My father used to yell when we were being loud.
"You're making so much noise!"
Well, it was more like a loudly-expressed, exasperated observation than yelling, though he did yell about other things.
I didn't get it.
Now, I have the same issue. The louder things are, the more stressed I am. (Unless it's Queen on the car radio.) I'm not talking about kids being loud in the car when I'm trying to drive in pouring rain. I'm just talking about normal loudness. Like the TV being loud, or the radio, when someone is trying to talk to me. A half hour in our van, in summer, when the only way to keep cool is to have the windows all the way down, is awful. I sometimes want to talk to someone, but I'd just have to yell and then probably repeat myself.
Why does this bother me? Is it my father's legacy?
Years ago, a friend and I did a learning style inventory which promised to tell whether we were kinesthetic, auditory or visual, only unlike others, it didn't just tell which area we preferred; it told which was our primary modality, which was hidden and which was sacred. I was KAV. I am kinesthetic in the front, which for me means that if my overtaxed bra is too stretched out or my sock seam is over my toe the wrong way, an immediate rectification is the only way I can keep functioning. I am visual in the back. That is my sacred modality. Anything visual either needs to be perfect or catgegorized as unimportant. In other words, if I purposely create something visual, like the color of my kitchen, it must be perfect, or if something's purpose is to be beautiful, like our garden, it bugs me if something is awry. However, the color that had already been in my kitchen before I painted it was not offensive to me, it was just off my radar.
My hidden area, the "middle", is auditory. The middle area is critical; it's a person's makeup. So if something auditory does not jive with my... rhythems, is a good way to describe it, it could potentially shake my very bones apart. This is why my daughter's screamo music lasts mere moments on the car radio and why my ex-husband knew when to start counting seconds until the jam session at the end of Free Bird would be shut off.
So can I draw an imaginary line in my soul from my annoyance with some kinds of loudness to my father (that's my real father, if you read my first post) and then dismiss this along with the other crap I inherited from him? It would be much easier if I could handle lots of noise without my bones shaking apart (yes, that's a repeated image but that's how it feels to me), especially until screamo is out of vogue and my boyfriend's four kids, three of whom are boys, get a little older. When I overload on noise, I need quiet AND stillness to come back to center. Quiet AND stillness together are very hard to come by around here.
So I'll try it. As the little boy in Angels in the Outfield says, "It could happen." And if it doesn't, please be quiet!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Sorry I punched you
Several years ago, my grandmother passed away. Well, she was my step-grandmother. I hadn't known her since childhood. But she had been pretty good to me. Starting when I met her as a teenager, she would take me Christmas shopping so I could pick out my own present. We always went to Weathervane. The first year, I tried on lots of clothes and liked most of them - a first for me. To my dismay, she tried to insist on buying me everything I liked. In subsequent years, I tried on one thing at a time.
Anyway, she died. On Christmas Day. With a load of Christmas presents in her arms. As we all sat at the dinner table, having Christmas dinner.
Needless to say, things got rather hectic after she fell to the floor. The house was full of great grandchildren. My parents were EMTs and so worked on her diligently until the ambulance (full of close family friends) arrived. My sister (my step-sister, really, and also a former EMT), was very upset. Unlike with me, this WAS her real grandmother. She HAD known her since childhood. And there she was, chest exposed for the defibrilator leads, lying prone on the kitchen floor.
I had two important tasks in this situation. First, I had to fetch the scissors so my parents could access gram's skin for the machine. This task included cutting her clothes. My father (technically, step-father) gave me this task and I did it sufficiently.
My second task, one I took on all by myself, was to keep my step sister out of the kitchen. As I said, she was very upset and probably much better than I will ever be at expressing her feelings as she's feeling them. In this situation, though, she also was not really helping with the effort to revive her beloved grandmother. She had to stay out of the kitchen.
Oh, there was another important task being carried out at the same time. Our children wanted to know what was going on, and they instinctively knew that they could find out by going into the kitchen. That would not have helped anyone, so they needed to be kept out as well. My sister (so as not to confuse things, this one is my biological sister) took on this responsibility. My efforts to keep our sister out of the kitchen conflicted with her secondary task, which was to keep our children somewhat calm. I don't know how she did that.
Soon the ambulance arrived and gram was loaded up for a short trip to the hospital. Here my memory gets fuzzy. My father and his daughter must have ridden in the ambulance. I know that I drove my mother to the hospital. I am pretty sure that my sister stayed back with the children, because I think I told her the news of gram's passing over the phone from the family room in the ER.
Gram was over 90 years old, so there was no autopsy, but my mom thinks a stroke took my borrowed grandmother. She had driven herself to my parents' house for Christmas that night, wrapped presents in tow, and stayed with us long enough to deliver them and wish us "Merry Chri-". We knew what she meant.
Sometime during the days and weeks afterward, my step sister approached me with something she wanted to say. She told me, "I'm sorry I punched you." Being a non-confrontational girl with a low pain tolerance, I had never been in a fistfight before and would have remembered being punched. She had not punched me, and she seemed surprised that I denied the event. I figured that that meant she had WANTED to punch me. I was ok with that, too, though I'm really really glad she hadn't actually done it. She was upset. She wanted to be with her grandmother, who was in distress. I was in her way. I understand. If I remember right, we discussed her understanding of why I kept her out of the kitchen. It wouldn't have helped for her to be in there, and after she had time to process things, she knew that. No hard feelings.
But now I have lots of questions. How will one react in a stressful situation? Do you go into panic mode? Do you become regimented and business-like? Do you become hysterical?
And what is stressful? Certainly that answer is not the same for everyone. Does something have to happen to YOU in order for you to become stressed, or can you watch someone you love in a crisis situation and become stressed yourself? (I'm guessing the latter is one of the easier questions to answer.)
What factors contribute to the level of stress experienced by individuals during any event? I have a student who, when asked "What should this girl's parents... boyfriend... next door neighbor do?" leads EVERY time with, "How old is the person?" This young lady would certainly say that the age of the people involved would be one of those factors. What are others?
At first, on that Christmas night so long ago, I froze. I heard gram's voice trail off. I saw her face freeze. I saw her become still. I saw her start to lose her balance. She was Lithuanian, very tall and big-boned, not a frail old lady. She was right in front of me. I could have reached out to try to steady her. I remember my now-ex-husband shoving me out of the bench so he could get past me and try to catch her. I just froze. Then I was ok. I got the scissors. I cut her shirt open. I had to be prompted, but I cut her undergarment too. I struggled with my sister. I drove to the hospital...
If someone had asked me, before that night, what I would do in that kind of situation, I would not have known for sure. It hadn't happened yet. Maybe I would have guessed that I would have run off down the street, screaming. I know little of how my sister dealt with our children or with her own perspective of the situation. My other sister, beginning that night and for a long time after, focused on her emotions. Three sisters, three unique reactions.
How do we know what will be stressful? How do we know what our reactions will be?
All these questions. I always have more questions at the end of a blog than at the beginning. But of all these questions about stress, about crisis, about reactions, none of them compare to these:
"When you are very stressed, how will you recover?"
"When you are in pain, how will you heal?"
"When you need help, will it be there?"
Know this. If someone loves you, they want to help. If you need help, you must tell someone you love. If you love someone who is hurting, both of you will feel better when you lend a hand.
Anyway, she died. On Christmas Day. With a load of Christmas presents in her arms. As we all sat at the dinner table, having Christmas dinner.
Needless to say, things got rather hectic after she fell to the floor. The house was full of great grandchildren. My parents were EMTs and so worked on her diligently until the ambulance (full of close family friends) arrived. My sister (my step-sister, really, and also a former EMT), was very upset. Unlike with me, this WAS her real grandmother. She HAD known her since childhood. And there she was, chest exposed for the defibrilator leads, lying prone on the kitchen floor.
I had two important tasks in this situation. First, I had to fetch the scissors so my parents could access gram's skin for the machine. This task included cutting her clothes. My father (technically, step-father) gave me this task and I did it sufficiently.
My second task, one I took on all by myself, was to keep my step sister out of the kitchen. As I said, she was very upset and probably much better than I will ever be at expressing her feelings as she's feeling them. In this situation, though, she also was not really helping with the effort to revive her beloved grandmother. She had to stay out of the kitchen.
Oh, there was another important task being carried out at the same time. Our children wanted to know what was going on, and they instinctively knew that they could find out by going into the kitchen. That would not have helped anyone, so they needed to be kept out as well. My sister (so as not to confuse things, this one is my biological sister) took on this responsibility. My efforts to keep our sister out of the kitchen conflicted with her secondary task, which was to keep our children somewhat calm. I don't know how she did that.
Soon the ambulance arrived and gram was loaded up for a short trip to the hospital. Here my memory gets fuzzy. My father and his daughter must have ridden in the ambulance. I know that I drove my mother to the hospital. I am pretty sure that my sister stayed back with the children, because I think I told her the news of gram's passing over the phone from the family room in the ER.
Gram was over 90 years old, so there was no autopsy, but my mom thinks a stroke took my borrowed grandmother. She had driven herself to my parents' house for Christmas that night, wrapped presents in tow, and stayed with us long enough to deliver them and wish us "Merry Chri-". We knew what she meant.
Sometime during the days and weeks afterward, my step sister approached me with something she wanted to say. She told me, "I'm sorry I punched you." Being a non-confrontational girl with a low pain tolerance, I had never been in a fistfight before and would have remembered being punched. She had not punched me, and she seemed surprised that I denied the event. I figured that that meant she had WANTED to punch me. I was ok with that, too, though I'm really really glad she hadn't actually done it. She was upset. She wanted to be with her grandmother, who was in distress. I was in her way. I understand. If I remember right, we discussed her understanding of why I kept her out of the kitchen. It wouldn't have helped for her to be in there, and after she had time to process things, she knew that. No hard feelings.
But now I have lots of questions. How will one react in a stressful situation? Do you go into panic mode? Do you become regimented and business-like? Do you become hysterical?
And what is stressful? Certainly that answer is not the same for everyone. Does something have to happen to YOU in order for you to become stressed, or can you watch someone you love in a crisis situation and become stressed yourself? (I'm guessing the latter is one of the easier questions to answer.)
What factors contribute to the level of stress experienced by individuals during any event? I have a student who, when asked "What should this girl's parents... boyfriend... next door neighbor do?" leads EVERY time with, "How old is the person?" This young lady would certainly say that the age of the people involved would be one of those factors. What are others?
At first, on that Christmas night so long ago, I froze. I heard gram's voice trail off. I saw her face freeze. I saw her become still. I saw her start to lose her balance. She was Lithuanian, very tall and big-boned, not a frail old lady. She was right in front of me. I could have reached out to try to steady her. I remember my now-ex-husband shoving me out of the bench so he could get past me and try to catch her. I just froze. Then I was ok. I got the scissors. I cut her shirt open. I had to be prompted, but I cut her undergarment too. I struggled with my sister. I drove to the hospital...
If someone had asked me, before that night, what I would do in that kind of situation, I would not have known for sure. It hadn't happened yet. Maybe I would have guessed that I would have run off down the street, screaming. I know little of how my sister dealt with our children or with her own perspective of the situation. My other sister, beginning that night and for a long time after, focused on her emotions. Three sisters, three unique reactions.
How do we know what will be stressful? How do we know what our reactions will be?
All these questions. I always have more questions at the end of a blog than at the beginning. But of all these questions about stress, about crisis, about reactions, none of them compare to these:
"When you are very stressed, how will you recover?"
"When you are in pain, how will you heal?"
"When you need help, will it be there?"
Know this. If someone loves you, they want to help. If you need help, you must tell someone you love. If you love someone who is hurting, both of you will feel better when you lend a hand.
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