I wasn’t on duty that night.
It was summer, 1967. Our hospital’s leading surgeon strode into the office, flipped off the paging switch, ripped the unit from the wall, then stalked away.
A broken circuit. A bent plug. A whiff of char.
My friend, running switchboard, stared at the metal-tipped cord meant to connect Dr. E. with his caller. Um, no, the doctor was not available. Could she take a message?
I know the feeling.
Socially, I’m feeling awkward these days. Not fully available. Seems I’ve misplaced my knack for navigating multiple, incoming signals.
My weekly Zoom conversation with five laughing women (often talking over each other’s words) can overload my senses — especially when my internet connection proves unstable and the audio cuts out.
I can’t keep all the lines sorted.
Fifty-some years ago, when I trained on the hospital switchboard, if I moved responded too slowly, calls would bottleneck. The insistent beeps and flashing lights overwhelmed me.
Verbal triage demands concentration. While directing telephone traffic, I’d ask, “Is this an emergency?”
Then I’d pause for a deep breath. Now, who did I put on hold? And what on earth did they want?
This past week I planned a small, pandemically sensitive, airport sendoff for cherished friends moving to Maui. We sang lyrics customized for the occasion — through masks — and yours truly busted a few Hula moves.
Laughter. Cheers. Cellphone captures. Words of remembrance and love. A-lo-HA!
Our friends beamed. After a year, it was heady being together again, even briefly.
And yet. I felt an odd sense of suspension, like a caller not yet plugged into the desired source. Inner switchboard, jammed. It caught me off guard.
From our earliest hours onward, touch fosters thriving. Sure, elbow bumps offer contact, the shared chuckle. Eyes may communicate soul but don’t always reveal nuance. Something vibrant seems lost. Or tabled.
Unused, my social skills have languished; my small talk sounds rusty. Too many days touched by sorrow and sameness can weary the spirit, fray generosity, erode compassion.
Isolation can also tutor us in the ever-deepening riches of creative solitude.
Dreamer assures me I’ll readapt, with practice. Will I reenter public gatherings fully? Gratefully?
Poet Angela Alaimo O’Donnell writes:
. . . You feel less lonely
when you’re part of a posse and still
your named and singular self.
St. Benedict writes: Always, we begin again.
Meanwhile, I’ll savor my ongoing pen pal endeavors, offer what ease I can to others. My lapse in social fluency may or may not dissipate. I’m okay with that. Going forward, from somewhere deep within command central God may switch my assignment, redirect my connections, as needed.
My job? Stay available.
How about you? What short-circuits your availability?
***
Excerpt, “The River,” Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O’Connor
Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash
Laurie, this is a remarkable metaphor for the short-circuiting I’ve been feeling, too.
Although I’ve been connecting with people one on one for some months now and family hugs have been plentiful there is still a bit of in-between that is not the way things used to be.
I can relate on the overlapping Zoom voices and screen overload–our brains were not wired for all that input and it is right to be overwhelmed.
One gift is that as our interactions slowly return, at least in my estimation, we will treasure them more.
Sending you a wave hello. Hawa’ii pun intended.
Jody, it’s helpful to me to have the “overload” to our cranial hardwiring confirmed. Thank you.
I’m so glad for the life-giving interactions you’ve been able to sustain over the past year. May they deepen and multiply gently. And safely.
Meanwhile, I am taking to heart your idea about the slow return of social contact as a gift we won’t take for granted. A gift.
Yep, jammed switchboard here, too–the one where my brain’s thinking wires have crisscrossed haphazardly. I hardly know how to think anymore, especially in regards to social interaction. It’s tiring try to navigate the opposing opinions of people I care about.
While I endeavor to hang in this suspension with contentment, I trust that the One who wired me will arrange the mental switchboard as He intends with love and wisdom.
You made me smile with the image of the flustered you in the midst of beeps and flashing lights. Not that I’m happy you were overwhelmed, but just thankful that God allowed you to grow there and to one day use the memory of those beeps and flashing lights as a creative lesson and encouragement for others. Pretty cool. Thank you. God’s working out His plan for you, too–with His Love and Wisdom.
Carol, huge yes to this:. I too find that fielding conversations amid polarized opinions is fatiguing (and often dismaying) in the extreme—especially among those we love.
Your example heartens me. I too want to face “this suspension with contentment” and trust the one who wired each of us uniquely.
Running that switchboard was my first job. My sister reminded me our mother also ran a switchboard. I had forgotten that. The photo I used in the post looks a lot like she did in her youth.
When the memory of training resurfaced, the experience felt remarkably pertinent to current life. I love the way God threads our lives with stories that come round again with a new layer of relevance, a new insight. A new reason to be grateful for the One at command central. : > )
Blessings on you as you navigate, friend!
What a treat to be together for your airport goodbye party, so good for your friends to have that memory! And for all of you, with the now-familiarly awkward distanced togetherness.
“…my social skills have languished; my small talk sounds rusty. Too many days touched by sorrow and sameness …”
I am experiencing these too as lately I run into the bumps of unpracticed social skills, feeling at times more like a child who just wants love than a senior with life wisdom to help show the way.
All you state of elbow bumps and conversation through masked speech, satisfying/dissatisfying connections – life as it is for now, and thank you for affirming it’s peculiar normalcy.
“God may switch my assignment.” You’ve been peeking into my world again, dear lady. It’s strange to be allowed to visit my parents inside after a whole year. I can’t help wondering what’s next. How have my priorities changed? Thanks for naming these feelings so beautifully.
Kathy, how wrenching these long months — for you and your cherished parents. To be separated so long, then finally, cautiously, allowed “inside” challenges family life beyond anything I’ve imagined. Priorities shift. I feel it, too. There may be new holy “Nos” that will need to be said so that we can say “Yes” to what’s needed now. May Grace guide us tenderly in the months ahead.
“I can’t keep all the lines sorted.”
“Inner switchboard, jammed.”
“Something vibrant seems lost. Or tabled.”
Laurie,
I SO relate to this post. It is like a balm to my soul.
OH, and the “muffle factor” of the masks – I get it! Am becoming hearing challenged too.
Thank you so much for sharing from your heart, mind, and soul:)
You have ministered to me to today.
Gratefully,
Katie
Katie, it is a shared balm, then, for I feel less alone, reading your words. Thank you. (Initially I typed “a shared blam” . . . cartoonish, but perhaps an apt speech bubble for feeling feeble, in public.)
Thank you for letting me know the post ministered to you, a response that makes this heart simultaneously bow and soar.
Oh yes–stay available. The disconnects that come to my mind are unavailability and inflexibility. I tend to be driven by my own agenda and miss opportunities. I’ve been known to chafe at interruptions. I’m still learning to be more mindful of people than the to-do list, more open to intrusions that God may have engineered. With St. Benedict I celebrate that always we can begin again!
Nancy, oh boy. You nailed me with “chafe at interruptions.” Yes, me, too. All too often.
This especially inspires me: “I’m still learning to be . . . more open to intrusions that God may have engineered.”
Your words re-frame interruptions (and disruptions, and while we’re at it, perhaps even certain eruptions?) as potential opportunities — intricately planned, by Love. Now there’s a view changer for me. Thank you, friend.
I like this… “I’ve been known to chafe at interruptions. I’m still learning to be more mindful of people than the to-do list, more open to intrusions that God may have engineered.”
Thank you.
“Changes – They come, Changes – They go…change, rearrange …that’s how we grow” …this favorite song runs through my mind so often and along with it the beautiful voices of my two most favorite musicians…thank you Klein’s!!
Dear Ruth, what a quiet delight. Thank you for offering those lyrics back to us today, as a gift. Timeless truth. And now the tune’s playing inside my head . . . : > )
I’m with you, Laurie….more socially inept than ever. I miss people’s mouth’s. I can’t hear as well as I used to—I never realized lip reading was my go-to hearing enhancement tool. I miss the mouth’s micro expressions that give away our emotional state. Without the mouth so much humor is now interpreted as meanness rather than humor. We cannot forget how to laugh! My eyes are crinkled beyond mere crows feet for trying to be as transparent & free as the mouth in blabbing my emotional state. How shall we ever recover? I’ve decided to exaggerate my expressions beneath the mask. I don’t want my mouth to forget all those smirking skills. And I’ve told my eyes no more eye rolling. No one interprets that right without a little help from the mouth. And same thing re winking. Who knows what to make of that?Missing your face, Dear One.
Susan, you describe this so poignantly. I’m now giving thanks for the mouth’s ingenious design, fashioned to be so profoundly expressive. You’ve given me pause for praise as well as to picture specific expressions, and how we interpret them. As an artist who sometimes paints portraits, you must be acutely aware of how the face works as a unit, each feature contributing to the overall expression. I’m seeing how wondrous this is! You are uniquely positioned to describe this and I join you in mourning our collective loss. I shall take to heart your words, “We cannot forget how to laugh!”
Thank you for widening my view today!
P. S. My hearing at certain frequencies is dwindling too, especially amid ambient noise. This makes the muffle factor of masks more challenging. Wish I could lip read. I’ll have to work on that . . .
P.P.S. And now I’ve shot my wad for exclamation marks for the next six months.
Attention to faces… especially eyes.
Like never before.
My aim is to continue that focus, after we’re unmasked.
What a beautiful aim, Rick. I’m going to join you in that.
I wonder if it will come naturally at first, because we’re so relieved and grateful to really take in faces again. Like when your arm’s been in a cast and sling for 6 weeks and after they saw off the cast, the first time warm water cascades over your skin it’s enough to make you cry.
Just thinking yesterday, “We’re due for some Laurie!”
So I prayed for ya’ll.
Thank you for this.
Yes, feeling disconnected.
Enjoying some of it.
Saddened too.
I need His Help.
Everyday.
I don’t always realize that.
Comfortable in the cruise control life too easily puts me in.
Help! I need somebody
Help! Not just anybody
Help! You know I need someone
Help!
No, wait…
Help! I need You, Lord.
Help!
Just You.
You are enough.
It’s Palm Sunday.
Hosanna!
Basically, “Help Lord, now. You’re good.”
Thankful for that four letter word… “Help!”
And that He is.
Rick, thank you for that prayer! No wonder this post came together so easily, along with finding the photo on the first try.
My introvert nature has no doubt eased the way for me this past year. Like you, I’ve enjoyed opportunities isolation has inspired and fostered.
But oh my, the profound, ongoing heartbreak, all over the planet!
I’m taking your updated lyrics into the day with me, Thank you!!
Oh, not a prayer for a post.
But hey, God only knows. 🙂
My personal time with the Lord almost ALWAYS includes, I Love You Lord.
Which often includes making mention of you.
And yours.
I do remember the prayer for ya’ll though…
That you would Know Him, See Him, Love Him – MORE.
It is what I pray for me and mine – daily.
Perhaps the post was collateral blessing, released in the overflow, because those three phrases you prayed go deep.
I am touched to hear the song continues to speak within and through you, Rick. And so grateful for your prayers. You and your family have mine, as well. I keep your last email flagged, in my inbox. Nor can I forget that aerial photo. You’ve expanded my notions of rescue . . . and the lengths God goes to, for each of us.