on Tuesday the temperature plunged from our normal wintry 70 to right below freezing. I think I saw a snowflake mid-afternoon, and a sheet of ice coated my patio furniture. Well, maybe not a sheet of ice, more like a Saran Wrap of ice. Thanks to Stacey, I was comfortably clad in homemade warm socks. And scarf. And sweater. And knit cap. Truth be told, once I got back inside the house, I got mighty warm mighty quickly and stripped off my extra clothes quicker than Miley Cyrus at an awards show.

     But not to worry-cold temperatures correct  themselves quickly here in Hell's Doorstep, and the temperature will be back up to a seasonally appropriate 80 this weekend. So much for my winter adventure.

     My family and friends back in Alabama, however, got smacked with a real winter storm. An unexpected snowstorm. Roads were impassable due to thick ice and hundreds of wrecks. Kids were trapped in schools and thousands spent the night in their classrooms. Parents hiked to daycares for their children. Overwhelmed police and fire and emergency forces were only able to respond to the most dire needs.

     In the middle of this horrendous disaster, miracle stories have abounded;  inspiring miracle after inspiring miracle have amazed and moved and uplifted the country. SUV moms ferrying neighbors and strangers alike home, like the housewife who took carload after carload of stranded families home, more than 100 people in all, until her gas ran out six hours later. Or the fellows in 4-wheel-drives that roamed the streets for two days, pulling cars out of ditches for no fee other than thank yous. Or the diabetic father who wandered down the side of the highway after he was stranded in standstill traffic, helping others to safety until he tumbled into a ravine through lack of insulin and exhaustion disorientation.

      And into the middle of all this chaos and bitter cold and howling snow and cracking ice, all the rage of nature breaking upon an unprepared state unused to more than a dusting of snow, comes the matter-of-fact example of a man who was, he claimed,  simply doing his job.

      The man is a doctor in Birmingham,  Dr. Zenko Hrynkiw. A neurosurgeon. Dr. Zen, as they call him, was at Brookwood Medical Center when a call came in from another hospital. An urgent call for emergency brain surgery. This being 2014, the nearby hospital sent the patient's CT scans to the doctor's phone, and he quickly interpreted the data as showing a 90% chance of death if surgery were not performed soon. The roads were impassable; not only is the exit road from Brookwood  a steep slalom down a mountainside, but numerous wrecks blocking the roadways made all streets clogged and accessible only to motorcycles or riding lawnmowers. Although the other hospital, miles distant, was to try to get someone over to pick him up, it just wasn't going to happen. So he made up his mind, and headed out the door.

      Yep, you guessed it. 

       He walked. 

       Here are some numbers to keep in mind. 6, 12, and 62.
       6 miles between the hospitals. 12 degrees outside. Oh, and 62? That's his age: Dr. Zen is 62.

      Ok, you might guess the rest of the plot, but here is the short treatment:  Dr. Zen walked through the snow and the ice, stopping briefly to thaw out in a stranded ambulance idled on the road, thumbed a ride for the last part of the journey, and arrived at the other hospital hours later. Dr. Zen having been in contact with them,  they were awaiting his arrival for surgery with a prepped operating room. The surgery was accomplished successfully, the patient survived, and Dr. Zen really doesn't get why such fuss is being made over him.

     Here are some of the doctor's words:  "It really wasn't that big of a deal." And "he had a 90 percent chance of dying...if he didn't have surgery he'd be dead, and that's not going to happen on my shift." Even "it was kind of a nice day for a walk".

    

     Sometimes all you can do in the face of astounding catastrophe is to do what you know to do, and to do what you know you must do. Sometimes you just go out the door and down the mountain to the highway to walk a few miles to an emergency brain surgery. Sometimes you let your actions speak more eloquently than any words. Surely more eloquently than my words;  I have none that will  add more grace or majesty to what Dr. Zen himself did by surely and determinedly putting one foot in front of the other, just like he does every other day when the world is not collapsing.

     So before you know a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Or six miles, if you are feeling up to it.

     “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” 
― Fred Rogers

       Thanks be to God for the helpers, wherever we may find them!

    

Paying my own way?

     Sometimes you experience milestones that only reveal themselves to you long after, when you sit and remember in the light of subsequent events. Some announce themselves with stereotypical fear and trembling. Some, like this weekend, slip up on you quietly with half-formed thoughts until you come to with a start and realize something....different...just happened.

    Lest I confound even more by mystery, I'll just go ahead and say Andrew picked up the check while we were out at dinner.

   

   Now, this is not a reflection on Andrew's generosity, mind you, he has always been very generous, maybe even the most generous of my kids. No, instead it is a reflection of role reversal, that in this case the typical dynamic of father and son flipped.

    Friday night we were on our own, Sarah and Andrew and I, because Stacey had headed out a couple of days before, the station wagon packed with spinning wheels, for a Spin-In or somesuch in Florida. Andrew and Sarah decided that nothing would be better for Friday night entertainment than to go out to Steak 'n Shake after Andrew got in from work, after his restaurant shift. Although my days of late nights are mostly behind me, when your 16- and 21-year old invite you to hang out at Steak 'n Shake on Friday night at midnight, you go! (Don't know how I stayed up that late-would it be cheating if I snuck in a nap earlier?)

     So that's how I found myself still up past the late news, eating sliders and drinking stickily sweet cherry Coke, last Friday night. I'm pretty sure I didn't yawn obtrusively more than once or maybe a dozen times, even. So we ate and talked and argued and conversed and laughed and joked, shedding the cabin fever of a snow day from school and work earlier in the day.

    Then the waitress dropped the check on the table, and Andrew retrieved it. I pulled my wallet out, and he told me "Dad, I've got this." 

     Maybe he has paid for something before, perhaps I have forgotten other instances, but  that's the way it goes with memory sometimes. Maybe a coffee at Starbucks or a taco at a truck or a burger for lunch. This was different, being more or less a family meal with me AND his sister on the tab. The type of dinner that an adult pays for, not just kids spotting each other lunch.

     Maybe it is a little...different...to have your children pay your way, to reverse the roles to become the provider. I certainly have no objection, and it doesn't diminish me in any way, but it somehow feels-well, momentous. I have a tendency to see pattern and metaphor in everything that happens to me.

     So here I am, beginning with a hamburger and ending with thoughts on the eternal rolling of one generation to the next. 

      I guess this means I better make sure I pick up my mom's tab next time I go out with her.