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| With a sketchbook, even the Emergency Room is tolerably interesting. This, from last month’s visit. |
Yesterday morning I struggled up out of sleep to the sound of my phone ringing. My second oldest child was taking her turn with the collywobbles-sans-merci and needed a doctor. Without thinking much about it, I threw my clothes on my back, my backpack in my car, and slipped down the Thruway to Buffalo.
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| Any place people are sitting, there’s a drawing waiting to happen. |
I drill into my kids that they should carry a scraper, candle, matches, chocolate or energy bar, small folding shovel, and an extra jacket or blanket in their car. The deaths in Buffalo last month should be a reminder that this is not just motherly paranoia, but a reality for America’s snow belt.
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| You will never be bored, or at least not impossibly bored. |
I’m going to add one thing to my own list: a sketchbook. Even though I’m an old pro at hospitals, the before-dawn phone call rattled me, and I didn’t check to be sure it was in my backpack. I spent nine hours in waiting rooms, and all I could find to draw on was my own eyeglasses prescription.
Neither waiting room had magazines, which were, in my day, the last refuge of the terminally-bored person. They’ve apparently been replaced by large television sets. Daytime TV is shockingly bad. I might have already known this except that when I’m in waiting rooms, my practice is to burrow in with my pencil, drawing the passing parade.
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| And occasionally, waiting rooms contain delightful surprises, like this elegant skeleton. |
Let that be a lesson to me. Be prepared. Make sure my sketchbook is always in my backpack where it belongs.
Oh, and my daughter is doing fine, thanks.
