I'm two weeks in to my third round of childcare-induced pneumonia. How am I feeling? I am fine while I quarantine myself inside my apartment, padding around in my socks from bedroom to living room and back again. I am especially fine when my babysitter isn't out sick for three days. But this time around the circuit, I decided to conduct an experiment. And I think I'm ready to present some preliminary findings. They are not very hopeful.
The night the sentence was handed down, I started by texting a friend while I was in the pharmacy waiting for my antibiotics prescription to be ready. Oh no! she said. Is there anything I can do? Well, at that very moment, not really. She did offer a couple of times since then, and I made several attempts to get her and her very tightly-scheduled toddler son to come for a playdate with me and Abe, but no dice.
I then decided to appeal to Facebook. I have a number of friends on Facebook. Not in the thousands, mind you, but a nice comfortable number, and a good mix of local and remote people. Now, the fact is, I tend to keep to myself, and I married someone who tends to keep to himself, and together we are a couple of loners. I've tried numerous times in my life to insinuate myself into a community, to the point that I become an indispensable part of one, and my presence is solicited and I'm missed when I'm not there. Other than my work life (where I was being paid to be there, and had a job to perform), I can't say I have succeeded at this. Combine with this the fact that being a stay-at-home mom is isolating in itself, particularly when you still have kids who nap and it is so hard to sync schedules with the parents of other napping children, and you start to see one possible source of the stress that has bounced me back to the province of the sick for the third time in as many years. So I started posting on Facebook. Pithy stuff. Gritty realism. Awww, look what kid x said stuff. Even a bald-faced attempt to bribe someone to come over and make granola for me, since I had my mind set on a particular recipe, but no energy to make it happen. What was I hoping for? What was the desired outcome? It has to do with community.
For the past two years, I have been involved with the PTA at Jonah's school. I have taken on the role of coordinator for getting meals to families who have had new babies. I have arranged dozens meals for families, many of whom I don't know and haven't even met, all because we had the same thing happen when Abe was born, and I was so bowled over by the gesture I decided to make it my job to ensure every family who had a baby had the same opportunity to feel cared for. I'm friends with a lot of parents from Jonah's school on Facebook. So, naturally, I thought some of those folks might step forward with offers of meals, playdates, or just say that they could bring Jonah home from school until I was well. I even asked to relocate a PTA meeting to my home because of my pneumonia. Everyone came. No one brought anything. I served them tea.
One person did get it. One. She made us some meatballs that were so delicious I thought I might cry while I was eating them. In fact I think I did. And she said what I was hoping to hear from others, that given how many others I have helped, I deserved a turn to get some help too. In the interest of full disclosure, and lest I understate the facts, another friend brought banana bread (thoughtfully using honey instead of sugar, because of my new self-imposed dietary restriction). And more recently another friend brought a lasagna. Neither of these people learned about my plight on Facebook, however.
Josh and I are traveling tomorrow, a trip to Puerto Rico to celebrate my 40th birthday, and we're leaving the kids behind. I'd like to think that perhaps wires got crossed, messages got muddled, and people think I am just fine now since I'm going on a trip, and that this is why no one else came forward. Yesterday, with the sitter here, I ventured out to find some new warm-weather clothes. I was only in the store for a few minutes when my chest tightened and I thought I might pass out. It felt like a panic attack, but more likely was the start of a relapse. I've had several hot flashes since then, which I have learned are just as dangerous as a temperature actually registering on the thermometer (I didn't have one, not once, this whole time). I am seeing the doctor for a followup this evening, and I'm petrified that things have taken a bad turn and that I won't be able to travel after all.
I'm taking this lack of response way harder than I should, I realize, but perhaps that's because of a very low blow from my mom this morning on the phone. She isn't nearby and is currently incapacitated, so all she has been able to do is field my anguished and stressed out phone calls this whole time. Today, she snapped and said that this is all because I've chosen to live in New York, and having made that choice, I have to deal with it. This is the first time she's been quite this insensitive. I get that she's frustrated from not being able to help me, but it felt like a wanton bridge-burning to me. She apologized, because my father yelled at her for saying it, but she hasn't called back to make things right.
I want to believe there is not some seismic shift going on here, that this is just the result of pneumonia which is the result of negligent care-taking of myself (and considerable stress), but I really feel like things have changed. I suddenly feel no particular allegiance to the community I've tried to make myself a part of for the past few years, since there seems to be a lack of recognition that being sick is just as valid a reason for helping as having a new baby in the house. Or, is it that people don't understand the extent of pneumonia? That they don't realize if your lungs aren't functioning 100%, you are simply fucked? I can be "feeling" "better" and still be up shit's creek in terms of my job as a mom. I don't have a consumptive cough or any other outward symptoms right now, other than looking like crap and inability to walk up a flight of stairs without hyperventilating.
I better stop as Jonah is coming home from school soon (I had my daily scramble to arrange someone to walk him home). I don't know if anyone's following this blog regularly anymore, but if so, and your name starts with A., I know that you've had pneumonia recently too, and I'm sorry I wasn't more proactive about helping you, as far away from me as you live. I could have sent food, could have sent some dehydrated soup packets or some astronaut ice cream or even just a book for you to read, and I didn't. I'm really sorry.
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2 comments:
I'm crying.
And kicking myself for not...doing something. For mistaking fb as a reliable source of information on how my friends are doing. I remember knowing you were sick and thinking you were fine. Because you have lots of friends who comment on your posts and you were going on vacation but jeez, I needed to pick up the phone and say hey, thinking of you.
You know, when I was poor and you sent wine through the mail? That remains a shining example of how to treat people. I think of that gesture whenever I hear of a friend in need. And still, so often I do nothing and blame my thoughtlessness on time, energy, funds, you name it.
I wish I had read this five months ago, and I wish more I had picked up the phone without even having to read this.
Are you coming northward at all this summer? Maybe we can meet in the middle somewhere?
Oh, sweetie... thanks so much for finding this. I'm glad you did. But please know that the wounds have healed and I'm all the better for having been through that. There are well-documented limitations to social media and I seem to have been living proof of them. Things are just not as bleak as they were, though of course there are the occasional blips and downturns. I think the negativity of my last post kind of killed my desire to write, and that sucks, because I think I do much better when I do write. I've been avoiding writing for quite some time (unless you count what I do on Facebook, which is not much at all).
It gave me so much pleasure to send you wine that time! (Even though the company has never stopped believing that I want to make it a regular occurence.)
We'll be on the Cape in late August - will you be anywhere nearby?
xoxo and please don't cry for me, Argentina.
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