“Where are you safest, Maggie? Helping others? Teaching?” Jim __
I was rather much up a creek without a paddle, as the saying goes, with this week’s writing group prompt. I did have my hearing aids in, and I was very much paying attention, but I could not “get” one members’ poem without looking at it as he read it. So I emailed him with the request that he send me a copy. He most kindly did so, but I couldn’t find the “safer self” quotation anywhere in the poem he sent. Amid that confusion and my embarrassment about it, however, Jim sent us his own reflection, concluding with a question for me. Coinciding as it did with a long visit from my daughter and her family, his question knocked me off my feet and opened my heart at the same time.
At the beginning of my career as a teaching chaplain, one of my committees pressed me on my compulsion to care for my mother. I was told that I would never be certified until I figured out that dynamic. Of course, I headed straight forward into the issue with my usual intensity. I am good at helping others, mostly because I inherited from my father the message that I wasn’t good enough to have or to ask for myself. When he died, my mother told me she expected me to provide all the affection and security that she had never gotten from him, and so I did, for many years. When I retired, my biggest struggle was my sense that it was now “my turn,” but instead of an obedient daughter, I had children who were doing well just to take care of themselves, let alone figure out how to care for their mother. I struggled mightily with my anger, sadness and loneliness in that place.
My aunt – – I took care of her for many years, too – – left enough money so that I could retire to Pilgrim Place. I told my daughter that they would never have to care for me because all my needs were securely taken care of. Then, the last day of my daughter’s recent weeklong vacation with her family, she and I sat in the sun for the whole day while the rest of her family him and explored the trails at the top of Mount Baldy. Phuong often talks about the end of her life, but now we had the time and closeness to go further. “I hope to live to be 100,” she said. (This was new, and I was so glad to hear it.) “And I want to be just like you, mom. I can take care of myself, and I don’t want any fuss. No funeral, just take my ashes, and toss them away somewhere.”
That was an unexpected opening for me. I responded, “Anh, when I said that, I was probably pretty angry. I didn’t think you cared or had the time and energy to care for me. So I arranged all that myself. I took care of myself, but I was angry and hurt. For example, here, when people move to assisted living or to the nursing home, their families almost always come to help them. I’ve watched that, and was sad and embarrassed because I assumed that I would have to do all that myself alone. So, if I ever need that kind of help, and send you all tickets to come, would you come to help me?”
So often, when I ask him Phuong and even for something very small, like a time when she will be home to accept a package I send, she responds with reasons why she can’t– her schedule, her time squeeze, the difficulty of planning ahead for anything, etc. This time, there was none of that. “Of course, mom! Of course, we would come to help you. We love you, and we will be there for you.”
I don’t think I have ever taken that kind of risk with my children, and very rarely with friends or neighbors. It is far more comfortable, safer, for me to respond to needs that I think are obvious. In the end, I’m exhausted, and I’m angry that others don’t respond. In actuality, my assumption is arrogant because periodically others have helped in quieter ways. Of course, many factors come into play around an issue like this. For example, I “help” by going to great lengths to celebrate every birthday of the several hundred folks on campus. Folks loved a surprise full dress bagpipe serenade on their special day, and when I could no longer play my pipes, I turned to writing a personal birthday letter to each, along with a chocolate bar. That is a nice project, but it is motivated by my fear of getting lost in the crowd, my hope that someone would celebrate my birthday, and of course, my fear that someday I will need help and no one will be there.
So here, it is enough most days to be thought of as funny, kind, generous. Now, my daughter knows my secret, that I am also sometimes needy, sad and lonely. An irreverent theology professor friend of mine always referred to God as, “Old-I’ll-Be-There.” Yesterday, that was my daughter, too. And sometimes, probably more often than I think or fear, others are there for me as well. I wish it weren’t such a big ****ing deal for me to ask.