Peace Descending

After a few days of 70 degree sunshine, the day takes a bitter turn when a vicious cold front sweeps in.  The day is deceptively sunny and bright but the March wind is frigid - the dogs, ever anxious to get out, skitter to the back fence and quickly return - the small brown one crosses the threshold and without warning leaps into my arms.  I'm unprepared and very nearly don't catch her shivering, pitiful little body.  She burrows into my neck and whines as if to protest this unexpected weather event - I slip her an extra biscuit then ease her into one of her wool sweaters, a red cardigan with "Beware of Dog" stitched in large white letters and she trots to the bed and makes a nest under the pillows.  Sensing her distress, two of the cats arrive and curl themselves protectively around her.  She blinks, sighs, then drifts off to sleep.  The black dog and the little dachshund, both thicker coated and much tougher, make separate stops at the water bowl then settle a respectful distance apart in the sunroom.  Peace descends.

It's never a good idea to set your plans in cement, I think to myself.  Just when you pack the long johns away for another season and put up the winter jacket, a bitter, frost bitten and most unwelcome March wind can arrive and blow your plans to hell and back.  

I think of a recent social media post from a not very close friend of mine - a young woman who saw her husband through three rehabs and gave him two children - whose world has come tumbling down at the discovery of his infidelity with, insult to injury, her sister.  Betrayed on not just one but two fronts, she can't make up her mind whether to be enraged or destroyed, to comfort or kill him and regardless of the outcome, things between her and her sister will never be the same.  I cannot imagine her pain but oddly enough I can imagine her forgiving him - she has children to support and raise and will not want to do it alone and that may be enough - on the other hand, she may find it more straightforward to shoot him and be done with it.  There have been times when it's what I wished I'd done.

Once upon a time I dreamed of being married forever, of never having to worry about money or illness or old age or insecurity.  I imagined traveling and a house on the shore, a small staff of capable and devoted servants, a new car every year or two, a circle of trusted and well off friends.  I would slip into this life as you might a familiar old flannel nightgown and leave the nuisance details to someone else.  I dreamed of it, even came close to achieving it.  It seems foolish now, foolish and superficial and trite to have dismissed fate and human failings.   

Life gets easier once you learn the difference between plans and fairy tales.  In another few days, the warm weather returns and peace descends.

Love, Hate & Retaliation

It looks like you have some issues with AOL, the young man in the white shirt, narrow tie and Buddy Holly glasses says to me as he peers at my laptop and scrolls randomly.  For $199, our tech support.....

Has hell frozen over? I interrupt him, Because only then will I spend one more dime on this piece of...I remember that I'm in a public place and manage to check myself.  Let me put it another way, I say more calmly, I'm sure I've made worse decisions in my life but off hand, except for the time, money, heartache and grief of my second husband, I can't think of one at the moment.

He looks at me as if I've lost my mind then manages a weak smile.  He doesn't ask for details.

Thanks anyway, I mutter, But I'd rather throw it in the damn river. Do I owe you anything?

Wisely, he shakes his head and I close the cover on the Hated Device and leave.  It takes a fair amount of discipline to resist the urge to throw it as hard as I can onto the pavement of the parking lot - I can't shake the  idea of how satisfying it would be to run it over - would that I had a tank or better yet a sub machine gun, I could put an end to it forever, although a sledge hammer would do.  No mercy, I snarl at it and throw it none too gently onto the car seat thinking vaguely that if I didn't lock the car I might get lucky and someone would steal the despicable piece of crap.  

Some of us are meant to embrace technology and progress - I, on the other hand, reject it with every fiber of my being.  I return home, still fuming, and take a long look at my desktop, a reasonably reliable and more or less stable piece of machinery that I've come to depend upon and almost trust.  I tell myself it has no feelings and is not plotting against me but, considering it's still a distant cousin to the detestable laptop, I remain cautious.  Unlike the Hated Device, I don't suspect it can read my thoughts, but I still feel the need to warn it in the event it's thinking about developing issues of its own - I've heard stories about retaliation and know in my heart that any collection of metal and hot wire and diodes is more than capable of not just vengeance but out right sabotage.

You're not a roomful of roses either, I remind it mildly, You'd better watch yourself.

It looks back impassively.

Well, alrighty then, I say, As long as we understand each other.

Meanwhile in the kitchen, the Hated Device sits on the kitchen table and sulks.  I'm not completely sure but I think I hear it whispering to itself.  Feeling vindictive, I snatch it's power cord out and remove it's battery, leaving it lifeless and impotent and alone.  It's more than it deserves.  Come Monday, I may take it for repair or I may not.  In the meantime, accidents do happen.

Sorrowful Work

I often wondered about the interns that came to work at the funeral home - why anyone would choose to work with the dead was something of a mystery.  There were the old and tired jokes, of course -"The customers never complain" was a perennial favorite - but the fact remained, it was sorrowful work, body removal could be physically exhausting and grieving families were wearing on the nerves.  You could be called out anytime of the day or night to any place - people died in hotels and on golf courses, they were shot or stabbed, mangled in accidents or found dead in nursing homes.  They killed each other and themselves with alarming regularity in the city and homicide was an every day affair - there were brutal gang murders, simple domestic disagreement murders, bloody mafia murders, loss of temper murders in bars and at intersections and in workplaces.  There were sad suicides and drug deals gone bad and killings of children, so much death and destruction, so grimly needless.  And between classes and studying and being on call all through the nights, the interns witnessed and became part of it, joked about it, took it all in without taking it to heart.  Sorrowful, sorrowful work - but as the interns liked to point out - steady as sin and just as inevitable.

Most were young, in their early 20's and slightly adrift.  They attended mortuary classes during the day and studied in their spare time, sleeping when they could in a tiny, shabby, second floor bedroom, snatching meals from the delicatessens and the cafeterias in the square.  Some found the work too depressing or too gruesome and they moved on after a few months.  Others were able to detach and distance themselves.  A handful stuck it out, finished their schooling and found careers in the industry, caring enough to want to ease the pain of those left behind and make a respectful living of it.  All found ways to cope and for those who stayed, death became a reality, an adversary, a transition and sometimes a friend.  They read chemistry and anatomy and Kubler-Ross in the same breath, learned to arrange flowers and write death notices, how to comfort families and embalm bodies.  They perfected the art of sad smiles and sympathy and they understood but accepted loss.  Most believed in some sort of a reward/punishment afterlife but were rarely if ever preachy.  

We are here to attend to details, my daddy often told them, to make the process smoother and the grief a little more bearable.  God only comes into it if invited and we respect all beliefs.  Leave your personal religion or lack of it at home.  

And so there were Catholic masses, Irish wakes, gypsy send offs and Protestant services.  There were pine boxes and mahogany caskets with satin lining.  Families grieved and said goodbye each in their own way under the discreet and often invisible eyes of the interns and the established funeral directors who stood on the sidelines and gently, quietly, guided and watched over it all.  

It's a gift to serve the dead, I'd heard my daddy say, But it's a responsibility to serve the living.

But it was still sorrowful work.

Now and again, one of these young interns - being so serious and well dressed and bright, not to mention reasonably attractive - would catch my hormonal pre-teenage eye and for a time I would lose myself in a world of fantasy where he would sweep me off my feet and carry me off to a distant land where there were live flowers all year 'round and no one ever died.  There would be art and music and books and white horses to ride into glorious sunsets.  Inevitably, I would then catch sight of my knight in shining armor in a rubber apron and gloves and plastic goggles, elbow deep in blood and guts with the scent of formaldehyde in the air.  It wasn't the sort of vision that sustained a crush.

Sorrowful work.

Winter Weary

Winter having been nothing to write home about, I'm glad to be seeing signs of spring - the crepe myrtle in the front yard is in bloom, the azaleas are sprouting enthusiastically, and there are mini tulip gardens showing their pastel faces to the sun all over town - we are warm and flowering and in no time, I'm sure, will be bitterly complaining about the heat.

I can see my daddy puttering around the cottage in the spring - in his khaki work pants, stained t shirt and battered old thrift store hat, a Lucky Strike tucked behind one ear and always in search of his gloves, whistling as he dug dirt or cut wood or mixed paint.  He was not a man who could be easily idle, it wasn't in his nature or upbringing to waste time or daylight and on the weekends he usually worked circles around us all.  He loved the spring, the cool mornings and clear nights were ideal for outside work and hot coffee and the sound of a chain saw.  My mother rarely ventured beyond the deck and her knitting - come summer, she would retreat completely, switch the window units and the television on and withdraw into a lazy, alcoholic haze - but in the spring, she was glad for the lake breeze and the soft sunlight.  On weekends she would make lunch for them both and serve it on paper plates on the picnic table - sandwiches and salad, iced tea and egg tarts.  

I often wondered what they found to talk about,  these two people who were so different and so often at odds with other yet who stayed together - after their fashion - for the better part of forty years.  My mother loved to gossip while my daddy frowned on idle chatter.  My daddy was driven by a lifelong work ethic while my mother treasured her stay-at-home and reasonably pampered lifestyle.  My daddy was responsible, serious, thoughtful and quiet with a dry and gentle humor.  He enjoyed being kind and had faith in the goodness and decency of his fellow human beings.  My mother used people for her own amusement, felt entitled to someone to provide for and keep her, underlined her sarcasm with malice and promised misery for anyone who got on her way or denied her.  I suppose they were both filling the roles they'd been shaped for - giver and taker, talker and listener, alcoholic and enabler.  Perhaps it was easier to adapt and fit than stand out.  Perhaps neither of them wanted very much from each other.  Perhaps choice hadn't much of an option.  You married and did what was expected of you and kept trouble behind closed doors.  I was taught to take the easy road, to accept rather than resist, not to ask too many questions or look too closely.  Secrets and privacy, secrets and shame, secrets and silence.  Leaving my family was like escaping a long and cold winter and discovering spring.  For a time I was even able to visit in relative safety, knowing that visits end and that the criticism would pass.  And then one bright winter morning, sufficient time and seasons had passed and I was strong enough to say no more.  I left my family and my brother's house for the last time, knowing I would never be back.  There would be consequences, I remember thinking, but none of us were innocent and there comes a time when if you are to have any hope of moving on, you have to leave the toxicity behind.

So I miss the New England springs of my 20's.  I miss the shade trees in bloom and the gentle early morning light sifting through the leaves, sleeping with windows open and being reminded to take a sweater.  I miss the man my daddy was before he was forced to choose between his wife and his daughter and the man he became afterward, the man who took a second wife and who I've always hoped found some peace and love and self respect.  But it's just winter weariness and the missing will pass as do the seasons.




  

Something Close to Magic

I like photographing pretty people - who doesn't - but I especially like photographing people whose lives are written all over their faces.  They may see age and wrinkles and scars but I see character and hard won fights, weariness and experience, wisdom and memories.  Struggle and survival leave marks, some good and some bad, but all worth capturing and being proud of.  Age is an achievement in and of itself and ought to outrank vanity.  Forgive me, dear friend, if you "look old" in a photograph I've taken of you - but you are - and you should rejoice in it.  Don't confuse old with unflattering.  Your eyes still crinkle with laughter, your silver hair tells of decades of living, those smile lines and crows feet are earned.  You may not like the way they look on you, but they speak to me.  I understand your vanity but can't approve of it.

My friend, Michael - artificially tanned with his lips botoxed, his abs corseted and his hair extensions secured -  has a birthday coming up.  He will take extraordinary pride in "looking young", never seeing that his looks have become a caricature.  A number of plastic surgeries - what an apt name for a cosmetic procedure - have given him a superficial sense of time travel, marginally alleviating his fear of aging and feeding his vanity with small doses of self deception.  He doesn't look younger, he looks as though he's had work done and

ironically enough, needs more to maintain the illusion.  It saddens me to see him fighting so hard for something so long lost.  In his 20's, he was darkly handsome, broodingly intense and seductive, catlike and graceful.  But in his 50's, he can't bear to look in a mirror except to preen and check his makeup.   He sees nothing but shadows, overlaid with a decrepit haze of the good years gone bad.  And he mourns - loudly, often and at length.

If all we measure by is vanity, then vanity will make fools of us all.  Give me a face with character and integrity.  Give me a face that tells a tale and I will give you my best work.


The challenge is not just growing older - we all do that without any effort whatsoever.  But to do it with grace and charm and a sense of celebration, well, that takes courage and style.

To do it while playing a squeezebox takes something close to magic.






              

Bikers Beware

If you've never spent a sunny afternoon in a biker bar surrounded by heavily bearded, heavily tattooed, heavily drinking and leather clad members of the UMF whose every other word is a loud and enthusiastic obscenity, which they often have to shout to be heard over the steady rumble of the decked out Harley Davidsons...well, you've been culturally deprived.   The air is blue with exhaust fumes and foul language, the laughter is raucous and filled with sexual innuendo, the beer flows like a river and clearly, no body part is exempt from piercing.
On stage, the musicians go slightly wild, they gyrate and shimmy and slam bodies - the crowd loves it and screams for more.

It's not, as they say, my first rodeo but it is the first truly close and extended encounter with this many of them in a relatively small space.  I find a barstool close to the stage, order my diet coke and leave the change in a donation can - the gathering is to raise money for a fellow musician whose recent heart attack has left him unable to work or pay the bills - and the bikers have turned out in force.  They're a rough looking crowd in their ragged blue jeans and opaque blue sunglasses, most all wear sleeveless black tee's under the traditional black leather UMF vests, each colorfully decorated with patches promoting guns, bikes, drugs, freedom and republicans.  I'm out of my element, I realize, feeling very much like a long tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs but I've come to photograph and photograph I will.  It's broad daylight, I tell myself, and surely these people can't possibly be as menacing and dangerous as I'm tempted to think.  I pick out one, a grizzled,  heavy set individual with an eye patch, slouched against a railing with both grimy fists wrapped around a beer, and tap him on the shoulder.

Hey, I tell him, raising my Nikon and giving him what I hope is a friendly grin, Look over your shoulder at me.

To my surprise he obliges.  You want I should smile?  he asks in a voice somewhere between a growl and a nicotine raspy whisper.

I consider this for a fraction of a second and then instinctively say no.

Thanks, I tell him.

Welcome, he tells me back and shrugs.

After that it gets easier - I point my camera, they pose, I shoot.  The danger has all been in my mind and when I pack up to leave, a husky, bald headed biker with insanely bad teeth and a Hatfield-McCoy beard gives me a grin and slings my camera bag over his shoulder.

Lemme git that for ya, little lady, he says and gives me a wink.

I wouldn't dream of refusing.  Bikers are people too.

The Self Improvement Store

If there was a self improvement store, I'd be a steady customer.

First, I'd find the patience section and stock up for life.  I'd buy it by the truckload and keep a little in my back pocket everywhere I went.

Second, I'd browse the tolerance display and take several six packs.

And most important, I'd stop by the anger management booth and take everything they had.

Alas, although it should, the world doesn't work that way.

By three o'clock on a Monday, three patients have simply not bothered to show up, two called just minutes before they should've been there to cancel, and one has casually strolled in, an hour and a quarter late.  The computers - like coaxing molasses uphill in a blizzard on their best days - have gone into crash mode and the best we can get is a half dozen keystrokes before they freeze up.  The doctor, idle and irritated by all this non-productive free time, is underfoot and in the way, peering over my shoulder, asking insulting questions and issuing unnecessary orders.  He hovers and hangs over me and shuffles my neat piles of end of day paperwork until I snatch them away and suggest he go take a nap.

What's tomorrow look like? he wants to know, as if he couldn't just look at his own laptop and see for himself.

Did you call maintenance about the light fixture? he asks for the third time.

Are the surgical charts done?  he demands although he knows perfectly well they're on his desk.

Don't forget to get a better 'phone number for our last patient, if she shows up, he tells me for the fourth time, You can explain that we need to be able to reach them in the event of..... But this is finally too much for me and I turn on him.

Six years! I snap, Six years I've worked for you and you're still reminding me to turn out the lights!  Now go 'way! I don't need to be told why we need to be able to reach patients or how to explain it to them!

You worry about the medicine and let me worry about the paperwork! Now shoo!

Nobody likes a wise ass receptionist, he mutters but at least he goes.

Nor a micro managing doctor, I mutter right back.

Yep.  A self improvement store would make a fortune.  

Let me be sure I understand this, I tell the woman on the phone,  Nine or ten years ago your husband had warts and a doctor - whose name you don't remember - gave him a cardiac medicine - the name of which you don't remember - but it cost $800 and worked really well on the warts.  And now the warts are back and you want Dr M to give him the same medicine but without benefit of examining him or knowing what it was?

See? she says impatiently, It's simple.  I'm not going to bring him in unless the doctor will give him the medicine.

Open 7 days.  Discounts for the chronically stupid in our patient department.  

The Ladies in Beige

On bridge party days, my grandmother rose even earlier than usual and tended to be testy about the smallest things.  We knew this and always did our best to do as we were told and stay out of her way.

The island ladies arrived promptly at 1:30 - to be early was in bad taste, to be late, a disgrace - and for the next few hours, the sunporch was transformed into a lively and chattering sea of beige - it was a matter of blending in, Nana said, no one under the age of 60 was even considered for an invitation and men, although allowed to drop the women off and pick them up at the end of the afternoon, were strictly forbidden.  Once the  heavy door to the sunporch swung shut, it stayed shut for the duration - neither hell nor high water would've persuaded Nana to open it until the games all concluded and even then, the ladies left by the side door, arm in arm and in pairs, still as giggly as schoolgirls.  My mother, excluded due to her age and seriously offended by my grandmother's absolute refusal to a make an exception for her, called them a flock of gossipy old hens and would then position herself by one of the windows, one ear pressed as nearly to the glass as possible.  This struck me as comical - perhaps because I hadn't learned the word hypocritical - and usually got me sent outside with a healthy smack to my backside and a warning to be seen and not heard if I knew what was good for me.

I didn't know much about bridge and didn't care much about the grown up gossip, but I was fascinated by the fact that the ladies took such care to look alike, all in their various shades of beige with the occasional flash of 
dark brown.  Beige skirts, beige blouses, beige stockings, beige makeup and if one were feeling a little racy, a hint of vanilla shine on their lips.  If they wore jewelry - and most didn't - it might be a single strand of pearls but certainly no more.  I hated to admit that my mother was right in anything but the overall effect of this carefully cultivated neutrality did suggest a certain barnyard flair, not unlike chickens at feeding time.  When I asked Nana why they all wore the same colors, she looked startled.

Do we? she replied and frowned, I never noticed.

Oh, Good Lord, Mother, my own mother said with a nasty edge to her voice, You look like a wheat field, for God's sake!

Nana's frown deepened.

I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, Jan, she said acidly, No one asked for your opinion.

No one ever does! my mother snapped back and began to cry, a time honored but overused ploy which my grandmother refused to be moved by.  Without a word, she simply hung up her apron and left the room, beckoning me to follow.

The ladies in beige didn't much go in for flashy colors of medodrama.

Have Faith

Remember, I write to a friend, God doesn't give you anything you can't handle.

She writes back of her faith - it's stronger than mine but I don't tell her that - and of the tests she's facing and all the doctors she's seeing, including a neurological surgeon.  She doesn't tell me what's wrong and I don't ask.
She is, as she writes, "still processing the latest results" and I know enough to back off and give her room.  

The truth is that God very often gives us things we can't handle or change or accept.  His eye may be on the sparrow but that doesn't mean He saves the poor, little bird from the prowling backyard cat.  Sometimes I think He just watches and waits, a grand spectator but a spectator nonetheless.  It's a random world and things are set in motion over which we have no control.  Sometimes all any of us can do is stand and watch.
Have faith, I write uselessly, Know you're in my prayers.  I have no illusions that the words will make any difference but some kind of understanding and reassurance is called for and it's the best I can think of - when in doubt, faith is my fall back position - if not in God, then in the resiliency of the human spirit, in destiny, in beating the odds, in some form of higher power.  Provided we pray for the right things - guidance, strength, endurance, wisdom and not winning the lottery or, no matter how badly you might need them, a new set of snow tires - no prayer is ever offered in vain but we are human and seriously flawed and when the answer seems to be "no", it's easy enough to write off the whole process as superstition and give up.

Faith - mysterious, intangible, fragile, inexplicable.

You have it or you don't.

Either way, have the time of your life with the time you've got left.  It's the only sensible thing to do.



  






  

Axe Away

When I was a good deal younger, I worked for the telephone company for several long years and had telephone manners drilled into me where they set like cement. So I know that any conversation that begins with, Look he-ah..... isn't going to go well.  And I end up with far too many of them.  

We don't consider appointments firm until they're confirmed so twice a week we spend/waste a good deal of time calling patients.  Provided the telephone numbers they've given us haven't already been disconnected for non-payment. they rarely answer and even less often take the time to actually listen to the message we leave. Why bother when you can just call the number back and be an idiot?

Look, he-ah, the voice mumbles, You call me?

Ah jist don' know, I sometimes reply, Who dis be?

Surprisingly, they usually take no offense at this, assuming perhaps that I went to the same school or maybe am related somehow.  To be articulate in my office is to be wasteful of time and energy and though it makes me want to cringe, I've learned to play the game.

Kin Ah axe you a question?  I hear.

Axe away, I answer though I know I'll regret it and wondering what has become of the English language.  Sarcasm is useful although not as satisfying as beating them senseless would be.

Dis be the foot doctor place?

Dis be the place!

Well, look he-ah, you take the medicaid?

No, ma'am.

Well, look he-ah, what's Ah 'sposed to do?  I ain't got no job and I be needin' my feets looked at!

One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. 
Oh, why can't the English learn to set 
A good example to people whose 
English is painful to your ears? 
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. 
There even are places where English completely
disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!  ~ Prof. Henry Higgins






 

Who Loves You Best

Early morning light creeps through the blinds a little at a time and I try not to shift position, knowing it will wake the sleeping animals and start a small riot.  Not having to rise and shine at 5am is a gift that doesn't come often enough and I'm not willing to let it go without a fight but despite my best efforts, the little dachshund senses wakefulness and begins to stir in his basket next to the bed.  I hear his tags jingle, then a very soft, almost tentative whine, and finally a gentle scratching on the side of the bed. 

Five more minutes, I whisper to him and he obediently curls back up in a dappled little ball, sighs, and goes back to sleep.  I feel the cats relax and the small brown dog shifts against the back of my neck.  In the shadows, I see the black dog raise her head, sniff the air delicately, and then lay back down - it would seem a bit of grace has been granted.  It's taken the better part of ten months to sort out sleeping arrangements for three dogs, four cats and one overrun human - all the cats, the small brown dog and I share the bed while the black dog, no longer young but still vigilant about guarding her household, alternates between the doorways of the bedroom and the living room.  Only the little dachshund is confined to a basket - in reality it's two queen size pillows in a soft sided mesh playpen that I set up beside the bed each night - months of experimentation and trial and error (and an extraordinary amount of patience on my part) have finally produced a minor but significant breakthrough in the housebreaking process, at least during the night.  Even so, with his breed typical stubbornness (to borrow a well worn phrase from AA), I fear this may be a journey and not a destination.

I'm asleep before the five minutes is up and it's another hour before the jingling, whining and scratching commence again.  By then it's almost full dawn, the point of no return, and reluctantly I throw off the covers and leave my warm bed to begin The 7 Animal Shuffle - dogs out, cats fed, dogs in, dogs fed, dogs out again - it's a complicated dance, well practiced and predictable, only marginally chaotic.  Within an hour we are all settled in for the weekend and all seems right in our tiny corner of the world.  When the chores are done, I discreetly (but not discreetly enough, it seems) take a towel from the bathroom and start to run water in the kitchen sink.  The little dachshund's radar goes off immediately and he takes off like a shot on those little, short legs, ducking under the furniture and finally finding shelter in a corner behind a table in the sunroom. When I pull him out, he goes limp in my arms and gives me the world's most sorrowful and beseeching look but  when I harden my heart and remind him that I'd seen a flea on his belly that very morning, he hangs his head and won't meet my eyes.

There's no shame in having a flea, I tell him encouragingly, You just can't keep him.

Being the exceptionally fine dog that he is, he submits to this grave indignity with grace and a quiet composure and after a brisk towel drying and a thorough brushing, he's content to lie damply by my side and fall asleep.  I stroke his fur and scratch his ears as he snoozes and wonder how I ever got along without him.  
I love all my animals equally, I tell myself, but he and I both know it's not true.

Good Help Is Hard to Find

If I have my choice of weapons, sir, I choose grammar ~ from "Lady for a Day" released in 1933 and which later became "Pocketful of Miracles" with Bette Davis and Glenn Ford.

Once an English major, always an English major, I think to myself as I leave for lunch and pass by the nurse from down the hall.  She's sprawled out on a piece of furniture with a movie magazine and the remains of a Happy Meal in her lap, a cell phone wedged between her shoulder and ample chins.  I can hear her gum smacking from ten feet away.  Mah baby, he five, she says into the phone as I walk past, He know what be goin' on.  Nothing as fine as a public education, I think to myself, at least if you're writing a low rent rap song, but otherwise it's an affront to the ears.  I remind myself that I shouldn't judge a book by its cover but it's impossible to get past the multicolored hair, bulging scrubs, false eyelashes and pointed, painted nails.  And the speech.  Especially the speech.  She may be a perfectly nice young woman, a devoted mother, an absolutely adequate nurse - but these are things I'll never know - it's foolish and unfair, but I'm too offended by her mangled grammar to want to find out and her appearance does nothing to inspire my confidence or curiosity.

Later in the day another young woman comes to the window.  She pulls a sheet of paper from her backpack - it's ragged and grimy around the edges - and when she pushes it toward me I notice her dirty nails and tattooed wrists.

You be takin' applications? she asks roughly and unsmiling.

No, I tell her shortly and gingerly push the piece of paper back toward her with a pencil, We're not.

She snatches it back, crams it into a back pocket and storms out with a sneer that I strongly suspect is permanent and more than a hint of sullen defiance in her waddle.  I watch as she jams earphones from a portable dvd player into her ears, slings her backpack over one hefty shoulder and then from the safety of the corridor, gives me a bitter glare and makes a finger gesture.  I have a sudden and compelling urge to disinfect the counter and spray the waiting room with air freshener but I settle for locking the outer door, as if it would actually keep the trash out.