Provoked & Considered V. 4
Trying to ground myself in crisis
What did I do to deserve my children?
I had to lean on my daughter last Monday night to talk me off a ledge, and that was not fair. She’s 28. I’m 49. But she grew up so wise, funny, grounded, and patient. At times like these, I’m sure I married into the right gene/environment pool.
Here’s how she reminded me that we all offer bad advice out of the best of intent.
In short, the text from my son Alex’s partner read, I think he needs to go to the ER. His neck is swollen, and he’s in intense pain.
Flashback to that morning: I sent him screenshots—again— of his insurance card for the dentist and medical coverage.
Flashing back for months: He’d asked for these several times before, and once he went to an emergency dental clinic. He’d need a root canal and crowns, they’d told him. They quoted a couple grand on top of insurance. Plus days off.
He’s 23, hustling at a full-time job, gigging on the side to make bills. He needs a cash boost now and again. We try to say yes. Still, he sells his gaming systems and his TV in a pinch. We used to sell CDs, but not the big stuff. Then again, his rent is twice what we paid back in the day.
Go to the dental school. They work on a sliding scale. Get this done! You’re covered under Mom’s insurance now. Don’t put it off.
He did anyway. He didn’t feel like he could take the time to make an appointment during work hours, take time off, or try to work out the co-pay. He’s always behind on his bills. We were too at his age. I can’t blame him. But I make about the same as when I was teaching; David’s a minister at a small parish in a small town. We both side hustle. Only in the past five years have we been able to dig ourselves out of the constant overspend cycle.
Flashforward to Monday and my uncharitable response: Didn’t I teach this kid not to use the ER as regular care?
The picture is probably how my son felt.
Go back to the clinic. It’s open for two more hours. If the infection’s that bad, they’ll send him to the ER again.
His partner, A: We’re worried they’ll just dismiss him again.
Me in my head: They won’t. Showing up twice in a day is a warning sign.
Me to A: The ER is ten times more expensive than the clinic. He’s always on the edge of financial stress. I just want him to be okay.
Me to David: Can you please plead with them? I have to meet my client.
I speed off to meet with a writer who is 83, has survived insulin shock therapy, lived a full life, but whose body is deteriorating due to the abuse of that treatment. My client is pretty deaf, and we have some hard stuff to work out on how he’ll do revisions on his book. I ignore texts for two hours.
When I leave, I see that Alex is at the ER, that they need to transfer him for emergency surgery due to a serious, but not septic—yet—infection, straight away in the morning.
Why am I a shit mom? I ask myself. I did this once before when he was in high school and we were in Indy for the evening. Don’t go to the ER, Alex. We’ll be home in forty-five minutes.
He needed to go to the ER both times.
Driving back from my meeting, I called David, who, like any good clergy, was already on the job, to free me to beat myself up. I’ll listen, he told me.
You don’t need to hear this, I told him.
Instead, I texted a friend who has brain cancer. Sure, she needed me to ask, Do you have some margin?
Then I called my daughter, Mae. She’s an ABA therapist with a master’s in behavioral therapy, mom of littles, wife, and all-around badass.
I did it again. I advised him to consider his financial interests before his health.
He’s going to adult the way he adults, Mom.
Ugh. Yes. He had postponed treatment. I had bit my cheek except to say, You are still covered under my insurance. Just get this done! It could affect your health later.
Okay, so yes. I gave the best advice with the information I had. After all, he’d just spent an hour chatting with me two days before. He’d not complained.
But bacterial infections can blow up fast! I watched The Big Sick. My sister, sister-in-law, and friends are nurses. I know the potential.
Mae talked me through.
The next day, as I held down the fort and David covered the hospital vigil with Alex, Mae lifted her shirt and showed me, yet again, another bite bruise, this one on her ribcage. She keeps calm with kids on the spectrum, then she puts her kids to bed, then talks her mom off a ledge, then sends DoorDash money to Alex’s partner, who is also sleeping on plastic chairs in the corner of a waiting room.
These are hard times, and I keep doubling down, trying harder. If I learn more, maybe I can learn my way into grace, into wisdom, into humor in hard times, into better decisions, right?
It’s been a season here. After my mother-in-law was hospitalized, a few weeks later, I ended up with shingles, the infection that won’t let go.
I’m trying to deal with all the external disequilibrium at the same time. How do I, as a clergy wife, consider all the people in our congregation? How do I show up as my most authentic self when I keep looking at the corners of the room and seeing the people isolated there? I’m always pushing out of one group for the sake of the person alone over there.
At home, I bury myself in podcasts, books, essays and conversations about the ideas that prod me out of my comfortable assumptions. God help me if I trust in the wrong chariot, put my faith in the wrong horse, or do the wrong thing in the name of the Lord God.
This week, in all its travails, afforded me enough time to listen to Andrew Ferguson, a great artist in Edinburgh with whom David traded inspo for songwriting! This is the “Darkness at the heart of town.”
I continue to find the work of Pierce Alexander Marks. This piece on “Reasons to live during (and after) the enshittification” contains some highly valuable life advice from Tartavosky.
I finished Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke, just to push myself. My dad would probably say, Yeah, this is what I think of all you kids after college. I have a fellow homeschooled friend whose dad told him recently that he wished he’d never encouraged his kid to go to college. But the book does some great scrutiny without saying that the ideas behind the now denigrated wokeness have value. We’re just using those ideas as words to let ourselves off the hook. This short post from Lehigh Valley Workshop hits the key points (coincidentally).
My son and partner forgave me for the bad advice, by the way. It’s the advice we give when we have a healthcare system that isn’t working. An employer-based system that charges the max for the deal made with that employer, and doesn’t cover some, and means co-pays on top of lost paychecks.
He doesn’t hold my previous mistakes against me. It’s best, I’ve learned to admit, Hey, I made a mistake here.
I came out of an authoritarian household, where that kind of transparency, vulnerability and humility doesn’t exist in the hierarchies of parent/child, let alone within the world at large right now. I’m thrilled that our family is practicing this, and as a result, we are healing from my past mistakes. I pray this gives us resiliency to grow closer to one another and find the grace of God in it all.
Here’s my final recommendation, from my partner in life, recounting the ER events. I’ll have you know he was the dude on the job for most of the kids’ appointments because clergy have more flexibility in their days. And they make great dads.
Check out the new Worktown Review.
Shout out to A. She was a trooper. She’s a keeper. https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3014637849/?ref_=tt_vids_vi_1