Just Say No

“He probably just couldn’t say no,” my mom said about my husband today. I’m sure she was right. He can’t say no to a child who needs him or to a caregiver who needs a break. I know she wouldn’t say no either. I know she worries and wants to protect us. I know she herself would do the same in this situation.

“Just say no,” my other mom told me today. Tell them what you can and can’t do. 

I agreed, but inside me I knew. I knew that I wouldn’t have the heart to refuse for a while yet. It’s fairly easy to set boundaries on the weekend from the safety of my home, but when life gets real on Tuesday and 3 children call my name from 5 different directions while I’m trying to walk out the door I won’t be able to look into their eyes and tell them I’m not coming back. I know my mil knows that, too.

It’s exhausting to be a carer. Also, it’s exhausting to care. Some of my friends tell me the same thing. I will paraphrase.

“I need a coping mechanism,” one friend told me in the middle of a long busy week. She’s a very capable person, and like she says, her parents did a good job of preparing her to deal with the things she’s dealing with. Even so, being a carer is overwhelming sometimes, especially when the situation or the people are difficult. She asked me if she could say no. I didn’t tell her that she should say no, because I have a different perspective than she does. From a distance, I see that if she doesn’t do the things, they will fall onto someone else’s shoulders, and maybe those shoulders won’t be as strong as hers. So, even though she has really wanted to on so many days, she hasn’t said no.

Another friend told me she was tired of working with people. “I’ve done it for so many years, and now I’m tired.” She didn’t say she didn’t love her job. She didn’t say she was tired of her job. Caregiving is difficult, emotionally more than physically often. But she still doesn’t say no

“Taking care of a newborn with medical needs is difficult.” These words came from friend who is a new mom. “But BabyBoy makes it so worth it,” she concluded. She’s a mother, she’s responsible for this child. She can’t say “I don’t want to take care of you now,” and walk away. She can’t just say no.

This is from the perspective of women in their 20s. Kids these days assume we’re major adults Cos we old, but some of us know otherwise. From conversations with friends, and my own real time experiences, it appears like we’re still learning how to care and be caregivers. Many of us will make that our life’s work, but  right now, in the learning stage, we  haven’t figured out how to take care of others and ourselves. We sometimes give too much of ourselves away, sometimes too little. Sometimes we feel like we’re caring too much but in reality we’re not caring enough. Sometimes the opposite. Myself,  I often feel both. 

Does being a caregiver get easier as a person ages? Do you learn how to compartmentalize so this work doesn’t take over your whole life ?  Maybe it’s meant to take over our lives. Maybe it’s mostly personality. Some of us probably handle caring better than others. Some of us probably avoid caring when possible.  

The disclaimers come near the end:

To be fair to my mom and mil, I have to say that neither of them say no to children or to caring either. They are just looking out for us like moms do.

I wrote this a few weeks ago, but never managed to pull it all together to form a cohesive post. It still isn’t very cohesive because I haven’t figured out how to blend it all seamlessly, but seamless isn’t what I’m trying to portray here. Real. Raw. That’s life, my life, anyway. I didn’t think I’d post this one every but Today it’s so relevant, once again, that I have to. 

Today I think I can’t do another day of zoom school with hyperactive third graders with fasd who can’t read or write, of feeding the hungry children from empty cupboards, of trying to keep the marijuana-smoking preteen from killing his little siblings, of pouring out every single ounce of love I have into a dark hole of need sometimes only to have it regurgitated and hurled back in my face in the form of anger. 

But I can’t say no. 

I’m not sure what little things that keep you caring and caregiving when you think you honestly can’t do it another minute. For me today it’s Small boy picking a single perfect dandelion for his teacher. The angriest boy who now lets me give him hugs/comfort even when he’s upset, a relatively new development. The weed smoking preteen making a point to talk to me in the mornings and open the door (after first slamming it) to yell  LOVE YOU at me instead of slinking off to school without a word. The little girl who treasures the tiny birthday gift I gave her and who calls me 3 or 7 times every day, even the days that I’ve  been there, because she needs someone. It’s the pure delight of a circle of children when we make a recipe they found on tiktok and it turns out perfectly. 

Inadvertent Faux Pas

Don’t  let Mama see you do that. I startle at the words, momentarily relaxing my busy repetitive scrubbing of the broom across the floor. Confused. 

???

?

Do what ? I finally have to ask, because I’m not figuring it out. It must be something important; these people don’t give orders or tell me I’m doing something wrong often. Just love the kids like they’re yours and do things like you’d do it at your house, is a favourite phrase here. 

That. Distracted for a second with keeping Mir from pulling out her feeding tube, R gestures vaguely toward the table. 

I wait. My mind spins in circles. 

Those shoes, he gets around to telling me. 

You mean on the table ? I’m sorry. I just thought they weren’t dirty-

No. He cuts me off. It’s our superstition. You’ll get bad luck. It doesn’t matter about them being dirty. But You might get bad luck. 

I apologize. Three times. Or five. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I just know Mir only uses them in her playroom so they aren’t dirty. I didn’t know. And then, because I’m all the way across the room, I’m busy, I leave them there, thinking I’ll grab them when I leave the room in two minutes and go put them away. Thinking the conversation is over. 

We don’t care about that. But you might have bad luck. Him

I laugh it off. I’ve had black cats run in front of me. My clumsiness has broken more than one mirror.  I laugh, because I still think he’s mostly joking. I’m not sure if I’m rambling about luck out loud or in my head. If I was going to have bad luck I probably already have it. 

I keep sweeping. I think about other things. 

R doesn’t forget that quickly. It’s bad luck, he says again. 

And again. 

Its take me a while, but I finally realize he’s not laughing. He’s serious. He believes this. He probably would’ve gotten up and moved them himself by now if he had been able to safely leave Mir’s side. I drop the broom and go move the shoes. He’s happy now, but still can’t resist one more worried comment a few minutes later, I really hope you don’t have bad luck because of this. 

I tell him I will be okay.

All the way home after my shift I’m wondering- Ukrainian superstition brought from the Old Country 2 generations ago? family belief handed down through the ages? personal belief based on experience? Possibly I should’ve asked. Possibly I should have told him there was Someone stronger than mere bad luck.  

Unforgettable

We’re approaching the end of our lockdown here in Saskatchewan, and I’m a little sad. Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not ready for normal life to resume fully. 

I like our Sundays of sitting by the pocket-sized speaker listening to church. But beyond personal enjoyment, these Sundays at home listening to church and not being able to socialize have offered us opportunities and experiences we wouldn’t have had otherwise. 

Take last Sunday for example. The 4 preteen neighbour girls stopped to see us in the morning and ended up hanging out with us all day. The first ones came just as the church service was starting to stream through our speaker, and we could still sit around listening and drawing together.  A little later, two more girls came, and at that point their noise nearly drowned out the pastor’s words. Nearly, but not quite. .

Tal, the oldest of the four at 12 years old, came and huddled over the speaker with me for a couple minutes, listening intently. How you live is how you’re going to die, the pastor intoned. Tal didn’t like that statement and repeated it three or four times before deciding she definitely disagreed, But it must have got her thinking. 

For the next five minutes Tal sat silently. Then she  surprised BTT and me with an insightful question, are you ready for the Lord to return ? We both told her we were and asked her if she was ready for the Lord to return. She said she didn’t know, she said she was worried about it.  She didn’t really know how she’d figure it out. My Mom says she’s ready; you guys are ready. But how do I know if I’m ready for the Lord  to return? she wondered. 

My heart aches for this girl, but I’m a little speechless. How do I explain Jesus to a twelve year old who has only once or twice set foot in a church and has learned everything she knows about God from movies and her off and on drug-addicted mother ? She knows a lot facts about Jesus, the Bible and heaven, (When it rains on earth, it’s the angels or God peeing, don’t you know?) but so many of the things she believes, I have a hard time reconciling with the real life Jesus I know. 

Finally, I find something to say. If you’re worried or confused about if you’re ready for the Lord to return, you can talk to Him. In fact, you can tell Jesus whatever you think and feel, anytime you want to. He’s always around to hear you. I don’t come up with those kinds of words. I mean, there’s a reason I’m at home in Saskatchewan and my sister is the one off in distant lands being the Missionary. Not my words. But I said them, never realizing the immediate effect they would have. 

What happened next was the best. With her typical half smile and a simple, Okay! Tal immediately folded herself into a reverent pose, clasped her hands under her chin and prayed. Miraculously, the other noisy girls noticed her praying and shushed each other to give her some semi-silence for her conversation with Jesus. Tal prayed silently, so I have no idea what she said. I also prayed silently and I have no idea what I said either. The pastor was still droning, unheeded, in the background, and the other little girls and BTT were hissing at each other to shshshsh! Tal’s praying! And then she looked up and smiled and said she felt better now. 

and that was that. 

Truly, though simple, this is a raw story, full of energy and emotion. It's the story of a deep-thinking child, often confused by the things she sees happening around her. I don’t know the future. I only know today. Tal is young, she’s hopeful, and she’s very spiritual. Jesus is and means and expects something different for every single child of His, so I’m trying to squash my tendency to think He’s limited to the way I know Him and the things He asks of me. Now Tal is worried that she might not go to heaven if she doesn’t spread the gospel like the Bible says to. I told her Jesus would tell her how she needed to spread the gospel, and if she’s not sure  her she can talk to Him about that too.  She said she’d do that. She might be growing as a Christian faster than I am. Tal is obsessed with the original 12 disciples of Jesus and likes to try to list them by name. And now that she had this conversation with Jesus, Tal says she’s a disciple of Jesus, too. I have no doubt she is. 

Selfishly, I also got some things out of that day. I got faith. I got to witness  another of the weird incredible ways Jesus works. And I got a story to tell. It’s not my story, it’s God’s story. It’s the oldest story, but for me it’s the first time I’ve witnessed it in action like this. And I. feel. unready. unworthy. and unable to forget it or stop telling it. 

Let Them Eat Whole Canned Mushrooms

 I have a tin of whole mushrooms in the my mini pantry. 

Also, I have a bit of a hoarding problem.

I’m not exactly sure what I had in mind when I bought a couple cheap cans of mushrooms a few months ago, because I generally don’t buy cans of anything, but it probably had something to do with the idea of an emergency rainy day mushroom soup or similar. 

My little neighbour Lex loves canned mushrooms.  Although I can’t personally understand their appeal, she’ll happily eat a whole tin of them at one sitting and then dreamily wish there was more. Since I bought these cans she’s eaten all of them except for the one last can I had hidden on the top of my fridge, hoping she wouldn’t think to look there. She never did find it, although she was suspicious I had one somewhere and tried half heartedly to find it.  Eventually I got tired of seeing that speck of yellow wrapper on the top of my fridge and moved it back to its real home in the pantry. Guess who discovered it there on her next hungry tour of my cupboards and fridge. Of course she did. And of course she asked if she could eat it. I. Said. No. Next time she came over she asked again, and, again, I told her I wanted to keep it. Sometimes she’ll just open the cupboard to look at that being yellow can with a hungry glimmer in her eyes and I’ll hard heartedly pretend not to see her. I think she’s stopped asking if she can eat it. 

Today I opened my pantry and saw that can of mushrooms and wondered, Why. Do I even care. Is a dollar twenty five worth of disgusting canned mushrooms going to do me half the good it will do her ? Or will it give me a fraction of the joy it will give her ? Never. Will my proverbial rainy day come before this tin has been bumped and bent and sat in my cupboard forgotten for 3 years ? Probably not. And by that time Lex won’t want it anymore either. Lex isn’t here today, so I shut my pantry, left the mushrooms in there, and kept thinking off and on about the absurdity of hoarding a stupid can of mushrooms. 

But now, as I wrote this, I had a brilliant idea. Lex just turned 9 years old, and I have a little gift for her sitting on my counter. As soon as I’m finished posting this I am going to go to my pantry, pull out that can of mushrooms, and add them to her gift bag. And to be honest, I think that will be her favourite part of her gift.