In Sickness and In Health

So, let's see... Abigail got a fever sometime early in the evening of Thursday March 15. That meant that she couldn't go to her school on Friday-- six hours extra childcare for Angela, on no notice. I had already planned to take the day off, so the impact to Angela was mitigated. Abby continued to have a mild fever all the way through Sunday evening, which meant two things: a) she was not going to school the next day (her normal schedule is Monday-Wednesday-Friday), and b) she appeared to have passed the magic three-day window after which the doctors tell you to bring the kid in to figure out why the fever hasn't gone away.

I stayed home again ("working from home") that Monday. She no longer showed a fever when we checked her temperature that morning, so we did not take her to the doctor. However, she seemed to have pink eye now, and her nose got very runny. Not long after this, the area under her nose got very raw and inflamed. Painful. Eyedrops for the pink eye, which she seemed to consider tantamount to torture.

I went in to the office on Tuesday and Wednesday, then stayed home again (working) on Thursday, as Angela had just gone two straight days taking care of Abby all day, and not doing her own thing on Wednesday.

Friday morning, crack of dawn, Abigail in the bed with us, Angela groans to me that she's sick. Not much to think about: now I pretty much had to stay home, not working. I wasn't sick to speak of-- just hurting all over my right side from my right-handed racquetball adventure. So I took my second "personal" day in just over a week. A week previously, in my agonizing way, I hadn't been sure whether to call in as sick (I still had lingering sniffles or whatever from my own cold at that point), or take an unplanned "personal" day. Here's the thing: in my old company (Adjoined), sick leave was a nebulous thing, and it wasn't clear what the "limit" was. In the most recent employee manual of the newer company (Kanbay), it says that we get seven sick days per year, and three personal days. In describing the purpose of personal days, they explicitly mention taking care of sick family members. In other words, it isn't appropriate to take a sick day, if you're not sick but are caring for someone who is sick, or providing childcare in place of someone who is sick.

This doesn't work so well for me. It would be much better if it was the other way around, seven days for me to help when others are sick, and three days for myself, or maybe five and five. Anyway, I'm coming dangerously close to boring myself here in my complaining about how to avoid awkwardness in taking time off, so I'll assume that I may have already passed that point for any readers.

So this past weekend, Angela was sick with a very sore throat and general crappy feeling. I started to feel a little achy late on Saturday (it was a little hard to tell it apart from the pretty severe muscle pain I had on the whole upper right side of my body-- did I mention I played racquetball right-handed last week?), and then felt much worse on Sunday. By Sunday evening, the worst was more or less over for me.

Good news for Monday: Abby ready to go back to her school, after more than 10 days away. I worked from home so I could help get her there and all. Neither Angela nor I very sick at this point (I was fine with a stiff dose of Tylenol, anyway). Subdued evening; I conked out on the sofa unexpectedly from around 6 to 7:30 or so. Angela had said she wanted to go to bed at 9 (!) since that's when she "has her dip", she said. I never understand this lurching around from going to bed at 12 or 1, all the way to 9. How about 10? 11? No matter: we were up till close to 12 again anyway.

Tuesday (today). Working from home again. No one really sick, but it's a non-school day, and I figured I'd help Angela transition back to the normal routine. Thing is, instead of going to bed super-early last night, Angela drank some slightly-strong green tea late-ish in the evening, and didn't sleep much. So she's dragging around today. Sigh.

I like to think that we're seeing the last of a big destabilization of our family that began (most likely) with Tara moving in. When Angela needs me at home so much, on zero notice, I feel like I'm presenting a pretty unreliable face to my client and my employer. But I don't need to see it that way: part of the reason I've stayed home as much as I have in the last week or two is-- because I can. The engagement I'm working on allows for it.

One of the biggest messages we've been getting from our joint counseling at CCEF is: one day at a time. I'm going to try to live by that.

Our Odyssey

Earlier this month, I referred to a "new chapter" for us, with the live-in arrangement with Tara at an end. It might seem odd that I talk this way about it, when she was only here for a month, but one should keep in mind that a) we had originally intended it to last considerably longer, perhaps a year, and b) it was a very intense month, which changed us.

I think we were moving in this direction already, with Angela going to her counselor every week, me going to mine, and both of us going together to CCEF every other week (we went weekly for the first three weeks of March, to devote extra time to dealing with fallout from the time with Tara, but we've dropped back to every other week again) , but our experience with Tara seems to have focused our minds and crystallized a certain consensus between us regarding our priorities as a couple. Namely, that we need to focus inwardly and ever more intentionally on our own "work" of recovery, and of organizing our lives, as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.

Don't we often find broken people taking refuge with other broken people? There can be a two-way bond here: the party providing the refuge has a deep sympathy for the one seeking refuge, and the one seeking refuge may trust the other more, out of a sense that they "understand". This may be a reckless leap, but I wonder if this dynamic isn't a big part of what makes poverty such an intractable problem.

As best as I can make out, the up-close experience of Tara's anxiety, confusion, bitterness and isolation shook our sense of our own identity. I feel the need to emphasize that Angela spent far more time cooped up in the house with Tara than I did, and she accordingly was the more shaken. What seems to have emerged from our three separate streams of counseling work is that our identities (hers and mine) must be much more bound up with the day-to-day work of keeping house and raising Abigail.

I don't feel that I'm breaking confidence excessively to mention that Angela's counselor recently reflected back to her that she may suffer from an interesting form of "survivor's guilt", vis a vis her status as a somewhat affluent black woman in America. Her mother struggled mightily, with no husband to help at any point, to raise her in a wealthy suburb of L.A., and in that she succeeded. Angela got an Ivy League degree and now lives relatively comfortably in one of the better public school districts in the United States. What about all those black women that don't "make it" like she did? Who don't find an adequate mate, who struggle raising kids alone, more often than not in poverty? What about all those girls, worth no less as human beings than she, languishing in the cities and the poor countryside? She is aware of them-- so what is her responsibility? As a Christian? As a Christian black woman?

Her responsibility is first and foremost toward her daughter and her aging mother and her husband. You'd be surprised how little that message comes through in the Christian scriptures. What I mean by that is that except for a few scattered reminders that women should "submit" to their husbands, and that they will be "saved through childbearing", there is only one passage that I can think of that holds up caring for your family as a universal (i.e. cross-gender) value, and that is mostly a negative exhortation (to paraphrase: "Anyone who does not care for his family is worse than an unbeliever.") The Hebrew scriptures are not much help either, in my opinion, since most of what we read there mainly tends to underscore how vastly different the ancient cultures were from our own, in many respects.

If I do say so, I feel that it is even harder to find guidance in this area as a man. The one, single, solitary place that is of help is I Timothy 3:4,5: "[A bishop] must manage his household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way-- for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God's church?" And it obviously is not much help, since the only way specified that this man is supposed to "manage" his household is by keeping his kids in line, basically. But there is a shred here, at least, for someone like me, who has in fact held church office. To me, that shred is: "You doofus! Why are you out there trying to keep a church afloat? Tend to your own family's problems first!"

Other than these two things in the Christian scriptures, any instruction to tend to your family would have to remain implicit, and really I don't think that you can make much of a case that raising a family can be a worthy "mission from God" is a distinctive of Christianity. (Although I've heard that raising families is an enormously important value to Mormons.) Anyway, this is the consensus that has been emerging between me and Angela-- our only clear "mission", at this time, is to grow stronger as a family.

A somewhat unexpected result of this has been a decision to leave Christ Liberation Fellowship. It is a small, five year old, predominantly African American "church plant" of the Philadelphia Presbytery of the PCA (the largest of a number of relatively small conservative Presbyterian denominations in the U.S.). It is struggling somewhat; as the pastor expressed to us on Sunday when we informed him of our departure, "We're too big to disband, but too small to grow without difficulty." I have struggled a bit at CLF because I have an ongoing struggle with conservative Evangelical Christianity on a number of levels, and my original rosy view that "this church is different, it has a real mission to the poor" has largely faded. Angela has been struggling with the situation of CLF's location in a virtually comatose host church which is only able to keep its doors open by renting space to four other churches (of which CLF is one). It's a chaotic arrangement and aspects of the building's dilapidation-- in particular, a portion of the roof over the fellowship hall that looks like it could fall in-- have been really getting under Angela's skin in recent months. And then there was that little incident in mid-January where Abigail almost lost the tips of two of her fingers...

I grow verbose. In plain English, attending CLF has been stressing us out. We're going to look at churches whose continued existence is in less doubt, who inhabit less precarious digs, who have a music ministry (read: choir) we could participate in with relative passivity, who have a more stable programs for children, yadda yadda yadda. It looks like we'll visit United Presbyterian Church of Manoa this Sunday.

Maybe it's more of an "anti-Odyssey", if by Odyssey you mean some kind of wandering journey away from home.

More to report later, I guess.

Switching up

Ok, so last time I checked in I indicated that I had won both of that morning's racquetball games, but that my body was really paying for it. Of most significant concern was my left hip and my left shoulder. And really I was only concerned about my shoulder, that the soreness was perhaps more of the repetitive stress variety and less of the muscle-building type. (I've been playing every Tuesday and Thursday for a while. Anyone have an opinion as to whether five days of non-use of a particular muscle leads to soreness every time you resume exercising it, even if it's on a weekly basis?)

Anyway, I was still sore enough on Thursday morning that I decided to take a drastic step, perhaps more drastic than just canceling for the day. I played both games with my right hand! (And yes, you surmise correctly, I am lefthanded.) And get this-- I almost won the second game! We served back and forth maybe four or five times with the score at 14-14. (I discovered from my perusal of the official rules of racquetball the other day that in non-professional play, a two-point lead is not required to win a game.) He had won the first game something like 15-6.

I scored so well against him-- in both games, really; keep in mind that he shut me out not too long ago when I was playing with my good arm-- that I initially felt that I should allow him a sort of handicap in my own mind, to account for the disorientation of being served to from the other side of the court. But don't you think, then, that he would have done *better* in the second game, not worse, as he adapted to this? I don't know.

In any event, between the fact that as of Tuesday I had won 7 out of the last 8 eight games, and the fact that I very nearly beat him with my bad hand yesterday, I feel as though I no longer have anything to prove. So I think I'm going to stop keeping track of our ongoing win/loss record.

One more note about this, and I'd be interested to hear others' experiences or secondhand knowledge about it: exercising somewhat intensively with the less-skilled side of my body for 45 minutes or so had a curious effect on me, for roughly the next 45 minutes. It's difficult to describe, but as I drove home I felt almost as if I was in a different body. I was driving exactly correctly, right foot on the gas, left foot at the ready near the clutch, more or less normal speed, but I had frequent flashes of *unsureness* that my hands and feet were doing precisely what I wanted them to do. And despite this "unsureness", I felt quite tranquil. Anyway-- obviously I'm inclined to think that the use of my right side had something to do with it. I think I'm going to switch more regularly, and see how it affects me.

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Racquetball Revisited

I decided to glean a lesson from my shutout last week in the first game, and asked Bob to let me hit the ball around for a few moments before we started the first game today. I guess it worked somewhat, since he only got 5 straight points before I got traction and started to catch up. I won that game, and the next as well, bringing us to Bob - 14, Joel - 13.

A few other notes-- since Thursday Bob had obviously either read about or been told about the technique of hitting the front wall at an oblique angle, to cause a lot of sideways bouncing, and supposedly make the ball "die" and be harder to hit. It didn't really work very well.

Also, I told him about some things I read last week in the official rules on the web: 1) A serve is good as long as it passes the "receiving line" (dashed line) without hitting any surface, and then hits the floor before hitting the back wall or more than one side wall. That last part is the key: we had been ruling all serves that hit the wall before hitting the floor as faults. 2) In amateur play, a two-point lead is not necessary to win a game. Not that big a deal, but could shorten some games, obviously.

I feel like I really pay a price for winning some of these games. My left shoulder is sore, and I didn't even smash it into the wall today. Just lots of hard swats on the ball. And my left hip is also sore, of all things. I guess 36 really is over the hill.

Taking one for the team

Today is Thursday, and you know what that means-- right, morning racquetball. As usual, Bob was there before me, but only by a few minutes. He always has a few minutes to hit the ball around before we play, and we start a real game as soon as I come into the court and stretch a little.

So, I say that between less than six hours of sleep and lack of warmup, the result of the first game wasn't that surprising-- I was shut out. I won the second game, by a reasonable margin.

We fought hard in the third game, doing a lot of switching off serves without scoring. It was 8 to 10, my serve. Often I run back from mid-court as soon as I can see where the serve is going to land, but not this time, and Bob returned the serve right into my face. He hit me right below the glasses, and just to the left of the tip of my nose. It hit pretty hard. It took me a minute or so to shake it off. And of course, since it was clear that his return would have been successful had my face not been there, we treated it as "interference" and did the serve over. Anyway, I ended up winning, 15 to 12.

Updated record: Bob - 14, Joel - 11.

Roaring back

So my cold seems to be largely beaten. A little stuffiness, but I feel like I have my energy back. And get this-- I won all three racquetball games today! Not only that, but I had my opponent's head spinning in the first game when I came back from 10-2.

Returning a lot more of his serves helped, but I also was able to run around a *lot* to get where I needed to be. All this on a little more than 5 hours sleep, to boot.

Current standings: Bob - 13, Joel - 9.

Losing streak

I have a cold, must have started on Monday. That is my excuse for a five-game losing streak in racquetball with Bob Stei, two games on Tuesday and three yesterday. The third game yesterday was well-fought, and I even led for a while, but I couldn't pull it out. It still boils down to that far-right corner serve of his. If I can figure out a way to always return it, then I'll win again.

Standings are now Bob 13, Joel 6. (Ack!)

Next Chapter

Perhaps I was being prescient, perhaps it was self-fulfilling prophecy, when I tacked on "Lord, help us" at the end of the post "Living Together". Perhaps neither. Anyway, we were not able to make the arrangement with Tara work. Just not enough patience and clarity of mind to go around. (We all could have used more of the other eight fruits of the Spirit as well, I imagine.) The last four weeks have been difficult at times, but I can't say I regret having taking her in. She and her son are both very special people.

The situation has been sufficiently stressful, particularly between Sunday night and yesterday morning, that it's going to take a few days for us to decompress and begin to move on with our lives. We might see a movie tomorrow; the last time we went to a movie was on Tara's first Saturday with us. Also, it appears that we're probably going to postpone the beginning of the next round of Financial Peace University until later this month or maybe April.

I guess that's all I really have to say right now. Racquetball standings after yesterday's three games: Bob 8, Joel 6. If I'm going to catch up, I'm going to need to develop a more dangerous serve.