Good Things Come From Talking to Strangers
Even when things aren’t going your way
Last week I went to Chicago to help my 83-year-old mother recover from hip surgery. I was leg number two of a three-legged stretch shared by myself and my two sisters. I’m glad I went but it was a grueling trip for many reasons.
It’s hard seeing my mom, my only surviving parent, aging. She’s old and vulnerable and not super happy about it. Being alone, she worries preemptively about everything. When I was there, though we didn’t need it, she turned on the air conditioner just to see if it might be broken. She fretted constantly that she’d pop her new hip out of place yet regularly broke her movement rules (pick a dead bug off the floor, put her coffee cup in the dishwasher, reach for her phone).
By the time I handed the baton to my younger sister to complete the anchor leg of my mother’s recovery journey I was exhausted and looking ahead to a long flight with a layover in Denver. When my sister arrived she said, “Did you check your flight? There’s a huge storm coming. It might get canceled.”
And, like clockwork, sheets of rain and pummelling winds surrounded my mother’s fourth-story apartment building. The door to the fire escape off the kitchen slammed shut and the sky went dark. “Shit,” I thought to myself, “I’m going to be here…
