Middle C Isn't Always Where You Think

Middle C - on a keyboard, there it is plunk in the middle.  On a violin, not quite the same.  It's there but you've got to slide your fingers around a little to get to it.  Of course, one year of training does not a violinist make.  Thus some of those notes - well they needed a bit more sliding around.  But alas, the violin is no more and that - well, it's another story.  But it's not music whose notes were a little off this summer but the health of a  family member.

After breaking his hip and causing some frightening moments thinking he wouldn't make it, my Dad is on the mend and looking healthier than he has in a while.  He's recently taken his pencil out and is attempting to do the Word Searches that he was famous for before his accident and reading his paper, albeit sometimes upside down.  My father has Alzheimer's so it's an up and down battle while he waits for long-term care, trying to make sure that each day is the best for him that life can offer.  

While I'm admittedly tired of the smell and feel of hospital, it's not such a bad place.  That's what the other patients have taught me over the weeks.  Life on the fourth floor is a lot of sameness.  The long-termers, mostly oldsters waiting for an appropriate care facility, all seem to have one trait in common, with the occasional exception, they're people with an ability to make the best of what many would call a bad situation.  Roaming the hallways in convoys of wheelchairs and walkers they're quick to chat or request a favor from wheeling their chair into a favoured position for lunch to lending them a phone to call home to just lending an ear for a chat.   

I suspect many on four remember living on the prairie.

Their resiliency amazes me for I suspect if it were me I would be bemoaning the fates, complaining about the food and overworking the call bell. I think about that as I leave the ward and head home but before I exit I'm surprised by the drawn out, once over look of a man wearing nothing but a flapping faded blue hospital gown and sneakers.   While I skirt as politely as possible around him, I have to bite back a smile.  His pickup technique is in need of work, the gown for one - just not working.  And I'm sure that given the opportunity there's a few little ladies on four that would be wheeling their chairs down to main to set this man straight.

And if you said fiction was more interesting than life - I have a whole crew of people you should be chatting with.

Ryshia
www.ryshiakennie.com