At THIS time of the year????
Years and years and years ago, when I was a desk clerk in a psychiatric
hospital at age 24, I discovered this is the time of the year when such
institutions get their greatest influx of patients. Just before
Thanksgiving till sometime after Christmas. The average stay on our open,
ambulatory ward was 23 days.
Bill and I lived in a university town (from whence we both graduated) that
first year of our marriage, and Mrs. Professor’s Wife, I soon discovered, was
privy to this “influx” ritual every year. She’d come in a total whack-job
and, within hours, if not minutes, would prance around like she walked on
streets of gold.
We all giggled, of course, because her rambunctious spirit lightened up the
place. I ‘spect some of the older staff were a bit envious of her, truth
be told. They watched the weight of the whole wide world slide off her
shoulders during the holiday season. How convenient!
But what I will never forget was how she’d abandon her shoes in the middle
of the hallway at early morning’s whim. I had a direct bee-line visual on
them from my front desk. She’d be nowhere in sight but it didn’t matter.
We all knew she was on an adventure somewhere, cheering up the other patients.
She gave a whole new meaning to footloose and fancy free!
And she taught me До свидания/do
svidaniya (Russian for good-bye) as well as a word/phrase whose language I
don’t know (Russian? Hungarian?) and can only spell phonetically: daw-pa-PAH-chin-yah.
With a twinkle in her eye, she said it meant “till we kiss again.” She
was old enough to be my grandma and it was I who wanted to take off my
shoes. It felt like holy ground.
These 44 years later, the light-hearted spirit of that lady remains as
fresh and invigorating as though it were yesterday when she entered my
life. Her Hungarian heritage intrigued me because Bill’s distant line
came from bakers there. In fact, the traditional Christmas meal I still
cook to this day is a Hungarian poor-man’s chicken paprikash (with homemade
dumplings) my kids and grandson would die for right now, passed on to me by
both Bill’s mom and aunt those many years ago.
Why she had to “commit” herself year after year, I’ll never know. Was
she expected to make more than chicken paprikash at home? Did her
professor husband hate seeing her shoes in the middle of the room? Was he
relieved when she was gone? Did she have children who cared?
It doesn’t matter now, of course. Nor do most of us have the luxury
to get away from it all, for whatever reason, at this time of the year.
Maybe by now most of us don’t need to? Maybe we’ve learned to cope and be
and do and go. All of it. We’re the Wonder Women, of course.
Amazon Warrior Women taking charge of Life, no matter what.
Okay, then, maybe not. But if all we do by now is kick off our
shoes, at this certain age, and walk footloose and fancy free, I dare say we’ll
make it through to the very end. Right?
At this time of the year. Yes!
