Searching for Good Enough

I had been asked to give a short speech at a fundraiser on Friday night. The event was taking place at a downtown club after work and featured a Ukrainian buffet meal--pretty casual and therefore not anything to get nervous about.

I had had another busy week that was not helped by the fact that I had Easter Monday off. On Friday I was barely in the office, which meant that I was typing up my speech at four o'clock. I read it softly to myself while timing it with my watch. I was aiming for a good five or seven minutes but got to the end of the page at only two minutes and a half.

"Are you going to send me your notes from the meeting today?" The medical director popped his head around the corner to ask.

I glanced over from my computer screen. "When do you need them for?" Please don't say Monday a.m., please don't say Monday a.m.

"In the next couple of days or so," he said.

"Sure." I smiled. "Hey, I'm working on a speech right now that I have to give tonight at a fundraiser. I'm only at two and a half minutes though and they asked for ten. They even asked for my bio. How am I supposed to tell them I'm not that important."

"Whadya mean you're not important? You got some good quotes in the news last week," the doc said.

I grabbed from my bulletin board the copy of the Free Press article on women and their shoes that Amara and I were in six years ago. My new co-workers know about my thing for shoes so I had brought it in to share with them.

"This is the kind of quotes I'm used to giving," I said, and handed him the article. He read it and laughed.

"Don't worry, you'll figure it out," he said, and left.

I went back to my drafting and about half an hour later was reading and timing it again.

"For crying out loud it's only three minutes!" I dropped my head into the keyboard and heard laughter around the corner.

"You'll do fine," the doc said. Well, easy for him to say. Massive internal bleeding and trauma for regular work assignments have a way of making something like my short speech look like a scrape on a knee.

I went back to editing and, when both satisfied and completely out of time I asked my other co-worker if I could read it to her. She thought it was beautiful and said it would make a person cry. When I was done I noticed that her eyes were all red but I wasn't sure if that was from my speech or seasonal allergies. She's been sneezing a lot lately.

When I arrived at the event I spoke to a few organizers and family members before sitting down with my own parents who had come out to support me. I had grabbed a plate of food but didn't have anything to wash it down with.

I was suddenly aware that I was incredibly thirsty.

I spotted my dad's beer on the table and took a swig while he was away in the food line. Maybe it was the not-your-babcia's perogies and cabbage rolls food pairings, but the cold lager actually tasted good (I still don't really enjoy drinking beer). Dad came back just as I was stealing my second sip.

"Hic," I slapped a hand to my mouth and my eyes bulged out.

"What? I saw you take a sip of my beer," my dad said, obviously deaf to my uncontrolled, spastic release of air.

"No, I hiccuped," I said, still afraid there would be more to follow. I envisioned having to approach the event organizers and telling them I was "hic" sorry, but I "hic" wouldn't be able to "hic" speak that night for "hic" obvious reasons. How freakin mortifying. Thankfully, the muscle spasm did not settle in, and I was fine. Lesson learned.

I was on as soon as I finished eating. I had no podium to stand at so I had to juggle my notes with the microphone while remembering to breathe and read at a normal pace (I wished I had had time to practice the speech more so I didn't have to read it, I hate it when people do that). I looked around the room trying to find a sign that someone was hearing my message. I couldn't tell. I finished with a shy thank you and stepped to the side to hand off the microphone. Then I sat back down with my parents.

"That was really good," my mom said.

"You think so? I was reading too fast and my voice was soft," I said.

"I don't think so," my mom shook her head. "I thought you sounded fine."

The loud inner critic stopped chirping soon enough when the mother of the person the fundraiser was in honour of came up to thank me. After her, another woman came up and asked me if I would come and speak to her driver's ed classes in the summer. I can hardly wait to tell the doc on Monday.

 At the end of my speech I asked, "how much do you think your signature is worth? Ask the people who've received an organ because someone signed their donor card and they'll tell you it's priceless." I don't need to win everyone over every time I go out, but if I can get one, two, maybe three people to really hear me out and then go do something with that, I've made an important difference, a priceless one. That's good enough.