The point of telling you all that was not to garner sympathy
for my woe, but to tell you that, of course, when the recommendation was to
rest my shoulder, I thought today would be a great day to pull all the heavy
pots and pans out of my very small and awkwardly-positioned corner kitchen
cabinet to replace the contact paper shelf liner. This is a task that required circus-level
contortionist skills. But I did it. The new liner is wrinkled and there are no
proper right angles, but it’s in there, dammit!
It’s clean and fresh and I feel accomplished! Surprisingly, my bum shoulder doesn’t even
hurt that much anymore.
Metaphysically speaking, there’s an understanding that back
pain, shoulder pain, etc. can often be related to “Carrying a weight on one’s
back (or shoulders)”. Sometimes, just
recognizing that is enough to ease the pain.
Sometimes, recognition also requires a heating pad and/or aspirin.
As I was crawling, twisting, maneuvering into position at
the back of the cabinet and laughing at myself for thinking this was a good idea, I flashed to my mother helping my aunt scrape old wall
paper off of walls in an apartment building my aunt owned. This was a rough time for my mother and, as
they worked, they talked about the frustrations and the more they talked, the
harder they worked, the more they scraped, and, eventually, the more they
laughed and felt better.
Then I realized this is something of a pattern in my
family. When things go wrong, things get
done! When I was unemployed and waiting
for a solution to my husband’s health problems, I did a lot of painting. When I look at the somewhat bizarre color on
my kitchen walls (seemed like a great idea at the time!), I’m reminded of how
far we’ve come.
My brothers build stuff.
Or tear stuff down. My mother
pulls weeds and grabs a shovel. I paint
or clean or craft something weird. It’s
what we do and I guess it’s cheaper than therapy. So that stupid cabinet has been begging for
new shelf liner for years. Why
today? I don’t know, other than the very
clear understanding that there are things that either need to change or that
are changing that are out of my control.
We were met with a family health crisis over the last few
weeks and there was nothing anyone could do to fix it. We’re now on the other side of the emergency
but there’s still work to do. This was
something I could do. A brother came to
town last week and fixed a bunch of little things in my mom’s house. Because that was something he could
do. That’s just how we handle
stuff. I’m not sure on which side of the
family this trait originated, but I’d guess it was probably my mother’s. We’re worker bees and I’ve seen evidence of
this behavior in my aunts and uncles as well.
I have some other minor frustrations to work out so I might
mop the floor later. If you see me
dusting or raking leaves, that’s when you’ll know that something is really not
right in my world for the moment but it will pass. If you see me pulling out power tools, you
probably want to keep your distance.
