It’s been
foot month. I won’t bore you with mine but my son dropped a 10kg weight on his in the gym and although nobody can figure out how he didn’t break it, the contusion and bruising is considerable and he is signed off work for a month. And champing at the bit.
There are a whole group of people who live by the most constructive kind of displacement therapy.
They are always busy – work, other work, committed social lives, obligations, getting from a to b which is often more demanding than for some time (road works, rail works, flooding, increased traffic).
My neighbour Helen (not her real name) is self employed and that’s feast or famine, do it while you can – so the last three or four months have been scarcely time to breathe and visibly tired, over 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, one project begetting another, don’t wish to disappointment the client, keep going.
At last, she came to lunch (do try garlic puree
between the toast and cheese) and talked about the weekend. Her husband (Red Beret, fitness teacher) had fallen on a running course in Denver and was finding recovery hard. And they have a country place. In hopeful innocence, I envisaged a quiet few days. But she went on to tell me what the next three or four days comprised. Which is part of why I only ever had a boyfriend with a country place once – a second set of domestic and social responsibilities although the view from the loo is preferable – if you have time to look.
And Wal was visiting Rhodes when his host had a stroke – hospital, taxis (“I am now an expert on local buses” he told me proudly. Don’t knock the achievement of that for a man who grew up with a chauffeur and a Rolls Royce), full scale family upset (naturally), shop, child, mother flew in, wife scared twice over (query losing him and query what becomes of her). This for a man who likes things organised, seeks control, worked like mad for years and years, and was looking forward to a quiet week and Lambros’s chips.
And Amy (see annalog/Amy and the Beast) who after major surgery is seeing some of her friends in a new way and finding dealing with it – in her own mind and with them – difficult – because she was always the go-to guy and as I have often found, it’s easier to fight for somebody else than yourself.
I am honoured that I can communicate with Amy (NHRN) both electronically and personally – and so could share with her my small but significant advance in two halves – the first twenty years ago – the second last week. And I saw a book recommended* which I shall suggest to her.
There is only so much you can say to a bright complicated man, especially if you are his mother but I hope he will use the time rather that fretting against it. That really is pointless though most of us do it, from time to time.
Helen and her husband will have to apply their combined and considerable wisdom to beginning to understand that time off enables rather than depletes. You can be (old Met police phrase) so fit you’re edgy but there is no point if the level of use and pleasure in that use is as sad as a failed cake.
But the success story of the week is Wal who made a journey into a kind of physicality (hugs. tears, clinging – all across limited English and no Greek) and allowed himself to grieve through that for something long ago and deeply personal, to let others help him, even if only superficially. Interestingly the tears he shed for himself released a rare bout of rage against noisy neighbour, and constipation. “How interesting !” I exclaimed when he told me. “Why ?” he asked so I said “The body can only do what it can do. You were in a give give give situation and the bowel went into neutral short term, don’t need that, do the other stuff. Happened to me once.”
“But you know” he said in conclusion” I think it did me a lot of good.” I think so too.
When you can …
- Wintering: the Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
Annalog 