Finding Ways to Feel Better

Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.
~Dorothy Day

I was at a Chinese buffet a few months ago with the Giant, and for some reason, I chose the three minutes he was up getting second helpings to have a mental breakdown.

A woman behind me was scolding her child, saying, "If you don't sit down in your chair facing forward by the count of three, you won't get any ice cream." The woman reached three. The child didn't budge. The mother promised to fulfill her threat, and the child whined, but to no avail. For a moment I though to myself, "This is a good idea. Give the children incentives, and reward good behavior." But what about when they grow up, and need to be coddled or praised for everything they do? It's a tough game to keep up with. So it's simple: only offer them rewards every once in a while. But then you have to pick and choose what times good behavior is important, and even then can you really trust a child to remember for the next few hours that something important is at stake? From this place, my brain exploded into a thousand different horrible scenarios of raising needy, spiteful children that cry and whine and wail and make embarrassing scenes.

Do you remember when your parents said to you, "You keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about?" Sitting in my booth at the Chinese restaurant, I suddenly felt very ashamed for my behavior as a 5-year-old. I don't care if I didn't know any better; I feel like I should have. Daddy always told me there was no physical pain worth crying over. I don't think he meant it literally, because sometimes you really can't help yourself, but I think he wanted me to understand that someday the word "pain" would mean something much more significant than falling knees-first into a pile of gravel.

People say that a parent can always feel their child’s pain, but once that child is old enough to understand, it begins to go both ways. Last April, a friend of my mother's died of cancer. Only a year prior she had lost another friend to cancer. The Professor's wife (who shall be henceforth known as the Boss) passed away in January from cancer. Poppa (my grandfather on my mother’s side) died of cancer. It’s an ugly word, and if it wants you, it’ll take you.

My mother told me via text message when she got the news last April when, obviously, she should have called. But she did it as a courtesy, considering it was 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning and I was trying to sleep off a terrible cold. After I woke, it took me a few hours to get a hold of her because she was busy taking care of her heart.

Some people believe in crying. Some believe in talking about it. Some believe in counseling. My mother and I believe in shopping and food.

Four years ago when Freckled told me (before we’d even started dating) that I wasn’t worth taking a risk, my mom threw me in the passenger seat of her car and took me out. She bought me a pair of rhinestone encrusted black flip-flops, and then treated me to the Cheese Cake Factory for lunch. For those three hours, I felt very little sadness. Who needs a dumb boyfriend when there are mothers to keep us company? He was water under my bridge, scum beneath my spoiled little toes.

On the phone with her that afternoon, I was trying to do much the same for her, minus the opportunity to accompany her on her shopping excursion. Thankfully, a phone call was enough to help my mother feel better, even if only slightly.

I've received a fair bit of advice in my life, but no one ever warned me that pain will be mutual between parent and child, no matter whose pain it was originally, and I wasn't prepared. And no matter what, I never will be.