In last week’s piece, I told you to expect a piece weaving together New York, New Yorkers, and cows. Don’t think it can be done? Watch me. But wait until next week. It’s already written, but after the tragedies of last week, I wanted to share this recollection of a moment of kindness to our family. It turns out there are benefits to being your own…everything…in the writing world. Strategist, editor, publicist, editorial board? Yes, all me. And this was what we all wanted me to write for you today. So I did.
On a fateful day in October last year, my mom fell and broke her hip. For many reasons, her situation was tricky. She was appreciative of most of the doctors and medical staff. Operative word: most.
Caption: The million dollar view from Room 208. I’ve hike both the tallest peaks you can see, but don’t remind my sister. I am the reason she didn’t make it to the second one (story for another day) and it’s rather a sore subject.
Everyone knows that the medical people want patients out of bed and moving as soon as possible after surgeries. For several days, Mom hadn’t done more than stand at the side of her bed and the movement piece was becoming, shall we say, not optional. Bent on getting Mom to make literal steps forward, the rehab team approached the session with almost a “spare the rod, spoil the child” mentality. There was no rod except for the one newly installed in Mom’s hip, and there was no child, but you’ll understand I’m talking about them taking a tough-love approach.
This worked not at all and only caused Mom to dig her heels in. Literally. She wasn’t going anywhere, didn’t go anywhere, and, after the team left, she was adamant: “I don’t want THAT MAN in my room again.” My mother is 12.5% Swedish and can be 100% stubborn in her own sweet way.
“That man” referred to the man-bunned physical therapist in the red scrubs. Let’s call him Jace. As the medical professional highly motivated to get her moving, Jace apparently pushed her too hard in her pained state and dismissed her requests to go slow. “Unwilling” was not her starting state; it became her state, though, when she felt rushed and unheard.
Guess who was assigned as her physical therapist the next day? Jace. In what may have been an act of strategic evasion, I left the hospital prior to her therapy session. She had superior moral support in the form of my cheerleading aunt and grandmother anyway. When I bravely returned later that day, I braced myself for the report. The first shock was learning that the session had gone swimmingly. The second shock was even more of a surprise: Mom practically sang her praises of Jace. “Oh, he’s just wonderful,” she gushed. And proceeded to tell me about him and their conversation and his hobbies and his background.
Given the prior day’s events and my mom’s unique situation overall, this report felt like the Eighth Wonder of the World. Or, if we are already up to Eight Wonders, this was the Ninth. (Yes, I could Google this point of information, but I’m practicing for the unlikely event where we need to get by without Google or ChatGPT.) Basically, this miraculous turn of events was BIG NEWS.
When Jace arrived, Mom was understandably and demonstrably unhappy. Everyone knew that their first date had not gone well. Apparently, without profuse apology but with genuine goodwill and admirable humility, Jace said something like, “I know we got off on the wrong foot yesterday, and it sounds like we need to take it a little slower today. Does that sound okay to you?” About this, my former coworker Lynda would say, “What a guy!” I would echo that and add, “What a study in relationship repair!”
He acknowledged the elephant in the (hospital) room.
He expressed willingness to honor Mom’s request to go slower.
And he gave her an easy way to let bygones be bygones and start fresh.
And start fresh they did indeed. By the time Mom left the hospital another several days later, she had worked with Jace another handful of times and had come to just love him.
Now, I don’t know if physical therapist training includes courses on critical conversations and making apologies. Even if they do, though, they can’t teach someone how to have a good heart. They can teach people to say the right words, but they can’t make their students be humble enough to pull off a “miracle moment” like Jace did for Mom, or to care about people not like them and with whom they’d already had a tiff. We will, I bet, never know how Jace became Jace, but I’m sure grateful he did, and for people like him. Aren’t you?
If you would like to see more of this sort of piece—a series perhaps called “The Nicest Thing”—mixed in, let me know and I’ll take it up with the More to Your Life Editorial Board. Which is, as it happens, still me.
Isn’t life cool and aren’t people interesting, and kind?
