Turning ordinary into special
I learned something today – my life’s too ordinary and several recent Vocal Point columns have confirmed that fact.
Take, for instance, Chicken, the feisty, feathery freeloader who adopted Stefanie Pettit, inspired several columns and has sprouted a feathered fowl fan club. No doubt about it, Chicken has made Pettit’s life less ordinary.
Writer Cindy Hval had a steal-your-heart morning when she met an autistic child she nicknamed Matt. Matt’s smile and whimsical personality stole Hval’s heart and a bond formed as they waited for his mother. This chance encounter made her life less ordinary.
Deborah Chan’s columns explore the psyche behind ordinary topics from Baby Phat to sun-worshipping, giving readers something less ordinary to ponder. She also shares her literary insights into characters and plots, which, in turn, create a book less ordinary. I wish I had this literary prowess. Alas, I don’t.
What I do have is a bum knee; an ordinary bum knee that was recently re-bummed when it met concrete in a very ordinary fashion. I tripped.
It doesn’t cluck, rarely oozes literary proficiency, and most assuredly couldn’t snatch my heart if it tried but there’s no doubt, Gert, my nickname for this somewhat cantankerous bum knee, puts a definite hitch in my giddy-up and is as much an irritant as the new but unimproved Spokane Valley City Council.
Gert makes me pause – not in confusion like I do whenever another City Council fiasco hits the news – but at every stairway, step or curb. See a doctor? That might jolt my too-ordinary life.
But sometimes a jolt is needed to realize that a life less ordinary is hinged in perception. That jolt came in the form of a co-worker.
Dorothy Thomsen and I have worked together for 20 years. We have a bantering yet respectful friendship. She smiled when she told me she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Smiled. Like this was a new adventure. Like it wasn’t a big deal. Like a life less ordinary.
She told me about the mammogram, the upcoming surgery, chemo, and radiation treatments; smile solidly in place. Then her brow furrowed and I braced for the tears. But Dorothy’s life is less ordinary.
“I hope I don’t start whining,” she said. “You tell me if I start whining, OK.”
I nodded. “I got your back.”
After surgery, Dorothy complimented the doctor and staff. “They’re so efficient,” she said. “I’m so lucky.”
In the weeks that followed, she had a port inserted for chemo treatments. It flipped. Dorothy thought a T-shirt that said ‘The Flippin’ Port’ would be dandy.
She had her head shaved. “It was going to happen anyway,” she said, sporting a jaunty biker chick cap. “This is kind of fun.”
To make matters less ordinary, she’s planning an August tea party celebrating her successful conclusion of chemo.
But even a life less ordinary has an obstacle or two.
A recent setback had Dorothy in the hospital and on the phone teaching me bookkeeping basics. This was no easy feat. I’m barely teachable with a carrot dangling in front of me. She sounded weary, distant; but by that afternoon her sense of humor returned. “I’m done doing secret patient surveys,” she joked.
During her absence, I sat in her office ruminating over Quick Books. One afternoon, after a particularly intense rumination, I noticed quotes of strength and comfort taped on a tissue box and wall. I remembered how people in the building asked me to convey their good wishes to Dorothy. I recalled the unwavering smile, tea invitations and “The Flippin’ Port” T-shirt and it kind of hit me – this isn’t a life less ordinary; this is a life extraordinary.
And so I learned something today from my fellow writers, a co-worker and even old Gert. An ordinary life, given the right perception, can transform a life too ordinary into a life less ordinary and, if we want, a life extraordinary.