Knowing and not knowing

I drove down to the Cleveland Clinic to watch the sun set from the rooftop pavilion.  Normally, there are only a handful of people in this, one of the city's undiscovered best places.  So I was more than surprised to hear the jangle of many voices as I exited the elevator.  Thirty, maybe forty, people were sitting around the tables eating dinner together.  A buffet line was set up on the eastern edge of the room.  Black people, old people, young families.  A soup of humanity.  I noticed two women wearing white coats moving from table to table -- doctors?  Speakers?  And a man clearly selling his wares: memo pads with an insignia, a fanny pack packed with something, pens.  Everything the same rust red and creme white.

I sat on the far reaches of the room and read my book for a while, but it did not hold my interest as much as these people did.  They were all so happy.  The normal 33/33/33 ratio was all skewed.  You know: 33 percent disgruntled, 33 percent ambivalent, and 33 percent gruntled. 

(Is that even a word?)
(It is! Webster's: "The people were gruntled with a good meal and good conversation")

I left after about an hour, happy -- for some reason not known to me.  One of the white clad women was in the elevator with me.  She was heading to the 3rd floor, me back down to 1.  I asked, "Who were those people?  What was that event?"

"That was a transplant dinner.  They are all people who have had transplants."

"All different organs?"  I asked, my hands motioning awkwardly as I scanned my whole body - liver, lungs, corneas.

"No, heart. They all have heart transplants."

There was something about knowing that that filled me up instantly.  I had just spent an hour with people who had received new hearts.   I was in a room of modern miracle.  Veneration.  Wonder.  How many synonyms are there for awe?

I love those moments.  The split second between knowing and not knowing.  One crumb of new information flips the hour.  Topsy turvies the day.  Opens it all somehow.  Widens the vantage. 

Tonight I sat in a room of people who have had two hearts.  Right now, at home, I am simply trying to lock in this idea: I must never forget that that which looks ordinary may just be splendor wrapped up in plain clothes.  I never really know what I am in the midst of.  I never know when I am ten feet away from the beat, beat, beat of something far bigger than anything I would imagine.