FINDING BEAUTY IN UNLIKELY PLACES

It’s June and life is in full bloom! Take your morning coffee outside and have a look for yourself, in your own yard or next door. I’ve always said June is the best month in the garden, because nothing has gone wrong yet. No bug infestations, no drought, no wash-out rains. Plants are bursting with new leaves and colours of every hue, expanding daily, it seems, to fill in all the rough spots. Here are some samples from my own back yard:

Of course, June makes it easy to find beauty. It’s everywhere – but what if it’s not?

I recently found myself in a setting and a situation that was anything but beautiful. And as I looked around, I thought: here I am, the one who says she’s on a mission to find beauty in everyday life, and to put more beauty into the world, but not every day is a day in June. So I set myself a challenge: to find and write about something beautiful in that not-so-beautiful experience.

I can tell you it took a few days to sift through the details and to finally see something good, something I could call beautiful. But I did find it:

SIGNS OF HEALING IN THE EMERGENCY WAITING ROOM

The white-haired woman hobbles in
leaning heavily on her husband’s arm.
She drops into the chair in Triage
where a nurse points to a poster of cartoon faces
to help her describe her pain on a scale of 1 to 10.
She stares for a moment at her left foot
her face scrunched into Level 8 pain,
limps to a waiting room chair and waits to be called.

Opposite her, under a sign explaining that 
abusive language will not be tolerated
sits a boy about 8, 
a gauze bandage encircling his head,
green stains on the knees of his baseball uniform 
red stain on the gauze.
While mom hovers, standing because of a chair shortage,
dad explains in precise, descriptive language 
how medical staples differ from the ones the boy knows from school.
The boy is briefly distracted. 
The white-haired woman learns something new.

Next to the boy, below a large photo of a pretty nurse 
holding a banner that reports 35% of nurses experience abuse in the workplace,
a 30-something man sits in a wheelchair with his right leg outstretched
icepack balanced on his ankle. 
He is joined by a pretty 30-something woman who hands him a large coffee.
Their eyes lock for a moment, crinkle at the corners in matching smiles.
She adjusts the icepack. 
The white-haired woman leans gratefully against her husband. 

Across the room, the sliding glass doors 
whoosh open to a tall woman cradling her right elbow, fist clenched against her waist. 
A large sign pasted on the doors warns in bold black typeface, 
do not open these doors between 11:30p.m. and 6a.m. 
to anyone except our staff or patients.
A rumpled man in a worn shirt and blue medical mask stands 
to give the tall woman his seat. 
She unclenches her fist, presses her palm to her heart. 
The white-haired woman stops shivering.

You may already be the type of person who gives up your seat, adjusts the icepack, gives a smile when that’s all you have to give. I apparently need to challenge myself in that regard. So I’ve set a goal to remind myself the next time I’m a situation that’s far from a day in June, I’m going to be the one who adds some beauty!

Lee Ann

What Else is New?

Do you ever wonder:

1. What’s really going on in the life of a plant? Check out my article, “Under the Microscope: The Wonder and Mystery of Plants” on Page 5 of the March issue of “Trowel Talk,” the newsletter of the Master Gardeners of Ottawa Carleton.
2. What’s happening under the surface of the soil where your garden grows? “Soil: It’s Not Dirt!” in the June issue of Trowel Talk reveals all!