From where I’m sitting on the toilet, if I turn my head right, I see the floor of my shower. There’s a spider. Hanging out on the floor of the shower.

Hey, it’s a pandemic. My mind most likely noticed him for a nanosecond. Then the “How am I saving my own ass? Or my family’s? Or my really good friends?, took precedence over all else. Clearly, a spider was not on that list.

I’m usually on it, escorting small insects to a more harmonious landscape outside, rescuing them from the inhospitable molded plastic of the shower kit.

Day 2. Head turned right, he’s still there. Did I think he was gonna walk himself out and open the back door? Or slither down the shower drain to some sophisticated spider emergency shelter where he would be welcomed by his friends?

“Dude, where you been?”

Or from his aging mother. “I was worried sick about you! And your 1500 brothers and sisters were, too!”

Day 3. Yes, I sit on the toilet regularly. Maybe I should ask my housemate to take him outside?

Side note: my housemate is cis-male, Has the pandemic slammed me back into some weird ass gender roles? “Oh, please. Please take care of the scary spider?!”

I still do nothing.

Here’s the deal. I’m a bath person. Showering once or twice a week to wash my hair is about all I can muster when I consider warm water on my body. So yeah, there didn’t seem to be an imperative to act on this spider.

The point of this story. I wanted to wash my hair today and some time after my first lather I glanced down past my left shoulder, and there he was. Crumpled. Did I even turn off the water and confirm that he was a goner? Nope, finished washing my hair, wrapped myself in a towel and..

OOMPH

What else am I avoiding in this time? What am I attending to that is so important that I can’t make that call, complete that donation, check in on a neighbor, open my heart into possibly difficult conversations?

I ignored a tiny life form. It would have been so easy to save that one life.

What about you?

Am I? Are you? Really? I’ve been guilty of speed reading recipes. Something goes in the oven and I realize I’ve skimmed over some essential ingredient. Or reading an email from a lover and missing the whole context of the note until I reread, after spending countless hours on some fixated emotional firestorm that ate up all the space in my body. Reminded again this morning after reading a piece from this too prolific blog poster (can you tell I’m envious, even jealous), Jen Pastiloff. In the past week she reposted a devastatingly intense piece from a woman who struggles with an addiction to Kloponin, which moved her to repost an earlier piece detailing  Jen’s work with clients at a rehab facility and an ectopic pregnancy that she went through. In short order she received responses with grave concern about HER addiction, that SHE was a client in rehab and congratulations on her pregnancy without looking up that an ectopic pregnancy is never viable or even what that is.

[Read more…]