Thunder Thighs: How to Avoid Being Completely Useless

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My father was in the hospital for a full day before my mom called. I was cooking when my phone started blaring “Space Unicorn,” an unhinged song about a unicorn who soars through the stars, delivering rainbows all around the world. As a cranky recluse, I hate phone calls. Text me like a goddamn human being. But it’s impossible to be completely agitated when listening to lyrics about marshmallow lasers. And you certainly don’t expect to receive bad news.

“I wanted to let you know that your father is in the hospital,” said my mom when I answered the phone. “Just in case you were trying to get ahold of us.”

She relayed this information casually, as if they had just popped out to the supermarket. As a result, I wasn’t sure what level of terrified to feel.

“What??” I asked.

“Remain calm,” she said.

My mom was calling from an emergency room bay, where they had been languishing since about 10 a.m. My father had passed out at the gym, she told me. This had already happened twice before. But this time, there’d been difficulty reviving him. EMTs insisted upon admitting him to the hospital so doctors could run tests.

Days later, we learned my dad had several severe blockages in his arteries. Upon delivering the test results, the doctor told my mom they had three options: open-heart surgery, medical management, or a procedure to put in stents and a loop recorder. The first two options felt like a death sentence. Luckily, after consulting with another cardiologist, the doctor decided the last option would be best.

My father was in the hospital for a week. At a loss as to how to be useful, I continued to cook. I made loaded baked potato empanadas, breaded chicken cutlets with lemon-garlic sauce, vegetable sides, and apple cider doughnut cake. I dropped Tupperware containers at my parents’ house so my mom would have something to eat when she got home from a full day at the hospital. I had learned from my mom that to feed someone was to care for them. At that point, it was all I knew how to do.

I also drove my mom to and from the hospital when I could. I visited with my dad and joked about the poor book selection in his room and took notes when the cardiologist explained the stent and loop recorder implantation procedures.

At these visits, my mom would inevitably throw me out after not too much time had passed. “I know you have a lot to do,” she’d say.

And on the one hand, this was true. There were client deadlines and my Hippocampus responsibilities. There were two-hour-long meetings with the Feminist Book Club transition team, during which we received a crash course in the governance of worker-owned co-ops and worked to develop our own bylaws. I had evening choir rehearsals and critique group meetings. I had school pickup in the afternoons. I had the last of Em’s soccer season. I had renovation chaos.

But at the same time, when I sat down at my computer, all I could do was stare at the blinking cursor in another empty Word document and do nothing. When I got bored with this, I cooked, or I wandered about the house aimlessly. I thought about my father.

Finally, there came a day when I was able to pick my father up from the hospital and bring him home. Once there, I helped him pair his loop recorder with an electronic transmitter and then I sat with him for a bit while my mom ran out to the pharmacy and then they sent me off to deal with my own damn family.

A week later, we were able to spend Thanksgiving together at my in-laws’ house.

And now, here we are, at the end of the month, safe and sound.

I’m reading a fabulous little book right now called Micro Activism by Omkari L. Williams. It’s about how you can make a difference in the world, even if you’re not the one with the bullhorn, the one in the spotlight, the one operating as the face of a movement. It’s about how you can make a difference in the world by focusing on the handful of small things at which you excel. The things that are totes in your wheelhouse, like writing articles and op-eds or curating resources or teaching small workshops or even spreadsheeting the hell out of an initiative. In this way, you can support the movements that matter to you, and you can do it in a way that’s sustainable.

It occurs to me, as I write this, that the same lesson applies to caregiving, and to being part of a care team.

Sure, I want to solve all of the problems. I want to do all of the things. I feel useless otherwise.

But no one needs me to do all of the things, and that’s probably a good thing. Because if I did all of the things, the rest of my life would fall apart. I would fall apart.

I have often felt frustrated that my mother is so resistant to asking for help. Much like me, she also wants to do all of the things. But what this incident has shown me is that my mom has a strong care team of friends and neighbors who will help out my mom whether she wants them to or not. And I am so grateful for that. All of us together? We’re going to get the job done.

So I’ll continue to drive back and forth and I’ll insist upon setting up a shared Google Calendar and I will make every stupid joke I can in order to make my father laugh.

Goddammit, I will bake all of the cakes.

And the rest of the time? Well, I’ll be a nervous wreck. But at least I’ll know I did what I could.

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On the Internets

• This piece by Anne Helen Petersen on who gets “quality” leisure time is about a year old, but I only just read it and, my god, can I get an amen? For the tl;dr (though you should absolutely read it), check out this fun Instagram video on mom hobbies.

• And here’s Lyz Lenz on the shuttering of Jezebel and the overall demise of all feminist publications and the question of where we’re supposed to put all our rage now. (Jezebel has since been purchased by Paste, so maybe there’s hope for us yet.)

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Everything I Accomplished Despite Life

• In case I didn’t already make it clear… not much. Though I did write a couple of posts for Book Riot. Here’s one on my favorite books about finding yourself, and another on graphic novels from my fave speculative fiction authors.

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Necessary for My Sanity This Past Month

• I took a day trip to New Hope and Peddler’s Village with my best mom friends and found the most fabulously witchy skater dress covered in cats. (Actually, my friend Laura saw it and immediately insisted I buy it.)

• I signed up for an online sewing class through Seamwork, and I am so excited about it.

• I ordered a denim jacket off Poshmark because I have grand dreams of making THIS happen.

• I read Heather Havrilesky’s Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage, which was such a hoot, and also a testament to choosing the one you love over and over again, for the rest of eternity.

• I also LOVED T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Grace, which I did not expect because even though I LOVE T. Kingfisher, I do not generally read romantasy. But this romantasy made me feel all tingly at all the right bits, plus it had me giggling the whole way through. More please.

• But most exciting of all is the fact that I am no longer living in my basement. You heard me. I’m back in my bedroom, sleeping mere feet away from this gorgeous new built-in book shelf / storage bench / book nook. Miracles do happen.

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