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Beside the White Chickens
Nov. 16th, 2021 04:40 pmThings are better now, but I had a very low moment on Friday where a paperwork/depositing error by someone else put me in jeopardy financially and medically. It was a problem I'd seen coming, and had sent several warnings about before it happened while also doubting myself for micromanaging and not trusting enough, and it still happened, and I understood why and how, and how absolutely non-malicious it was, how much it came from someone trying very hard, someone who cares about getting it right.
For several hours it was too clear that I am centrally, critically, Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life, which I always know but which is usually safely veiled where it can't prickle me so hard. It is not fun to have thrust in your face that you have repeatedly put aside your own dreams and goals and hopes in service to the public and your family, and that everyone really appreciates it, and also will fail you in ways you can't be angry about really, which will be devastating.
The whole time, I knew I would be fine, because for those very same reasons, I have many people who will rally around me to fix the situation, which is what happened - several colleagues spent the better part of a day working the phones on my behalf until many bureaucracies agreed. And I also know that if they hadn't, other people totally unrelated to the problem would have stepped in and shored me up for as much as a year and a half, if I'd needed it.
Even knowing that was going to happen, because I know that I am Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life, it was a difficult several hours, in the same way that I am sad during the movie even though I know how it ends.
It's recently gotten cold enough that we've turned on the radiators, and Dad is either old enough now or alert enough to COVID risks that he made sure to walk me through the process for next time "just in case." It sincerely is complicated and like being on a steamship, because this is an old house which has undergone several remodels and additions; it has eight heating systems that have to be activated in the correct sequence or the upper floors won't get heat, or the radiant panels in the kitchen and bathroom will shatter, because the water has to go in the right circuit to and from the boiler.
It only has to be done once a year, but if it isn't done correctly it's potentially either very expensive or life-threatening, because it does get very cold in this part of the world. Notably, I spend most of my time in the attic, in the room which is the first to freeze if anything earlier in the circuit fails. (I do have a backup electric space heater for that room, courtesy of Ciro, who recognizes my specific precarity.)
There are a lot of situations like this not only in my life but in everyone's lives, where it makes a huge difference whether a single individual is doing something you don't particularly notice. Sometimes in a disaster you find out who it was, because they become briefly visible. (I'm thinking at the moment of the Marconi wireless operators on the Titanic and the Carpathia.)
I keep thinking of the line "So much depends on a red wheelbarrow," from the William Carlos Williams poem which is not as memed as the icebox plums, but the one that in high school first made me pay attention to him. Williams was a pediatrician and GP. I think he and I are both red wheelbarrows who depend on other red wheelbarrows, getting pecked at and rained on, sturdy and bright colored, visible from the window if you look. I suspect the handful of people reading this post are also red wheelbarrows.
For several hours it was too clear that I am centrally, critically, Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life, which I always know but which is usually safely veiled where it can't prickle me so hard. It is not fun to have thrust in your face that you have repeatedly put aside your own dreams and goals and hopes in service to the public and your family, and that everyone really appreciates it, and also will fail you in ways you can't be angry about really, which will be devastating.
The whole time, I knew I would be fine, because for those very same reasons, I have many people who will rally around me to fix the situation, which is what happened - several colleagues spent the better part of a day working the phones on my behalf until many bureaucracies agreed. And I also know that if they hadn't, other people totally unrelated to the problem would have stepped in and shored me up for as much as a year and a half, if I'd needed it.
Even knowing that was going to happen, because I know that I am Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life, it was a difficult several hours, in the same way that I am sad during the movie even though I know how it ends.
It's recently gotten cold enough that we've turned on the radiators, and Dad is either old enough now or alert enough to COVID risks that he made sure to walk me through the process for next time "just in case." It sincerely is complicated and like being on a steamship, because this is an old house which has undergone several remodels and additions; it has eight heating systems that have to be activated in the correct sequence or the upper floors won't get heat, or the radiant panels in the kitchen and bathroom will shatter, because the water has to go in the right circuit to and from the boiler.
It only has to be done once a year, but if it isn't done correctly it's potentially either very expensive or life-threatening, because it does get very cold in this part of the world. Notably, I spend most of my time in the attic, in the room which is the first to freeze if anything earlier in the circuit fails. (I do have a backup electric space heater for that room, courtesy of Ciro, who recognizes my specific precarity.)
There are a lot of situations like this not only in my life but in everyone's lives, where it makes a huge difference whether a single individual is doing something you don't particularly notice. Sometimes in a disaster you find out who it was, because they become briefly visible. (I'm thinking at the moment of the Marconi wireless operators on the Titanic and the Carpathia.)
I keep thinking of the line "So much depends on a red wheelbarrow," from the William Carlos Williams poem which is not as memed as the icebox plums, but the one that in high school first made me pay attention to him. Williams was a pediatrician and GP. I think he and I are both red wheelbarrows who depend on other red wheelbarrows, getting pecked at and rained on, sturdy and bright colored, visible from the window if you look. I suspect the handful of people reading this post are also red wheelbarrows.
