I know there will certainly be days to come when I will wish that my bad day was the kind of a bad day like this one was.
That said.
We were about to leave for church when, walking down the hall, I caught a glimpse of shiny–wait, what? Turned and looked and it was sunshine from the skylight bouncing off the water on the floor. Water?!
The toilet was Niagara-ing impressively.
I waded in and turned the water off to it, we put a whole lot of towels on it and down the hallway, threw a bunch in the washing machine, managed not to soak our Sunday best in the process, washed our hands and headed out.
Or were going to–but someone had parked across our driveway, you know, one of those I’m just running over there for a few minutes things, and he was soon out of the way–after sitting in his truck and being on his phone awhile first.
Got to church, sat down–and the woman behind me started coughing. A lot. Right into the back of my neck. She was not wearing a mask but I had just stocked my purse with a bag of new ones so no problem, and offered her one to match mine.
This is someone I’ve known for 36 years and I did not expect the reaction: she stood up in the middle of the meeting livid, stared me down angrily, and walked out.
I was like, what just happened here?!
I’d had no idea she was a MAGA. I was trying to help her out (and everybody around her) with what she’d clearly forgotten rather than embarrassing her by moving away from her myself, which would only help myself.
I apologized to her husband after the meeting for upsetting her.
We got home from church, started in on the towel laundering, and the dryer was only halfway working. It would do it, but it took two and three rounds through and in fact the last load of towels is still running at 8:00 pm as I type even though I did what I could to make sure the vent was clear. (Ed. to add, third round didn’t do it. I gave up and hung them to dry the rest of the way.)
The grandkids FaceTimed and that helped save the day.
But I knew I had to say something to that woman or this would come between us forever and life’s way too short for that.
I apologized in an email. I had given offense and I’d had no intention, but I had and I was sorry.
(Type, edit, pray for her, edit, go away for a few minutes to look at it with fresh eyes, repeat, pray so I’d say it right. Edit some more.)
But it felt important to keep at least some medical context so I said, my autoimmunity has been mildly flaring and it took me straight back to 14 years ago when I’d been starting to flare and someone had sat down behind me in church with “just a cold” that turned out to be bronchitis. My lupus and Crohn’s went nuts and I lost my colon and six months later after I still didn’t stop bleeding they did major surgery again.
I touched briefly on the lung damage and cardiac inflammation. I just can’t do germs with a system that thinks I am one. And so I watch my exposure carefully, I said. I just wanted to explain–but I gave offense and in no way meant to and I apologize.
Prayed again and sent it off.
Sometimes you just have to tell someone how it is. Especially when you don’t want to be a was.
And to establish boundaries.