Do Good to Feel Good, Part II

Now I'd like to play a couple rounds of Devil's Advocate.

Let's put it on the table. Is there such thing as too much giving? After all, some of us are already helping people. All. The. Time.

We volunteer at the retirement home, we bake for the neighbors. Perhaps we run a little NPO on the side that distributes funds and clothing, or join every other community hesed committee, or run off to a wedding hall in the middle of the night to pick up and distribute the leftover food.

Or maybe we do some or all of the above, PLUS we've found our life's calling in one of those pointedly-named Helping Professions --as a social worker, therapist, nurse or charity office manager. What could be better? We are assured an opportunity to help others, every day, and often in the most moving and meaningful ways. We take care of others' bodies and souls. We sooth mental anguish and relieve financial burdens, advocate for the disenfranchised and restore human dignity. We do all of this without pitying or patronizing.

So is there such thing as helping too much? We love our life's work because it is life-giving, meaningful, significant. We believe our professional role is right and yes, a kind of moral obligation. But we often resent the conditions: Low pay, little recognition, case overload, stressful work environment.

I'm thinking about yet another phenomenon. How do you do it, how can you work here, with such sick kids? someone will query in admiration. Kol haKavod (Bravo!), that's amazing! They don't get it. I can do this work because love this work, and when I'm doing it, my life feels meaningful and significant.

The problem comes later, when I get home. Sometimes it hits me, how sick those kids really are, and I am exhausted. Weighing me down are all the patients I didn't have time to work with. The parents I didn't get back to. That uncomfortable exchange with a short-tempered staff member. The feeling of being constantly on call -- encouraging, empathic, organized and authoritative -- but not too authoritative. These things can all but wash out the day's many successes.

Worse, I often find myself unable to regroup and focus by the time I've finished my commute home. My own kids need me. They need someone to give them lunch and watch their gymnastics practice and blows their noses and help with their math homework. They don't feel my own need to go to the bathroom and then sit down for five minutes, alone, over a hot drink. Whatever went on in my day until now is completely irrelevant. They expect focused, energetic Mommy, ready to go and full speed ahead.

The work itself is not the problem, it's maintaining my strength to give and give, all morning and afternoon, and then give again into the evening. It's keeping up the required enthusiasm at home to do all the day-to-day tasks, with the patience my kids deserve from me.

Sometimes I fantasize leaving for a well-compensated, "normal" office job, or locking myself away in my studio, "arting" around all day. I imagine opening a small craft business, or private therapy work with a limited number of clients. But getting down to it, I know I would only do such a thing if I were to reach the conclusion that the price had gotten too high, that I could no longer keep up both ends of the giving spectrum, and that giving at work was always at the expense of giving at home.

And here's where I have to admit it. For all its difficulties, hospital work gives me a sense of status and accomplishment that, for whatever reason, I cannot always seem to muster at home. Maybe that's the fallout for some of us girls who grew up in the Seventies on Sesame Street and Free to Be... You and Me. Or maybe it's just that at work, I'm an experienced professional, a figure of authority, a source of knowledge and understanding, while at home, I'm "just" Mom.

Their only Mom. Full speed ahead.

Keep the balance,

ALN

____

For more on why we help one another, this is another interesting NYT piece, especially the part about the role of the sclera (whites of the eyes) in human altruistic behavior.

"I'm the Oldest Person I Know."

I'm 95 years old, and you know what? That's old.

I'm the oldest person I know.

That's Grandma. As a kid, I can't say we got along. There were some strong opinions involved, some -- shall we say -- incidents. Like the time she called my mother from 100 miles away insisting that we wear sweaters "because it's cold over here." Or the time she entered my room while I was away and straightened it up "just a bit." I wanted to kill her.

Grandma has always held strong opinions about everything. She was into raw foods and organic produce long before the rest of California discovered them. She firmly believed, and continues to believe, that fluoridated water is evil reincarnate, and that women who do not make efforts to "look smart," (that is, dress well and apply make-up) are doing humanity some sort of general disservice.

Through the years, her letter-writing has had me in stitches. There's the time I wrote her from summer camp to report on my recent swimming lessons, and received a reply that she, too, was learning to swim. At age 70. "But," she confided, "I don't like to put my face in the water." (I could relate to that).

And not one of my fellow campmates received, as I did, letters signed with the valuable but ill-timed advice, "Remember to eat lots of organic lettuce!" I neglected to return her counsel with the sad but true reality that at camp we were lucky to get some limp iceberg with our suspiciously-tinted beef patties and soggy fries.

This year, my grandmother is, as she puts it, "really feeling my age." Everything is a process; getting dressed, preparing meals, even -- I assume -- going to the bathroom, although this has yet to come up in conversation. A couple of months back she fell down in her kitchen and, in typical Grandma style, refused to tell anyone about it for fear she'd be dragged to the hospital for endless tests (eventually that is exactly what happened). She's okay now, having rested at home for a short time, after which she systematically rejected the help of every home care nurse and social worker available.

During her recuperation she refused to go outside, for fear she would be spotted using a walker by one of her fellow retirement community-neighbors in her, and subsequently be labeled an old lady.

* * * * *

The other day I asked Grandma for her insights about aging.

Grandma: I don't like old people. Even myself....I have to listen to myself all the time, and I get tired of it. I'm always trying to change things.

Me: What do you mean by that?

G: I would realized what I'm doing, and change what I'm thinking, and reject it.

Me: Like what?

G: Like walking like a duck. I reject it. Like being critical about people. Things really aren't that important, you know? I'm trying to resist some of the earmarks of old people.

I once read in an old copy of New Scientist, a British popular science weekly, that neurological imaging at different stages of life has shown that older people have a tendency to "mellow out" over time, not getting as worked up neurologically about those little things that get under the skin of most the rest of us. In other words, over time, older people gain perspective, at the most basic neurological level.

Sometimes, after a frustrating conversation with Grandma, my family will say, "Oh, she's acting like an stubborn old person again." But I'm not so convinced. No question, she's still stubborn, way beyond the rest of us, but she's always been like that. If anything, she's calmed down a bit over the years.

She's not acting old -- she's acting Grandma.

If you'd asked me as a child whether my grandmother would ever mellow out, I wouldn't have answered positively. I wouldn't describe her as mellow now. Despite her refusal to receive help, for the most part her obstinate behavior benefits her. She's already lost some of her mobility, much of her eyesight, and most of her friends to old age. But when she tells me she's gained a new perspective on herself and others, I believe her. She just wants her body, and her life, to stay just the way they are. Don't we all?

(Get to know Grandma a bit better in Imagine the Alternatives and At Least I Can Explain Two Tin Cans).

Keep the balance,

ALN

Iodine Season

Spring is in the air... speaking of which, many thanks to Gila from My Shrapnel for a great HH #215, and that lovely Julie Andrews song!  But I digress...

Bike Season is officially here, so keep the iodine handy.    A couple weeks ago I brought what was formerly Elder Princeski's long-outgrown, hot-pink set of wheels into the local bike shop for a tire refurbish, and the guys could barely look up from their wrenches and chains, they were so busy sliming and realigning. 

(Slime is, of course, a registered trademark and the brand name of that funky stuff they smear on the inner tubes to make them self-repairing.  The bike shop has a huge tank of it sitting on the floor, next to their scattered worktable, and for a few extra shekels they'll apply it to your inner tubes, saving you much sorry later in the season).

The number of first-time bikers  on our block -- among them, our own Always the Imp --can appear greater than the total number of children around here.  The other afternoon I edged toward our driveway while noting at least a dozen (including a couple of my own) within a three-house stretch, wheeling about like scattering sparrows.   

The scene inspired me.  

A day or two later, That Guy I Married set off with Elder P to get her a new bike, accompanied by my long-neglected red frame, with its shredded seat and failing gear shifts, in the hopes that a renewed set of wheels would inspire me to re-commit myself (yet again) to some sort of reasonable, enjoyable fitness plan.

I can't speak for the future but so far, so good.  I've managed to get myself out on it two days in a row -- if only around the moshav, at this point.  Only 28 more days of this and I'll have myself a habit.  

Nothing like that burst of speed down a hill, that rush of air across the face, to remind me what every kid worth his weight in helmets already knows.  So get out the iodine, and get out there.

The hills are alive...

Keep fit, and keep the balance,

ALN

Re-Awakening

What a funny feeling -- four weeks off-blog, and now, the ironic sting of returning to this virtual world of real people...  a feeling that this corner of my life has dropped out from under me.  Now there's that expected-nevertheless-surprising squeak of the gears as I try to slide my way back in.

Winter is here, rain is not (not in Israel, not nearly enough of it), but the microbes are back in full, and my two-week battle with bronchitis was there to prove it.  Tune in for my forthcoming work, An Ode to Rythromycin.  

No question, this was my psycho-somatic response to the usual stress at work and the unrelenting scrollbar of daily activity, against the ever-nearing backdrop of our country at war.  The verdict is quite clear:  if I do not learn to pace this hectic life-schedule multi-tasking thing, I will inevitably engage in a forced vacation, and last week was it.  I was in bed, or flopping over onto some sofa or other, for the entire week.  Did not recognize myself.

Even odder, for the duration of that week, nearly everything was input.  Instead of writing (or blogging, as noted), I read.*  Instead of practicing therapy at work, or art in the studio, I went over books and articles about therapy and art.  And I ate regular meals, ones that I had taken time to prepare.  A-B-C's for most, a notable accomplishment for me.  I barely opened the computer, and within three days found myself drowning and spluttering in an email effusion that nearly required a Cyber Coast Guard bail-out.  No blogging.  None.  Not even blog-reading.  It was the printed word, read off of authentic, bleached tree-pulp products.  

Freedom, in an odd way, but also a strange pang of loss and absence... and a return to my original question:  

How does everyone find the time?  

Please, send the magic pill on over.

Keep the balance (or -- you've been warned -- your body may do it for you),

ALN

____

* Namely, אישה בורחת מבשורה -- Until the End of the Land (2006) by David Grossman (I only found circumstantial evidence of its availability translated in English), and How Doctors Think (2007/2008) by Jerome Groopman.  I have thoughts on both, but not for now.

"You Should Have Met Me Before..."

I'd been hearing great things about a certain patient, a young woman, but my previous attempts to meet her had fallen on bad timing.

I always get a little nervous approaching a patient for the first time... I never know who I'll be meeting, what state she'll be in, especially at the early stages of diagnosis.  Overwhelming emotional storm?  Breakdown?  Confusion?  Denial?  Contradictory, shifting affect?  All of the above? Will she even register our introduction, or -- often as not at this early stage -- will she mistake me for a physician or nurse, and set forth a litany of disjointed questions about medicines, central catheters, fevers? 

But yesterday morning, there was G, smiling, inviting me into her little corner of the outpatient clinic.  Is this a good time? I ask.  Of course!  Why not? is her immediate answer.   She is already succumbing to the soporific effects of the meds she's received, but with little encouragement she gushes into a brief description of herself.   She has this job and that hobby. She is involved, engaged, active.  

You should have met me before.  I was the athletic type.  I used to run, do aerobics all the time. I was a teacher, I had a whole class of kids, ran a whole educational program.  I love art, love to write.  

I'm trying to keep up, listening at 100 km/hr.  I tell her we can offer her art therapy, bibliotherapy.  Meanwhile I'm noting all the was's and used to's.  That part has me a little worried;  she's only just begun treatment, and she's already left central parts of her identity behind.  She is clearly a doing person -- and for now, she is not doing, therefore she does not feel fully herself.  I can relate, all too well.   

I weigh my options.   Do I remark on the used to's, thus beginning the teeniest intervention without having had the time to really meet her, or do I let it go and make a note for later?  

Her oncologist steps in to inquire about her general welfare, and I gain a few more minutes to think, listen and decide.   I am impressed with how readily and directly she describes the recent state of her digestive system.  After all, he may be a physician, but he's a guy, and she's a young woman... who seems to understand the value of accurately reporting her physical state.

He goes, and we resume our conversation.  Meanwhile, I've made a decision.  You're still a teacher, you know.  You're on a break from teaching, but you're still a teacher.  And it really shows that you're an energetic, athletic person, despite all these tiring treatments.  We move into a brief discussion of what it means for her to be forced into this unwanted break from her active life.  At this first glance, she seems to know exactly what her limitations are, and what she still can do.  She is eager to move forward while she can.

I want to learn some art techniques, and I want to meet the bibliotherapist.  We should get started, right away.   But for now you'll have to excuse me, I'm a little stoned from all these drugs, I think I'm falling asleep...

I tell her it's been a real pleasure meeting her and excuse myself.   Her enthusiasm and optimism are contagious, and I find myself smiling as I exit the room.  I'm so happy to finally meet her,  I mention as I pass her oncologist. What a fantastic person. 

He looks up.  Don't get too attached.  Looks back down at his paperwork.

A sudden rush of air, and all that contagious enthusiasm has collapsed.

He means well.  Maybe he was just trying to look out for me, or for himself.  And yes, I am aware of the dangers of her illness.  But getting attached is part of the work.  I can't do my job without it.

Anyway, it's too late.

Keep the balance,

ALN

Back to Balance... Or Not

Ah.... it's good to be back.  

The school year is in full swing, the kids are back in school and I'm back at work.  Finding time for it all --  blogging included --  has become the task of the season.  How dare you go to work instead of blogging?  deadpans Dad.  Even Mom, who doesn't fully get the blog thing, called a few days ago wondering whether I'm still alive, for lack of published evidence.  

Returning to the Jblogosphere after over a week's hiatus feels something like jumping back onto a nonstop spinning carousel;  it's simultaneously thrilling, dizzying and weighted down by false starts.  As much as I've missed it, there has been plenty to keep me busy around here. Included below, an abridged record of the flurry, a kind of back-up disk for my sleep-deprived mind:

Things to Do Instead of Blogging

1.  Back-to-School Night (known in Israel as an asifat horim, lit., "gathering of parents"), one for every minor inhabiting the household, and sometimes more.  (RivkA explains it here in all its glorious detail).  Even the daycare centers here hold a back-to-school evening, usually in order to spell out the additional charges they request, for everything from toilet paper to art supplies to enrichment activities.  These events are painfully long and drawn out and can drag on for three hours.    This year, as a balance- and sanity-preserving measure, I skipped the preschool one altogether.  I hope they'll still let my son graduate.

2.  Working in the art studio, making paper and carving linoleum prints for greeting cards.

Here they are, drying on the mini-blinds:

Close-up of the same print as the one up on top, in a different color palette:

Supplies (Carving knives, water-based printing inks, soft-rubber brayers, carved linoleum printing blocks, card samples)  The art table is a low-budget home-made model:  an old wooden door on a frame of leftover construction wood.  Works for me.

My friend Q has a large studio where she makes handmade paper of amazing quality.  A few years back we added on our own, much smaller studio to our own house, but a full work schedule meant it often sat unused.   Going back to my artwork is probably adding years to my life.  At least that's the feeling I get from it.

Indoor plumbing repairs.  Particularly unsuccessful new hobby;  definitely sticking with my day job.  Note the bucket under the studio sink.  Guess why it's there...

Scheduling my kids' extracurricular schedules.  Another less successful venture.  In keeping with Israeli tradition, my kids are now signed up for various after-school creative ventures.... only problem is, the schedule is still new and I keep forgetting to send them on time...

Catching up on Srugim and other stuff.  I'm up to episode 12, and I'm wondering how things will hold together now that the geographic focus has spread out beyond the Swamp itself.  Last night we watched the first couple hours of the BBC's Pride and Prejudice, which follows the book down to nearly every last detail (which is why it takes about six hours to watch.  (I'm just amazed that we have such a detailed historical record of all those line dances... and how did they manage to get their hair arranged so neatly with no running water in the house?).

Work, work, and work.   More work.  Don't know why this one's so far down on the list, actually.  Time-wise, it's way on top.  Lots to do:  Strengthening our connections with the families, designing a class schedule for the school year, helping our new staff members find their way, meeting with medical and mental health staffers, inviting patients' schools to meet the department.... the list is endless.  Despite this, I'm still making every effort to leave work on time.  Balance, balance.

Dancing around the living room, music on full volume.   I do this with the kids, but between you and me, I would do it anyway.  (Just ask my former roommates -- Friday afternoon was Disco Time in the kitchen.  Remember Cate Blanchett in Bandits?  Only she, as always, looks amazing, and I look like, well, never mind....).

Getting some sleep.  Only kidding - I just added that one for Mom.  Amazingly enough, even without blogging I haven't managed more than five hours a night.  I'm still waiting for someone to invent a pill with no negative side effects...

All the other stuff:  Laundry  Dishes  Cooking  Homework help  Bedtime   Stories  Wiping noses (and other places)  Commuting there   And back   Shopping  Phone calls  Hair cut  Bank statements  Emails  Visiting neighbors  Shul meeting  Cleaning aquarium  Guests here  Floor clean  Food ready  Table set.... Go.  Shabbat.

(Speaking of keeping the balance...)

Shabbat Shalom,

ALN

The Five-Minute Bedtime Challenge

The scientific world has yet to prove what all parents have long ago accepted as fact:  the evening hours between six and eight o'clock, plus-minus, are indeed the most long and exhausting two hours of the day.  

Why is this?  Could it be that light-speed transition from never-ending workday to carpool to neighborhood grocery stop to home?  Or perhaps it's the time-swallowing vortex, eldest-daughter-instigated, last-minute pancake-fest, evidence of which is clearly visible on every horizontal surface from kitchen to dining table, and the occasional vertical surface between. In any event, we have every reason to believe that the Fear of Limited Energy Theorem is at work.

In steps the Five-Minute Bedtime Challenge, only recently (30 minutes ago) devised and formulated by Alternative Reality SuperMom,* and now in Phase-I trials in participating households.**  

Parameters are as follows:  

1.  Gather all household children in one place, preferably in close proximity to their sleeping quarters.   

2.  Announce at the top of your lungs, In one minute from now, the [Your Family Name Here] Family is taking on the Five-Minute Bedtime Challenge!

3.  Outline the Six Challenge Requirements:   Clothes in laundry hamper, 30 seconds.  Pajamas on, 60 seconds.  Bathroom break, 30 seconds. Teeth brushed, 90 seconds. School clothes out, 60 seconds.  In bed and lights out, 30 seconds.

4.  Note the current time and shout, Ready, set, GO!

5.  Option A:  MC the entire event in a loud, fast-paced, motivational sports announcer voice.  Option B:  In a fast-paced auctioneer's voice, alternate words of encouragement with a ten-second incremental countdown.

6.  Call Time's up! and reward your team by jump around like a crazy maniac while waving your hands in the air and cheering their accomplishment with all the genuine enthusiasm you can muster (for this part you might need to call in Alternative Reality SuperParent).

7.  With your last remaining kcal's of energy, run to your computer and let me know how it went.

Ready, set.....

Keep the balance,

ALN

_____

*  Alternative Reality SuperMom is the entity that, to the benefit of all concerned, took over Regular Mom's body just when the latter was on the verge of collapse.  A SuperDad version is, of course, also available.

**  If you would like your household to be considered for participation in Phase II trials, please submit your typed applications, in triplicate, to the Comments section.

The Fear of LImited Energy, Part 2

Last night I dropped in on a local dance class for the second week in a row (I'm on vacation in California). Like last week, the group was pretty clearly divided:

25% The junior high dancing set (girls who basically live in the dance studio and take ten classes a week in every modality, from ballet to hip-hop);

60% The late teen/early 20's set, who take dancing seriously but it's not necessarily their primary occupation;

15% The rest of us, i.e. women in our mid-30's who already have a life (husband, kids, career) and are squeezing this class into whatever free time and brain space we can find. (OK, so right now, on vacation, finding the time is less of an issue. The brain space, however...).

At the end of class, I casually asked the teacher if the entire class structure would be based on learning routines, since, as I put it, "some of us are a bit older, with a few kids, and we no longer have the brain space to simultaneously learn a routine and concentrate on perfecting our steps."

Last week, three of us were eyeing each other throughout the class, sweating and half-smiling while desperately trying to keep up with the routine, as the instructor piled one move on top of the next. This week, before we even walked in the studio door, we stopped to exchange greetings and mutual support.

One, a mother and physician of internal medicine, put it to me: Between work, kids, and everything else, don't you feel like you can barely fit it all in? These kids in the class, they don't do all of that; they have plenty of brain space left for this.

I smiled in agreement. When we're learning a routine, I told her, I just can't remember what comes next. It's as though I've lost the ability to move the information from one side of my brain to the other. We entered the class together with another 30-something, our newly-formed comraderie boosting our spirits, and our efforts.

I think it worked -- we all seemed to remember the steps much better than last week. Of course, by the time I'd gotten home half an hour later, all was forgotten. Oh well... 'til next week.

(Anyone else out there feel you're losing brain cells as time goes by?)

Keep the balance,

ALN

The Fear of Limited Energy

I'm actually sitting outside at a cafe, blogging while sipping a cappuccino (that is to say, הפוך). It doesn't get more stereotypical than that, does it?  

The reality:  when do I ever have time for things like this?  I'll tell you when:  when I'm waiting for my car to have its guts oiled and realigned.  On any given morning there is no cafe, no lazy breakfast that I've paid someone else to prepare --  it's just work, work, work, then rush home for the second shift: talk and play with the kids, visit a neighbor, prepare supper (maybe fitting a blog post - or part of one - in there somewhere), tidy up the house a bit, and maybe make a couple of phone calls while stuffing the dishes into the dishwasher.  All while thinking, Thank G-d for the dishwasher.  

(And since it's summer, convincing the kids it's time for bed can take, well, 45 minutes on a good day.  "But Mommy, the sun is still out, it's not time for bed yet!"  I'm tired.  I still have twelve things to do this evening.  It's time for you to go to bed).

My friend S calls it her fear of limited energy.  All mothers know to keep some spare, but what happens when we have some timely project to finish and we forget to budget our energy for the rest of the day?  Or we had a particularly stressful or emotional day at work (it can happen)? Or we've been letting "The List" (read:  laundry / dishes / phone calls / paying the bills / helping with a school project / cleaning the litter box-fish tank-hamster cage) run way over board, for way too long?  The day still has hours remaining, but you, my dear, do not.  Then what?

One of my neighbors (name withheld to protect the innocent) once confided in me, in a hushed voice, that she actually lets her kids have cereal for supper once a week.   

I was astonished, not by her "admission," but by the fact that she saw it as such.   

In my book, if she manages to get through her week and have the energy to prepare supper for her family six nights out of seven, that sounds like a real accomplishment to me.  I mean, I practically survived my teenage years on breakfast cereals (and tofu-broccoli stir-fry, and Haagen-Dazs with whipped cream), and it didn't seem to do much harm.  As we know, all major breakfast cereals are fortified -- B vitamins, folic acid  -- and have been so since the FDA realized that this is one way to insure that most Americans will get enough of these nutrients (see a short history c/o the NIH here).

Furthermore, grain products and dairy together?  That's a complete protein.  (And while we're on the subject, see here for the protein content of various vegetarian food sources).  Your kids could certainly do worse. Anyway, with the price of cereal these days, it's practically a luxury food.

Just think of it as buying back a little energy at the end of your never-ending day.

Keep the balance,

ALN