I thought it was ironic that on the day the news of Swine Flu ramped up, I was sitting in the local Emergency Room with my mother. The waiting room was packed. I wondered how many people were there with symptoms of swine flu.
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After our second visit in one month of a minimum of 3 hrs. in the ER, I went to a much-needed yoga class. I'll admit, I was feeling completely burned out on mother-care. Since March 27th, when i got a call from Langdon at the Fort Myers airport, it has been non-stop in doctor's offices and the E.R. Why me? I asked myself. How am I supposed to get anything done while spending so much time transporting and treating bronchitis, blurred vision, anemia, water on the knee? My yoga teacher read something at the end of class that made me change my point of view. It was something to the effect that "When things weigh you down, don't ask why me? Ask what you can learn about yourself during this challenge." I felt that for sure she was talking directly to me. I spent the rest of the week contemplating what I have learned about myself throughout the challenge of caring for my parents' needs over the past 5 years. I can't say that I'm thrilled with myself as i contemplate that. I've learned that I can be impatient and self-focused. I've learned that I don't suffer fools gladly. I've learned how easy it is to be resentful. I've learned that it is very hard to be the "go to" person all the time. I've learned that I fear the future for myself, as I inevitably age.
I've also learned what an amazing person my mother is. She remains cheerful and optimistic, no matter what. She doesn't remember much, but she remains engaged in life and loves to be outside to see the birds and flowers and enjoy the sun on her face. She is unfailingly grateful to me - to the point where it drives me crazy. She loves a simple outing, but she remains quietly accepting of her life at Langdon Place. She still wants to do things like read, help put on a family dinner, hem a dress, even though she can't. I hope that maybe I have a few of her genes in me so that I may grow old and be as brave as she is.
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I've been thinking a lot about a major core value that I hold, having been invited to write a "This I Believe" essay for an Oyster River High School project. I probably won't get to write the essay, but I have been thinking that I think empathy is probably the key value I have most based my life on. It helps that I am a Libra, and usually see both sides or many sides of a situation. One of my major heroes is Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird, precisely because he tries to teach Scout and Jem the importance of seeing things from the other person's point of view. I've gone a long way in my head in thinking about this value and how it has shaped my teaching and my life. So . . . the other night when I opened a new volume of poetry by Mary Oliver and read this quotaton from Kierkegaard as the epigraph, I found myself completely revising what I thought was my core value. He wrote: "We create ourselves by our choices." That struck such a chord with me, and maybe it was because it was the same day I had been thinking about what I had learned about myself (see above), but I realized that when you get right down to it, I believe that we were given free will, and nothing is more important than the ability to make choices. In every situation we are presented with choices. This in itself isn't all that remarkable, but it served as a good reminder that I have the power to choose how I react to every single situation that presents itself to me, and that as i make those choices, I create myself.
I've never liked the saying "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," because I don't think that is necessarily true, unless you reflect on what you have learned about the choices you made in the situation you were in. It really goes back to Socrates, who is another one of my heroes, who said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
