HELP

February 18, 2011

HELP

I hate feeling helpless. without help. unable to assist. Upstairs my son is putting in contact lenses for the 4th time in his life. It is not going well. He has not yet acquired the knack to doing it. I cannot do it for him since I hope one day for him to live in another residence. I know it is not going well from the banging on the bathroom vanity, the loud shouts of frustration. The long pauses of silence are agonizing…did he get one in or is he frantically searching the floor for the slippery piece of saran wrap that would rather curve back to hug his fingertip than cling helpfully to his eyeball and put us both out of our misery. This is agony. I would call a friend to help ease my pain but that seems selfish so I type out my anguish and listen… for exactly what I do not know. He just came down rather calmly (yea!) to show me the lens and asked if it looked right. I concurred that it did and he is back up to the resume the fight. I contemplate calling my mother, she would understand this horrible predicament but again I nix the idea of soothing myself and resume my quiet mantra “please let him get his contacts in.”  Yesterday one tore. The return to wearing glasses was more than he could stand after so many minutes of frustration and he refused to go to school.  I called his bluff and he calmed down and went.  I was able to help ease that pain yesterday with a ride to school and a quick trip to pick up another contact lens …and here we are again.  I realize that there is much worse suffering in the world and this is trivial.  The idea that the vanity of contact lenses can create  any anguish on any level for 2 human beings is laughable .  But here, now, in this moment, I don’t feel like laughing.  And as I type that last sentence he is coming down the stairs after a very long silence from his bathroom…….. Success!  Laughter is now on the horizon and I am off to microwave a pancake on a stick in celebration!

Permalink