In Good Faith by Maria Polonchek

Author:Maria Polonchek [Polonchek, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2017-06-08T04:00:00+00:00

6

Meaning and Purpose

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

One morning in June, the kids fresh out of school for summer, I eased out of bed and immediately collapsed onto the floor in pain, doubled over and breathless. I had been living with a disc injury in my lower back for almost a year and had tried almost every nonsurgical treatment possible, with little relief. After months of masking my worsening condition with ibuprofen, enough was enough. My spine could no longer support me. Less than a year earlier, I was backpacking with my kids, climbing the toughest hills on my bike, and perfecting my push-up, and now I couldn’t even crawl to the bathroom. I cried out for Chris, who was in the kitchen, as he had been every morning for much of the year, on his own to keep things running while I tried to get through the days. That morning he found me on the floor, carried me to the bathroom, and held me over the toilet, no hesitation. It was one of the more humiliating moments of my life, the words “in sickness and in health” never having such meaning as they did when he supported my weight while I peed.

What were we going to do for the summer? I didn’t know how long it would be until I could get off the floor, let alone walk again, and we had three kids at home all day, every day. We couldn’t afford to outsource anything. We had no family nearby, and while friends and neighbors offered to help, we knew they were like us, hustling to keep things running even in the best of circumstances, without a lot of bandwidth to take on new challenges. Chris managed to take a week off work but couldn’t miss more than that. The domestic chores I’ve come to ambivalently embrace over the years—cleaning, cooking, laundry, scheduling, schlepping—fell by the wayside. I knew the work I did at home was of value, but I didn’t realize how much value until I couldn’t do it.

I worried about the kids. Their summer did not look promising. We live in an isolated rural area, and I couldn’t leave my room, let alone take them around to swimming pools or barbecues, baseball games or camps, or the number of other activities their friends would write about their first day back at school for “My Summer Vacation.” What would they do with their time? How would they have any fun? How would they survive twenty-four hours a day together without losing it? This anxiety was a complete flip of perspective from the one I’d had during the school year, when I worried that they didn’t have enough responsibilities. Especially in the boys’ last year of elementary school, Chris and I had found ourselves repeating variations of the “when I was your age” speech.

“When I was your age, I was babysitting,” I told them.

“When I was your age, I was cleaning the entire kitchen by myself,” Chris told them.

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