I’ve been under a bit of stress lately, and have been acting strangely as a result. Things culminated yesterday and today. While preparing last night’s dinner, I put some olive oil in a large pot to warm up, so I could sauté some onions. I think I must have put the heat on fairly high on our gas burner, and then I left the room. My mind was elsewhere. Somewhere speaking in zeros and ones.

A few moments later, a room away, I smelled something burning slightly, so I raced back to the kitchen to find the pot filled with smoke. Duh, I said to myself, thinking about how I’d need to start over with a fresh bit of oil. I picked up the pot and quickly placed it in the sink, which already had a couple of things in it, but I didn’t remember what they were and figured it was just too bad. (As it turned out later, one was a plastic container, which melted completely into the pot’s bottom.)

No sooner had I put down the pot than the oil caught fire. It was in slow motion: fwoomp. The whole pot was ablaze. I stood there and stared at it, and hours passed.

Then, stupidly, I put the faucet on, and blasted it into the pot.

If any part of my brain was functioning up until this time, by now it was seriously impaired, because any dork in the kitchen knows that you don’t put out an oil fire with water. The fire answered back, yesss. It blazed full up to the cabinets, which are kind of high up there. (Just ask my mother, who has been known to remark more than once, “This is a kitchen made for giants.”)

Another hour went by while I watched the fire and wondered how long it would take before the cabinets melted. I blasted more hot water. The fire relented, and went out. I guess it had really only been a second, or even less, when it flared. My heart was in my throat, and my kids were in the next room. I thought about all the things we could lose if the house went up in flames. How some people weren’t wearing shoes. I didn’t know where all the pets were. It was cold, and raining, outside.

As it happened, there were only a few sooty traces on the cabinets above the sink. I was able to use a back-up pot after talking myself down for a while to try to come back to cooking, and I didn’t try to multi-task with anything else unnecessarily.

Today, though, this kind of thing happened all over again.

I was trying to get some work done in a rush, in the time I had available between taking my children to school—which was insane today because of some road construction right in front of the neighborhood fire station, so the walk was a din of beeping, growling, grumbling, smoking, and revving large machines—and going to do an interview near City Hall.

As it happened, though, I was distracted by ten thousand things while doing email and reading the morning news feeds, and ended up hurriedly leaving the house, remembering enough to grab my iPod for recording the interview as well as my wallet in a purse, a notepad and pen, and oh yeah, a jacket. As soon as I stepped out the back door, which locks without a key, I realized I had left my keys in their usual spot inside, maybe because I grabbed a jacket I don’t ordinarily wear, and so I wasn’t checking for the weight of the keys in the pocket. I also didn’t put the jacket on, another safeguard for remembering my keys.

I stood there for a moment feeling really dumb. Then I figured I was going to need to cancel my interview, since I was already running late, and now I was never going to make it. I left a voicemail and then called River at work. He was in a meeting but was going to drop everything to bring me his key. He works an hour’s drive from home. I felt like a dork supreme. I began rummaging everywhere in the backyard, wondering if the key fairies had somehow decided to help us out overnight. No dice.

River said he’d call me back when he was on his way. Twenty minutes passed. It was cold outside, and the air was raw. It wasn’t raining, but the air was preparing for it, and worse, the temperature was just above freezing. I was underprepared, with no gloves or hat, and not the warmest jacket. The garage was the only place with any protection from a nasty wind that was blowing from the north side of the house, cutting across the back porch, making that an unpleasant stoop. Every time I went back there to sit, I ended up shaking uncontrollably. Back to the garage. For a while, I put on canvas work gloves and half-heartedly did some yard raking to try to warm up a little. I was so depressed from locking myself out and being an all-around loony tune, though, that I just couldn’t get into it, and I kept obsessing about how all the stray cats in the neighborhood seem to use our yard as their litter box. I kept wondering, what am I doing trying to clean up this mess of a yard?

When I did finally speak with River, he told me that his office intern, Tim, would be driving up with a key. That was a relief. River could stay and take care of his huge pile of work. He had already planned to stay late at work that night. I didn’t want him to have to drive so much during a productive work day.

To pass the time, I played a game on my cell phone for a while, but this was during one of those uncontrollable shakes phases of my wait. Back to the garage again, to stand around, and wonder what else to do. Finally it was close enough to time for Tim to show up that I went to the front of the house and waited on a chair on the porch. Our porch is very close to the street, so when you sit there, you end up basically greeting everyone who walks by. Not many people were walking by. It was grey, depressingly grey, and quiet, except for the rumbling and grumbling and beeping of construction vehicles a few blocks away. Eventually the mail carrier came along. She chided me for sitting outside. I shivered at her. I explained my predicament, and she told me about her preemie. Without being locked out, I wouldn’t have known the details about her new baby.

I talked to my mother on my cell phone for a while as well. It was good to have someone to more or less moan and groan to although I tried to keep that to a minimum. Then, while we spoke, Tim showed up. He was very business-like. He got out of the car, handed over the key, politely said, “You’re welcome,” to my thanks, and drove away. I gleefully went inside and pledged to take some time to tend to myself, to reduce this baffling, apparent stress problem. I made a warm lunch and took a hot bath. I got under the covers and had hot chocolate. The shivers abated, and I began to feel better.

A few hours later, I needed to stop by the neighborhood post office to pick up the Bahá’í Assembly’s mail. I believed that some important annual election documents might be waiting there for pickup, so I grabbed the PO box keys and thought I had enough time before school let out to do the errand. When I got to the post office a few minutes later, it occurred to me that I didn’t remember what the PO box number was. I called River (again) to see if he had that information in any emails. No luck. I asked at the counter, but couldn’t decide what name the box would be listed under. The first two attempts yielded no listing. I was now late getting my kids at school. The postal worker brushed me off, saying, no, wait just a minute, I’ll find it for you, and then he disappeared for what seemed like five more minutes in the depths of the post office. I had to take off.

Getting the kids was a procedure of going inside to locate them at the office, where they are brought when parents don’t pick them up outside. If parents don’t show up for a little while, the children are brought to a central city school where care is provided. I don’t know what happens to them after that, if parents don’t show up. I have never had to retrieve them like that, and I don’t want to get into the habit. I raced from the post office to the school (a few short blocks over rough, under-construction terrain). I am fortunate not to have gotten into an accident, because my head was still somewhere else. When I managed to get the kids, and return to the post office, the worker there had discovered the PO box number, gave me a brief quiz, and I was able to retrieve the mail.

When I returned home a bit later, now through relentless pouring rain, while fielding innumerable questions and comments from my children, I looked through the mail to discover that the envelope I had anticipated was not there.

I went to look through a separate pile of Assembly mail I had set aside from my last PO box pickup. Sure enough, in that batch, was a large, unopened envelope with the documents I sought. It had been sitting at my desk all along. I don’t know how so much time passed, and why I didn’t get around to opening some envelopes in the pile. Then again, I’ve been paying bills late all winter. I’m not on top of any of this.

At dinner that night, which I prepared successfully with nary an oil fire or a locked-out-of-doors, and served in a timely fashion to my children without any other adults around to assist (very challenging for me lately), I opened up about my problems.

“I’m feeling really stressed out,” I told my kids. “My stress level is up to here.” I held my hand, flat out, at the top of my forehead. I recounted for them the things I had done lately that prove my absent-minded condition.

Paolo then exclaimed, “I know what you need, Mama!” He stood up from his dinner (this often occurs at our table when people want to make a point or need to run a few laps, and it drives us nutty), and he came over to me. “What you need,” he continued, “is a visit to the spa!”

The boy was so right on, I just couldn’t get over it. “You’re absolutely right, Paolo,” I agreed emphatically. “I totally do need that. I need to relax.” I am not a spa-going person. I rarely even treat myself to decent chocolate, let alone a massage or something as indulgent as an appointment would require.

Vigil looked at me sideways from his seat at the dinner table. “You do need to relax,” he echoed.

Then they started whispering amongst themselves. Paolo came over to me again and started rubbing my shoulders in earnest. “Just giving you a little preview,” he said. From then on the children behaved like angels. Paolo recited his haiku from school, which was lovely. Vigil ran around in circles after eating only a little, and Council ran to hush him on my behalf; I could hear her saying, “Mama’s got a headache!” (which wasn’t true, but that was fine). They cleaned up after dinner (mostly), and ushered me upstairs to wait while they prepared an upstairs room for… the spa.

The kids set up our small TV room by opening up the sofabed and spreading some blankets down, arranging pillows just so, and placing a side table next to it with a few news magazines neatly spread out, with a fresh glass of water. A jar of lotion sat on the bed. Sticking out from a tall shelf was Paolo’s green, plastic light saber, which had a purple sign taped to the extended saber. The sign hung at about my chin and read, in cursive, “The Delicate Spa.”

The spa itself was a true delight in pampering. They lotioned and rubbed my feet and hands, and took turns massaging my shoulders, back and head. Their collective attention to this waned quickly, but I soaked up every second of it. I told them that it was the very idea of it that made me feel so much better, and anything else they did on top of that was extra delight.

“Is your stress down now?” they asked.

Later, when Council and Paolo were in bed reading, Vigil gave me a “therapist” session, which he felt was an important part of the spa and stress-relieving experience. I had told him earlier, at dinner, that therapists mostly listen, they may make gentle suggestions, and they ask questions. This was in response to his question, “What’s the name for that kind of person you can talk to when you have problems?”

He tried to follow suit while he listened to me, but started off right away wanting to tell me how to solve my stress problems. I asked him to wait a minute and listen to me explain, but he kept talking and gesticulating enthusiastically about his fixes. This went on for a few minutes, until as I reflected, I uncovered something slightly new about my erratic behavior.

I said, “There’s something else about what’s been going on.” Vigil looked at me expectantly, listening. It helped him listen if I gave my idea a headline, a short proclamation. “I just realized that I haven’t even been aware of my stress when I do things that are dangerous or without thinking clearly. I try to act as though nothing is bothering me.” Vigil waited, with a goofy, wide grin on his face. “So my problem is that I’m not even paying attention to what I’m doing or how I am feeling.”

Vigil’s eyes lit up. “That’s it! That’s it!” He started jumping up and down in place so he became a blur. “I know what you need to do! You need to pay attention!” He then delivered a long soliloquy, while jumping, about what paying attention would solve. More therapy sessions should be like this.

“But how do I pay attention?” I asked.

“When you’re doing something, especially something that might be dangerous—” and here he reminded me of some of the dangerous things I had done lately, “—make sure that you’re paying attention first!”

Later, while I tucked him in, Vigil bragged to Paolo that he had solved my problems with just one piece of advice.

Posted by Heather B on 4 April 2007 at 11:15 pm.