Retirement is not what I thought it would be at all. It is actually more tedious than going to work. It is definitely more stressful. My husband has a medical issue and we sit in the overloaded waiting room filled with old people our age. We have already been through the lab for a blood test and a bashful urine test that lasted an hour. The results of the lab tests are things that we have to wait for; a kind of waiting room of the mind. Then it is my turn. I do not sleep well the night before I see my doctor, who, by the way, is as young as my middle child. I have had a blood test, and have had a urine test that did not take an hour. The waiting room experience was once again filled with old people my age. My husband played golf on his phone. The results of the blood and urine tests usually lead to more waiting rooms at more doctor’s offices. I’ve read all of the magazines from five years ago to the present. It now seems that pushing back my cuticles is more entertaining.

One always worries. Is this test going to show all of the mistakes I’ve made as a youthful person? What are these doctors looking for? Day after day, week by week, and month after month our lives are busy going to different doctors and dentists and sitting in waiting rooms, worrying. It is a Disney circus line because the outer waiting room moves along slowly and you think you will be home by lunchtime, but you are ushered into a small room with a single chair, an examination table, a stool, and a non-descript cupboard. These waiting rooms are boring. You can read the charts by the sink and on the back of the door: all boring. My husband plays golf on the phone and I push my cuticles back on my fingernails. We don’t talk. We wait.

I imagined strolling on a tropical beach, travelling to distant lands, becoming foster parents to abandoned kittens. I want to do these things. But, I am in the waiting room of life to deal with mundane health issues. I sometimes dream that I am waiting to be the person who comes in with a health care worker to check me into a doctor’s office. I sit in a wheelchair in a waiting room and push back my cuticles as I look at my hands in my lap. I wake up with a start and see a light coming from my husband’s side of the bed. He’s playing golf on his phone.