The Tunnel

To get from the V. A. Hospital to Shands Medical Center there is a long underground tunnel with white walls and a tile floor, all very shiny. Ceiling fluorescents light the way and make everything so bright, it almost hurts the eyes. It curves in some places and has a slight upward drift going to Shands. Coming back to the V.A. is easier, mostly downhill until the very end when it rises slightly.

I saw many people walking this tunnel for exercise. There is a sign on the right wall as you exit the V.A. It tells the length and how many laps you should walk, but I have forgotten those details. The tunnel goes from the basement of the V.A. to the ground floor of Shands. I never grasped why the ground floor of Shands is not called the basement since there is a 1st floor, the floor I always went to, either by elevator or stairs.

I didn’t walk the tunnel for exercise. I walked it when my husband was a patient at the V.A., which was many times before and after he had his colon removed in 2007. He had ulcerative colitis. The walls of his colon were very thin and riddled with ulcers. Several different drugs were prescribed to halt the almost constant bleeding, but nothing much helped until finally surgery became our only choice.

After his surgery, problems from not having a colon resulted in numerous hospital stays, most of them due to dehydration. If you Google “function of the colon”, absorption of fluids is the first thing on the list. When you have no colon, this becomes a big problem. If you have ever had the flu, you have a tiny idea of what dehydration is like. Jim felt this way and worse most of the time, tired, sleepy, nauseous, and dizzy. Proper nutrition with no colon requires 24/7 vigilance, and even then, things go wrong.

The tunnel was my get-away when the recliner in his hospital room became too much or when he was taken somewhere for tests or when he was sleeping. I invented reasons to walk the tunnel. I listened to music in the Shands atrium and looked at all the pictures on the walls that young patients had painted. I tried every restaurant in the food court, and when our daughter or grand children visited, we tried the Shand’s cafeteria, a hot meal for a pittance. I bought earrings, gift cards, and notebooks at the gift shop. Even the bloodmobile was a welcome diversion. 

In the tunnel everyone was friendly and smiled when you met their eyes. I wondered about their stories, but the tunnel was a place to somewhere, not a rendezvous for conversation. Everyone continued on with purpose. Some of them I recognized as doctors and nurses on Jim’s floor.

When Jim felt well enough, I talked him into the wheel chair and pushed him around as long as he would let me. Sometimes we would get lunch to go at the V. A. cafeteria, and I would guide the wheelchair to an outside picnic table. Many of the grounds of the V.A. are beautiful, especially when you have been inside much too long. On the way back, I would always stop at the hospital library and pick up some new reading material.

And when the tunnel was closed at night, I roamed the V.A. halls. I joked with the nurses that I could be one of those volunteer guides, and often I did give directions to people who looked lost…and were.

But the tunnel was my favorite place to go. I felt in control. I knew exactly where I was going, and I knew what was at the end.

A Room with a View

I spend a lot of my time in one room of my home which I have named Connieann’s Corner although it is a room with four corners, and my name is Connie, not Connieann. Connieann’s Corner is also the name I chose for my blog on Google’s Blogger website. How Connieann came about was from a spelling error on my original Social Security card. Someone forgot the space, and so these millions of years later, on my blog, I revitalized Connieann.

The room I refer to as Connieann’s Corner is actually the third bedroom of my three bedroom home. 

It is filled with drawing and painting supplies, art in progress, books of all genres, my computer, and most important of all, a comfortable chair and a window with a view of the outside world. I sit in front of that window now. My Chromebook rests atop my drafting/drawing table and fights for my attention with birds, plants, neighborly walkers and even a squirrel. By raising my gaze I can report on the weather, the traffic and the time of day. In this stay-at-home time this window is a direct link to my sanity.

In the morning I enter Connieann’s Corner carrying my breakfast bowl of oatmeal topped with yogurt, strawberries, blueberries and a few walnuts or pecans. As I twist open the blind, it is not unusual to see cardinals, chickadees, wrens, sparrows, finches, jays and even a mourning dove eating from the feeder or drinking or splashing in the birdbath. Since the squirrel is a recent guest (I say that word loosely), he may be hanging upside down from the porch post with his nose in the feeder as well. 

The feeder and bath, a turquoise dish in a jute sling, hang from porch beams. Both are so familiar to the birds that they sit in the bushes nearby as I clean and refill. The squirrel backs up a few feet but remains in sight as though questioning my authority.

About three feet in front of my window is a six foot loropetalum bush which routinely blooms with tiny pink flowers attracting bees and butterflies. Closer to my window but still hanging from a porch beam is a red glass hummingbird feeder. I have seen many different hummies drinking and sitting on the homemade hangar. If I should go out onto the porch while they are feeding, they confront me with their buzzing noise and reluctantly fly a short distance away until I retreat back inside and they can resume drinking their sugary water cocktail.

On the ground directly under the window in the right angle made by the join of the porch to the house is a concrete birdbath. The roof valley above naturally keeps the bath filled with rainwater and no doubt is one of the reasons the squirrel and other wildlife find my porch so attractive.

When the weather is cool enough, I open the window and can better enjoy the birdsong chorus and squirrel chattering and hummie buzzing. Mopsy, my cat, loved to sit on the inside sill of the open window and stare down the lizards that traversed the porch rail. She made that little clacking noise in her throat and the anoles red-throated balloons would expand as they came on guard. She never seemed interested in the birds, somehow knowing they were beyond her reach. And the birds never minded her, hardly glancing her way. The squirrel came calling after her passing.

The most unwelcome visitor I ever saw was a lengthy black racer. 

One morning when I opened the blind, he was slithering up the porch post headed for the feeder. I am sure I gasped at the sight of him. He hung around for quite some time, basking in the sunshine, waiting for a meal, but when no birds appeared, eventually he slithered away, back to where he came from. Another unlikely sight was a hawk that swooped past my window, gliding under the porch and on to his unknown destination. I am sure I gasped that time, too. And I have seen numerous egret and ibis families strutting around the front yard with their long legs and curved necks possibly pretending to walk their kids to school.

Recently, turtles have been a popular sight with a street crossing directly in front of my house. Several cars have slowed with some stopping for the driver to exit and deliver the turtle to safety in my front yard. I read online that it was best to let them continue on their journey as they do not roam far from home.

I am grateful for the wildlife that parades in front of my window, and I try not to miss anything, but of course I do. It saddens me that it is possible and even likely that sometime in the future, there may be a silent spring as Rachel Carson predicted. I hope we will have leaders that fight for laws that protect all wildlife so that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will know the joy of watching a cardinal spray a sunlit fountain of tiny water droplets into a clear blue sky. For now, this is something Covid-19 has not changed.