Ruby Made My Day February 17th, 2023

                       

 Ruby Made My Day

Friday February 17th, 2023

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         I knew I needed to walk again at the hospital. My recent directive was to walk every day!!

Because it was Treacherously Icy out, I chose to walk at Hennepin HealthCare in the long corridors of

 care  I know so well. We are all waking up from the Pandemic and I am glad to be back after 3 years.

    

      I go through the sliding doors, past all the stickers one receives frozen to the sidewalk.  I ease 

inside and there sits Ruby in her wheelchair, large purple quilted piece on the one leg she has now. 

I need go no farther. Easing myself into the empty wheelchair next to her, knowing its girth will hold 

me. I chat away.  I'm real good at chit chat. It's easy to talk to her. 

She tells me she. doesn't need to go into the  hospital. We breathe that collective sigh of relief because

 we know How Good That Feels!! 

    I ask her if I can draw her and she says Yes. I regret my drawing pad is So Small because Ruby 

deserves to be drawn really big and bold on a large piece of paper. But I make do. 

My lap becomes my studio once again as I set my watercolors on my big thigh. Yup! Got it all right

 here! I draw her as beautifully and carefully as I can. Mooshing  the colors,  but my feeling for her 

comes through. I am critical of how it goes..but then It's Done, I give her the

 portrait in a silver envelope and I say.

"Thank You Ruby for Making my day!!!!" 

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