Last week I ran into a mom after school who decided I needed to hear her vent for 15 minutes about the housecleaner that didn't show up at her house the day before. "Did you hearwhat happened?", she asked, and then went on about the wayward housecleaner, who needed the money and said she'd come, then backed out....and the ensuing calls and texts that went back and forth between this mom and the girl. And then the final tragedy....She had to clean her very big house all by herself.
And all I could do was plaster on a fake smile and "oh" and "wow, that's too bad" the whole way through.
When what I wanted to say was, "Consider who you are talking to - I work at a hospital - let me share some real tragedy with you -- how about the young father who dove into a shallow river on christmas day and now will never hug his daughters again; how about the guy who has cancer spread so far throughout his body that he's lost his mind and his poor family waits for his suffering to end; or the guy who got the H1N1 virus and died in the prime of his life; the woman who had simple surgery and every possible complication that could happen, did happen and is now hooked up to a ventilator just to breathe? How about that?"
Beyond that my thoughts are purely selfish. I was without a home for a year so cleaning one now is a small price to pay for the joy of having a home. I work full time and manage to keep things picked up (or my husband and kids do and I'm grateful).
But I didn't say anything. I smiled and bit my tongue almost clean off.
Why? Why couldn't I have gently redirected her thoughts to those real tragedies? Not in a mean way, but just saying anything, something, to change the conversation and help her see how ridiculous it seemed. Maybe because if I had let my real thoughts out I would've come at her with both barrels blazing. Or maybe I was afraid of causing a conflict. Maybe I knew it wouldn't matter what I had to say. I don't know, but I'd like to figure it out.
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