A Project In Process

Today I got a call from Edith’s school nurse – this is never a good thing and my heart sank. She has said she did not feel well last night. I thought she was just tired. I had a day packed with appointments, and I was actually training her old youth pastor from a few years back. The school nurse said, “She says it hurts when she pees and there is blood in her urine. Do you want me to send her back to class?”

Uh. No. (Do parents really say yes?)

I point my truck toward the school and call the doctor office all in one fluid motion. They can get us in in 30 minutes – it’s close, but I think it’s doable. I message my office to cancel my next appointment and put the next one on standby, turn to Kerry and say, “Guess what your training involves today? We’re going to see the pediatrician. I have no time to drop you off, so you’re going.”

I run into the school and get Edith. She hops into the back seat, greets Kerry (who she may or may not remember, but likely does remember to some extent), and then starts to poor out her physical ailment woes in detail. The pain, the blood, the pee, the urgent need to go to the bathroom. We openly discuss peeing in a cup and if we need to drink water or not drink water.

We get to the doctor’s office and there is a lot more talk about all these same things, plus introducing the horrible requirement of having to pee in a 3 oz cup. This is a feat she has never done before, and she is clearly intimidated. I will not get into details, but I helped, and we got through it, in a fashion. I explained to the nurse in the open office with probably 10 other witnesses, holding up The Cup, that the specimen collection did not go as planned; but there was pee in the cup, and the whole room seemed pleased with the course of events, including Edith.

It hit me somewhere between Reverend Kerry and the semi-successful urine sample that Edith is not ashamed of her body or of what it does. To her, a urinary tract infection is about as interesting and as private as the solar eclipse we had 3 weeks ago.  And even more bizarre, a man of God bears no more weight in her reaction and words than her mother or the nurse or a complete stranger or the bubblegum machine in the corner.

My world felt severely tilted. I almost felt like I’d been hit, by a safe foam object, but really whacked pretty hard. Yet I was also holding the urine sample, I had more appointments to run, and Kerry was sitting in the waiting room reading Highlights for Children earning $15/hour.

I could not process it completely until later. I put one step in front of the other and tabled it. Later, it flooded me. It started slowly - I had to actually ask myself, what happened today that buried me emotionally? At first it was a blank – just the recollection of a terrible feeling. Then I grabbed a straw – it was about Edith and being sick. I carefully excavated the afternoon and pulled everything aside slowly that I knew that was not it. It was like trying to remember a dream two hours after you wake up, or 30 years into the past at 3 Am. As I worked out today, I really focused on remembering instead of watching the treadmill time clock, and then I remembered.

Remembering just 4 hours in the past required deep resources.

I don’t ever remember not being ashamed of my body. I have always been ashamed of what it looks like and what it does. I have been ashamed of every fluid or solid that comes out of it, where it comes out of it, why it comes out of it, how it comes out of it, when it comes out of it, and what it looks like. I have been ashamed of any feeling or emotion it evoked – either good or bad. I have held all of these things a hostage in my mind attic, locked the door, and turned off the lights.

If this same scenario that happened to Edith had happened to me at 9, I would have been mortified. I actually had moments where I was mortified. I had moments where I had no idea what was happening to me, or knowing it was happening to me and being ashamed of it. I buried it.

I rejoice that Edith is not ashamed. And it makes my heart cry out for Lucy. It makes Lucy twist grotesquely in the wind of the past.