Month: April 2018

This morning I was alone in my house for thirty minutes. I thought it was going to be quite a bit longer since Howard and Kiki had gone out to see Infinity War. But before I really had a chance to stretch out into the aloneness, I got a text from 17 asking to be picked up early from school. I suppose there are some people for home “alone at home” is a common experience. It is certainly the source of significant emotional adjustment for those who become empty nesters at about my age. Between a spouse who works at home, a daughter who works at home, and two partially homeschooled teenagers, I don’t get to be alone very often.

It is strange to note the ways that I expand internally when I know there isn’t anyone else in the house. I know that I won’t be interrupted. I don’t have to track anyone else or predict when they’ll need my attention. I don’t have to reserve a portion of my brain so I’m prepared to respond. The thing is, I’m not even aware that I’ve got attention on reserve. It is something my mind does automatically and I only notice it was a thing when my brain stops.

Going to a retreat has an added layer of expansion in that I’m outside my usual context. At a retreat my first question is always “what do I need?” While at home the prevailing question is “what needs to be done next?” Retreats give me a chance to live inside my mind in different ways. Unfortunately stepping outside my context can also trigger anxiety precisely because I’ve stepped away from my usual tasks. Some retreats I’ve spent far more energy on battling panic than I have on thinking writing thoughts.

As I drove to pick up my daughter from school, I tried to figure out how I felt about having alone time taken away from me. The feelings were subtle, a faint sadness perhaps. A slight shouldering of responsibility, because with her in the house I am reminded of the work she needs to do in order to not fail some of her classes. It is her work, not mine. I shouldn’t have to track it, but the overdue work exists because she’s been off kilter for months. She’s overwhelmed even though I’ve already adjusted her workload downward as many times as I can. She’s not functioning at capacity, so when she is home, I track where she’s at and whether she’s been able to work. With those tracking circuits re-engaged, I proceeded onward with my day. I have things that need to be done. Those things don’t change much whether my house is co-occupied or empty.

However it is important to note that arranging for time alone is probably something that would be beneficial to me.

Frustration
It was one of our morning business meetings where Howard and I discuss the day and decisions we need to make. I explained to him an opportunity that was related to an event. He stared at me blankly. I re-explained twice before what I was trying to express became clear to him. No idea whether I was being unclear, or whether his brain was not parsing what I’d said. No way to determine which without a third party or a recording of the conversation.

I looked away from that frustration to glance at my email, where I saw that the business opportunity I’d just explained had sold out and was no longer available to us. It reminded me vividly about a much more important task associated to this event that I’d also been late in taking and for which I was still awaiting a satisfactory resolution. Cue feelings of failure.

I stepped away from the computer and into the kitchen, trying to recalibrate my day. I stood looking out the window and thought about the other things which currently feel like failures: the laundry (while clean) has been heaped in baskets for weeks, forcing both Howard and I to play “mining for socks” every morning. I was supposed to have a conversation with my son this morning about a thing he’s been doing that frustrates his sister. The conversation may or may not trigger an anxiety meltdown. And then there are the tasks that have lingered on my To Do list weeks past the original date when I assigned myself to have them done.

I decided to squelch all of that and go take a shower. Perhaps I’d be better able to do things once I didn’t feel gross.

This was the moment when Howard walked up the stairs, and I heard the shower turn on.

Escalation
I stood by the sink, listening to the water of the shower. Howard had no way of knowing I’d been about to go shower. I hadn’t said an of my thoughts out loud. Recalibrate again. Maybe I could go fold the laundry while he was showering. That would be a nice surprise for him when he got out and I would have reversed at least one failure.

I walked up the stairs just as Howard stepped out of the bedroom door and placed the empty laundry basket outside.

Here we need some back-and-fill info. Howard and I have had previous conversations about the laundry. Processing and folding laundry is one of the household tasks that stresses Howard and breaks his brain. As near as we can tell it has to do with sorting a jumble of like items. We haven’t been able to train his brain to react differently, so laundry is my job and he takes on different household tasks that don’t break his brain. Having to mine for socks is exactly the sort of brain breaking activity that we try to avoid for him. Thus the laundry piles are very guilt inducing for me because my failure to fold laundry puts Howard in a brain-breaking position every single morning until the problem is resolved. Howard does not get angry about the laundry pile, but sometimes the only way for him to find socks is to dump the contents of the laundry basket on the bed so he can spread out the mass and better find socks. Howard has apologized for this basket dumping behavior, worried that it seems like a passive aggressive attempt to tell me that I should really fold the laundry now. I told him that I understood why he did it and it was okay.

But there he was deliberately placing the empty basket outside the door with an air of frustration. Dumping to find socks was one thing. This was something else. In that moment it felt like being slapped in the face with my laundry failures just when I’d planned to come and fix them.

Howard turned and went to shower. I began folding the laundry angrily. It turns out that laundry is not an activity that lends itself to angry venting, not like hammering or clattering dishes. There are not satisfying noises or solid motions. It is all softness and precision. I stewed the whole time Howard showered. Angry. Feeling like a failure.

Resolution
This is the part that young Howard and young Sandra got wrong so very often. Young me would have not recognized how much of my anger was at my own perceived failures and she would have chosen more accusatory language. I did better this time. When Howard exited the shower I said
“So it turns out that dumping the basket on the bed is fine, but when you place the basket outside the door it feels like you’re scolding me.”
Howard said, “Yeah. Sorry about that. When I went to dump the basket, one of the speakers (from our music system) fell into the basket and I tripped over the basket, so I was mad at the basket and put it outside the door. I didn’t realize the action had a subtext until I’d already done it.”

I then cried a bit about all the things that were really upsetting me and Howard listened. He apologized that he couldn’t fix any of it. I told him I didn’t need anything fixed, I just needed to be told I wasn’t terrible.

Then I showered, and as expected, it helped me feel better about all the things.

A Comedy of Errors Which Has Me Contemplating Security, Safety Nets, and Preparedness While Sitting in a Train Station Parking Lot With a Dead Car Battery.

(If you take comedy in the Shakespearean sense that events become amusing because everything turns out okay in the end, but the whole thing could have been a tragedy if the end were different.)

Fact 1: I lost my coat two weeks ago. Through process of elimination, I’ve determined that it is not anywhere in the house and I probably left it behind at a doctor’s appointment. I currently only have the one coat. However it’s spring and I’ve been able to make do with some sweaters, so I haven’t gone to the doctor’s office to ask.

Fact 2: I needed to drop my oldest off to catch a shuttle bus in the early hours of the morning. I looked at the weather and it was only a little bit chilly, but I was going to be in my car the whole time, and the car interior can be heated up, so I didn’t bother to find a sweater or to do anything other than shove my feet into some sandals.

Fact 3: We’ve been trying to teach our kitten to not be afraid of the car. This process involves kids sitting in the car with the kitten while she explores and gets comfortable. During one of these sessions, a child became chilly. He put on the spare jacket I usually keep in the car. Then wore it into the house. So the jacket was no longer in my car.

Fact 4: Last Monday I was driving the family home from an event. Part way home we discovered that my headlights weren’t on. I flipped the headlight switch back to “auto” so the lights would turn themselves on as needed. We wondered how they got moved off of that setting and made a joke about how I will always forget to have the lights on unless the switch is set to auto.

Fact that made things turn out much better than they could have been: We got Howard’s car fixed yesterday after it had spent almost two weeks undrivable because it had a “check engine” light on. We didn’t want to drive it until we had the mechanic check the engine (per the indicator light’s instructions.) Mechanic gave the car a green light yesterday. This meant Howard had a car available this morning.

Fact that makes all the difference in this story: We live in a world where most people have cell phones. Including me.

My daughter and I arrived at the parking lot twenty minutes early for the shuttle. I parked so we could see where the shuttle would arrive. I turned the engine off. Only then I couldn’t see the dashboard clock to track the time. So I turned the key so that the clock lit up again. This also turned on the headlights. I considered turning the headlights off so that they wouldn’t annoy others, but I worried that I’d forget to switch them back to auto. I reasoned that the sky was bright enough that the headlights wouldn’t be too annoying. It didn’t occur to me that having headlights run off of battery for twenty minutes might have an effect on the battery.

Flashback which outlines why I really should have known better: In January of this year I accidentally drained my car battery dead by using the battery to run a tablet watching videos while I and this same daughter were waiting for access to her college apartment. We ended up getting a jump start from an employee of the restaurant we were parked outside. One would think this experience would teach me to recognize the limitations of vehicular batteries rather than treating a car as a magic box that can dispense electricity at will. Apparently I didn’t learn.

Just before the shuttle arrived, I noticed a change in the dashboard lights. I suddenly remembered that car batteries run dry. With a sinking lurch, I turned the key…nothing. So I calmly waited three minutes until my daughter got onto her shuttle, then called Howard to alert him that he’d need to handle the remaining school drop offs and that he’d need to bring some jumper cables to me.

Then I sat for another forty minutes while Howard went through tasks as quickly as he possibly could in order to rescue me. During those forty minutes, the chill seeped into the car. I contemplated how I would have to rescue myself if I hadn’t had a cell phone. There were houses within a five minute walk, including my sister’s house. The walk would have been unpleasantly cold, especially with the windchill, but it was completely survivable. In fact, I could have walked home in an hour had I really needed to. Though I would have gotten very cold. I thought that the day would warm up as the sun rose. Instead a storm began to blow in and the temperature dropped further. There were other people in the lot, but since it was a commuter lot, most of the people I saw were rushing to catch a train.

I thought about how comfortable my life is on a daily basis. So comfortable, that I have the luxury of forgetting that the charge on a car battery is an expendable resource. I can go from warm house to warm car and back again without needing to dress for the weather outdoors. I can have things go wrong and know that I have multiple people I can call who will gladly rescue me from my troubles. I can ask strangers for help and they will be kind and non-suspicious of me because I don’t look like a threat to them.

Not everyone has these comforts. For some people a dead car battery becomes a tragedy rather than a comedy.

I thought about all of that as I wrapped my arms around myself and jiggled my legs to stay warm. I wasn’t too terribly cold, but over time a slight chill seeps in.

Howard arrived with a warm car, heated seats, a jacket, and a hot fast food breakfast. I got to sit in his car with all of these things while he braved the windy chill to link our cars together. Inside five minutes, my car was running again. But Howard had me stay with him in the warm to finish eating. He ate too. “This way it’s like a date.” He smiled.
“We need to plan better dates.” I answered.
Then he responded with words I can’t remember specifically, but the words meant that while maybe this wasn’t a flashy date, it didn’t matter because being together was date enough. Dates are about shared experiences and togetherness rather than about the itinerary.

I’m back home. Surrounded by warmth and light, both of which are generated by electricity that I’m actively grateful to have right now. My car is parked in the garage and is restored to full functionality. In a few minutes I’ll go take a hot shower to chase away the last of the chill. All’s well that ends well.

But I’m going to put that spare jacket back in the car. And go see if my coat is still at the doctor’s office. And be better about dressing for the weather even if I’m only expecting a short trip. And remember that I should never use the car as a source of electricity unless I’m also running the engine to generate that electricity.

Lessons learned. (I hope.)