The Epiphany Of Cranes

     As I walked the skyway on my way to the hospital on the second day of testing I heard a child's voice cry out with excitement.  "It's moving!" he said.  "It's moving....the red one!"
     The skyway was filled with Cleveland Clinic employees on their way to work, patients, walking from the parking deck to their appointments, golf carts whirring by with other patients who were unable to walk, maintenance men tending to the skyway's speaker system which ordinarily piped in soothing, new-agey music which was now noticeably silent.  Among the muffled conversations around me the excitement of the child's voice felt hopeful and alive.  I looked ahead and saw the source and I smiled, but it was also the source of much reflection that day and an image I will probably never forget.  Toward the end of the skyway, where the street meets the hospital's Glickman Tower, stood a mother bending down behind her child, both of their faces filled with wonder and excitement, looking East out toward the sunrise.  As I walked, I followed their gaze with my eyes and saw the source of their excitement.  In the distance, probably three blocks from the skyway, were half a dozen towering cranes, even in January, working on construction of The Cleveland Clinic's new Cancer Center.  I had passed this scene the day before a dozen times but never really paid much attention to it.  It wasn't until I was alerted to the activity by the child that I noticed that construction hurried along on this new center....even in the middle of the winter, even this early in the morning. 
     Standing behind him, her face as eager and animated as her son's, the boy's mother pointed excitedly.  "Look, look!  The blue one too!" she said.
     "What?" said the child, scanning the horizon for the new excitement. 
     "Right over there," she said, patiently.  "Right next to the green one.  The blue one is spinning around!"
     "Oh yes!" said the child, as thrilled to see it as to have this connection with his mother.  He looked back at her proudly and with a look of tender joy.
    
     It was just a year and a half before this that I walked this same skyway on my way to visit my mother in law for the last time.  I couldn't help but think of her......all mothers really.  It is after all from the eyes of our mothers that we first learn to see the world.  From our earliest age they guide us to what is important, they teach us, they shelter us and they share joy with us.  This simple gesture, a mother and son, was more for me this day than this one private moment.  There was a universality to the gesture that struck me and stuck with me for the rest of the day and clearly still sticks with me. It felt important and significant to me and I paused to honor my mother in law,  my mother, my father and my good fortune for having been allowed to experience this connection in my own life over and over again since infancy.  No matter what the day could bring I had been given this gift.  I held it close to me like my own memories and I walked on into my future, across the threshold to something new and unexpected.  I knew I wasn't alone.  I was seeing the world through the eyes of everyone who had come before me and I was alive with purpose.