Wannaskan Almanac for Thor’s Day, March 8, 2018

   My wife was lamenting about what she had not accomplished today, then went ahead and listed what she managed to do, downplaying each activity as unworthy of mention or success. I reckon we all may feel this way sometimes, especially as we age on and don’t quite have the impetus to do all which we think we should. Surely, it can’t be an unusual phenomenon.
   Lately, I’ve been driving an older neighbor to his doctor appointments in a city an hour’s drive west. Waiting outside a hospital, as a (hopefully) healthy person, I observe people going in and coming out of the facility, as a visual of hundreds of imagined scenarios, some of which I can reconstruct personally and others take but little imagination, many of which offer my wife and I the knowledge that however limited we feel any given day, we are thankfully not among those individuals who must languish in pain and discomfort in hospital beds wishing they could be at home. We have much for to be thankful each day.
   I stood off the main aisle near the hospital’s main entrance and watched as a medium size van pulled along the building. A man wearing a picture ID badge on a tether around his neck exited the van and walked to the passenger side of the vehicle where he opened the van’s sliding side door. A small boy of about six years old walked out of the vehicle and playfully stamped about, in the snow that had been brushed off the sidewalk there, as the man remained in the van, the side door still open. I thought it odd that the boy was unattended, although he stayed close to the van, and never strayed away. Soon the man stepped out of the van. He turned and pulled a narrow steel ramp out and to the ground. Down the ramp came a girl, of about eight, in a black powered wheelchair with a blue frame and backrest. Pausing to wait for the man and the little boy to accompany her, she nimbly turned toward the entrance and entered the building as though this visit was a common occurrence. The two afoot walked briskly to keep up.
   A nurse walking behind me, pushed a patient in a wheelchair to the entrance. She locked its wheels and helped her charge to stand up, assisted by a man I presumed was the patient’s relative or friend. Another patient wearing a nasal cannula, and pushing a walker containing a small oxygen tank, had walked down the aisle under her own power, arriving just as the nurse turned to return to her point of origination. The nurse smiled affectionately upon recognizing the woman. Saying something, the nurse stopped and gave her a warm hug before allowing the woman to leave the building.
   An older man, with an ID badge, sat on a chair to the right of the main door was a parking lot valet, I figured out, just I remembered seeing parking places near the building designated as “Valet Parking Only.” (I don’t get out much.)
   As I waited out in my car, a 40-something year old man apparently deep in thought, walked past, carrying a large yellow toy duck, a balloon and some clothing. I figured somebody he knew had had a child or perhaps one had been hospitalized and was in the process of going home. He was just carrying things to the car to help get ready for the move.
   Other people, unseen through upper story windows, look out at passing traffic, watching the repeated change of traffic semaphores and writhing exhaust as cars and trucks accelerate or idle, one behind the other for blocks in any direction, all those people going on about their lives oblivious to another’s life, as birds whirl by in the pale blue sky, the city’s starlings and pigeons, the crows. People at Perkin’s appear occasionally in the large tinted glass windows. Garbage trucks heave across intersections. A young woman fills her car with gasoline as she watches the dollars and gallons increase. A shiny car among dirty cars awaits a U-turn when traffic allows. A tall man in a cowboy hat steps down from a short bed truck. People point at a coffee mug left atop a car going by, someone in a hurry this morning.

                 Happy Thor’s Day from Palmville!