Is what I screamed last night after a day's frustration, after taking apart the pipes in the bathrooms sink, after Drano, after Zooming with Jude's dad and still not being able to fix the clog. He said we could go over to his house and pick up the auger in the basement.
"What does it look like?" we said, being non-handy people.
He sent a picture from the Home Depot website along with specific directions through his basement, "to the little room past the furnace room and to the left of the washer on the bottom shelf," where it will most likely be, "but blue, not orange."
It seemed like an odyssey, but we found it. Together, TCF and Jude augered and fixed the sink. It took putting the pipes back together several times. It took learning to take that unruly auger like a bull by the horns. It took patience and Youtube and our family team. It took all we had. On any other day, it would have taken a miracle. It took a pandemic. And we did it.
And then the burner went out on the stove. Just stopped working. No heat when heating up the morning kettle for coffee. "Is this some sort of intensive gratitude training immersion?" I shouted in not so many kind words. Like, okay, now I should be grateful because we still have three burners? Such abundance! And when the heat stops working, do we tell ourselves, "well, at least we have blankets?" Yes, there is always more to be grateful for in comparison. There is always someone, somewhere who has it worse. But is that supposed to make me feel better? Shut me up? Does defaulting to comparison negate the feelings I must feel in order to move on and do what needs to be done? Is there space to feel compassion and grief and frustration? Is there space to feel like giving up when so many people are out there saving lives?
Usually when something breaks, I call someone to fix it. "I'm a Jew!" I say, "I can't fix anything!" I've lived in perfect harmony with this arrangement my entire life, having learned early that it's okay to pay someone for help, especially when it comes to paying someone for the skills you are lacking and for the tasks you are physically unable to do. Now, with no choice but to fix things ourselves, I'm beginning to see that maybe we're way more capable than we thought. I'm beginning to see how many things I believed to be true about myself were confining, not helpful. First Zoom and Paypal, now plumbing. Hot damn!
One of my students recently told me "because they're all I have," when I enviously remarked upon how supportive her family is to her—her husband and two teenage kids— and how much she leans on them for encouragement and support. It seems they're always cheering each other on from the sidelines. I was deeply moved by her reply. "Because they're all I have."
"Well, that ain't my family," I joked, without giving due credit to my little family, who may or may not cheer me on, but it never occurred to me to ask. In my family-of-origin, we did not ask; that may have been deadly. But this is now. And this is my family today. And this is what cheering on looks like during a pandemic. And in this very moment and for quite a while it seems, when it comes down to it, they're all I have. Together, we just might fix that stove. Together, with enough cheering, we might realize who we are as individuals.
And that we're going to be okay.
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