All it took was a peek into another room on my way out. The cancer room. A chubby mama, holding her baby with the daddy near by. Cancer? In one of them? How about a peek into the dialysis room? A woman with a ruddy face and watery eyes tucked her dry, messy hair into a baseball cap. Waiting to recycle her blood so she can stay alive.
All it took was a book I'm reading in the waiting room about the Irish potato famine. A mom waking up with no more milk to feed her baby. Pricking the vein of her horse to feed her sons with blood. Fever, death, shallow graves in frozen ground.
I recently ate a dinner with potatoes. They were piled high on my plate, steamy and covered in ketchup. I ate so much I felt sick the rest of the night.
I felt so lucky to make dinner for my kids tonight. Dropping sticky dumplings into a rich soup of fish, onions and cream. I hear them slurping the dregs from the kitchen.
I wonder how many days I've truly, truly worried. I worry about if I have too many dimples on the backs of my thighs to go swimming in public. I worry if my Tivo recorded Vampire Diaries. And of course, like all of us, I have true worries.
But for the most part, I have a blessed life. I need to worry more about my hands. What have they done to lift another today?
