Programming note → after a crazy week last week (read below) the first book club post for Gold Diggers will appear next week. The Weekly Update should still come out this Friday. Although, after last week, who knows?

Last week did not go as planned.

This time a week ago I expected to be heading to Maryland to spend some time with Matthew. Instead, life happened. In a big way.

Last weekend, Elizabeth wasn’t feeling well. She had a fever and just felt generally yucky. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, Barb took her to urgent care. She was diagnosed with a UTI and given some antibiotics. We started the meds and expected her to feel better on Monday. 

Only, she didn't. In fact, she felt worse. 

So much worse in fact, we called the pediatrician on Monday and they recommended we take her to the emergency room. So on Monday afternoon, Barb and Lizzie headed out again. After a very long wait (emergency departments are still overwhelmed, y'all), Liz got a CT scan that revealed the reason for the UTI (and the reason antibiotics were ineffective) - she had a kidney stone. A large one, apparently.

So she was then prepped for emergency surgery to have a stent placed that will hold the stone back and allow her bladder to empty normally. Then the UTI can be treated. Once it clears she will go back in for another surgery to break up and remove the stone, and then remove the stent.

She ended up spending the next couple of days in the hospital. She is feeling much better. She is such a badass, in fact, that she went to school on Friday. 

You know who didn't go to school Friday? Justin. You know what else? He didn't go to school all week long.

See, while Barb was doing all this with Elizabeth, I was dealing with Justin. He went to school on Monday, but only made it about an hour before I got a call from the nurse saying he had a fever and didn't feel well. So I went and got him and brought him home. By the end of Tuesday I was worried that he didn't seem to be getting better. So I took him to the doctor on Wednesday. That was a full Justin experience.

When the doctor came in and said hello to Justin the first thing he said was "there are lots of kinds of viruses and we have to find out which one is making me sick." He then proceeded to name all the viruses he knows. It was a long list and the doctor's jaw got wider and wider. She looked at me. "Yeah, he does this," I said.

When he was done, she started with the exam and he proceeded to lecture her about viruses, space, and what might happen to different viruses in space. He also asked to listen to his heart through the stethoscope and then asked to listen to hers too. 

She told me his ears were clear and so was his throat. His lungs were clear and his breathing was good. She said that his illness probably was a virus, but she would run some tests to be sure. As she was leaving the room she said that she looked forward to seeing Justin the next time he came. "Maybe," she said, "we can have another talk about viruses."

"No thanks," Justin said, "you don't know enough about viruses to talk to."

Like I said, it was a full Justin experience.

And it turns out, it wasn't a virus. It was strep, with an atypical presentation. So Justin ended up on antibiotics like his sister, and missed a full week of school. 

And like an onion, this shitty week had layers. And one of the layers was that I was supposed to be spending this week in Maryland, with Matthew. Only I had to cancel at the last minute to make sure that I was here and available to help take care of the patients. 

It is simple enough to reschedule the trip (I will be going in April for the Final Four hopefully), but Matthew is sensitive - with good reason - to the fact that he often has his stuff pushed aside because of the needs of others. And it was upsetting to have to cancel on him.

And an even deeper layer - one that I haven't even started to take the time to unravel - is that we are a year out from when Barb and I began the process of physically separating and all of the struggle and drama that went along with it. There are some unpleasant anniversaries the next couple of weeks. And no one likes being reminded of one of the worst times of their life. Especially when there are so many things happening in their present.

See? Onion. Lots and lots of layers.

Only, here's the thing. As onion-y has the last couple of weeks have been for me, I recognize that most (if not ALL) of the people reading this could tell their own tale of struggle and woe. Because life is hard. And everyone's life is complicated.

Everybody's got layers. When we see people as two dimensional, or we see their situations as simple, then we are not seeing the fullness of their humanity. People aren't caricatures. Life isn't a soap opera. Everything and everyone is more complicated than they appear. Because human beings are complex, and the human experience is not simple. And we do ourselves a disservice when we fail to see how complex people - including ourselves - are.

Sometimes all we see of ourselves is the story we tell about our own experiences. We focus on one part of our story - that weight we need to lose, our anxiety, our trauma, our struggle - and we make that the whole story. We lose sight of all the good things that we are. We lose sight of all the different things that have happened and are happening. 

The opposite happens, too. We get so caught up in the good things - money, success, adoration, attention - that we start to think that our circumstances define who we are. We start to think that money or a good job or a way with words means that we are inherently good people. We lose sight of our flaws. We become victim to hubris. We conflate the things we have with who we are. 

To be human is to wrestle with all of these layers. To try and reconcile all our contradictions. We are all capable of love, generosity, and caring. And we are capable of doing much darker things. And that's not a judgment. It just is.

To be human is to be perfectly imperfect.

I am not particularly interested in what people say they are. In my experience, most of the time someone tells you what they are then they are most assuredly worried because they aren't that thing. When someone has to repeatedly tell me, for instance, that they don't care what people think, I know that they are acutely aware of what people think all the time and are scared of losing approval. People who really don't care what you think don't bother explaining it. They actually don't care.

I am also not particularly interested in what people say they are. All of us believe a lot of things about ourselves that aren't true. I know gorgeous people who think they're ugly and folks who think they're brave who don't really understand what that means. Just because we have an opinion of ourselves doesn't make it a fact. For most of my life I thought I was unlovable and irredeemable. I was wrong.

What interests me is what people DO. I am interested in people as they are. If you want to know who someone is, watch what they do. On balance, if someone is kind, they will do kind things. If they are generous, they will be generous. If they are funny, they will be funny. It may not be all the time. And sometimes you may have to squint to see more clearly. Some people recognize the worth of their gifts, and don't just share it with everyone.

We're all onions. We all have layers. 

We have mistakes and imperfections and beauties and glories. And sometimes those are all the same thing. What we do matters. Who we are matters because WE matter. We matter to us. We matter to each other.

May it ever be so.