I'll Skip the Shortcut

I park on the other side of this garden each morning and have the option of walking across the parking lot or through this path to get to work at Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital in West Ashley. The garden route is a little less direct, so I don't take it every day, which is really dumb since it is so breathtakingly beautiful.

I enter the hospital from the Women's Services West entrances, and most mornings there is be a young man sitting on the bench by the door. He is rumpled, bleary eyed, and talking excitedly into a phone. It's a different man every morning but they have one thing in common. They aren't patients but they each wear a thin plastic bracelet around a wrist—the telltale sign of a new father. They are new fathers who have fallen in love with a precious baby born during the night, and it's finally a reasonable hour to wake up friends and loved ones with the news.

That is the moment I walk by and smile to myself. It's not a bad way to begin a day.