Tag: caregiving

Writing in a Community

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I started a lunchtime writing group. The last time we met we wrote poems on fragments of Anne Sexton’s poetry. (Brilliant assignment, Tiffany!)

I cried a little as I wrote my piece. When it came my turn to read the poem out loud, I alerted the group, “I may cry when I read this. Don’t worry about me. Don’t hand me tissues. I am okay. I’m just having feelings.”

I read my piece out loud and two-thirds of the way in, I began sobbing. Literally sobbing, sniveling, gasping-for-breath crying. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to sob — especially in the middle of the workday and in front of coworkers. That is the time I like to joke around about Toddlers & Tiaras or take a walk in Riverside Park.

But there were things bubbling up in me. A sadness around the shifts and losses in my marriage, due to my husband’s Parkinson’s Disease.

Here’s the story: I cope really well. I work out. I write. I share my feelings. I lean on my friends. I feel alone. I love my kids. I love my job. I love my communities. But, at times, I feel and I am alone. And I am sad.

There was something healing about writing about and reading this piece to a writing group — a community of real people in real time and in a real place. We wrote together and then we listened to one another read.

Our meeting is simple. We rotate leaders. The leader picks a topic and then we write for 20 minutes. Then we go around and read what we’ve written. We have written about other things too — our childhoods and our rituals.

There is an alchemy to being a part of a community of real writers. The other day I wrote on my other blog What is Community? https://mbcoudal.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/what-is-community/

It is hard work, passion and diversity. This lunch time writing group has and is all that. We meet again tomorrow at 12:30. Join us.

The Seder and the Little Things

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Granted, there are a few parts of the Passover Seder that could be considered boring, but Chris was asleep during the Plagues part! That’s good stuff. Frogs! Lice! Pestilence! Boils! etc.

It’s times like these I try to focus on my 7 rules. I reminded myself of Rule #2 — Escape through Literature. I buried my nose in the Seder guidebook, the Haggadah.

I’ve been more worried about Chris’s Parkinson’s lately. Like last night at the neighbor’s Seder, Chris’s chronic illness was visible, difficult, and anti-social. And it persisted. After the party, instead of getting the kids ready for bed, he sat in front of the computer and fixated on his on-line bridge game. I know I should be grateful for all he does and is. And mostly, I am. But still. I laid awake at night worried. And then I moved on to worry about the little things.

Like the possibility that the mouse we caught on Sunday was not the only mouse in the house. Honestly, my worry about the mouse in the kitchen surpassed my worry about Chris’s Parkinson’s decline. It’s the little things that slay me. That feel insurmountable as I lay awake in the middle of the night.

You somehow learn to live with cancer or chronic illness, but the mouse situation? That’s the last straw! I’m ready to toss it all in and ask for a redo. This must be why something as small as lice made it to the Top 10 list of unbearable plagues that smite mankind in Egypt. The Ancient God of the Seder knew it was the little things that get you, not the big ones. Still, it doesn’t make it any easier.