Times Like These

As a child, Saturday afternoons in my home were not free. My parents chose Saturdays to accomplish what seemed like an endless list of to-do’s. There was cleaning, cooking, mowing, cutting wood, hauling wood, stacking wood, feeding livestock, cleaning animal stalls, gutting sheds, washing cars, repairing farm equipment, washing laundry, dusting, changing the bedding, scrubbing floors, and so forth.

Every Saturday morning, I woke by nine and left the house by nine-thirty for gymnastics practice. I returned home at one to the crack of my parents’ work whip. I begrudgingly cleaned the bathroom with one eye out the window; I could hear the muffled grind of my friends’ dirt bikes grazing the terrain. But upon bathroom-cleaning inspection, my mother would scowl that I had missed the base of the toilet or that I had left hair in the bathtub drain. I hadn’t cleaned to the level of her expectation.

 Next was the kitchen floor. I sloshed soapy water from one end of my mother’s industrial-sized kitchen to the next. Missing patches here and there, hurrying to finish, wanting to have been at the creek by then to spy on the boys’ newly constructed hideout that perched on a nearby rock ledge. But again, upon inspection, my work did not make the cut. My mother would stand over me, pointing out those missed patches of dirty flooring. I hadn’t achieved what she was expecting.

From the kitchen floor, I was ushered outside where my father methodologically split thick chunks of wood that he and my brother had hauled from the hollow. “Get the wheelbarrow, Sissy,” he’d say. “This wood needs stacked beneath the porch.” On my fourth trip, the sun would begin to set, casting splintered orange rays through the branches of the walnut trees. I couldn’t see that the stacks were not straight. I was blinded by the silent alarm of the day coming to a premature end for me. My father, disappointed in my ill-shaped wood pile, scolded me for my shoddy workmanship and shooed me away with his gloved hand.

I still had time. It wasn’t yet dark. I ran to the barn for my bike. I could still make it to the creek. My friends still might be down there. But lo-and-behold, my mother would call for me through the kitchen window, waving a wicker basket in her hand. She needed blueberries from the orchard. Wouldn’t it be nice to have muffins after supper? I would pick the berries, but eat most of them. And then take the verbal lashing from my mother in the kitchen when I would return her basket with no more than a few handfuls of berries rolling around at the bottom. Not enough for her anticipated muffins. “But I mixed the batter while you were picking!” she’d say to me, her voice shrill and crammed with utter frustration.

The sky would be dark by then.  Saturday would officially come to an end.

I’m certainly not scarred by my childhood Saturdays. I don’t often think of those days in the perspective in which I just described. Growing up on my parents’ farm has blessed me with endless stories of old that fill me with warmth and a longing to return.

But today I recalled those Saturday afternoons under a cloak of failure. It’s the same cloak I’m wearing right now.

I slipped it on this morning in BJ’s just after turning into the new produce section of the store. Because I am in one of those mind-sets in which I am unable to execute anything to the fullest extent. Nothing ends in proper completion, nothing turns out as expected, and everything involves an intense and internal frustration that randomly erupts from me without prior notice. A quality cloak of failure is required for times like these. It enhances the degree of self-loathing necessary in walking that jagged line of martyrdom. Not everyone can take failing to such great heights.

But we all go through it. I hope. Times when it feels like everything we have tried has ended in failure. And then there are those really special times in life when we keep trying, and we try so hard, and for so long that resources become exhausted. Innovation dissipates. Strategies fade. Passion ceases to thrive. Emptiness consumes. At which point I pull my cloak of failure over my head and mope. Sometimes I cry.

Hence, the explosive success of the anti-depressant niche.

I don’t take the pills. I was asked to take a prescription twelve years ago by my doctor. Knowing better, I declined.

If I didn’t smudge my way through these standard life-lesson pitfalls, against what would have to measure the joy when it comes? Don’t we need the bad parts of life to cultivate the good parts into something beyond our wildest dreams?

Sometimes I fail because I’m distracted; I’d rather be doing other things, like being a kid and wanting to play rather than work. Sometimes I fail because I lack interest in the things I’m doing. But most of the time I fail because I have no patience, tolerance, or acceptance for the circumstances with which I am dealing. I have destroyed more than I’d like to admit merely because I did not have the patience to wait for the miracle to happen on its own.

I know that I fail not because of the heaping pile of failure at my feet, but because I am informed of my failure by those whom I have failed.

When my mother yelled at me for not cleaning properly, I remember thinking, “But you asked me to clean, and I cleaned. You never told me how you wanted me to clean. You just told me to do it. So I did it my way.”

Or when my father muttered words of distaste over my inability to properly stack wood, I remember thinking, “You never said the piles had to be formed in even rows. You only said it went under the porch. And that’s where I put your wood.”

As an adult, I whisper similar statements in my mind when under fire. Sometimes I want to ask people if they’d like to have my job? Or if I’m doing such a terrible job, why are you still here?

But rule #1 in the Guide to Becoming a Martyr states, “Martyrs do not question verbal abuse. They take it as it comes and politely smile in response. In some cases a Martyr may inquire if he or she can offer any further services to the abuser at hand; however, getting a word in edgewise may be impossible depending upon the circumstances and the decibel level at which the abuser is offering criticism.”

So I smile. I crack a joke. I well up in BJ’s. I argue with people in my head. And I eventually find the way out of my self-obsessed maze. I fold the cloak and place at the back of the closet until next time.

I am convinced that Blue Cross should issue me a stipend for the amount of cash I am saving them on monthly prescription refills.

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