Living With Someone Else's Pain

How do we cope with the day in day out of living with someone else's chronic, acute pain?

When you wear too tight clothing, it rubs somewhere. You chafe or blister or walk funny. You take it off and feel better. You lose weight and feel better. There's a solution one way or the other.

But you can't take off some pain, and you almost surely can't take off someone else's. If you don't care for the person or don't have regular, close contact with her, perhaps you can avoid her. With a loved one, an immediate family member, that is not a likely solution.

The family is a unit. It functions as a symbiotic life form all its own, and pain or another crisis rips the covers off that reality, sunning it in the heat of reality. When one family member hurts, all hurt. Maybe we each feel the rub in a different place and in a different way and to a different degree. But we each must find a way to cope with the pain that upholds the others individually and the family as a whole. We each reach for the handhold that will build our corporate strength so that we cope together in unity, because to withdraw, to opt out, is to weaken all and self, to collapse under the weight of a would-be usurper.

So when one person lies awake in pain or has to be accommodated in daily activity to alleviate pain and reaches out to the others for help or lashes out in exhaustion, frustration, and agony, the family unit changes, adapts to cope. How?

Words like knocked arrows poise to fly on death's wings through a heart
or like living water pour comfort into the soul

Each moment our lips and tongues tense to ship words into the world we have a choice.

There is an old saying: least said soonest mended.

So spare, careful, caring words can bond a family in pain. What more?

I ponder elements that build in crisis and will post as they coalesce into coherent thought.

Puppets and Knitting

Lulu Mouse globetrotted for a crowd of kids at the Mount Baker Community Center. Lulu and her friend learned a little about the British Isles, Japan, and Mexico, introduced the kids to folk costumes and dances from these places. The children got to participate in some of the dances. Pretty fun all around. The drawback for the forum seems parents at the back of the room talking constantly and little ones running amok to the extent the performers had to stop repeatedly toward the end to quiet the crowd so they could be heard.. Apparently, that's par for the venue. At $3/head, if you've got the money, it's not bad. And most of the kids who were interested in the performance sat up front and could hear. I couldn't figure out if the parents in the back with the disinterested, wild children didn't have other partners with them to take those children out for a walk or if they were oblivious to the noise and needs of others or if there's an unspoken agreement among regular attendees that this is how these events are. Who knows?

Buggy, a slick children's consignment and new goods shop on Beacon Ave. on Beacon Hill, hosted its first knitting lesson day. The two proprietors had two prospective knitters show up: Frank and a woman whose name I've forgotten. Frank was excited to learn to knit, especially since it should mean a finished knit cap at the end. The class lasted 3 hours and wasn't cheap, but the atmosphere was fun, and he got the hang of it (if not a lot of confidence). Little Bear and I looked through the consignment clothes, shoes, some new things, the toys, and played with the toys that were set out for that purpose. Really nice shop.

Lunch and el Quetzal (tasty) and a stop at Mount Baker Park, and we were done with our outings. A movie rental stop and home. Pretty tame for us.

The big issue that arose (and early) is how to help Little Bear become disciplined about getting places on time and listening to our guidance before we raise voices or she gets in trouble. How to pay attention to and not dismiss, disrespect, or take for granted those who love you. It's all become an issue in recent weeks. We're not batting 1,000 on this.

Miracles

A pause from the election chatter to ponder miracles, giving up, restoration, the unexpected.

This morning during the drudgery of cleaning the cat box in the basement, I noticed something small moving toward me, something coming from behind the ironing board and the cat litter bucket, something with a very sweet face and very bright eyes: our hamster Piknecon (pronounced pinecone). Startled and almost afraid to breathe, I picked her up and welcomed her back into the fold. How can a human heart fill with joy over the return of a missing hamster? But it does. I carried her upstairs to show Little Bear and Frank, who likewise could hardly believe their eyes. We took turns holding and stroking her. Then, I fetched her cage, which had been relegated to the basement but not changed since the day she went missing, September 10, 2008. I remember, because it was the day the Hadron Collider started up. Her disappearance had been bizarre: a completely closed cage, no signs of where she'd gone (droppings, blood trails if the cat had gotten her, etc.), no confessions from family of having left it open and later closed it.

Her appearance in that part of the basement, so far from where her cage had been upstairs in the living room is astonishing. Her survival after all this time is equally mysterious and astonishing.

Oddly enough, after 1 1/2 months away from us, she essentially came to my voice, did not fuss when I picked her up, and seemed very, very happy to be held and petted. She is resting in a pile of shavings in her cage. Home.

The cat has been exonerated, and her strange little dance around me, trying to get me to go to the basement (I thought to fill the food bowl or empty the litter box) has now been explained.

Welcome home, Piknecon!

Post-election

Yesterday, I sent emails to some family members asking what the election meant to them based on their life experiences. They have all agreed to sit and write it out so that I can archive it for future family members.

Today I'll share one of my memories, the one that popped to mind most prominently as Barack O'bama gave his speech Tuesday night. Vividly, the image of a young, black man, a boy actually, in my second grade class in Starkeville, Mississippi, in 1971, supplanted itself over the face of our new President. I don't remember the boys name, but I hope never to forget the image of him.

He had been made to stand beside his desk while our teacher, Mrs. Rice, berated him for his shabby clothes and told him and us never to wear clothes like that to school. She spoke of the disrespect his clothes showed, but his torn, denim shorts and hole-worn shoes without socks were not a disrespect to school. They were a disrespect to him, a human being with dignity and deserving of better. And his clothes were not the greatest disrespect in that classroom that day. Her words, her shaming behavior, her racism, her bullying were the greater offense. I remember looking at him and thinking how beautiful he was, standing there with a firm jaw and squared shoulders, a quiet, strong man-to-be, taking the lash of her tongue without lowering himself to her brutish level. He was taller than the rest of us and may have been older. He looked older than we. He did not say one word.

I sat in my seat, glaring at my teacher whom I had been taught to respect, but whom, I realized, did not deserve it.

Now, through the haze of history and memory, I do not remember if I spoke up to her aloud or only in my head. But I remember saying, "You shouldn't yell at him like that. He may not be able to afford better." Words, retorts, arguments burned into my brain in that moment. They have served me well since. There are times I think that day was a defining moment in my life, a time that said, "find your voice and speak out for those who can't speak for themselves. Never let an injustice go unanswered."

As I watched and listened to Barack O'bama Tuesday night, I remembered that proud boy in second grade and felt that somehow he had finally received justice.

Vote

The sabbatical ends today. I voted. It counted. Will my preferred candidates and measures win? Stay tuned.

Thank you 19th Amendment.