Room

Usually I get in to Linac3 right away (don’t ask; I don’t know either. On my first visit, when I asked where the radiation lab was, the nurse said, “It’s there on your paper.” Uh huh. Wait. I just realized what Linac means: Dianne told me the other day that the machine is called a linear accelerator—lin ac—If that’s any help when you’re looking for a radiation room). Today they were running behind, and I was supposed to wait 40 minutes, but Amanda in Linac1 said she could fit me in. Because I’m quick. In and out in fifteen minutes.

I notice the differences in the room right away. They stand out in this solidly white room with its white bed under a white sheet under a white machine waiting to swallow me. On this ceiling, instead of giant dew drops on tree branches against a blue background, they’ve bolted giant hosta leaves against a purple background. Not that I know they are hosta leaves. When they are 200 times too big, it’s hard to recognize them, but Amanda has been in this room a long time, and she’s figured out what they are. She says that makes this the Purple Room. Next door, the Yellow Room has falling leaves. She says that the bosses switch things up every so often (think about that phrase for a bit. Every…so…often? TESL students must be shaking their heads). They change the technologists around to new rooms and partners to break the monotony.

When Elai was in high school, she wrote a research paper on a possible career path that I  had wisely picked out for her. It was precisely this job, a technologist working with death rays or sound waves that travel ultra-ly through your tissues. It’s a great job. Good pay. You get to work in one white, windowless room for eight hours a day, helping very ill people in and out of a machine. “Right,” she said. “I get to look at what is hurting and killing people all day. In a room with no air. No thanks!” So much for my planning my daughter’s career path. She’s now a drama major at Wheaton, managing lights for a play called Caucasian Chalk Circle with half a car sticking up out of the stage. If I weren’t visiting Linac 1, 2, or 3, I could go see it with her. Sigh. The life of a starving artist, my dear. But so much more FUN!

But I tell you I am thankful for Dianne and Rob and Derek and Amanda who attend me, calling out those numbers, shifting, measuring, adjusting, syncing me to life. As they prep me, they say in their young voices, “Excellent. Perfect. Very good. I agree.” I feel part of a job well done. You can find satisfaction in any room. And compassion. And hosta leaves.

Really. Take Room. I haven’t seen the movie yet. It’s out this year. If you see it before I do, tell me what you think. The book was astonishing. It’s about Jack, born and growing up in one 10’ x 10’ room until he’s five because his mother is a captive there. To Jack, the room is an entire world because his mother makes it one, for love. “Good morning, Room,” he says. “Good morning, Lamp. Good morning, Sink.”

Hamlet, with such a different mother, cries out, “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” Do you know, it’s up to us to make the room livable? To call out, “Excellent?” To make a room a fairy tale with Sink and Brush for characters? To plant the hosta—on the ceiling if we have to?

Paul says, “I have learned to be content.”  God’s second greatest gift. After what makes it possible. Love. Am I ready for such a lesson?