Yesterday, I was walking to my car outside of Trader Joe’s, and I saw a mom pushing her grocery cart with her son riding on the bottom ‘shelf’ area of the cart. He wasn’t just sitting there, though. He was riding on his belly, hands forward, like he was sliding headfirst like Josh Hamilton.
Not a big deal, really. But I cringed and got that sick feeling in my stomach. It came from a memory that flashed in my head of riding in that same place on a grocery cart, as my dad pushed me & the groceries through Albertson’s. I must’ve been about five. Somehow, my hand made contact with the front wheel, and it ripped off one of my fingernails. It hurt probably about as much as you think it would! I remember being pretty hysterical, wailing and screaming at full capacity, until eventually some folks who worked there delivered some sort of ointment and bandage. I was still in a significant amount of pain (ever had a fingernail ripped off? Sucks.), but it was manageable now, and I’d been given a few things to help me get cleaned up and able to finish the shopping excursion.
That memory flashed up in my mind watching that kid get pushed through the parking lot, and my initial instinct was to chase down that poor child in peril, instruct him on safe grocery cart-riding etiquette, and be merrily on my way, having saved at least one child from the terrible fingernail experience of my childhood, still haunting me 20+ years later.
Of course I didn’t, because I’m not insane, but it had been a while since I remembered that grocery cart ride, and it stuck with me throughout the rest of the day.
As children, when something ails us, we scream and cry and wail and moan until our parent comes to manage our problem or our pain subsides. As we are raised, it is among our parents’ goals to train us to be self-sufficient in responding to these little things that life gives us, so we won’t need to scream and cry and wail and moan until someone helps us. And one of the things that we adults should be able to rest upon in evaluation of our selves is our ability to ‘take care of ourselves.’ If you have known me very long, you know that I believe this very seriously, and see parents who intervene in the problems of their children as doing the children a disservice–the parent/child dependency factor is restraining so many of my peers from graduating out of the paradigm that the world runs on their emotions and opinions, and it’s hurting them. But…more on that another time.
When I look around my community here in Bellingham, and consider the childishness of my screaming and crying and wailing and moaning when my fingernail got ripped off, I think this time I need to take the other learn-able point. While I’ve held (to a destructive fault) the simple equation: dependency = bad, I have to admire the child who won’t relent their shrill noise-making until someone comes to help them. That child is capable, whether he or she has any or no concept of it at all, of something we adults fail miserably at too often:
letting pain be known.
As I think about it, I was probably lousy at this as a child, too. I wanted so much to be viewed as an island, unreachable and un-hurtable, that the way my pain was known by others was through my dysfunction, rather than my healthy ability to communicate and be supported. And…you guessed it, I’m still that same kid, trying not to scream and cry and wail and moan. Aren’t you, too?
Part of being in a healthy community is seeking out ways each day to support neighbors in all seasons, joys, & trials of their lives, and being conscious of the ways in which we are working to give life to the community. It’s something we talk about often, and it’s something I’m very glad to say I see often. It’s encouraging and inspiring to look around see all the simple and necessary ways in which folks come to walk along side each other and celebrate highs and share burdens of lows with each other.
The challenge then, comes in swallowing our pride in our dependence, and letting pain be known. Do we shout it from the rooftops? Probably not. But the way I’ve lived, the way I’ve seen others live, is more along the lines of letting pain be cleverly cloaked (or worse yet, buried). And if I had been too proud to scream bloody murder that evening in Albertson’s, I never would’ve gotten that band-aid…and God knows, band-aids cure everything when you’re five.
So I have to be aware when my neighbors are asking me about who I am, and respond honestly–free from witty deflections and lies that sound like my least favorite 4-word greeting: ‘good, how are you?’ And I need to trust that whoever is asking will identify with me, will share my burden, and as I do the same with them, that we’ll each become lighter and more adept at managing future burdens that we come under. Part of my self-critique tells me that nobody is interested in hearing about my lousy childhood, my differently-lousy adolescence, my lousy-and-embarrassing first attempts at adulthood, and the ghosts of those that follow me as I continue working to be a healthy adult. But I know I need to stop hiding, and I need to pull my neighbors out of hiding, too.
So my friends, I hope we can all take a lesson from little 5-yr old bloody Freddy. Scream and cry and wail and moan a little bit. Let the people around you come and support you. Be sincere and earnest in letting them share your burden, and when you reach victories, you’ll have more to celebrate with. Let’s all do this, just a little bit more than we already have, just to see what happens.
THE STONES WILL CRY OUT 