COMPLAINING, COMPANIONS, COMPASSION

Before life with Arthur, I had never been much of a complainer. I had little to complain about. Life was good, if not great. I was young, I had a great marriage, we finally had our first child, and I loved the military life. It’s not for everyone, I realize, but travel is in my blood, and meeting people and making new friends is something I've always good at.

None of that has changed over the years. I still enjoy meeting new people, and although long car trips are not something I enjoy overmuch these days, I have discovered I have a definite affinity for ocean cruises. Basking in the heat of a tropical ship deck is close enough to a sauna to melt the knots right out of my aching muscles. As long as I can find a place out of the sun, I’m good.

I must digress for a moment here, and take us back to the days immediately preceding our trip to Europe. Since I was staying with my parents temporarily, I decided to take on a part-time job to help occupy the days until I could join my husband. I had never worked much in fast-food, always preferring office work to standing on my feet all day ensconced in the smell of hot grease. But I thought it might be a fun change of scene, and there weren’t many employers willing to take on office workers for such a short time.

So I applied for a job at the local Wendy’s. I liked working with the young kids that often fill those positions, and the manager was a family acquaintance who knew my time there would be short. I went off to work in my blue striped apron, knowing my parents would love the time alone with their granddaughter.

What a nightmare! At that time, Wendy’s had only recently introduced their first chicken sandwich to the menu. One of my assigned tasks was to prepare the chicken breasts for deep-frying. I had to place the breasts in a shallow pan of flour and break down the membranous fibers so that they didn’t curl up when fried.

The only way we were allowed to break down the chicken was with our knuckles. I had to press the backs of my hands into the chicken meat hard enough to break it down, but not too hard. A utensil would have mashed it up too much. Knuckles were best.

It wasn’t long before my hands because extremely sore and tender, and they swelled slightly. My co-workers and companions didn’t understand it. Several of them were also assigned to the same task, and had no such problems. They made me feel like a total wuss.

My mother was compassionate about it, but didn’t understand the extent of the pain I was experiencing. For that matter, neither did I. My hands got so sore and stiff that I couldn’t pin diapers on my daughter. She has very sensitive skin, and wouldn’t tolerate disposables, so I had always used cloth diapers on her. But suddenly the pressure of squeezing the large safety pins caused extreme pain in my knuckles. I thought it was all just a reaction to the chicken breast pounding, so I gave up the job.

Now I had more free time than I knew what to do with. I began looking up old friends and spending time with them. But it wasn’t long before they started acting strangely. It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally realized that it was the constant complaining I had begun.

I honestly didn’t mean to complain. And it’s not like I went on and on about how bad I felt all the time. But I’ll give you an example of what my life was like at that time, and see how you would describe it.

My friend and I arrange for her to pick me up to go shopping. She arrives at my parent’s house, and I limp out to the car. (I’m limping on my right leg.) My friend greets me with a frown and asks what’s wrong with my leg. “Oh, I don’t know,” I say as I arrange myself in the car. “It just hurts sometimes.”

We get to the mall, and after a while we’ve got a selection of items to try on. We come out of the dressing rooms, and I’m rubbing my left shoulder. “Did you hurt your arm?” asks my friend.

“Um, no,” I reply. “It just hurts all of a sudden.”

My friend eyes me a bit doubtfully. “How’s your leg?”

“Oh, it’s fine.”

We head down to the food court, but half-way through lunch, I stop eating. “Is there something wrong with your salad,” asks my friend.

“No, my jaws just ache,” I respond. I pick up my tray with my left hand and stretch my arm out toward the trash bin, which I force open and dump the remains of my lunch.

“Doesn’t that hurt your arm,” asks friend with raised eyebrows.

I toss the tray onto the top of the trash bin. “Nope. My arm’s fine now.”

See where I’m going with this? By now my friend is beginning to think there’s definitely something wrong with me, but she’s sure the problem is somewhere in my head, not in my leg or my arm or my jaw. I know this to be true because she later admitted it. She’s not the only one.

But that’s how it started out for me. The pain in my joints would travel throughout my body, stabbing me here, pinching me there, until I doubted my own sanity. I definitely felt pain, but aspirin didn’t make it go away, and I had never taken anything stronger. So I started believing that I had developed hypochondria. The word ‘arthritis’ never entered the picture. Not once.

That was my life. Still young, still wearing those four-inch spike heels, a fairly new mother going off to a strange country, and having mental issues. But I wasn’t going to let it get the best of me. I pushed the pain to the back of my mind as much as possible, and kept doing what I had been all along. I took care of my family. Probably not as well as I had been in the past, but hopefully well enough that they didn’t notice what it was costing me.

Hope you all have a blessed week. I’m going outside to lie in my hammock and smell the honeysuckle.

Harmony