Home
Previous
Next
April, 2013
9 234/9/13 - Title: "Heroes"
I'm one of several volunteers (the only male) who help out, most of them mid-wives, with the medical care for bomber crews, on the airplanes during night raids over Germany in World War II. As we are being driven out to a plane, I ask if I have time to take a pee first, but am told I do not. Oh well. I realize it will be uncomfortable, but I can hold it.
Someone helps me fasten my nametag, in plastic with a big safety pin, onto the top of my head, in my hair (thicker than my actual hair, as I'm a lot younger, in my 20s), so people can tell the number of the flight (plane) I was on and who I was, if we're shot down or I'm wounded or killed in flack and they find me or my body later.
I see my dad, and he's smiling and proud of me.
A young woman asks about volunteering, not for the air crew medical care but to be a mid-wife. She already has a special rubber garment with two leg holes that she'll need for helping a mother with a delivery(?). I encourage her and tell her where to go volunteer. I realize she sees us all as heros (heroes). I'm too tired and scared to feel very heroic. And I need to pee!
4/23/13 - Title: "New Living Arrangements"
Scene one - Fran and I have been away but have returned to a large house with many rooms. In the interim it has been most all occupied by a large number of people, and they live in it in many informal residential spaces, the separations between them often ambiguous, resulting in many more or less communal groupings and spaces.
There are some with kids here, but mostly the other residents are single young adults.
Everyone gets along well with everyone else in a friendly, accommodative, practical way, but there are way too few bathrooms/toilet facilities for so many, so that people, including the kids, must wait for one to be free, and then people are expected to just pee or whatever in front of others waiting for the same facilities. In addition, there are a few who try to casually slip in without waiting, sometimes successfully, sometimes called on it and forced to wait like the rest.
I don't see how any of this is going to work for me, as I'm used to a lot of privacy, both in where I live and in using the toilet. There is no choice, however. I must adjust as best I can.
Fran and I find a small space (about as big as our real master bedroom) where we can stay. It is so crowded with us and our stuff that misc. things are scattered all around in a disorganized way, getting in the way, especially when the (roughly queen-sized) bed is cleared enough for us to rest on it. Of course, there is no adjoining bathroom or kitchen, etc. However, there are two doors, one connecting to the already occupied rest of the house, and the other to a shallow patio/alley area. Roll-up, brown awnings or shades, with strings to control them, are on a bank of windows in the wall between our room and the patio/alley. These shades are rolled about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom, so the room has some natural light, but it is relatively dim or gloomy during the day.
I have gone looking for a bathroom while Fran continues getting herself unpacked and adjusts to the living space. With many false starts, looking in vain for privacy, I finally find a place to pee, wait through several kids one at a time peeing in clear view in front of me, then adult men and women following suit, and finally get my chance. Somebody, a young woman, tries to jump in ahead of me. I gently but firmly move her back out, close a door I find there, pee, then leave, and head back to our room.
The whole pee place search, wait, and finally successful pee and return has taken about two hours, and (with prostate trouble) I often need to go more than once in any two-hour period, sometimes even at night. (So, I think this current arrangement will hardly work well for me and hope it will be very temporary.)
Meanwhile, night has fallen and it is time for bed. I hope Fran can more quickly find her own opportunity to go to the bathroom and that it will be quicker for me next time. Perhaps this will be true now that others have gone to bed.
Scene two - We are it seems in the same place late at night, but have a small suite-like area on the second floor. I think it is fairly private, but a scruffy looking young man comes through a hall-like area and a room adjoining our bedroom.
"What the Hell are you doing!?" I say in some anger and alarm. He does not react to my emotion but gives a reasonable answer. I see again that our arrangements are more communal than I had realized or wish.
Evidently he needed to get something to eat from the fridge before going to work (late shift), or some such. Obviously, he knows the ropes, lay of the land, or how things are here, and as yet I don't.
[What I get from this so far is that there is a big community, aspects of the Self within me, most all getting along together well, though there is now not much room or opportunity for expression for the ego or for feelings. It feels like too many new adjustments are required in my new life situation (Alanon? getting older? Fran staying busy most of the time away from home?), but there is also dawning awareness, transformation, a sense of unity, a period of transition, nurturance, and accommodation. Yet there is also depression, alarm, and anger, a great feeling of being unsettled, and that if things will be like this more than temporarily I do not know if I can handle it. There are nonetheless several creative projects which are in their turn (or proper order) getting expression.]