The pain is excruciating. The slightest movement sends white-hot needles burrowing into all the nerves in my lower back.
But the anger? The anger is louder and even more insistent than the pain.
I’m lying in the bed—the victim of a misguided attempt to pick a piece of laundry up off the floor—and I’m looking up at my spouse. He has that look I recognize and find intensely annoying—a mixture of exasperation and patient weariness.
“I have a tee time at 12:30,” he says. “I won’t be finished by then.”
I have asked him to pick up our daughter from school—something that is usually my job, and one I thoroughly enjoy. But I’m in agony, and there is ZERO chance of my being able to drag myself downstairs, fold myself into the car, and drive the 9/10ths of a mile to get her.
But he has a tee time.
“Can’t she catch a ride home with a friend?”
This question makes the pain—and the anger—even worse. She is on the outs with her best friend right now (long story), and being reminded of this does nothing positive for my back OR my mood.
“No,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Fine,” he sighs. He’s not going to make this easy for me. “I’ll just go play the first nine holes, and then I'll pick her up.”
I can barely bring myself to spit out the words “Thank you.”
In my mind, I add “…for nothing, you asshole.”
*********************************************
Things you should know: My husband adores me--and (despite what's come before, or might come after) the feeling is entirely mutual. He’s a good bit older than I am, and often clueless about how things that sound perfectly reasonable to him don’t always sound that way to me.
He’s as structured as I am free-spirited. His entire life is captured in an Excel spreadsheet that he updates daily, while I am constantly forgetting both the mundane and the important. He is never late, and I’m what you might call “time-challenged.”
We are the stereotypical “opposites attract,” Yin/Yang couple. On many days, our differences are what make us good together.
Today is not one of those days.
He just retired after 45 years in the ministry. He was a very successful pastor—greatly beloved by his parishioners and the wider community he served. And one of the reasons he was so successful was that he knew how to draw boundaries and keep himself physically, emotionally, and mentally protected from the stresses of having so many people depend on him in just about any form of joy or sorrow you can imagine.
When it comes to setting boundaries, I'm once again his antithesis. I’m the one who drops everything to take care of everyone.
You need something? I put off writing on my blog, or skip choir practice. I forego walking the poor dog, or going out with friends to make it happen.
He doesn’t do that. He is jealous with his time—guards it like a precious jewel.
This makes me both jealous and livid.
Why does he get to say “No”? Or “Sorry, that doesn’t work for me”?
More to the point: Why can’t I?
****************************************************
My inner negativity coach, Gladys Kravitz, wants to stir up trouble:
“You work your ASS off, and he wants to kvetch about having to pick Lulu up from school ONCE?!?!? What is his fucking problem?!?!?!?”
Gladys is a nag and a busybody who loves nothing more than instigating turmoil. But I have to confess I have a soft spot for her. She is morally superior to everyone, and—let’s be honest here—I aspire to her level of moral superiority.
But my instinct to stand up for my own kicks in immediately: “He doesn’t mean….”
Gladys cuts in without hesitation: “You are flat on your back, in AGONIZING PAIN, and he’s going to quibble about picking Lulu up from school so that he can play GOLF?!?!”
On one level, I know she’s right. My teeth start to clench, and the pain in my back flares.
And then this tiny voice I’ve never heard before suddenly poses a question:
“What if you did what HE does?”
My first thought is that having two voices in my head is probably not a good thing...
But that kind of question demands an answer. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” I shout back to the little voice.
I do not wish to be reasonable at the moment, so I’m pissed that she has managed to make herself heard over Gladys Kravitz’s much-more-sensible response to this situation.
“Well,” she says. “Maybe what you really need is to set some boundaries for yourself. Like…maybe…tell the family that the time you set aside for writing is time you are simply NOT AVAILABLE to them. Period.”
I am pissed all over again that I haven’t thought of this before. But I’m not ready to make nice to a voice I don’t even know.
“And just how am I supposed to do THAT?”
“Just…tell them. The same way he told you he had a tee time.”
Gladys seizes on this piece of advice—largely because she thinks it will cause trouble with the spouse.
“You know, that’s not a bad idea! Tell him to stuff his golf clubs up his ass—you’re going to do your own thing from now on!”
And, suddenly, I remember that look of weary patience on his face. I think of all the years when people assumed they had a right to his time—no matter when, no matter what—because he wore a dog collar.
For the first time, I wonder if being a minister is kind of like being a woman? And what would happen if women did what he learned to do? What if we learned to protect time for ourselves?
“That ain’t NEVER going to happen,” Gladys says. I can almost see her rolling her eyes.
The tiny voice says “Why not try it? What’s the downside?”
The answer comes so fast I don’t have time to edit the truth of it before my brain opens up to admit the thought:
“I’ll have to recognize that I’m 54 years old and I could have been doing that my whole life. I’ll have to face the fact that there are so many things I could have done, and so many people I could have been—and I fucked it all up.”
If a voice can shrug, this one does:
“And if you don’t start today, you’ll be one day closer to 55, and that will be another opportunity lost. You don’t get to re-do the past, but your future is up to you.”
I hate this kind of happy-clappy-positive-self-talk bullshit.
********************************
The spouse picks the girl child up from school—and then goes back to the golf course to finish the other nine holes. He’s tickled pink with himself for thinking up this clever solution to his “problem.” The spreadsheet for today's golf scores will be complete.
I sign up for a very expensive online writing course that will have assignments and deadlines.
Gladys Kravitz hoots and hollers over this, of course. “A fool and her money are soon parted!” she says. She will have a field day when I fail.
But my back feels a lot better.