I feel all this tension in my back from having a pretty rough couple of days. I ask River to crack my spine for me in a hug. A few vertebrae give a satisfying crack. I ask him to try a little lower. Even in trying to let him, I feel my back tense up, and he can’t crack anything else: my back might as well be a brick wall.
Yesterday was pay day. As usual, we have a few electronic payments lined up to match with pay day. We’ve experienced pay days gone wrong in the past, having been self-employed for years, and contractors for various companies. The stakes are higher these days than they’ve been in the past, however. This pay day gone wrong matched up with a bi-monthly electronic mortgage payment. Unfortunately, the pay part of the day didn’t exactly take place due to a little computer crash problem at River’s workplace. Thus, after waiting all week to buy groceries… well, nada.
It’s no fun trying to raise a family of five on dwindling resources. True, we have some Halloween candy. But that doesn’t really make for a good, healthy lunch. By the same token, it’s remarkable what you can find in your cupboard, and use to create a meal, when you get down to the very last bits. I lasted all week without knowing what I would make for dinner, and each evening, pulled off one thing or another. This morning, lacking breakfast cereal, oatmeal, and eggs, I managed to make cranberry scones using regular white flour, gluten flour, yogurt, and butter, and they actually came out better than other attempts that have been more conventional. I’m thinking, it’s really okay to run out of food.
Today we held a “world citizen stories and crafts” session at our Unity Center. A fair amount of stress was invested in this experience, in the preparation—not so much on my part directly, more of a shared stress and workload. Often with these activities I wonder if we can really pull it off, and then at the very last minute, everything comes together perfectly. We learned about India today and started little model Taj Mahals. The group of kids was comfortably small. But all of us adults were so tired.
I had shared some of my financial tale of woe and one of our friends there asked if I needed a small loan. I denied, thinking of my creative scone success. Another friend gave me a look like, “Are you crazy?” and then she said “Take it Heather,” and so I was chided into taking the cash. I feel guilty and pitiful doing so. But you know what? We walked to the local market and bought food for dinner. Four kids in tow. Walked home carrying bags of groceries totaling $26.00. Without it, I don’t know what we’d be eating tonight. Why am I so stubborn?
Last night I talked with a friend who likewise is suffering financial problems—feeling what it’s like to be in the red. Similar cupboard-grubbing going on, wanting to just give up and eat take out, but being unable. At least I know I have good company. Another friend with three children jokes with me regularly about eating beans and rice all week when pay day is a little irregular or expenses are a little more than you think they’ll be. With so many mouths to feed, it’s a whole other world.
A friend called me this afternoon to tell me her little three-year-old is at the hospital, in traction. At pre-school, another kid did an accidental pile-on—or so the story goes—and it happened to be on top of some wooden bricks. My friend’s kid emerged from the pile-on with a broken femur. This is not a child who takes particularly to sitting still for long periods of time. Now he has to be in traction, in the hospital, for up to two or three weeks, or so say the doctors at the moment. My friend is basically camping out by her child’s bedside, 24/7.
When we returned home tonight from our excursion in the neighborhood, my littlest child was climbing the stairs, slipped, and ba-da-boom-boom-boom fell all the way down the stairs, slamming his head on the railing on the way down. He was able to get himself upright again at the bottom, wailing. No blood. Ice pack applied. Crying finally faded. Eventually he was ready to take a turn in the bath.
His older brother Paolo came downstairs, crying, “Vigil’s bleeding! Vigil’s all bloody, Papa!” My heart stopped. I could feel all fluid freezing in my veins. I prepared for the worst. Had we not noticed a bloody gouge on the side of his head? Had he found a razor in the tub? Was there some other fresh, new injury, one less audible? At this point, I feel prepared for more and more unfortunate things to occur. Isn’t that what I’m here for? Some kind of punishment? For at times, it feels as though dedicating my life to selfless service is really just an exercise in learning how selfish I really am, and indeed, I deserve the worst for it. Surely not reward, or rest.
“They’re just using the color tablets in the tub, Papa,” I heard Council say from the other room. “They’re smearing the red tablet all over the tub and themselves.”
River was decidedly calm. Me? Not so much.