Four Pages is a series of non-fiction short stories that I experienced one afternoon as the on-call chaplain at a local hospital.  I received the pager at noon and passed it on at 4:30.  Though I only got four calls, these were more intense than a night shift when I supported twelve trauma victims in the emergency department.  These four pages show just how intense the life of a hospital chaplain can be.

That afternoon there was no time to rest or even think between each page.  There was no way to prepare myself for what I might see and hear, nor could I anticipate the questions that were about to slap me out of self-absorption.  I entered each room, assessed the situation, gave what care I could and then gently disengaged.  I left each room with much on my mind but had no time to process because someone else was calling me.

As a pastor, especially as a hospital chaplain, I have discovered the great temptation to be Minister Fix-It.  When someone is in distress or when I witness great suffering, I feel an overwhelming call to fix.  It’s like there is a neon marquee in my brain flashing trite answers and solutions.  But, as anyone who has ever experienced pain knows, answers and quickly spun solutions are weak and useless weapons against turbulent suffering.  Answers comfort for a moment.  Solutions are debunked and leave a trail of bitterness behind them.

When Mrs. Glass asked me if her husband’s condition was her “cross to bear,” I had several instinctual responses that I could have offered to her.  She looked at me expecting something – perhaps absolution or agreement – but I said nothing.  I could feel her pain and I desperately wanted to soothe her hurt.  Instead, I held her gaze and let the silence linger between us.

It would be foolish to repair a sinking ship by patching a gaping hole with silly putty.  It would be ridiculous to say to a person drowning in the eye of a hurricane, “the storm will be over soon” or “you’ll survive this” or “you’ll be stronger because of this.”  For the drowning, there is only the here and now, the heavy limbs that pull them under, the briny sea burning their eyes and nostrils, the roar of the chaotic wind and swirling clouds that eclipse the possibility of a horizon.

There is wisdom in resisting the urge to fix and to answer.  There is wisdom in offering silence, in taking time to think instead of respond, in allowing hollow spaces.  In hollow spaces I honor the complexity of each unique situation and acknowledge the awfulness of suffering.  I have learned that acknowledgement and understanding are the strongest responses to suffering.  These are the tools with which I can offer long-lasting comfort.   They are the birthplace of hope.  If I can hear or touch or taste even a portion your pain, I am reminded that I too am weak, that I am vulnerable, that I would not want to be alone with this terrible pain.  In these hollow spaces, I am pulled down from my lofty pastoral position, forced to acknowledge my humanness and reminded of my own bouts with suffering.   Then I know to cry out with you because that is the best thing that I can do for you.

Every time I hold the hand of a hurting person like Francis Woodson, I am horribly tempted to abandon wisdom and embrace foolishness, to be a pastor-mechanic instead of a pastor-human.  It is perhaps the hardest thing to linger in hollow spaces and allow suffering to have its place, to partake in it with others.  Ministry that shares in the suffering of the human condition can be mind-numbing and excruciating and scary.  But it is also the only truly effective ministry there is.

The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. (John 1:14)

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Page Four

My fourth and last page of the afternoon came just 45 minutes before it was time to go home for the day.  A nurse from the surgical intensive care unit told me that a family member of a patient was asking for the chaplain.  The nurse seemed to be in a hurry and gave me very little information about the patient other than her name, Jane Tyler, her room number and that Jane had been in a car accident.  I arrived at the unit, a wide, U-shaped corridor where all the curtained beds could be seen from the central nurses’ desk.   I approached the curtained room I was called to.   It was time for afternoon rounds in SICU, and five doctors stood to the right of Mrs. Tyler’s bed quietly discussing her prognosis and ongoing treatment.  Ignoring the doctors, I approached the woman sitting quietly in a chair at the left of the bed.

The woman was Sarah, Mrs. Tyler’s niece.  She was in her early 60s and the only living relative still in touch with her aunt Jane.   She told me her aunt and uncle were returning home to New Jersey when their car was struck by a semi.  Sarah’s uncle George died at the scene.  She told me that his body was in our morgue waiting to be claimed.  With baggy, bloodshot eyes focusing on her aunt’s still body, Sarah told me that Jane, though alive after several surgeries, was not predicted to live more than a few hours.  The injury to her head had been too severe and her brain was swelling beyond the doctor’s ability to help.   When I asked Sarah how I could assist her, she told me she wanted to know what was going to happen when her aunt died.  At first, I didn’t know whether she meant spiritually or practically.  I asked a few more clarifying questions and discovered that Sarah was mostly concerned with what she needed to do to take her aunt and uncle’s bodies back to New Jersey.   I told her I would connect her to a staff member from Decedent Care that could walk her through the next steps.  She thanked me, clasping my hand for a brief moment.  She looked again at her aunt, bandaged and bruised probably beyond recognition.

“My aunt wasn’t a very religious woman.  We weren’t very close, but I know she had faith.  I don’t think she has gone to mass in years, but I know she believed in God.”  I waited in silence.  “She never had children, so she was always that special aunt in my life.  I’m glad in a way that she doesn’t have to wake up and realize that her husband is dead.  This way she can just pass peacefully, not conscious of the wreck, not knowing what happened.”

Sarah looked at me with some kind of expectation in her eyes.  I was tired.  This afternoon I witnessed so much tragedy, suffering, despair, and anxiety that I had very little left to give.  Where were my words of comfort, my offering of support?  I really didn’t know.  I must have used up my reserve stores as I ran from one page to the next.  My emotional weariness was starting to overtake my ability to care.  I certainly didn’t want to be fake.  I knew that I didn’t have a single compassionate or understanding smile left in me, so I wasn’t going to offer one.  I looked to the bed where Jane Tyler lay surrounded by beeping and flashing monitors.   Her face was so swollen it hardly looked like a face.  Here too was tragedy, a sad ending to a life probably well lived.  I looked back at her niece, Sarah, and saw a woman subdued by grief, waiting for me to respond.  The one thing I knew to do, and could do at this point, was to pray honestly.  Sarah eagerly accepted my offer to pray for her aunt and family.  My prayer was simple and short.  I started with, “God, we are weary.”

stay tuned for Four Pages: Debrief

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Page Three

Only a moment or two after I stepped out of the Romano’s room, I received another page.  I dialed the number and was dispatched to a general medicine unit.  The nurse, Connie, explained to me that her patient Francis Woodson was having a bad pain day.  “They call him Frankie and he is a very kind man,” she said.  I was told that Frankie has advanced ALS and has been declining rapidly.  Connie was busy with many patients and thought that if someone could just come sit and talk with Frankie, it would help calm him.  I would be right up, I said.

I reached Frankie’s room and double checked the number on the door.  (I’d gone to the wrong room before, which was embarrassing and awkward.)  In the few moments I paused in the open doorway, I heard a weak voice saying, “help me; help me.”  Wrong room or not, I was in the right place.  I entered the room and found Mr. Woodson laying on his side facing the door.  He wore the standard hospital gown and the blankets of the bed were tangled with his ankle socks.  Classical music was playing loudly from a portable CD player beside the bed.

“Help me,” he moaned, the words seemed to be pushed out on strangled puffs of air. His jaw worked continuously.

“Mr. Woodson, my name is Corrie.”  I approached the bed and stood beside him.  “I’ve come to spend some time with you.”

“He—head.  H—elp me.  Hurt.”

Frankie’s eyes stared at the wall behind me.  His right shoulder was against the mattress, his arm lay by his head, stiff and unmoving.  His left arm rose from the mattress and waved erratically through the space between us.  “Help me.”  I clasped his hand in my left one and as I held it stationary, I could feel the muscular impulses from his arm pushing at our joined hands.  His eyes closed, clinched, and opened again.

“Frankie, how can I help you?”  I’d never worked with an ALS patient before.  I knew the basics of the disease, but didn’t know the recommended therapeutic plan.  All I knew was Frankie couldn’t control his body and that he was in pain.

“Head.  Head.”  His words were strained.  They started at a high pitch and trailed down to a wheeze.  “Help me.”

Then I noticed that Frankie was slumped down so that his head was against the plastic rail that lined the bed.  There were pillows between his legs, at his back and under his head, but all of his weight was pressing on his forehead.  I told Frankie that I was going to get him some help and released my hand from his.  After untangling the sheets from his ankles and spreading them smoothly over his legs, I went to the nearby nurse’s station and requested Mr. Woodson’s nurse.   I told the receptionist that I needed someone to come adjust Frankie, that he had slid into an uncomfortable position.  She said she would send someone immediately.

“Immediately” turned into another ten minutes of waiting.  I stood at Frankie’s side while he moaned and whimpered.  I debated whether or not to move him myself but Frankie seemed fragile – his legs were likes spindles, bone without muscle or flesh to dress them – I had no training or clearance to move him.  His cries and his obvious pain made me anxious and desperate.  I did my best to reassure him by telling him over and over that I was with him, that help was coming, by holding his hand.

“Pain,” he said. “Head.”  I returned to the nurse’s station and requested help again.  Soon a nurse came to adjust Frankie’s position.  She thanked me for alerting her and positioned more pillows around Frankie so he wouldn’t fall.  Frankie and I were alone again.  He seemed more settled, less distressed, but continued to speak intermittently.  I took his hand again.  He turned his blue eyes toward me for the first time.  “Pain,” he said.

“Frankie, I see you are in pain.  I’m here with you.  God is with you.  God is here.”  It seemed the only consolation I could give him.  I couldn’t take away his pain.  This was his life now — to be a man physically helpless, aware but trapped in a body that only offered pain and helplessness.  “God is here, Frankie.  He will never leave you.”  Holding his gaze, our clasped hands waving through the air between us, I said a prayer.  Frankie’s gaze returned to the wall.

“H—elp me.”

“Yes, Frankie.  I know.  I see.  I’m here.”

“Pain.  Hurt.”

I stood beside him, here to help, but I knew I was just as helpless as he.  All I could think of was this: For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me…I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’  (Matthew 25:35-36, 40)

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Page Two

My second page of the afternoon came just ten minutes after I left Mrs. Glass.  Now, a nurse in the emergency department was asking me to support the wife of a patient brought in from a nursing facility.  The nurse told me the patient’s name, which was so Italian I thought I had heard her wrong.   The name made me think of the rough-hewn streets of Rome, of brightly painted stucco, and vineyards lining the graceful terracotta slopes of Tuscany.

I entered the ED and spoke briefly with the nurse who paged.  She told me Mr. Romano, (as I will call him) was stable but they still needed to do some assessment.  The doctor would be in soon.  Mrs. Romano was more of a concern at the moment.  She seemed confused and nervous and her English wasn’t great, or so the nurse told me.  I entered the examining room and introduced myself to Mrs. Romano.  She immediately rose to greet me, taking my offered hand between her two, and peered up at me.  Viviana, as she insisted I call her, was a short, softly rounded woman in her mid seventies.  Her face was incredibly wrinkled with skin that hung past her jaw.  Viviana greeted me like she would a much-anticipated guest entering her home.  With heavily accented English, she thanked me repeatedly for coming and led me to a chair next to her own.  She gave me the chair closest to her husband.  Once settled she patted my hand and then indicated the man on the bed, “my Antonio, he is very sick.”

Indeed he was.  Mr. Romano lay in the bed just two feet beyond our chairs, moaning.  His eyes were open and he starred at the harsh florescent light panel without blinking.  His hands were fisted at his sides, his mouth hung open to reveal empty gums.  Viviana and I chatted as the nurse examined Antonio, changed his dressing and diaper and took his blood pressure.  Viviana told me her husband lived in a nursing home just a few miles from the hospital.  He had been there for two years, since his health had deteriorated beyond her ability to care for him.  Antonio had Parkinson’s, diabetes and dementia.  He had lost his ability to speak almost a year ago.

The conversation shifted easily between us.  I asked about her situation – her husband’s health, where they were from, and their family – and she shared comfortably, pausing every now and then to sigh and mutter in Italian each time her husband moaned.  Over the next hour Viviana not only answered to my questions, she told me her story.  As she told of her life, strength and independence reflected through the anecdotes.  She may have looked feeble but she was anything but.  She lived alone in the house she and Antonio had shared for forty years, their three grown children lived within city limits.  The Romano’s had been married 56 years, immigrating to the US when they had only been married for two.  They came from a small village, married young and decided to try their prospects in America.  She spoke of hardships with money, the joy of buying their first house, the birth of their children, receiving news of the death of her parents – 56 years retold with thick Italian inflection as though she had just left her homeland last year.

It was a beautiful story, stirring, laced with the kind of nostalgic adventures that would make a good film, but the whole time Viviana talked it was with a sense of detachment.  I felt as though she was telling someone else’s story, that she was just a narrator rather than a main character.

The doctor and nurse completed their exam and gave Mrs. Romano an update.  Her husband had an infection, perhaps an ulcer, and they needed to run some tests.  They drained his stomach through a permanent port in his belly; brown liquid flooded the tube and collected in a plastic container mounted on the wall.  Viviana asked why it was brown.  The nurse said it was blood from his stomach.  Viviana’s response was, “Oh.”

She had few questions:  would Antonio be okay and would he be staying in the hospital because she needed to move her car.   In an hour, she never got out of her seat except to welcome me.  She didn’t take her husband’s hand, even while he moaned.  She asked more questions about me than her Antonio.  She looked at Mr. Romano several times but she never spoke to him.  It seemed peculiar to me, a strange response to her husband’s physical state.  When the nurse told Viviana that Antonio would be moved to a regular room, she said, “Okay, I go home.”  She turned to me and said, “What can I do?  I go home.  This has been too long.  Thank you for sitting with me.  You a sweet girl.  It’s been a long time.”  Somehow, I knew she was not referring to the hour we had spent together.  I asked her if she would like to pray for Antonio.  She replied that she didn’t know any prayers.  I told her I could pray for his health and that he could rest well.  She said that would be good and I prayed while she patted my hand.

“What can I do?  I go now.”  Mrs. Romano, married 56 years, gathered up her purse, escorted me to the door, thanked me again and left.

Page one

The black pager at my waist chimed its three pitch ring just after I returned from lunch.  I called the number on the screen and spoke with an ICU nurse who asked me to support a woman whose husband had taken a sudden turn for the worse.  The nurse told me the wife was visibly shaking and unsteady.  The wife could not control her grief, switching between hard crying and anger.  It was clear to the nurse that she was very anxious.  When the nurse suggested the wife see a doctor about something to help her anxiety, she told the nurse she had already taken a Xanax.  The wife requested a chaplain to come and pray with her.

When I arrived at the room, it was empty except for a man lying somewhat rigidly on his back in the bed.  Like many patients in comas, his eyes were slightly open but still.  Tubes were coming out of his mouth and nose.  Lines ran from his chest to several monitors.  There were IVs on the back of both hands; purple bruising framed the tape anchoring tubes to dry skin.  After a few minutes standing quietly with the patient, the wife returned.

She was a tall woman, that was my first thought.  She crossed to the far side of the bed and greeted her unconscious husband.  She looked up at me, pulling a knit cardigan tight around her waist, tears running from both eyes.  She reached up with a damp tissue to blot the tears away.  The wife was smartly dressed though a bit rumpled.  Her short white hair had patches of gray at the temples and she wore clear, plastic-rimmed bifocals with large round lenses.  The bright hospital lighting reflected rectangular patches off the lenses, sometimes blocking me from seeing her eyes behind the glass.  In any other context my first impression of her would have been a steely strength she carried in her straight back and bony, wide shoulders.  I quickly realized that this woman’s appearance, the thick sweater, straight posture and sturdy glasses hid an acute fragility.  As I listened to her story, it was though I could hear her cracking, like a small chip slowly splintering and spreading across a window, like ice audibly fracturing centimeter by centimeter.  She was brittle and threatening to break.  Her loss was recounted in great detail.  She recited her story as a tragedy told by the most committed playwright.

The week before, Mrs. Glass’ husband had been giddily playing in the sand and the waves with his two granddaughters.   He had to run to keep up with them and it seemed his energy was limitless.  He was healthy and active.  Before the beach trip they had spent two weeks traveling in Europe.  They had so many dreams to still accomplish and Mr. Glass was, as usual, breezing through life at a good clip she told me.  Or at least he had been just 15 days ago.  Now he was in a coma, on a ventilator.  She was intently focused on the great things they had lost in so short a time.  She could tell me about each day in the hospital and recount all of the mundane events and occurrences of hospital life like a detailed memoir.  Mr. Glass caught a cold which turned into pneumonia and that, combined with a preexisting heart condition, made the doctors hesitant to release him.  He seemed fine she said, sick, but fine.  After a few days of bland walls, blander food, the monotonous beep of the heart monitor, stumbling coughs and endless TV, Mr. Glass asked Mrs. Glass, “Get me out of here.”  She suggested they follow the doctors’ advice and remain until he was clear of the pneumonia.  The next day began Mr. Glass’ gradual declined.  The day before I was paged, he suddenly coded.  The staff was able to stabilize Mr. Glass, but he was in a coma, on a vent, unable to communicate.

I was there, still listening to Mrs. Glass, when an Oncologist came to tell her that they found Leukemia.  It was shocking and paralyzing news to her, so much so that she had to brace hers hips on the bed rails to remain standing.  She let out a sob.  I reached across Mr. Glass’ body and took her hand.  She quickly stood up, still gripping my hand, her other one busy wiping at her running nose and eyes.  She shot questions at the doctor.  She asked him how this could have happened when her husband had been so healthy two weeks ago.  It was just a cold, she said.  She was antagonistic and rude but that seemed understandable, allowable.

When the doctor left, Mrs. Glass dropped my hand and again erupted with emotion and continued with what my supervisor would call a “litany of loss.”  Her grief had her blaming the doctors, the nurses, the weather, the cold Mr. Glass had caught.  It wasn’t fair.  She stood across the bed and raged and the injustice of her husband’s situation.  How could this have happened?  Look at all these tubes and monitors in him, she said.  I could just hurt somebody, she said forcefully, as she raised and shook a clenched fist in the air between us.  Oh, don’t think I’ll hurt you, Mrs. Glass said, releasing some of her anger with a laugh.  I smiled at her and told her I knew she wouldn’t hurt me, that I understood her anger.  We both looked at Mr. Glass.

“This is my fault,” she said.

“Why,” I asked?  “How could this be your fault? “

“He asked me to get him out of here.  I didn’t.  I should have because look at what’s happened.  This wouldn’t have happened if I had taken him home. “

She looked up at me, tears building on her lids, her mouth quivering.  There was no glare on her glasses then.  She looked straight into my eyes and said, “This is my cross to bear, isn’t it?”

to be continued…

Last year I sat in on a lecture where the instructor had each student write a poem based off of George Ella Lyons “Where I’m From.”   Each individual had to write about her or his identity and particularly reflect how identity is shaped by place and experience. Rather than be bored for twenty minutes, I took part in the exercise.  Below is the poem that formed out of that exercise.  Since I just spent the weekend in my hometown, it seems like a good time to post the poem.  Enjoy.

Buckeye, Bleachers and Cabbage Patch Kids

I am from buckeyes,
from chlorine and bleachers.
I am from the two-story white colonial
with black shutters and a red blue door.
I am from the flower beds circling the white picket fence,
the suburban lawns of the capital city.

I am from Ghost in the Graveyard
and bedtime stories of our native ancestors,
from Carl and Betty, deceased too soon
and Harry and Mariann, mid eighties,
living arthritically but fully.

I am from the funny, athletic, Christian family,
from adolescent bullies and forced apologies.
From the eye-rolling “you are such a drama queen,”
and the respectable “best actress, senior class 1998.”

I am from the soft mauve carpet of childhood faith,
one of the wandering in the dessert of desperation,
from the bedrock of one holy Catholic family.

I am from Worthington and the stage
and homemade spaghetti sauce on squishy pasta.
From the cousins who steal cookies after bedtime,
the brother who became, finally, a friend,
and the singing dinner table.

I am from Hickory Ridge Lane.
The lines in my father’s hands like roadmaps
I have yet to explore.
My mother’s mountain of purses like expectations
I may not summit.
I am from the dream of being the best Little Mermaid.
I am from the belief that imagination raises good questions and
cabbage patch kids.

All of us have symbols and images that define us or, at the very least, help us make meaning of life.  For some of us, these symbols are striking like thick, shiny strands woven into every piece and pattern of our lives, which we cannot ignore.  For others, these symbols are like subtle undercurrents, they are felt, they make an impact, but they are below the surface, never acknowledged.

In graduate school I took a seminar course called Women’s Voices: Issues in Faith and Development.  Our first assignment, and perhaps our best, was to think about an image or symbol that represents what we were taught it means to be a woman.  The next week we had to bring that image or symbol and present it to the class.  Eventually I stumbled across an old memory of a conversation I had with my mother the summer before I went to high school.

Mom:  “Honey, we need to go to the mall.  We need to get you some clothes and school supplies and things.”

Daughter:  “Okay.”

Mom:  “Oh, and while we are there maybe you can find a purse that you like.”

Daughter:  (typical teenage silence that is so stuffed with thoughts it is indiscernible to both parent and child)

Mom:  (typical parent-of-a-teenage silence that expects a rational answer)

Daughter:  “I don’t need a purse.”

Mom:  “Yes you do.”

Daughter:  “No I don’t.”

Mom:  “Yes you do.  You are a woman now.  It’s time to get a purse.”

Daughter:   “Mom, I have a backpack with like a trillion zipper pockets.  It even has special slots for my pencils.  It has so much room you could probably fit a car in there.  I don’t need a purse.”

Mom:  “Oh, yes you do.  You need a purse.”

Daughter:  “Why?”

Mom:  “It’s how we carry things around.”

Daughter:  “But mom, the backpack thing, remember?”

Mom:  “But don’t you want a purse?”

Daughter:  “No.”

Mom:  (stunned silence) “Well don’t you want to carry things around in a purse?”

Daughter:  “What things would I carry around in a purse that I can’t carry around in a backpack?”

Mom:  “But what about after school and on the weekends?  You’re not going to carry around a backpack to the movies or to a friend’s house.”

Daughter:  “What would I need to take to a friend’s house or to the movies that I couldn’t fit in my pocket?”

Mom:  “You need a purse.”

Daughter:  “No, I don’t.”

And so it went.  Mom and I must have had this conversation a handful of times, but it seemed like we went forty rounds everyday about needing to carry a purse.   My mother was adamant that I needed one because I was a woman and women carry things around in purses.  I was adamant that a purse was unnecessary, just another thing to lug through the day and potentially lose.  Ten years after my initial argument with my mother, I took a purse to my seminar course, (a purse my mother had bought me) and talked about receiving this startling message as an adolescent: to be a woman means you have to carry a purse.

My mother loves purses.  She always has and always will.  At any given time she might own a fabric and a leather purse for every season of the year, purses for special occasions, a purse that is a memento of foreign travel, a purse for Easter or the Christmas season, and a purse my father bought her as a gift.  She knows the brands, the designers, the materials, what’s in season and what’s out.  You might consider her a purse connoisseur.

I, on the other hand, have never quite understood the mystique of the purse.  Why do women always have these things dangling from their shoulders, elbows and hands?  Why do they carry so many things around all the time and to all places?  What are these “things” we have to carry around, why do we have to carry them and why are they essential to womanhood?

If we had a national dump-out-your-purse day, and every woman simultaneously dumped the contents of their purses out on the sidewalk, what would we find in common?  I’d guess keys, a wallet, check book, tissues, chapstick, makeup, a small mirror, and any kind or number of “feminine products.”  That’s a heavy list.  I’ve always prided myself on being low maintenance.  I can get ready for the day in forty minutes and that includes showering, blow drying my hair and eating breakfast.  I wear makeup once or twice a year.  When I go out, I only carry what I absolutely need.  My first “purse” was a 2 x 4 inch fabric bag with two zipper pockets – large enough for keys, cash, eye drops, my license and a tampon.   My mother never considered this bag a purse.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it wasn’t big enough, or because it wasn’t leather, or I didn’t carry enough stuff, or what I carried wasn’t the right stuff.  I never really asked why my purse wasn’t sufficient.

I don’t know how many purses the average woman has…two, four?  I currently have eight, six of which were purchased by my mother over the last ten years.  A few of them are pretty worn, others are like new.  Even those that I hardly use still hang in my closet.  I can’t bring myself to get rid of them.  (Once, when a male guest opened my coat closet, he jumped and let out a little shriek as a rack full of swinging purses threatened to bludgeon him.)

No matter how many conversations my mother and I had, no matter how many disagreements, no matter how many purses she has bought me, I have never latched on to the idea that the purse is essential to womanhood.  I am not less than a woman because I don’t always carry a purse.  I am no less a woman because I do not wear makeup.  I don’t like chocolate or wear pearls and I am categorically opposed to panty hose, but I am a woman.

Recently, my mother and I discussed this purse disagreement and had a good laugh.  Then I got to thinking.  I do resonate with the symbol of the purse in the sense that as a woman, as a person, as Corrie, I do hold many things close to me.  If a purse did symbolize my life, what would make the “essentials list” to who I am?  Whether out of a sense of love, obligation or burden, what do I carry around with me everywhere I go?  What things, whether symbols or ideas or images, help define my life and identity?

The Purse will be about who I am, how I understand myself, or God, or the world, and what essentials I carry with me through the everyday.

I just finished washing my kitchen floor.  The ugly cream and green linoleum squares have been calling to me for days.  Last week was one of those weeks where I thought about cleaning every day but I was just too busy to follow through.  Actually, it’s been two weeks since I last washed my kitchen floor, so a good cleaning was long overdue.

For those of you who clean your floors several times a week, or even several times a day (you know who you are), please don’t judge me.  Keep reading.

One thing that my sister-in-law Kara and I vehemently agree on is that the best way to wash the floor is on hands and knees.  There are many reasons why I believe in the hands and knees approach.  I don’t want to bore you, so I’ll just name a few.  First, I live most of my life five feet, nine inches above the floor.  Even with the correct contact lenses, that is a far distance from which to zero in on small details.  Second, It’s no surprise that flooring materials – even those that lay in tribute to the 80s spearmint decorating craze – are chosen for their ability to hide crumbs that fall from our countertops.   So I ask myself, how can I possibly see all the dirt and debris if I don’t take a close-up look at the floor?  If I want to thoroughly clean my floor, I have to get down on my knees, zoom in on the scum and attack.

The old fashioned mops and even the new fangled Swiffers get the floor wet and take up a thin layer of dirt, but ultimately they fall short.  Mops push crumbs to corners where they become fodder for household pests.  Swiffers, with their flimsy poles, don’t have the power to erase scuff marks or eradicate sticky globs of last Wednesday’s butternut squash soup.  So when it’s time to clean the floor, it’s back to basics.  I grab a bucket, add dish soap, some vinegar, fill with warm water, drop in a rag and get down and dirty.  The result?  A spotless, gleaming floor that I could eat off of if I really wanted to and one satisfied cleaning woman.

Today as I scrubbed and scoured, my mind wandered across the new thought that I should approach my life the same way that I clean my kitchen floor.  There are things in my life, places in my heart and mind that are messy and need cleaning.  The kitchen floor of my soul is often littered with crumbs – disappointments that I never processed through, hurts that I push to the shadowed corners of my mind and ignore, but where they build up and begin to stink and attract scavengers.   I try to pay attention to and reflect on my life.  I have an awareness of my soul.  But I peer at my life and my heart from a distance where things probably look a lot more presentable than they really are.  I know my life – my heart, mind, soul, and relationships – need regular cleaning, but I usually take the easy way out.  I’ll acknowledge hurt feelings to myself but not speak with the person who hurt me.  That’s like spot cleaning with a Swiffer; it lacks the power to wipe all the layers of sticky goop off my heart.

Weekly, I might do a cursory mopping of my heart during Confession or in the few minutes leading up to the Eucharist, but if I’m being honest with myself, and you, I rarely get on my hands and knees  and look keenly at the very foundations of my life.  I don’t deliberately crouch down and gently, but firmly, wipe at the ugly stains.  Instead I walk around semi-clean.  Semi-clean is not clean at all.

Maybe this metaphor is a new resolution or a reminder or an encouragement.  I want to live and worship clean.  I want my attitude and motivations to gleam like my freshly scrubbed floor.  But to do so means that I need to get on my hands and knees.  It’s a humble position, uncomfortable, even painful.  (I have arthritic knees and cement subflooring.)   It’s not easy to look at my own grime, to get up close and personal with things I may have been ignoring or neglecting for a long time.  I might be shocked by a stain I didn’t know was there until my eyes are an inch from the spot.  Self discovery can be disheartening, but I believe that getting down on hands and knees is the only way to get truly clean and it’s the only way to wholly live.

Now the task is to follow through, to take the time to look keenly at my life, to expose the grit and grim, and gently but firmly wash it away, on my hands and knees.   Do I go on a silent retreat?  Do I seek a spiritual director?  Meditate more?  Take up journaling?  Become more intentional in my prayer?  These are all ideas, tools with which I might cleanse my soul.  I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to go about it, nor is there a set time interval that would be optimal.  The key is the approach.  The most striking part of this kitchen floor metaphor is the image of being on hands and knees.  That is what I am going to focus on.  I’ll let you know how the cleaning goes.

(I help teach a college, writing intensive, first year seminar called “That’s what little girl’s are made of.”  We talk about what it means to be a woman and things like gender roles and stereotypes.  This short story mirrors the first essay assignment. I’ve given myself a little more freedom of structure and changed the audience, but I hope my students, and you, enjoy this piece.)

Gustafson family dinners always began with smells that made me salivate.  Scrumptious foods were always simmering on the stove, like my mother’s homemade spaghetti sauce.  Rich with garlic, zesty tomatoes, onion, and the tang of basil and oregano, mom’s sauce always pleased.   I considered myself very lucky to be the family taste tester, especially on spaghetti night.  Mom would call me in to see if the sauce needed something more.  I’d taste, give her my opinion and then, when her back was turned to get the noodles from the pantry, I would sneak a few extra spoonfuls.  Blissfully satisfied, I’d try to sneak back to the couch to finish an episode of Who’s the Boss, but it never worked.  Mom inevitably asked, “Sweetie, could you please pull down the plates?” (This was one of those special occasions when parents disguise a question as a command by saying “please.”)  After I’d pull down the plates, I was asked to gather five glasses, forks, knives and napkins.  Then I was asked to set the table.  I didn’t hate setting the table, but I didn’t love the job either.  Internally I would grumble – couldn’t a girl, just once, get the privilege of being the taste tester without the added labor of table setter?  Not in my household.

Eventually I realized that I was always setting the table.  At first I thought it was a problem with my sneaking skills.  I thought I needed to be stealthier as I slipped from the kitchen back to the living room.  No matter how quickly or quietly I tried to escape, my mother always caught me before I got one foot out of the kitchen.  It wasn’t long before I realized that being the taste tester was a ploy to get me into the kitchen to help.  The more tables I set, the more episodes of Who’s the Boss I missed, the more frustrated I became.  Why weren’t my two brothers being asked to help?  They were around.  They had hands.  But it always seemed to be me who was expected to set the table.  Not only did I set the table, I was also asked to clean the dishes after the meal.  Were my brothers expected to do this?  No.

Frustration eventually grew to indignation as I compared the expectations between my brothers and me.  Brock and Brandon were asked to take out the trash, mow the lawn and help dad with other outdoor jobs.  I was asked to help cook, set the table, wash the dishes, clean the bathrooms, and help with the laundry.  I realized that my brothers’ chores were downright minimal when compared to mine.  With an extra-large garbage can for a family of five, the trash only needed taken out once or twice a week and there were three males in the family sharing that single task.  Mowing the lawn and raking leaves were seasonal.  My mother and I folded the family laundry from January through December.  Weekly, I scrubbed our bathroom sinks clean of caked-on toothpaste and our toilet bowl free of unmentionable debris.  Nightly, I helped with dinner.  I asked myself, could males not be taught to load a dishwasher?  Was there something about boys that limited them from doing indoor chores like cleaning and table setting?  No and no!

The contrast was clear.  I spent much more time contributing to the running of our household than my brothers did and it had nothing to do with my abilities or their inabilities.  It was all because I was a girl. As a girl, I was expected to do as my mother did.  I understood the simplicity of this arrangement, but I couldn’t let go of the fact that it was unfair, arbitrary, and utterly silly.  A burning feeling of injustice lit me up like full stage lights slapped on in a dark theatre.  Suddenly I was compelled to fight for change.  I was determined to show my family, especially my brothers, that we all could share in every chore, and that we should, no matter what our gender.  But how could I do this?  I knew complaining wouldn’t get me anywhere, neither would nagging or, if I were forced to resort to it, clear reasoning.  So I did what all females must do raise awareness of important issues in an unjust system.  I trashed for equality.  I mowed for equal opportunity choring.  I took on all the family chores regardless of gender assignment and showed my family that I could do what only boys were supposed to do.

My subversive campaign to change the unjust family chore system was brilliant for a twelve year old.  Unfortunately, my plan was like a low quality diamond ring, beautiful and meaningful but, no matter how you looked at it, flawed.  Sure, I showed that I was capable of doing my brother’s chores.  I could gather and tie of a plastic sack with the best of them and once taught the intricacies of the push mower, I could easily mow our lawn.  The problem was that my show of physical prowess and selfless volunteerism did not motivate my brothers to reciprocate.  They didn’t ask to do the dishes for me, or jump up when mom asked someone to get the laundry from the dryer.  And they certainly weren’t more careful with toothpaste application.  In fact, they never said a thing about me taking on their chores.  The only comment I received about all my work was from my father.  Sometime in the summer, dad, in his deeply loving way, thanked me for being willing to mow the lawn.  Then he said he would take over for me because he wanted the mow lines straighter than I could produce.  (We had a rooty lawn.)

Of course I was disappointed in the failure of my campaign.  It was like I had torched a thousand bras and no one flared a nostril at the stench of charred underwire.  Rather than expanding my brothers ideas about gender roles their new thoughts were limited to things like, “our sister is more insane than we thought – she wants to do twice as many chores.”  My parents still held to the status quo.  Boys followed dad, girl followed mom.  I went back to setting the table, doing the dishes, scrubbing the toilet, folding the boxers and briefs.

One day, while soaking and scraping the Crest cap free of dried paste, I realized that I wasn’t a complete failure.  I couldn’t control, motivate or manipulate the thoughts and actions of others, but I certainly could influence my own thoughts and actions.  My thinking had changed, my worldview and self-understanding expanded, and I was proud.  I determined that some day, when I had kids of my own, chores would not be assigned by gender.  Instead, I would design my household to be a place where all girls and boys are created equal.  A place where, if you have hands you will do, for the mutual benefit of all.

Seventeen yeas later, I am 29, single and live alone.  I do all the chores.  I think back to my adolescent feminist awakening and think – at least I’ve had lots of practice.

If Jay Leno cornered me on the street, pressed a camera and microphone in my face and asked me to describe the “American Way,” I’d probably say it is a pyramid scheme that fronts as a company selling goods that no one really needs.  I’m not very political or nationalistic and have serious doubts about the American dream (which is a subject for another time).   Despite my lagging patriotism, I was enthralled by the Inauguration of 2009.  It was a big deal.  Famous singers belting out timeless American folk tunes, an original poem for the occasion, a presidential speech, pomp, circumstance and confetti.  I was impressed and it felt great to take part in the inauguration, if only from my living room.

I’ve been thinking of blogging for over a year now.  But first, in typical Corrie fashion, I had to take time to hem and haw,  to question why I should blog, to decide what I wanted to be about, to worry about being a conformist,  to gather the opinions of others, and generally to be scared of all the potential implications blogging might have for my life.  Just like the media coverage of the political campaigns of 2008, I got sick of thinking of blogging from every angle.  I lost my ability to keep the issues straight.  Like preparing to do my American duty and vote, I reached a point where I couldn’t take in any more opinions or debates or ads.  I just needed to vote and get on with life.

The votes are in and I elected to create a blog.  Obviously.  I’m a little worried about this whole thing, but maybe there are things to discover on this keyboard that I could never have imagined.  I’m hoping for a bright future.  I’m going to choose to be optimistic about blogging, though I don’t imagine I will ever become more optimistic about politics.

This day, this post, is a big deal for me.  It’s inauguration day.  If I had the time, I’d hold a ceremony, write a poem about my journey here, give a speech, invite Over the Rhine to compose and perform a song in my honor, drink champagne, dance around the mall and kiss perfect strangers.  (Well, maybe not the kissing part.)  (Definitely not the kissing part.)  But this is an inauguration and its a big deal.  Congratulations are welcome.

I promise to work hard.  I hope I don’t disappoint you.   If I do, please throw confetti anyway.