I just spent most of December helping to plan, coordinate, and support a visit from my grandmother. My sister is her full-time caregiver, and the visit, assisted by several family members, made an annual vacation possible. The greatest part of the caregiver role was held up by my uncle - a paramedic - and a friend who by training is a nurse, and by life experience knows a great deal about struggle and support. I was the backup person, over the week and a half my grandmother was in town. In conversations, with the nurse and with my sister, I found some surprising parallels between caregiving and my other new effort: tutoring a young woman who is learning English. In essence, both endeavors ask for a profound availability, and a generous sharing of power. Each of which, in its own right, is also (in my view) an essential ability of one who would work for peace, whatever the field.
One has to be deeply available: not only to the unexpected questions, needs, and wishes of another person, but for the way that these things will stretch and expand the time the two of you will share. On the toes, in the moment, go-with-the-flow flexibility is requisite. Detachment from rush, from too much scheduling, from whatever happens an hour or two hours from now. Speech slows, becomes more spacious: not to condescend, in either case, but to be completely accessible, and present. Clarity of communication includes advance notice and followup or feedback: no room for assumptions. Listening, too, becomes more active, participatory, inclusive: the conversation is a flickering new fire that you both feed, with greatest care, so that it doesn't go out. Repeating or rephrasing if needed: again, to uphold the story being translated from the mysterious language of one soul to another. Our experiences are unimaginably different, but our words will link us. There is only now, and we are using it fully.
Not just the ego, but other aspects of soul are challenged by the issues of power that arise. The sharing of empowerment becomes a matter of the simplest actions. Of detachment from expectations, even the most benevolent ones. Of starting where the ability is, and moving outward from there. In the company of my English student, we might talk about our daily actions, her children's schooling, a shopping trip. I might alternate between English and my faltering Spanish, even though I'm not supposed to, to put us on more level ground. With my grandmother, I may sit and sing her favorite old hymns with her (when nobody else is there to hear). Remembering, with her, her love of religious life and small-town community is, for me, like reverting to an original language that I don't speak any more: it's rusty, but the words will come if I try. In either situation, we start at the beginning, or wherever in relation to the beginning we both may be. We accept each other's limitations, whatever they are: finishing a sentence on the one side, patience that allows the sentence to be finished, on the other.
There's much to be learned for both of us. This is far from a one-way street. At any moment that I think I'm the only "teacher" or "giver", I miss half the lessons. If I forget that my partner in this effort has her own journey, her own story flowing with her into the now, I risk many of the moment's potentials. I have my doubts about how much I can help another woman to learn this crazy language of English, though she's keen and good-humored and ready to try. I definitely have my wit's-end points, and at-a-loss moments, even with my grandmother who I love, and who was the one source of unconditional love in my early life. But I'm up for the chance at further fluency in the vocabularies of patience, empathy, presence, and even insufficiency. All part of the nurture and care that's not always first nature, but which I hope to learn as a second language before I'm too much older.
One has to be deeply available: not only to the unexpected questions, needs, and wishes of another person, but for the way that these things will stretch and expand the time the two of you will share. On the toes, in the moment, go-with-the-flow flexibility is requisite. Detachment from rush, from too much scheduling, from whatever happens an hour or two hours from now. Speech slows, becomes more spacious: not to condescend, in either case, but to be completely accessible, and present. Clarity of communication includes advance notice and followup or feedback: no room for assumptions. Listening, too, becomes more active, participatory, inclusive: the conversation is a flickering new fire that you both feed, with greatest care, so that it doesn't go out. Repeating or rephrasing if needed: again, to uphold the story being translated from the mysterious language of one soul to another. Our experiences are unimaginably different, but our words will link us. There is only now, and we are using it fully.
Not just the ego, but other aspects of soul are challenged by the issues of power that arise. The sharing of empowerment becomes a matter of the simplest actions. Of detachment from expectations, even the most benevolent ones. Of starting where the ability is, and moving outward from there. In the company of my English student, we might talk about our daily actions, her children's schooling, a shopping trip. I might alternate between English and my faltering Spanish, even though I'm not supposed to, to put us on more level ground. With my grandmother, I may sit and sing her favorite old hymns with her (when nobody else is there to hear). Remembering, with her, her love of religious life and small-town community is, for me, like reverting to an original language that I don't speak any more: it's rusty, but the words will come if I try. In either situation, we start at the beginning, or wherever in relation to the beginning we both may be. We accept each other's limitations, whatever they are: finishing a sentence on the one side, patience that allows the sentence to be finished, on the other.
There's much to be learned for both of us. This is far from a one-way street. At any moment that I think I'm the only "teacher" or "giver", I miss half the lessons. If I forget that my partner in this effort has her own journey, her own story flowing with her into the now, I risk many of the moment's potentials. I have my doubts about how much I can help another woman to learn this crazy language of English, though she's keen and good-humored and ready to try. I definitely have my wit's-end points, and at-a-loss moments, even with my grandmother who I love, and who was the one source of unconditional love in my early life. But I'm up for the chance at further fluency in the vocabularies of patience, empathy, presence, and even insufficiency. All part of the nurture and care that's not always first nature, but which I hope to learn as a second language before I'm too much older.
No comments:
Post a Comment