This year’s Labor Day post is for the people you don’t meet until you need them. They do things you wouldn’t have imagined you would ever need. The people who shepherd a frightened family member through a traumatic trip to the ER. The people who help you coordinate home care when you know absolutely nothing about what to do and what you need. The people who deliver and set up the hospital bed. Physical therapists. Occupational therapists. The people whose job is it to keep taking X-rays while trying not to cause pain. And, most of all: the carers. You definitely aren’t going to meet them under ordinary circumstances. You are so exhausted that you have contemplated walking out into traffic just to end the continual fear that you are doing something wrong. You desperately need help and you are afraid that sharing the load is shirking your responsibility or means that you don’t care as much as your ought to. Our culture treats this kind of care work as something quite low - - unskil...
It only takes one variable to change your day. I needed to pick up a few things that my own Walgreens did not have in stock so I put in an order at the one on Route 40 in Catonsville. I entered the destination into my GPS and headed out. I soon found myself lost, more or less, in what I would call The Wilds of Dunloggin. It is not a terrifying thing to be aimlessly drifting through Dunloggin but it was unexpected. A little checking revealed that my GPS was inexplicably set to “avoid highways.” So I was not lost. I was taking the scenic route. Since I spend so much time inside the Columbia Bubble it’s honestly educational for me to visit neighborhoods that deviate from my expected norms. I took in the differences in architectural style, how the lots were laid out, and I wondered what it was like to live on these streets when they were new. I felt like I had pretty much gotten the hang of where I was going when a vision off to my right startled me. It looked rather like a chi...