Daffodils bloom their sunshiney faces in early spring, though a cold snap is sure to come. Their cheerfulness makes me turn my face toward the sun.
I visited my friend in the hospital. He’s a former clown, magician and a natural entertainer. He tells one nurse that “benign” is the age after “you be-eight.” He tells another nurse that “bacteria” refers to the “back-of-the-cafeteria.” They look at him, momentarily stunned, and then laugh. The ancient Greek poet Pindar once said, “Good cheer is the best of healers.”
My youngest child “be-eight” years old, and she wove a bracelet for me out of tiny plastic rings. “God loveth a cheerful giver,” wrote the old apostle — that’s my girl.
During my career in ministry, our hospital system has achieved remarkable progress in the quality of medicine and also coffee. Instead of serving lukewarm sludge in the waiting room, there’s a Starbucks located just outside the cancer center. In the courtyard, song sparrows, echoing Joni Mitchell’s words, sing “real good for free,” while healthcare workers enjoy their lunch break and sun themselves beside a redbud that has bloomed like a frozen firework show.
That morning, I had found yet another parishioner in a reflective mood. He’d had a lot of time to think in the hospital room. Perhaps because it’s spring, he spoke of his baseball career, how he’d wanted to pitch but was such a talented hitter that his coach put him in the outfield so that he could play every game. But then his career faltered because of a teammate who, in good fun, had hit him with a snowball after practice and damaged his left eye. He couldn’t hit a lick after that. 10 years later, his draft number was chosen, and he boarded a Greyhound with dozens of other young men, who were all herded like cattle into a warehouse for physicals. My friend failed the eye exam on account of that snowball, and so he was sent home to Michigan instead of to the jungles of Vietnam. You might call that benign providence; you might call it dumb luck. Almost 50 years later, my friend, lying in a hospital bed, said that ever since he returned home on that big Greyhound bus, he has tried to give back to others.
In the hospital courtyard, I whisper to myself, “Be-eight,” while smiling at my bracelet.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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