Waiting

When I’ve got Errol at home it’s easy for me to get distracted (dishes to wash, clothes to fold, uranium to enrich), so it’s always a treat to get to take Errol to the doctor (there are plenty of opportunities) where we can spend lots and lots of very focused time together in the waiting room. Yesterday Errol and I went on a date to Baptist hospital (he loves it – he starts hooting as soon as we get into the garage) for his biannual immunology checkup and oil change.

You get to wait a lot at the doctor’s office. After we checked in, we moved from the main waiting room, into an interior waiting room, into an examination room where we got to wait some more. (The magazines get older and worse as you move inside the belly of the whale.) All this waiting used to make me mad, but I’ve come to enjoy it, and realize that waiting is actually good for me: my heart rate drops, I stop rushing, there are no clothes to fold, bills to pay, quesadillas to cook, and I’m able to turn my attention solely and squarely on the one thing that’s most important. But since Judge Judy wasn’t on yesterday, I got to hang out with Errol.

Little Earl is a delight to wait with. We have a couple of favorite waiting room games that we play. The first is “the doughnut game.” Errol sits in his stroller, and I spin him around and around in the waiting room. We make a few circles to the left, with Errol’s blonde hair flying, and then we stop, boom, “He, he, he!” laughs Errol. Then Errol and his hair are off to the right until we suddenly stop, boom, “He, he, he, he!” Now it’s off to the left again, then back to the right. Now Errol is beginning to get the game: left, right, left, right, and thinks it’s pretty damn funny (just wait ‘til I do, left, right, left, left, right, right- he won’t believe it!) We repeat the game until my arms give out (always well before Errol’s laugh gives out). Then, because we’ve got time galore, we play another game called “Let’s read War and Peace.” After we finish Tolstoy’s masterpiece, the doctor is still not ready, and we start another game called “Six foot baby.” I put Errol on my shoulders, where he looks like such a big boy, and he grabs my hair like a rein. I walk, dance, or circle (it doesn’t really matter what I do, because to Errol it’s all the funniest damn thing that’s ever happened) and he laughs and laughs, “he, he, he.” Errol loves his bird’s eye view and the proximity to my hair (hair just about tops out Errol’s happy list). After I wear out (again, months before Errol) we sit back down and mull over the causes of the Franco-Prussian War, the effects of American farm subsidies on West African grain prices, and the future of Russo-Sino relations (you know, just normal father and son chit chat). After our light banter, we have yet to lay eyes on the doctor. When the doctor finally comes in we are pretty sad to have to wake up and end our games.

After the immunologist examined Errol (about 30 seconds), she sent us down to the phlebotomists (vampires) for some labs (blood). The past few years have weaned me of my needlephobia, and today I watched as the phlebotomist (what a euphemism) took blood from poor little screaming Errol. (When he was tiny, he didn’t cry when he was stuck; now he screams bloody murder, which, I think, is a good sign of cognitive development, but hard to watch.) I haven’t experienced a more impotent feeling than watching my child in pain, my knowing there is nothing I can do to make it better. Luckily this blood draw was only a three minute (felt like three hours) ordeal. I asked the phlebotomist if she had ever seen a parent pass out; she said no, but that she had seen plenty of them cry with their babies. I can understand that.

Back in the waiting room, there was a raggedy father, unkempt and unshaven, bending over his wheelchair-bound child. I couldn’t see the child’s face, but I was able to see his sweet father hovering above him, stroking his hair, talking to him, trying to comfort him. It was a very touching scene. You could see the love between them. When they were called back to the lab, the father wheeled his son around and I could see that the boy was afflicted with a very serious syndrome. His head was bulbous, he was strapped tightly into his reclining wheelchair’s restraints, and he had a completely blank look on his face. I looked at his eyes for a sign of light, and didn’t see anything. But that was me looking; clearly his father saw something in his boy no one else could. That daddy knew his impassive boy, what he liked, and how to comfort him in this traumatic moment. It was beautiful to see two people communicating in such a quiet but loving way.

Sometimes Errol gives out of gas and hibernates inside himself, far from us. I imagine that when people see Errol, with his hand hovering an inch above his face, staring blankly into space, that there’s nothing going on inside him. Perhaps some folks wonder why I am talking to this little lump, swinging him around, reading books he can’t possibly understand. One of the great joys of parenthood is the ability to know the exact meaning of the slightest movement: a raised eyebrow, a clenched jaw, a barely audible coo. It is a rare gift to know someone in such an intimate way.

I hold Errol and then lift him up, up, up onto my shoulders. Errol leaves the unknown world of his hand, clutches tightly to my hair and lets out a squeal of joy. Everyone in the waiting room is smiling.