Angels All Around

My friend had changed her conventional name Linda Ann to conventional Linda, dropped her middle name and family last name, and adopted unconventional An as a last name. Now, every time one forgets and calls her "Linda Ann," it is really her first and last names being used -- "Linda An." It's as if one would say in my case, "Please pass the salt, Barbara Waters." You've lost a friend and gained a stranger. We remain friends, nevertheless, with mutual interests.

Linda An writes spiritual poetry and is a reliable caregiver for difficult occasions, having taken care of her frail mother. A large woman, she can easily wrestle into shape the light transport wheelchair I sometimes use in public. And of course we have our helpers.

As we left the neurologist's office on August 4, a tall man with his hair drawn back in a ponytail patiently held open a series of exit doors for us and my wheelchair to pass through.

"He's our Third Angel," I said to Linda AN. "He even has a ponytail like our first one"

"Thank you for all your help," she said to him. "You are an Angel."

To my surprise, his face beamed and he exclaimed, "Why, THANK you." He was actually pleased at the thought. Or perhaps at the recognition.

A second, short-haired male angel had helped us enter through the same difficult doors.

Our First Angel had been the most impressive. He had materialized outside our car a month before at the Taos hospital when we were trying to squeeze me out of the car in order to have some xrays taken. I'd had my first bout with pneumonia and was very weak. Pneumonia, by the way, is one of the leading causes of death for Parkinsonians
due to rigidity pulling key chest muscles out of place, thereby reducing cavity space.

Suddenly this man wearing a shiny navy-blue, one-piece astronaut's suit appeared beside my open car door. He had on white sneakers and his hands were covered with a pair of cream-colored rubber gloves. His long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail; a card on his chest read "LAB."

"Let me do it," he said.

In an intricate maneuver, he reached sideways over the top of the car door, lifted me up by the armpits, pivoted to his left, and plopped me outside the car into the waiting wheelchair. He saw us inside the entrance doors, then disappeared as Linda An wheeled me over to the xray reception room.

"Where did that man come from?" I asked.

He materialized again beside the door in the hallway.

"I was just taking a break from the lab upstairs where I work," he said.

"What upstairs?" I said to the empty hallway. "There is no upstairs here."

I sometimes cry out of gratitude for all these helpers everywhere, whoever or whatever they are.