Rush to Judgment

In the small country town we are staying in as we wait for news of both homes closing … the one we are selling in Tucson (closing date approx 8/7), and the Harpers Ferry home (closing date approx 8/18), we wait and discover the unfamiliar relaxation that comes at the end of all this geographic change. There’s nothing to do. The frantic calls to realtors and lenders at both ends have leveled off. And then today, there was one more little trickle of activity.

Our Tucson realtor Patti called about a perfunctory appraisal form that had to be FAXed back to the lender. She needed a FAX number to send it to in WV and to have me send it back. Paul and I were in the center of town walking Daisy when Patti’s call came. I thought about the library but had already had a run-in with the librarian there when I had popped my head in to ask if vacationers could borrow DVDs and was told “No” with a tone that made me feel both annoyed and stupid for even entertaining such a thought. Even though as a former librarian, I know how much abuse of the word “borrow” goes on, I thought she was a bitch and told Paul how unpleasant she was.

You can imagine how reluctant I was to return and inquire about sending FAXs, but when I had asked another retailer where to send a FAX, the library was it.

I went in and told her my need and she gave me the rate for a max of 10 pages plus any long distance charges. I called my realtor to ask her a few questions and then the librarian literally threw me out for using a cell phone in her (empty) library. I was miffed and told Paul that this woman was impossible and if I had to deal with her ever again, he needed to go in my place and turn on the French charm.

Patti had said she would mail the form but as it happened she called me back and said no, she had to FAX it. The last thing I wanted to do was return to the library and incur the wrath of this woman, but I did.

I went back. I asked the librarian if she would please send my FAX and she said she would and I stood there in neutral annoyance until she asked me to sit down and I pulled a chair up to a desk in the aisle and waited. A patron came in and asked the librarian, whose name was Carolyn, how her summer was going. “Not good”, she said, and I was quietly gloating thinking “Right. What a bitch. She can’t even enjoy this gorgeous town in the ripeness of a late July day when everything about being alive is so exaggerated and wonderful”.

The return FAX came in and I had to sign it and have Paul sign it too except that he had taken Daisy back to the rental and I was signing for him which if you were a small town librarian might be considered a crime and I did it fast and gave it to her and she sent it and didn’t look…as far as I could see.

Then I gave her four dollars. There was an awkward pause and I had noticed early on that her arm was wrapped in an ace bandage so I asked, “Did you fracture your arm?”. She answered, “No. It’s lymphedema.”

Now a light goes on and everything starts to reprogram so quickly and with such discomfort that I feel the process of my brain making its corrections.

“You’ve had surgery?”, I asked, knowing full well that she had had breast cancer and that the removal of lymph nodes was causing her present distress.

“Yes”, she said and recounted the chapter and verse of her cancer nightmare ending with the discovery yesterday that she has metastasis to her bones. “It’s the 'inverse T’, she said, “spine and pelvis both”. She went on to tell me about the pain and how her MD has told her it’s just a side effect of the chemo but she knows it’s the bone mets. I believe she is right. I told her what I knew about managing the pain from bone cancer, the need to add steroids, the long-acting and breakthrough meds. I did not use the “H” word and neither did she, but when she talked about having only Medicare and no money, I wanted to tell her about the Medicare Hospice benefit that is there for her when the time comes.

I will communicate with her again before I leave this idyllic town. I am thinking about how to do that. Meanwhile, I have learned a profound lesson about being small and judgmental that I am more than happy to share while it is still fresh.

A long time ago, when the girls were hurt, a friend of mine named Father Ed Abbott told me that “Sometimes we find God and sometimes He finds us”. Today he found me.