The annual physical at the doctor’s office. You’ve been there. You know the drill. How the automatic glass doors open to reveal a receptionist, pleasant but brisk, who pulls you up on the computer. You are a number — first a birthday, then an insurance policy. You sit in the nondescript waiting room with its two-year-old magazines and stare without looking at the talking heads blaring on the television.
A nurse calls your name and leads you through a door. You step on a scale, then back against the wall to measure your height. You follow the nurse to an examination room. Another computer. More tests and more numbers about oxygen saturation, heart rate and blood pressure. As all this is happening, you wonder dully how the nurse does the same thing, day in and day out, countless times. It must be like a long rain in the rainy season. Over and over again. No break in the monotony.
But suddenly, this nurse catches your eye and smiles. “Let’s you and me take a deep breath,” she says. “In…and out.”
Though I had been looking at her, I actually saw her for the first time, including her name tag. Her name was Unique. I mean that literally — Unique was her name! In response to my comment, Unique laughed. “I hated it when I was little, but now, I think my name is kinda cool.” I wholeheartedly agreed. She made a routine suddenly personal and special. I felt like I’d discovered a new room in an old, familiar house.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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