Heroism ... a Day in the Life of Small Acts and Tiny Victories

I have trouble with the movies my sister/friend and I call the "One Flew Over the Mountain Twice ... Backwards" sort of movies. These are the inspirational movies about people who have been in horrendous accidents and are paralyzed from the neck or waist down, or who are double amputees, or have survived stage 3 cancer in two areas of their bodies. Make no mistake; we know these are heroic people who truly are inspirational. There is no quarrel that these people have a fire or a faith or both inside of them that just makes you want to write an orchestral score about them, let alone a song. And they can make us keep moving forward in a crisis by remembering their strengths.

That's not my issue. My issue is the caption often shown right after those breakthrough scenes and moments. Our hero (please note this word is being applied to men and women alike) is shown breaking down, refusing to take another "step" or to endure one more limb manipulation. There is that scene followed by an inspired physical therapist or strong and loving family member, the one who has the words of wisdom that tap into our heroes internal strength or faith or love, or all three. And that medicine is taken; that step is made; that resolve is given a voice.

And we then have a few heavily scored scenes, perhaps, of the repeated therapy sessions and steps taken toward recovery--scenes that total no more than two minutes at most.

We move to a new scene entirely, with the pivotal caption that says something like "Denver: two years later." And at that point we see the person in the midst of organizing a march or forming a company, or stretching for a marathon. We see the heroine readying herself to go out and do that marvelous thing we all gasp at. (Usually it's something I'd never have believed I could do WITHOUT the health problem!)

Nothing wrong with that as a dramatic vehicle, right? The thing is, when I was young, I'd simply be in awe because, I mean, who can run a marathon with a leg missing? How can someone run a company with no hands or functioning legs? I'd see the big thing. The bike race, the advocacy company, the appearance before Congress.  What I did not see was that two year period of recovery and struggle. I saw the beginnings of the BIG victory.

For me, though, once I began my hospital fun and my own struggles, I learned that some of the biggest heroism lay in the smallest actions or decisions and the smallest victories:

• the decision to get out of bed and face the day. 
• the decision to do that the next day, and very day,
• All year. 
• For years. 
• Over and over. 
• To tolerate the loved one and/or the nurses washing you, attaching a bag, helping you flip, feeding you, helping you out of the chair, tying your shoes, brushing your hair, wiping your chin. 
• To move from tolerance for those acts to gratitude
• Learning flip yourself, tie your own shoes, lift your hand and wipe your chin, especially when there is no one to care, to see, or to validate
• You do the laundry for the first time, or tie your own shoes, or figure out how to pick a coin up from the floor.

I learned to see victory in the endurance of innumerable small indignities of the day... after day ... after month ... after year, and in the steady move back to personal independence, then to finding ways to contribute beyond that, without encouragement, without any notice.

Is acknowledgment of the big act what creates the hero? It is the stuff of the dramatic story, the stuff of a movie or a book, perhaps, but what of us, the people in everyday life who have endured far more than everyday illness or catastrophe? Sometimes the very movies that inspire, or the accomplishments that inspire, can interfere with our own ability to feel pride in our own journeys.

Sometimes, because that bi accomplishment is the movie and the story, too many people say "after all, so and so did this, and he had cancer, too" or "she was in a wheelchair." They say this to someone who is struggling to stay alive and to be a functioning mom or dad or sister or son--fill in whatever relationship you choose. They say it to someone who is agony but who "looks" healthy.

Why? Because all we see is "Two Years Later..." That momentary banner that denies the big hero's smaller daily acts of equal heroism, to my mind.

And perhaps you are the one who is struggling, in pain, or simply trying not to be in a wheelchair. Maybe you are not a hero in the eyes of most; but perhaps you are a hero to someone else...   and it does not make your struggle every day any less heroic. Maybe it didn't even make my own struggle less heroic, or the people who surprised me in their support any less important to my smaller victories. Still, it's harder to see this in ourselves, isn't it?

Okay, so let's see it in someone else and let another person see it in ourselves. That's fine. The point is to look; the point is to look beyond the grand accomplishment, perhaps to the giant tiny steps along the way.

Home Was Where My Heroes Were

It was after my second operation after I'd been married... two operations after the big three of earlier posts. I was again in a body cast, though only for two months rather than seven.  It had been a tough bout, but I'll leave that for another time. That last surgery had taken a terrible toll, however, and this time I was about to embark on two years of physical therapy, six times a week for the first year--while I was the primary coordinator in the death of my Dad and then of my mom.

And my marriage had not turned out to be what I'd hoped--again for another time. What is relevant is that the Mark of those pre-marriage surgeries was long gone...

I was fragile, but when I got home, Mark said, "It's about time. I really can't take all this with the kids now." I had been gone a month.

"It's not like I was on vacation, Mark. I was not having fun."

"Well, you sure as hell weren't taking care of the kids." And he went into his room. To be fair, he came out fifteen minutes later and said, "I'm sorry, honey. Maybe I could have said how much I miss you and that the kids miss you. But no, why not go for the jugular and be an asshole?"

Unfortunately, the original statement was supported by what followed.

The day after I'd gotten home, a Monday, the only ways in which anyone helped me were to do the laundry, and lower expectations for supper, although my family did sometimes get grumpy when it was sandwiches more than two days in a row. I got up before the kids went to school, made them lunches, saw them off. I picked them up at school and taxied them wherever. I checked on the "gang" of kids who were latchkey kids back then, being the one adult in three families who was home and available to keep our kids out of too much mischief. No one saw the accomplishments of the day; they cared only for how I stepped back into making their lives easier.

Or so I felt for a while.

I could not tie my shoes, so I wore ballet slippers. Mark did the laundry. I usually took forty-five minutes to dress, and I went to PT before school ended, so that I could rest for an hour when I got home. My son, Jay was the only one who even asked me what I did, just once. When I asked if he truly wanted to know, he cocked his head and said, "Maybe not."

That night, about a month after I was home, he came to me again, just before he went to bed, sat down and said, "So tell me what you do." So I told him about the cobra and other Yoga positions I had to practice, about being in traction, about all the exercises, and about how they moved my leg over and over and over again, hoping that the nerves would heal, so I would no longer drag it. I could feel it, and I could move my foot to drive, but I could not walk more than about twenty steps without a cane or crutch nearby. He asked how long I spent doing all this every day and I told him about two hours. His eyes got very big.

When I was done, all he did was throw his arms around my neck and say, "I love you, Mom--Jeannette, I mean. I'm sorry it hurts so much. But, like, please don't go away from us again. We're scared you won't come back."

"They'd have to tie me down not to come home to you and Jessie, don't you know that?" He grinned his gap-toothed smile and ran off to bed.

My little hero. That one small question, those few moments, gave me the courage to work longer each day to get better.

Two weeks later, I looked at the laundry and decided today was the day I would take that chore back again. Jessie and Jay had learned how to do the laundry, to save their dad, but I wanted to do it this time. AND I decided to make my family's favorite meal: my meat loaf, oven roasted potatoes, my glazed carrots, and one of my homemade four layer Boston cream cakes with my own mocha butter cream frosting. (Why settle for accomplishing what was reasonable?)

Jessie went into her room and saw the laundry folded on her bed, and Jay did, too. They came out and looked at me and I nodded. They high fived me and I said, "But don't think I'll do it all the time." They little twirps stuck their tongues out at me and turned on the t.v. to tune me out. I laughed and we decided to act out MTV videos together before their dad got home. (It was the 80s, remember, and MTV was pretty new.)

At dinner, the kids eyed the meatloaf, practically drooling and when the cake came out, Jessie said, "That AND the laundry? You must be tired." She looked concerned for a moment, but I smiled.

Then Mark said, "You did the laundry today? All of it?" When I nodded he shrugged. "Finally. We can have things back to normal. Real food. Laundry. Thank GOD."

When I looked hurt, he said, "You're looking for a medal for doing a little laundry and making an actual dinner?"

I simply got up and cleared the dishes, not wanting him to see the tears. Jessie came into the kitchen and said, "I THINK NOT" and took the dishes from me. "I LIVE for dishes, you know." She was tearing up, too. And when I went into the dining area, Jason was coming in from the hallway with my down pillow and put it on the recliner, pointing for me to sit.

As he passed his father Jay said, "Sometimes, Dad, you can be such a jerk." Mark stormed into our room and did not come out again until after the kids went to bed. He pretended then that nothing had happened. It was an early coffin nail for our marriage.

Jessie was my other hero yet again, that night. When I went into her room to have our normal bedtime talk, she, like her brother, just put her arms around my neck as I sat on her bed. "You make the best cakes, EVER. Aren't you really tired though?"

I admitted I was, then said, "I know. It is such an effort to spread frosting, you--"

She sat straight up, pulling away, interrupting me with "You are the strongest mother I ever saw."

All I could think to do was hold her very close and cry.

I asked Mark later that night whether he wanted to see what my therapist did with me in PT so he could understand. He turned his back to me and said, "Right. I want to watch some man who walks on water put his hands on you? No thanks, but gee, thanks for the invitation." Coffin nail again.

Sometimes we dare not speak the words resting on the tongue, the words we can never take back.

I got up and looked in at my sleeping son and then at my daughter one more time.

No Movie, but Heroes Nonetheless

I guess there was no movie there, either, but I learned something about heroes from that, too. I was their stepmother, but both of them cared about the mother part of the word that day. They made me feel strong. Me. I felt strong, this woman, lost in her body cast and her therapy and the hauntings of a thousand cuts.

The small heroes, larger than my small life, brought me home at last.

We look for the big acts, the sacrifices of life and limb. And there is nothing wrong with that, I know. But more and more, I see the people... the people like nurse Carol, who paid attention and saved my life more than once. I see my physical therapist, working with me beyond my session, finding new ways for me to challenge the damage from my spinal injuries. I see friends who showed up with food so I would not have to cook. I see my children paying attention and every so often, letting me know that they saw me... not just their transportation, tutor and cook. They saw Jeannette.

When I look around, I see adults with learning disabilities in "integrated" group homes, who are far more isolated, even, than they were in their institutions, in some ways. No one in the neighborhood wanted them there, and no one pays any attention to them. As long as the lawn is mowed and the house kept up, the house blends in, and they are invisible....

... until they go to a concert or a public pool, or a restaurant. Then they are laughed at openly, more often than we are comfortable wanting to know. The residents I know personally know they are different, they call themselves "slow," they know that people don't trust them with children around. They feel the loneliness and their invisibility to the point where they were overwhelmed because I sent some grapes and smoked cheese on toothpicks to my friend, who was giving them a cook out at her house. Overwhelmed because someone bothered to give them something special. Special? My friend keeps them posted on my health because I worked with them both thirty years ago at another agency. They remembered me very specifically, as I remembered them. Funny. Another worker at their home had no recollection of me at all and I worked with her every day for two years. But Grace and Bill are "slow?"

And when my friend is in pain and having trouble, it is Grace who tells people to help her; it is she who notices her pain. It is Bill, half blind and with a leg brace, who wants to help her unload the groceries because she is limping. They feel bad for me because I cannot always go out!

To me, in their daily decision to get up, to smile at the indignities of their daily lives, these people who try to feel lucky when they know that they will never have their own families, these residents whose lives are proscribed and pretty darned bleak--they commit small acts of heroic patience almost every day of their lives. Martha has said more than once, "The residents are the reasons I go back. Not the paycheck. And not my colleagues. They inspire me every day of my life." And, of course, Martha inspires me too.

What's In the Word?

There is no movie there, either, simply people choosing and trying to live their lives with joy, when others would find their lives bleak beyond endurance.

Why all this? Oh, maybe it has to do with dreams. I will never be in one of those movies. Neither will my son. Neither will the residents I've written of--or Carol or Martha or my beloved Dr. D. Those residents still have big dreams from time to time, and Martha does not discourage that. And I will never stop having my big dreams and smiling all the while I go after them. But I recognize the roles of others in the fact that I DO dream, that I am once again working out at least six hours a week, often more, that I return to my writing and my singing and my painting, no matter what.

We throw the word "hero" around, and acts of heroism. I suppose on the one hand, the word should be used only for those big things, but I will never feel that way myself. I think that even those bigger than life people are probably challenged the most in their daily small acts, the ones that do not make it to the screen. Indignities and tying their shoes may have been, to them, acts that required more will power than the big race or becoming a senator or, perhaps, even saving the world.  My guess is that every movie hero who overcame some unbelievable catastrophe would name half a dozen heroes or more, who helped him or her along the way... and I bet they all think of those people as heroic, as do I.

Because you are. Every one of you who bothers to ask how someone who is hurting is and listens to the answer. Every one of you who takes the time to see the individuals beyond their pain and lets them know that.  Every one of you who bothers to tell the person with the cane how beautiful his eyes are or his painting is or her poem is; who recognizes that the buckling of a shoe may be that person's Mt. Everest, and the successful writing of a name on paper is that person's great American novel. Know that you are the hero of that person that day.

And I give thanks again to everyone who bothered to see just Jetty, the girl and the woman beyond the ravages of time and the ravages of a challenging life.