Pretty Girl

The first Sunday of daylight savings time, when darkness descends at 5:00 p.m., shocks my system and makes me want to go to bed at 7. On that day in 2007, I lugged two comforters and detergent to the laundromat at Ashland near Division. It was chock-full of older people, middle-aged people, young people, and one exquisitely beautiful four-year old girl. She was a dark-eyed, dark-haired wisp of Middle Eastern or Hispanic ancestry. A drama princess dressed in pink, with a flair worthy of Katherine Hepburn, she touched the back of her hand to her forehead, and explained that her head ached.

Tylenol overuse led to the emergency liver transplant of a friend’s 24-year old daughter so I sought her mother to warn her. She was near the front door folding laundry, wearing a foot surgery boot, her crutches at the ready. She knew of the Tylenol risk and didn’t give it to her children. I acknowledged the fatigue that I knew she must feel, which she wearily affirmed. I went back to watch my laundry spin around. The beautiful little girl sat down next to me, almost snuggled, and put her hand on my leg. As her mother finished up the laundry, her brothers, probably eight and ten years old, came to get her because they had finished and were leaving.

The stunning exhaustion that I experienced on my first outing after foot surgery made me keenly aware that this mother must have been depleted. If ours was a culture of supportive communities, the mother would not have been in the laundromat wearing a foot surgery boot, with three children at 6:00 on a Sunday evening. The little girl wouldn’t sit close to a stranger and put a hand on her leg.

I assume that the mother works and is away from home a fair amount. I’ll go out on a limb and say that earning a living and putting food on the table takes all of this mom’s time, leaving little of it to shower her daughter and sons with the love and attention that they all crave. This vignette of human and maternal struggle vividly illustrates a family that could use some help. A basic improvement could be a community that had enough awareness and resources to pitch in to help a mother recovering from foot surgery. Another possibility is living in an apartment building, or house, with other competent, caring adults and a washing machine.

The blog post, Time and Talent – Precious Resources, talks about the imbalances that are so prevalent today. Surely, reliable people in this woman’s neighborhood would be honored to lend a hand. At the regular community gatherings that New Community Vision is gearing up to facilitate, neighbors will get to know each other, establish trust, form alliances, and identify who needs what you have to offer and who has what you need to get. As we learn how to do this, we will shift the paradigm and live easier, more satisfying and fulfilled lives.

I’m figuring out how to organize community gatherings and expect to announce the first ones soon. Stay tuned.