Why not treat everyone as if they’d just had thoracic surgery?
After thoracic surgery in which 20% of her lungs were removed to clean out cancerous tumors; after four days in the hospital where I enjoyed room service and a desk to write humorous updates on her condition; and after a week and a half at home where I entertained visitors who brought copious amounts of food and floral arrangements, my wife is recovering nicely.
How do I know?
One day I opened the front door and discovered a pile of Amazon boxes she’d ordered.
Another day, her sister asked what she could bring over, and Tia didn’t hesitate: “Crab cakes.”
As CEO of her dog-sitting LLC (of which I am CWBB – Chief Walker Before Bed), she accepted a query from one of her clients to entertain for the weekend a blond fur muff with four invisible legs.
Her surgery and recovery at Central DuPage Hospital in Wheaton, Illinois, were exemplary, and we’re grateful for all the medical and nursing care she received. I just wish I had the same verve to announce to Tia at home the way the nurses and other staff did at the hospital, “Okay, time for your walk!”
Or, “Okay, time for your physical therapy!”
Or, “Okay, time for your meds!”
When I see my wife napping, my initial response – the safest response – is not to rouse her, even when I consider the motive – to get her out walking to fill her lungs back up with air – for her own good. Because I will always be verbally proven wrong.
While Tia’s been recovering, I’ve tried to be especially pleasant and accommodating, which, if you know me, is difficult. However, given the temperature of the nation these days, a spike in its fever requires high dosage of Tylenol (or, rather, let me rethink that prescribed remedy), and I’m trying to be kinder and more responsive to everyone.
For example, driving home today on rural Old Lafox Road, signs portended a one-lane road ahead. And, yes, there was the man holding the red STOP sign until one car passed by going south, when he swiveled the sign to a yellow SLOW and I proceeded – but only after waving, “Thanks!”
At the other end, I smiled and waved to the signage man, who, more surprised than if handed a hundred-dollar bill, smiled and waved back.
Not to toot my own horn, but these days I toot my horn to alert drivers who want to join the flow of rush hour traffic that they can enter in front of me. They wave, and I wave back. We have, for a brief moment, an anonymous bonding that binds us beyond all political, religious, and philosophical irritations that might divide us.
I look cashiers in the eye and thank them – along with those who round up parking lot grocery carts.
I joke with bank tellers, “Someone asked me if tellers could forecast the future, and I told him they shouldn’t BANK on it.”
(There are limits to my good nature. Like when a traffic light turns green and the driver in the car in front of me sits there texting or playing Roblox, I’ll honk my horn. Loudly and longly.)
So let’s all simmer down instead of boiling over. Pretend the next person who pulls into the parking space ahead of you just had a knee replacement. Instead of giving the person a piece of your mind (and a HONK), offer the equivalent of a cane.
• Rick Holinger’s chapbook of poetry, Down from the Sycamores,is available at Amazon and http://finishinglinepress.com. His short fiction collection, Unimaginable Things, is forthcoming in winter, 2026. North of Crivitz (poetry), and Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences(essays) are available at local bookstores and Amazon. Contact him at editorial@kcchronicle.com.More information at www.richardholinger.com.