Elide

Woke up thinking about not having to answer people, which is often the best choice. One I was not allowed as a child, I had to give an answer to any question put to me, even if I didn't have an answer, even if the question was accusatory and unanswerable.

It's normal for me to ask a surgeon a question, then get no immediate reply, after all, they are busy. Later, maybe five minutes, maybe an hour or more later, I'll get the information. "Yes, a splint. And big C-arm for the next case." I'm very used to this. So often in my life, I've been pressed for an answer, a reply of some sort. Learning to not react, but to think and choose not only what to say, but if I even say anything at all, has been a struggle.

D has also shown me how not to answer, inoffensively. Not intentionally taught, but his instinct is to elide. His way of dealing with his parents' occasional intrusions. Just a few issues (religion, family loyalty) that they press on, isolated, and he cannot be pushed. Took me a while to understand what he was doing, how it worked. No hostility, but a kind and impenetrable silence. A tai-chi distraction, redirection.

Answering is still my reflex. I have to stop myself from talking into the gap, fill it up lest I fall in. Getting better at it, kinder but more definite. Proving patiently that no, I did not have to answer them. I do not now. All the non-responses I needed then, I spend now in a bunch, and my mother gets silence.

So often, people think they have to do … whatever it is, and really, they don't. I remember a very tired cow-orker at the library, decades ago, talking about having to stay up when neighbors came to visit, when she had to make three dozen cupcakes for her daughter's class, and she had to finish the other child's elaborate halloween costume, and oh, how hard it all was, but she HAD to work until 3AM to get it all done. All I could think was, why does anyone have to do any of these things? No one is going to die if you don't. Tell the neighbors you are busy, buy a box of cookies for the kids, simplify the costume, and go to bed.

We box ourselves into Musty Boxes, then wail at our misery. Better to say, If I want this, then I must do this, but I don't HAVE to do any of it at all, or I can make it all easier. I want to do this, because then I get that, works better.

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Dreams this morning.

Circulating, surgeon throws a wad of clay at me, lands on my bit of desk. So I drop it down the back of his shirt as I tie up his gown*. Then I'm scrubbed in, and we have to go for supplies into a back stage area. Literally, a theater backstage, with non-OR people carelessly waking around us, as I get exasperated trying to keep the surgeon's gown, and my own, sterile. Multiple attempts to adjust lights, then I realize there is a production of Hamlet going on, and we are visible to the audience. By then, I've had to officially break scrub, irritably, and try not to disturb the performance, while still doing my job.

Then of having to leave, desperately wanting to come home. On the way, the car dash lights go out, and I lose power, although not completely. Winding back roads, getting dark. Worried that we'll need to buy a new car, then more and more worried that I won't even be able to limp home, a long way to go.


Got up, after Eleanor has her cuddle. Moby has a paw on my knee before I can even sit on the chair. He purrgrowls on me for a half hour, until I coax him off to move my legs.

Laptop increasingly unreliable. A swarm of little things, but worsening. D suggesting, as my IT support person, he would prefer I get something newer, easier to support. I balk, I dissemble, but he's right. I lay it in his hands. I buy his shirts, he buys my electronics. I just hope we don't have to replace the car anytime soon.



*Yes, I really would do this.