Getting down

During one of the first weeks of summer, I found myself one day on pick-up duty for Luke and Megan's Bible Camp at St. Peter's. I don't remember if Julie was working or where she was, but I had James and Isabelle with me by myself.

It was probably one of the first times I was trying to travel with all four kids and no partner to lean on for help. Simple enough task: get into the gym, get Luke and Megan, get back out and home. But when we got there, I realized that getting to the gym from the parking lot requires two flights of steps down from street level, then up a step into the gym lobby. The flights aren't huge; maybe 6-8 steps each. But it ruled out the stroller, meaning I had to carry Isabelle in her car seat in one arm and hold James's hand and navigate him down the steps with the other.

As we crossed the street and approached the steps, I was sweating and feeling helpless and angry. Other parents and kids were streaming effortlessly up and down the steps. "Steps" didn't even look to be a thought in their minds or a care in their worlds. I wondered if I was having a moment like one of our priests, Fr. Mike, must have daily—he's in a wheelchair from a car accident a long time ago and while St. Peter's has made a number of accommodations during his time there, it's still a tough world when you can't get up and down steps. (When Luke and I were at the evening Mass on Good Friday, a tornado warning sent everyone to the basement—everyone, that is, except for Fr. Mike, the celebrant, who couldn't get to the basement because it's only accessible by steps.) And if my little moment crossing Jefferson Ave. in early June is any suggestion of what Fr. Mike feels about steps and the people who take them, it must be really hard for him not to be pissed at and jealous of the sweet obliviousness of our carefree relationship to them.

So the closer I got the more I felt like there was no way I was going to be able to help steer James down the steps using my left hand while hanging on to Isabelle's car seat for dear life with my right arm. I had no idea what I'd do if James suddenly decided to do one of his go-limp flops in the middle of the street or on the steps themselves. But we started down the steps, one slow one at a time, and James held on to the railing with his left hand and didn't flop. It was slow and painful—the hard plastic carseat handle was wedged into the crook of my arm, which was going numb from the pressure and the weight—but we made it. Once we got inside, I had another panicky moment when James finally did flop at the entrance to the gym because there were tons of people and noise and he hated it—but luckily first Megan and then Luke saw me and I didn't have to get all the way across to their little groups. The ascent on the way out was no less painful but at least I was pretty sure we'd all make it.

That feeling—the one I had crossing the street—became a kind of metaphor for me for a while this summer. Why do so many things with James seem so hard to me sometimes? Why is it even so hard for me to say out loud that it is hard, or frustrating? Why does every little, well, step have to be so deliberate and take so much work and emotional energy and even guilt?

So I kind of chewed on that metaphor off and on all busy summer long—thinking of all the steps, all those now-much-harder-to-get-to places that seem easy to everyone else. It's hard to articulate this feeling exactly without sounding like it's a pity party—it's more like a low level background teeth grind that can go quiet for long stretches but just as easily hit a sudden intensity. I just get very frustrated, I think because I feel very helpless. It's not that I don't feel that way about our other three, because I do, all the time. (Of course I don't feel only this way, and I don't feel only this way with James.)  It wasn't Isabelle that made me feel all of that anxiety that morning—though it was trying to transport her in carseat without stroller that gave the trip its higher degree of difficulty. But there's little anxiety for me about Isabelle's progression towards the world of the steps; with her and the others, I get to be one of the sweetly oblivious, at least most of the time.