And then you awaken...

A friend and I were both at our wits ends the other day over individual and group conversations that weren’t inclusive. “You and I exchange,” she said, doing this circular movement with her hands. We were sharing our recent situations with that glee you get of knowing you’ll be understood.

Then she told me about an article she’d seen called, “If you feel like you’re going crazy, maybe you’re awakening!” We nodded our heads knowingly. We got the “going crazy” part at least.

I told her how Donny got crabby the night before and then asked me in the morning if I was still crabby.

I said, “I’m not the one. It was you.”

He said, “You didn’t have the day I had.

My heart melted with that and I said, “You didn’t even get a chance to talk about your day, did you?” He’d picked Henry up, and as soon as he got home we were in the throws of dinner with his mom and getting ready to can turnips. Turns out he basically had the same problem, or nearly: too much talk, too little said, too little listening.

So I rubbed his shoulders and neck for a minute and then went about my business. Don’t need a lot of words to explain how too many drive you bonkers.

What is it that makes for the exchange, the dialogue, the conversations that aren’t endless monologues with no connections?

A friend of mine is teaching English in Vietnam. He told me this story about an exercise the children were doing:

"I noticed that question number one remained blank on every workbook. All the pairs had bypassed it and had begun working from question two. The first question was:
While you are standing in line at the checkout do you, (a) get nervous and impatient or, (b) wait patiently. Eventually everyone completed the questionnaire, except for this first question. Finally one of the students raised a hand. "Excuse me teacher, what does this mean?". What had stumped everyone was the phrase "standing in line"! It's a concept that is completely unknown here. I tried to explain that in Western countries we stand in an orderly line at checkouts etc., but they could only shake their heads in wonder at this strange way of doing things."

So maybe “awakening” is like shaking your head in wonder. You didn’t before see the strangeness of this way of doing things. You didn’t notice when the best of your daily conversations became like standing in line: you take your turn; I’ll take mine. The awareness builds slowly. Then it starts to make you feel crazy. And then….

And then it’s morning again, and the sun’s coming up, and the sky is golden along the horizon, and you’re not sure any of it matters.

It’s like the carpet. Got cleaned last Friday. Two days later, Henry walks through the living room shaking his sippy cup of purple juice. We scurry like mad to get up all the miniscule spots before they dry. In the general commotion, Henry stares from his space on the floor between chair and couch, aware that he’s done something wrong (maybe for the first time ever “aware” of it). After the cleanup he follows me to my bedroom doing the toddler version of small talk. I know he needs assurance that I’m not mad at him. I love him up. His mom takes him for a quick walk. When she gets home Donny plays with him.

If you could have seen the look on his face. That “Oh, oh, what’s all the panic about, what did I do, I’m in trouble” look. It makes you think, “What does it matter? Who cares about the carpet? This is crazy.” But you care. We didn’t scream and yell (except for Donny’s initial “Stop!”) but our actions conveyed that we cared. It was just one of those crazy things – after nearly three years of no sippy cup shaking of purple juice in the living room, it happens right after the carpet’s cleaned. What are the chances of that! I said something along those lines to Donny as we cleaned.

He said, “It always happens.”

It does (although usually it’s the dog or cats). It just seems like you can have a hard time sometimes (or I can), sustaining the level of caring. Something is always happening. You think you’re going crazy. Then you awaken (at least to a new day).