Friday Round-Up: Good Catch

Posted on December 23, 2017 by Jan Wilberg

Every day this week had a message or a lesson but it would be futile to order them Monday through Friday like the underwear I wore when I was six. I always wore Wednesday on Monday anyway.

Tonight in a tiny hospital room where one of my children was having an unexpected and blessedly brief stay, a nurse gave me a popsicle to sooth my coughing, maybe as an alternative to kicking me out. I’m not contagious but I concern people, most of whom feel compelled to tell me about tea and honey.

I am sometimes torn about responding to my children’s emergencies, especially if they have a significant other already on the job. But then I go because, after all, there are significant others and then there’s your mother.

Our Hanukkah dinner fell on the 9th night of Hanukkah. There are only eight, we just read the dates wrong. It is a production – Hanukkah is – but it has its own zen. It always has an intensely beautiful moment that, if you’re lucky, you’ll remember the entire year.

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Thursday, I watched a new appointee to the Board of Directors of the local Continuum of Care responsible for coordinating homeless services close his eyes as he listened to a discussion of a new procedures manual for admitting people to shelter. The next day, the volunteer street outreach program he works with posted on Facebook about a homeless woman found dead of an overdose in the woods.

A mental health administrator being strenuously questioned by many of us a few years ago made the cautionary statement “Assume the best intentions.” And I have taken that on as a mantra — to not assume that people I think are doing the seriously wrong thing are doing so out of malice. I endeavor to assume the best intentions. But it is plenty hard a lot of the time. Sometimes impossibly hard.

That’s the round-up of this week ending December 22, 2017.

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Photo by Jorge Gonzalez on Unsplash