Dirty Details

2. nights, lifting, and toilet: the first conspiracy of silence

nights, lifting, and toilet: the first conspiracy of silence two S everal friends don't understand why, at Inglis House, they don't put Jeff on the toilet, why they just wait for him to go and then clean him. They think that's terrible. But I've done toilet, and I know why. I also know about the way they do handle it at Inglis House. That's no picnic, either. Only too well do I remember those nights, sometimes two or three times a night, never just in the bedpan, or even on the towel underneath the bedpan, but always on the sheets-both the top sheet and the bottom sheet-and sometimes on the mattress under the sheets. I'd worry, Kafka-style. It's impossible to wring out the mattress. And the bed under the mattress. And the earth under the bed. I'd get upset, angry. Even Atlas couldn't wring out the earth. And-what was almost too delicious to contemplate or tantrum about-not only because there would be no place for what I wrung out to fall, but because there's simply too much of it.• It wasn't all toilet and bedpan. Jeff would have trouble using the phone, or he'd need someone to write down a number, 15 Copyrighted Material dirty details 16 an address, or an entire physics calculation. He always felt anxious and rushed about those physics-related phone calls and those calculations. They were his life and his livelihood , more and more so as he became less able to teach, as he was finally excused from his teaching duties, and as he knew that the University of Pennsylvania was paying him for research alone. Most often it was a jar he'd need, or a page turned in a physics book. Still, when I heard "Mar!" I thought "toilet." I expected toilet. "Please," I'd mouth, "not toilet." And if it was only the jar, I'd think, "Oh," or I'd say, in a sarcastically pleasant tone, "Something possible? At your service!" Usually I said exactly what I was thinking. It came naturally to me and seemed honest and healthy. It was my way. It is not the way of all well spouses; some keep their anger to themselves or express it less vocally and less often. For me, speaking my mind preserved my sanity and our relationship , and mine with the kids. It also seemed a way to let the kids know that they had permission (mine if not society 'S) to feel-to be angry, sad, upset, resentful, whatever. As in my childhood household, my husband and children often talked about "Marion's temper tantrums" or "Mommy 's temper tantrums," but for me tantrums and assertiveness went hand in hand. I never threw things, never hit anybody, often didn't even scream; long was what I got, not loud. My tantrums were a matter of words, sometimes quite eloquent. After a while, with help from therapy, Harriet Lerner's book "The Dance of Anger, " and the writing of a series of anger poems, I got some hold on those tantrums, or what other people said were tantrums. Now that what I call the "impossibleships" are over, I do not have tantrums, Copyrighted Material nights, lifting, and toilet 17 nor do I have to work at not having them. The situation was not to be abided, and I feel no regret or shame over myoId long-winded honesty. At the last well-spouse meeting someone said, "I went up to my room and closed the door and screamed and screamed and screamed." In the latest well-spouse newsletter a woman wrote anonymously, "One day I found myself standing on the bed, hauling my husband up onto it and being so upset that I was almost-but fortunately not quite-driven to BITE HIS ARM!" Another anonymous well spouse gives a beautifully clear description of this kind of repression scenario: "Would I ever hit him? Of course not. It would not be appropriate to break into his splendid isolation , his dreadful specialness, with anything as rude and irrelevant as violence. I have begun to act like a proper servant, always on call but rarely noticed. Suddenly it all seems so odd, my life, an old British play on public television." There's no question that anger, however expressed or repressed, is a huge...