Showing Up

Friday night about dinnertime I got a call from Dr. Bill Cutrer, with whom I've co-authored seven books.

Our family goes way back with Bill. Starting in 1986, he was our infertility doc. In 1992, he took us to Russia with him. Ten months later, we all returned. The photo is of the overnight train we took on that trip from Moscow to Minsk with an anesthesiologist friend (Bill's on the right; Gary took the picture). We went to Minsk to follow up on our translators from the previous trip. Then we returned with him one more time the following year. After that he left medicine to pastor a church in our town. He asked us (prayed, convinced us) to join him. We agreed. And as part of that church, we made three trips to Mexico with him on mission teams. He and I went on to coauthor books. And when Alexandra came into our lives, he placed her in our arms.

Well, Bill moved to Kentucky six or seven years ago to become a seminary prof. But he and I continued writing , thanks to Word-file attachments in cyberspace. We finished our last book two years ago.

Okay, so back to Friday night. The call was pre-arranged, as we're updating our book on marital intimacy for its third-edition launch.

I should add that holding the phone and writing notes takes some doing in my one-armed state right now. So at times simple tasks on this project have left me feeling overwhelmed because of my limitations.

So the phone rings. Gary is due home from work in five minutes, and Alexandra is in her room playing music. I start to settle in with the manuscript when I hear the doorbell ring. I groan.

Bill lives in Kentucky. We are talking long distance. On his dime. I hate to make him hold while I see who's there. I consider not answering, but he tells me to go ahead. Yet I have to hold on to the rail to go down to answer the door. Problem: I have a phone in my only free hand. And I'm not about to navigate stairs without holding on. (I fell head-first down the same stairs last year, even "holding on," which is why I'm operating one-handed now.)

I call and call to Alexandra to get the door, all the while apologizing to Bill, who (frankly) sounds a little impatient. Finally she emerges from her room, but when she gets downstairs and tries to see out the window into the dark, she hesitates. "It's some man..." she says. "I don't recognize him."

She knows better than to answer the door to a stranger. That's good. But she tells me, "I don't want to open it."

Agggh. Whoever is waiting can see her standing there. I apologize to Bill again. His response? With a laugh in his voice, "Tell her to open the [dang] door." So I tell her I'm watching from upstairs. It's okay. She can open it. Please just open it!

So she finally does. And the man standing there has a cell phone to his ear. And he's talking to me on it.

Turns out he was in town for a medical conference. He'd arranged the details with Gary a few weeks back, and neither breathed a word to me about it.

Two hours later, the manuscript was ready to Fed Ex, and Bill was on his way.

The same girl who said she didn't recognize that guy stood on the porch and waved on tiptoes until his car had disappeared from sight.

Bill has always said that 90 percent of friendship is just showing up. Sometimes I think it's closer to 99.