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Our Saturday

Although not the most exciting of videos and pictures, we figured out how to upload things to our blog. Here is a look into our day, spent going for a walk, reading ravenously and enjoying nutella...also ravenously.

We also fixed our settings so that all can post comments without needing to sign up or sign in. So feel free to comment away, even on older posts.

The Comfort of my Weakness

Working in care professions puts the world in oxymoron. I work to improve the lives of others, and in this see not so much their weaknesses but my own. Each day is a lesson in humility, a reminder of my inabilities, but in this I find comfort.

I was reminded of this powerful lesson on Thursday as I waited with one resident to go to an appointment. As my coworker retrieved the car, I sat with Sabine on the couch. She removed her beanie and began yanking out clumps of hair, quietly repeating phrases. Sabine is typically very quiet, a woman who has the ability to calm you just by sitting in her presence. As groupmates yell and raise ruckus, she sits still, looks at you with her dome eyes and whispers something more to herself than anyone. She looks like she has deep thoughts revolving in her head, like she holds a valuable life lesson within. So to see her pulling her hair out was more jarring than if it’d been another resident.

I know people, dear loved ones, who have struggled with the same symptom. It is not something I judge or look at with perplexed eyes, but something I empathize with. It was different, though, to witness her self-abuse. People with developmental disabilities often carry the gift of honesty. Many never formed the social inhibitions that cause us to hide our flaws or emotions at all costs. It is a quality I have grown to admire in my work with people with disabilities because I think most of us could use a lesson in the value of true honesty, not about lying but about letting ourselves and our emotions truly be known. Sabine did not hide her anxiety from me, but let it exist as a fact of her current state.

Though I knew it came from somewhere deep, I tried to talk to her, to ask her to stop and tell me what she was thinking about. It wasn’t that I expected it to work, but that I didn’t feel that I could just sit there quietly letting it happen. I had no power in the situation, no control, no logical way to help. I could only be with her, and that is what I did. I reached out my hands and laid them gently on her scalp, then listened and whispered words of comfort.

Perhaps I did not help her through her day or her anxiety, but she helped me, with her raw emotional honesty, through mine. I had no power in the situation; I was as meek as she. But my power came in acknowledging this and simply being present. She reminded me what we are called to do, that we are called to be with one another and walk together. It doesn’t mean that we can always help the way we want to, but that being aware of our common humanity, we can live in communion. In this, I find comfort.

Love, Bryce

No Good Deed...

Upon fixing our washer/dryer, our landlord invited us over for coffee with him and his wife. After a few unsuccessful date proposals, we made our way over for a pleasant Saturday evening of wine, cookies and pretzel sticks. It was an enjoyable conversation, at least the 60% that I understood (all of the 50% in English and about 10% of the German). We discussed the adventures of their two children living abroad and future and current work; our plans for graduate school after Germany; translating what he went to school for and deciding that Heilpedagogie was like a combined study of social services specifically for people with disabilities and disabilities rights; the enjoyment they get from their terrier, even bringing her on the marathon trainings that Norbert runs; the use of the farmland near us; and other typical congenial conversational topics. We were especially pleased to find out that it was Norbert listening to the Maroon 5 that we overheard two days before Christmas and not their twenty-year-old daughter. Before we left into the continuously falling and piling snow, they even offered to bring the newspaper over after they were finished with it each day.

The following day we helped our “host” family, (who included us in their Christmas celebrations), by shoveling their driveway. They were in Berlin for the week and a lot of snow had collected in their absence. After Bryce’s shift ended in the afternoon, I met her there to heave the 8 inches off of their long, crooked driveway and parking space. She borrowed a neighbor’s shovel, while I presumed it was okay to bring our landlord’s; he had finished shoveling his drive and our walk, and had left the shovel out. On our way back from shoveling, we noticed that a piece of metal that straddled the end of the shovel had bent back. There was also snow and ice jammed between the blade and the metal strip on the reverse side. We weren’t sure if this had been the case before we borrowed the tool, or if we inflicted the damage. In order to try to repair the shovel, we needed the snow wedged in it to melt first. We brought it inside the entryway to thaw, and planned to do our best to repair it before warning the landlord of the damage.

Shortly after dinner, the doorbell rang. We had forgotten about the newspaper. I greeted a smiling Norbert at the door and thanked him for the paper. As I was closing the door he glanced down, and noticing the shovel lying on our floor, said “Ist das mein Scheiber?” I apologized and stumbled through some awkward explanation about having used it (although it was abundantly clear that the only shoveling around our area was completed by him) and that there had been snow stuck in it (which had since melted completely), throwing in other comments that he probably wasn’t paying attention to. He said he would take the shovel and that it was okay. He then went on his way, after I handed him the couple of broken pieces lying on our floor that had once fastened the metal to the blade. (Maybe I should have offered him my umbrella.) The newspaper has since been delivered each day as promised, and the only shovel to appear has been a newer one resting on the opposite side of the garage.