The New Neighbors

We just met our new neighbors yesterday. They will be living upstairs from us in our condo complex. Sharing a garage with us. My husband and I are pretty much geezers living among mostly other geezers here. Okay, at 54 and 62 we're on the adolescent end of geezerhood, but still. And I'm okay with that. Our complex is only 44 units and although it's not an "over-55 community", like many of the communities down here, (down here being Florida), it just kind of turns out that way anyway.
So back to the new neighbors.

Our previous upstairs neighbor was an old woman in her eighties who was, shall we say, eccentric. She became more and more eccentric until she began threatening people with brooms and hammers and calling the police and fire departments reporting imaginary break-ins and assaults. This is not funny and I'm not making fun. She had become our friend, more or less, over the years, but we began keeping a watchful eye out for her as she started drifting back and forth between glad to see us and calling us filthy names. Then finally she "went over to the dark side" for good. They took her away and sold her condo. We heard they sold it to someone who intended to rent it out. Oh goodie. Enter "the renters", our new neighbors.

Our doorbell rings yesterday and a woman introduces herself as the owner/rental agent of the condo upstairs and just wanted to let us know that our new neighbors were moving in RIGHT NOW and would we like to meet them? Sure. I walk outside to where their furniture-laden truck is parked, and the woman points me toward a twenty-something guy, about six foot two, with gorgeous curly locks who looks like my nephew and has no shirt on. She says, "This is Aaron. He and his girlfriend Wendy are moving in upstairs." Holy cow. YOUNG PEOPLE!
This should make for some animated conversation at the next potluck in the clubhouse.
"Whose kids were those at the pool today? Ruth and George's?"
"No, they LIVE HERE!"
"WHAT?! But they're, they're YOUNG!"

So anyway, after I overcame my own shock and introduced myself and so on, I went back inside and told my husband the news. Young people were going to be living upstairs, sharing our garage. He got a sardonic look on his face and said, "This oughta go over big," thinking as I was about the rest of our neighbors. So he goes out to meet them too. By now Wendy is also outside and we chat briefly, offering any help we might be able to give. They seemed nice. Respectful. (Oh good Lord, listen to me. Respectful. That's what my grandmother would have said.) So we go back inside and soon we hear some conversation outside. See, the stairway to their unit is right outside our door in a kind of little courtyard. We can hear everything. So, it seems that Aaron and his friend Jeremiah, who is helping him, can't get the massive couch through the door and around the immediate corner. No way to make it go no matter what. They're thinking that maybe if they removed the screen from their lanai (Florida-speak for screened-in porch) at the back of the unit, they might be able to pass it up from beneath. I'm thinking good luck with that. In fact I even said it. Next thing you know, we look out our lanai door behind our condo and see Aaron and Jeremiah with the couch. In a flash, they had it on its end, and hoisted it so the top end was resting on the lanai above us. Now here's my favorite part. Aaron takes over holding the whole thing while Jeremiah runs around the building, up the stairs, and through the apartment to pull it up from the other end. We're standing in our living room looking out back at a guy HOLDING A COUCH all by himself, arms over his head like Atlas holding up the world, and his arms aren't even shaking. My husband and I looked at each other and he said what we were both thinking. "Might be good to have this guy around."

Well, that's chapter one of the new neighbors story. I don't expect there'll really be much to report. They seem like good kids. Hey, I'm kind of looking forward to being exposed to some youth for a change. Besides, in a neighborhood full of "Hanks", "Franks", "Eds", "Eleanors" and "Marguerites", it's kind of refreshing to hear names like "Wendy" and "Aaron".
Welcome to the neighborhood.

The Waiting Room

The family waiting room on the surgical floor was near capacity when I entered it to begin my own vigil about 5 PM. Some people seemed to be waiting as a family group, some as friends, and some as single spouses, like me. It struck me how many people must be having surgery. And this was just one hour of the day, in one waiting room on one floor of one hospital in the world.

I had just kissed my husband before he was rolled into the O.R. for major surgery. After four years of dealing with bladder cancer, exhausting every treatment and out-patient procedure available, he was now having the bladder removed. Serious stuff. I knew it was going to take several hours, so I settled in for an evening of reading, Sudoku, and a dinner break in the cafeteria. You may notice that I left out the word "worrying". That's because my most important activity during this waiting period was praying. I prayed. It was not desperate praying, but confident praying. I gave my husband's well being to God, and prayed for the doctors, nurses, and electrical equipment. (We live in Florida, and my first answered prayer was that there were no hurricanes yet in sight to threaten electrical power, or require evacuation at a most in-opportune time.)
A few friends had offered to stay with me through this, and I had declined. Something told me it would be better this way. I was able to be still, and know that God is God. The first miracle was that I wasn't fearful. My husband and I had been praying about this for quite some time. He had already put himself in God's hands, and faced this life-changing event with all the grace anyone could ask for. And that was perhaps the biggest miracle of all, and also what allowed me the strength to stay steady.

Time passed, and the waiting room thinned out, as one by one, surgeons came to speak with families about the outcome of their loved ones' surgeries. After three hours, I got a progress report from the operating room, saying things were going well, but they didn't have an estimate of how much longer it would be. There was lots of work to be done. I was grateful for the report. It was kind and considerate of the staff to let me know. After a few more hours, it was down to me and one family left. It was getting late by now, almost 10 o'clock. The wife and two beautiful daughters now sharing the room with me were beginning to frazzle. The husband had been in surgery all day. Another cancer patient. Just when the wife's considerable strength had been almost completely spent, their surgeon arrived to speak with them in the conference room. Mostly good news. I was glad for them. And I prayed for them too.

Another hour, and a few people came and went. The hospital volunteer at the desk outside had long since gone home. The halls were quiet, the night was dark, the TV murmered across the room at low volume. After six hours of surgery, at 11 o'clock, when our surgeon finally walked in to speak with me, there were just the four of us left in the room; me, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The doctor saw me sitting alone, but I wasn't.

The report was good. My husband came through it well. It went according to plan, and I was able to go and see him shortly afterward in recovery. He was groggy, drifting in and out of conciousness. I smoothed his hair and smiled at him. His first barely audible words were, "You wanna dance?" I couldn't believe that even now, he made me laugh. After another brief lapse into sleep, he opened his eyes again and said, "Thank you Jesus." Amen, my Love, Amen.

Success?

I saw three news articles yesterday that dealt with the idea of success, in three very different ways.

One story was about an enclave of obscenely huge mansions in a segment of Los Angeles called North Beverly Park. This is a development of giant, hotel-size homes, some as large as 40,000 square feet, and most 20,000 to 30,000, owned by the mega-super-rich and famous. People who not only don’t believe that less is more, but do believe that more is never enough. The home owners association member list reads like the Academy Awards, plus a Who’s Who of the sports world. Apparently this group of gargantuan homes is deemed “too much” even by the elite standards of Beverly Hills and Bel Air. The article pointed out that the main things this little group of neighbors have in common are their enormous wealth, and their dire need for privacy in a world filled with relentless paparazzi and gawking tourists. It seems this security-gated, border-patrolled, other-worldly community is the only place where this peculiar breed can live a “normal” life, having been rendered unfit to live among the rest of us. The sentence that smacked me in the face was this: “In the center of Beverly Park is an elaborate four-acre children’s park, which is usually empty.”
Is this success?

On the page opposite this article was a story about the Buffett family. (That would be Warren, not Jimmy.) In the last several days all the news outlets have been filled with the story of Warren Buffett’s decision to give the bulk of his 40 billion dollar estate to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The story I read, however, was about his three grown children. Apparently they have always known they would not inherit great wealth from their father, who does not believe in inherited wealth. (Although I’m quite sure most of us would consider the “crumbs“ that fall from the table to be a pretty good amount of wealth.) The three middle-age children of Warren Buffet are apparently low-key and fairly normal, and each of them has his own charitable foundation which he or she runs. They’ve been raised to believe that you use your wealth to help those who need help. Now we’re getting closer to success.

The third story was one I saw on TV. It was about a young soldier who returned from Iraq minus a leg. While still in the hospital, he assumed he would spend the rest of his days in a wheel chair. Then he saw another vet, who had lost both legs, working out and running with his artificial limbs. The young soldier then realized that somebody even worse off was doing so much, and decided that he too would run again. And today he not only runs, he competes and hopes to compete in the next Parolympics. Now we’re talking success.

Success comes in several sizes and measures. Personally, I find success to have nothing to do with wealth or fame. It’s a fleeting thing, therefore a daily thing. One success follows another. Sometimes it follows failure. I know this much; in the end, success is not what’s in the financial portfolio, but what overflows from the heart.