You know when you’re sitting and waiting, and there’s nothing you can do? You know what I mean – one of those situations that’s entirely beyond your control.
It happened to me last evening when my site went down for a few hours, due to something that came up with my provider and required a simple fix. An email and phone call made that clear, and equally clear – the fact that I would need to wait.
There was a queue. A sequence. A set of priorities.
I was dangling by a thread with no say in the matter, no way to influence the speed of resolution, and no control whatsoever over yet one more situation in daily life.
Oh, it’s hardly a tragedy if my site is offline a few hours. It’s rare, I’m happy with my service, and it’s more my perfectionist tendencies that have me on edge if anything is awry with this gathering spot for expression, discussion, and occasionally – shared laughter.
But I am unnerved by helplessness that sets off emotional triggers to do with other areas of my personal and professional life. Issues that matter enormously to any single mother, or anyone struggling in this economy.
And then there’s my younger son and something that matters to him at the moment – something “simple” that has been out of reach financially, for several years.
* * *
I find myself pacing.
I’m checking my page and my email every ten minutes.
I watch a movie, but my mind is drifting.
I’m calmer than I thought I would be – I am polite on the phone with the man addressing the issue – and I do my best to surrender to the fact that truly there is nothing I can do.
I seek a place of broader perspective; I’m fine, and my kids are fine. It’s only that my site is down, and them’s the breaks.
* * *
He sits beside me in the car and his bad mood is palpable.
I inhale and exhale and remind myself that motherhood is an inexact art, and growing up, a fluid and imperfect process under any circumstances.
I note his translucent skin in the early light, his lids still heavy with sleep, and the wispy mustache over his upper lip. I take in his changing profile – the strong chin, the line of his nose that is reshaping in older adolescence, the way he has just started to comb his hair off his forehead which makes him look more mature.
He’s a handsome kid.
“Happy we’re doing this?”
I’m weaving in and out of rush hour traffic.
“It’s about time,” he says, with irritation in his tone.
His remark is without malice, but it annoys me all the same. He rolls his head toward me and I can’t miss the surly expression.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It was out of my control.”
“I’m just venting my frustration, okay?”
I can tell he’s sitting on anger and holding back. I can only imagine the complexity of feelings he’s experienced over the years, caught in a particular limbo between two parents. Some of the emotions we’ve talked about. Many we haven’t.
I think to myself that he’s luckier than some, and better late than never when it comes to this class. If he’s unhappy about timing, them’s the breaks.
I bite my tongue and continue driving.
* * *
It isn’t like waiting for a medical diagnosis. It isn’t like waiting to hear about a job, an acceptance to school, an offering of scholarship, or any other significant news or opportunity.
I take long, slow breaths to alleviate the intensity of my emotion – the fact that I am again out of control, that money issues change the complexion of any endeavor, that a history of years of financial complications and no success at fighting back triggers terrible responses in me.
Despondency. Hatred. Cynicism.
Years of fighting for monies due and only partially paid. Years of fighting, period. In the dark, from a place of darkness, until finally giving up in order to find a small piece of light.
I glance for the fiftieth time at my computer screen and see – at last – that an email has popped up; my site is fixed, and I can close my eyes and sleep – if I can push the other worries out of my head, how the next weeks will flow, the unbudgeted costs in gas and more that go along with this undertaking that he wants so much, that is a small thing and a big deal, that he will manage and I will manage and we will manage because we always have. Because we must.
* * *
I’m not good at waiting, though I’ve learned.
How to deal with no control?
Practice, I suppose – whether we like it or not.
Yet I despise these states of in-between, of lifestyle limbo, of floating, though I have come to be more tolerant in the unsettling embrace of each.
I tell myself there will always be disappointment, there will always be frustration, there will always be things beyond our grasp and out of our control, and my son will be the better for knowing it. As for me, I recognize my triggers and have learned to manage them.
But I’m tired, so tired, and even more so, weary of what is out of my control.
I tell myself it’s Monday and the feelings will pass. Them’s the breaks, and it’s time to buck up.
The coffee is plentiful, and for now, that’s enough.
While it was not a medical diagnosis or game-changing job offer you were waiting for, I suspect that your site, at that dark moment, represented your connection to something vital, and the block triggered primitive dread, the unremembered past of feeling alone and unsafe and scared and agitated and confused. While this is our wiring, collective and individual, your ability to get back connected and tell the tale is the proof that the unremembered past must be filed truly in its proper place.
As we heal, we bounce back faster from the pits of our despair, finding truth in our connectedness and in the solidarity of our human suffering, frustration and anguish. We also may be taught and guided by our pain toward a soft surrender to what simply is… and the hope that we can be soft and safe and simultaneously connected—striving to help ourselves, our kids and each other in a paradigm that excludes no feeling and no person.
No matter how it breaks moving forward, I’m sending you All Good Wishes
Thank you Bruce, for your own contribution to that soft surrender and vital connectivity, for many of us.
Oh boy! Them’s the breaks. I feel this so fully.
We just ‘took that drive’ and I felt the same overwhelming and suffocating feelings of helplessness and managing because we have to.
Things just HAVE to change soon… for all.
We all have our coping mechanisms, don’t we, @notasoccermom? I wonder how much of this is familiar territory to any single parent, or any parent (regardless of marital status) who is dealing with something trying. We keep going, but man, it’s tiring.
Oh, yes— not good at waiting, yet seem to be living in wait. Some days I don’t even really know what I’m waiting for. Keep telling myself that no matter how wide the river, there is another shore, and I’m heading for it, even if there be dragons.
In my case, maybe it’s finding the whereabouts of a deliberately missing husband so that I can deliver divorce papers and get this thing done. And it’s waiting for a company to make up its mind after 2 years whether I’m staying or going. And it’s waiting for the last child to leave the house so that I can decide whether I will make a good life by myself or wither away, suddenly absolutely rootless. Children gone, husband disappeared, parents passed on. Will it be just me knocking around somewhere, labeling the family antiques in case someone has an interest someday?
I hate that waiting more than anything.
What you’re going through right now, Madelia, is one long wait, followed by another, and another – punctuated by surreal moments when something happens that moves you forward into the unknown. It is what it is, though it must seem all the more dreadful when it’s at the hands of the person you loved.
Wishing you strength, and sending you positive thoughts to endure the waiting.
I hear you on how unsettling it feels to have no control over something, especially if it has to do with my kid. Just yesterday, during an almost-perfect anniversary weekend, a pleasant stroll through a cute, wine-country backroads town results in an instantly-appearing golf-ball size bump with a bright purple middle. Wished it were me but it was my kid. It looked much worse than I could calmly handle but waiting for him to feel soothed, the ice to kick in, the swelling to abate, the pediatrician’s emergency line to call back and the reassurance that everything will be okay felt like an eternity.
Oh Belinda. How frightening. Yes, anything that comes at a child is terrifying, and the feeling of helplessness, the worst.
You always have such a crafty way of reminding us, your readers, that sometimes the frustrations we exhibit are not always due to what is happening at that precise moment. I hope things get better in regards to your son’s situation. We always want what is best for them but sometimes (a LOT of times) money is such a hindrance. May your Tuesday be brighter! 🙂
As a smart-ass 20-something, I said to one of my teachers, “Control is an illusion.”
Yes,” he said. “But it’s a hell of an illusion.”