Spontaneity: When the Heart Says Yes but the Head Says No
“No no no no NO!” shrieks the toddler inside of me, wrestling with both my clothing and inner demons, defiantly stomping on the very idea that yes, yes, YES, the Universe (or, in my case, God) is trying desperately to shove a letter through my mail slot. And I will have none of it. I don’t want the letter and I don’t want to peruse it.
You know when everything around you is conspiring against (or more likely, for) you, and the weight of your exhaustion is too busy sideswiping you into your own bed for you to either argue or agree with it? When “Spontaneity” reared its free spirited flurry in today’s Daily Writing Challenge, I sighed (216.5 times — I was just too tired to force the last half sigh), and wanted to tantrum on the needs-to-be-sweeped laminate.
Pauline Boss just told me about spontaneity in Chapter 8 of Loving Someone Who Has Dementia (the last chapter I completed before slamming it on the table. According to Brene Brown a good book makes you uncomfortable enough to chuck it, but I haven’t the heart to do that to an innocent book). I just came across, and read, a couple of articles about improvisational theatre techniques as effective ways to deal with Alzheimer’s from a caregiver’s perspective. And now even my Writing Challenge is “forcing” me to brood on spontaneity?
Spontaneity used to be a great pal of mine. I did get married (the first time) in a hot air balloon in Las Vegas, after all. In the classroom I would deem it one of my top skills: flexibility can allow for deeper responding-to-student-inquiry lessons, often more meaningful than what was previously planned. (And it does prove extremely helpful when you’re not a regular checker of emails and things like, say, guest speakers in the gym, are discovered as all the other classes parade past yours on their way.)
As a parent I embrace and encourage spontaneity. Just last evening, my husband shouted “what are you DOING?” as my daughter and I, precariously dipped our feet in the wobbly bathroom pedestal sink and splooshed soap into dark bubbles in our attempts to remove sharpie marks so that at bedtime they wouldn’t stain bed sheets. From her characterizing her foot into Guido the talking body part who followed us all around, asking odd questions of us as she hopped so that her foot base would face us, there evolved a story. A second character: my foot (nameless, poor leg end) danced into the plot and soon we were sharpie-ing eyes and unibrows on to the dorsal surface of our feet.
Why, then, am I so afraid of it when it comes to dealing with my spouse and his absurd Alzheimer’s behaviours and words? Why can’t I usurp Truth (and my absolute stingy and un-moveable desire that our children learn its importance) and just “say yes”…go with whatever is about to happen/be said? Oh yes, husband, you insist you just let the cat outside (and yet, unless that new brand of coffee has me hallucinating?, he is miraculously purring at your ankles). Oh yes, of course you just took the garbage out to the shed (though why the Housecleaning Fairy dropped it back in the bin is shocking — do we need to sack them and hire anew?).
Pauline Boss did inform me (okay, us, the readers — she and I aren’t personal friends) that “If you’re the type who insists on certainty arrived at through clear, coherent reasoning, you’ll have a harder time” (p.146). I didn’t think I was that rigid.
Oh sure, my heart says yes, yes, YES to spontaneity. (I’m pretty sure that’s because it links spontaneity with an impromptu trip to New Zealand.) And yet my head, bound in toddlerhood when it comes to this idea, doesn’t want to wave the white flag to truth and the way reality “should” be. How do I get my heart and my head to hook up? How do I invite Guido and Guest into interactions with my husband? How do I begin saying yes, yes, YES, instead of no, no, NO?
