{"id":1789,"date":"2013-01-31T11:47:34","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T16:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=1789"},"modified":"2013-01-31T11:47:34","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T16:47:34","slug":"learning-how-to-sit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2013\/01\/31\/learning-how-to-sit\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning How to Sit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Charles<\/em>\u2014Yesterday I did one of the wisest things I\u2019ve done in a long time.<\/p>\n

Nothing.<\/p>\n

I missed the chance to actually be a day early on deadline on Wabash Magazine<\/em> for the first time in 17 years. I came to work in the morning, finished an interview with Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts Director Charlie Blaich, then drove to Indianapolis and learned how to sit. Something my dog Jules mastered long ago.<\/p>\n

My wife and I sat with my best friend and his family while his wife had surgery for breast cancer at St. Francis Hospital. Two skilled surgeons and their teams operated for more than four hours, and we just sat there. Huddled with our comfortable chairs arranged in a square, talking about trips we\u2019d taken, laughing at the various challenges we\u2019ve each been facing as we get older (You know you\u2019ve become a senior citizen when your conversations begin with how often you get up in the night to pee), catching up about our kids, anything else that came up.<\/p>\n

Nothing, really.<\/p>\n

I remember observing such moments as a kid when I accompanied my parents or grandparents to the hospital, or to gatherings after funerals, to sit with their friends. How could they stand to sit for so long?<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t they have anything better to do.<\/p>\n

Now I understand that they didn\u2019t; they were already doing the most important thing they could do\u2014sitting.<\/p>\n

There’s this scene in the film Lars and the Real Girl<\/em>, where a painfully shy young man whose mother died giving birth to him has turned away from all relationships and orders an inflatable doll online to be his life partner (I know, I know\u2014but watch this movie some time to see a writer and a director turn something potentially perverse and maudlin into just the opposite).<\/em>\u00a0At the end of the movie when the doll is \u2018dying\u2019, a group of older women from Lars\u2019 church brings food and stays with him as he takes a break from being at his vinyl beloveds bedside. He sits on the couch in his living room as one of the women knits, another embroiders, another looks up every now and then and smiles. Lars finally asks, \u201cIs there something I should be doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo dear,\u201d one of the women says. \u201cJust eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came over here to sit,\u201d another says.<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s what people do when tragedy strikes,\u201d another says. \u201cThey come over and sit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you feel a little better?\u201d the first woman asks.<\/p>\n

Lars looks down at his food, at the small gathering of knitting and embroidering women, considers this, and nods.<\/p>\n

Lars has to learn this from women, as I did from my wife. When we first heard about the surgery, CJ said, \u201cI\u2019m going to be there.\u201d I felt the same instinct. But when the day finally arrived, one obstacle after another threw itself at my plans.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts Director Charlie Blaich
photo by Kim Johnson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What finally convinced me to go was something Charlie Blaich said when we were talking about the deeper purpose of a liberal arts education, how \u201cWabash will be doing great work if it can play a role in this process of helping you become a good man, and help you with habits and things to think about that will keep you reflecting upon that process the rest of your life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re always becoming men\u2014it\u2019s not like you get the stamp of manhood when you graduate.<\/p>\n

\u201cA good man tries to do good by the world, to serve others,\u201d Charlie added [excerpts from the interview will be featured in the Spring 2013 issue of Wabash Magazine]<\/em>. \u201cThey are loving. They stand humble before the world and hope to have a positive influence, but don\u2019t claim things too overtly for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I transcribed Charlie\u2019s words, I knew that on this particular day, being a good man for me meant setting aside my anxiety about online magazine and blog deadlines and concerns about my viability as an employee here, driving to Indy, and doing nothing.<\/p>\n

Even when I had no power to change the outcome of the surgery and or help in any material way.<\/p>\n

Any doubts I had about this truth were put to rest soon after we\u2019d arrived, when my friend thanked me for showing up.\u00a0I dismissed it matter of factly: \u201cWhere else would we be?\u201d Even as I remembered how close I\u2019d been to not coming at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cStill,\u201d he said, \u201cI really appreciate it. The little community and all, just sitting. People used to do this all the time for each other. Not so much anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet in the waiting room there were several huddles like ours: People sitting\u2014some talking, some silent, all these prayers in the flesh for someone in an operating room just down the hall.<\/p>\n

After the surgery and the doctor’s report CJ and I were trudging up to my friend\u2019s wife\u2019s room with her sister, Lisa, when a volunteer said, \u2018You\u2019re all immediate family of the patient, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I answered without thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a new policy, you know. Immediate family only,\u201d she insisted, looking quizzically at me, then Lisa, who nodded. When we got on the elevator Lisa said, \u201cWell, you\u2019ve been part of our lives long enough\u2014you might as well be family.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most tangible reward of sitting is getting to see the person you\u2019ve been thinking about all that time after the operation\u2014she\u2019s alive, awake, safe. At least one part of her ordeal is ended. We walked in with about 12 others into the room, each of us wearing our pink visitor sticker (So much for another rule: \u201cOnly two allowed in the room at a time”) She smiled for a second when her youngest son Luke told her that he had done the laundry for her that day. I looked around the room at this family doing the most mundane thing families do at such times and to be in the middle of it all felt miraculous.<\/p>\n

I was remembering that scene this morning when I realized that CJ and I really had been the only \u201cnon-immediate family\u201d there that moment. The family could easily have asked us to wait outside and we’d have understood; we had no \u2018right\u2019 to be there. But gathered up in this moment of grace, trust, and gratitude, there we were. And it finally made sense\u2014Where else could I be?<\/p>\n

This morning it\u2019s time to get back to work, and later today or tomorrow (depending on when the print copies arrive) I\u2019ll be posting the Winter 2013 issue of Wabash Magazine.<\/em> I\u2019m proud of the writing and thought that seniors Ian Grant and Riley Floyd put into this; the work that Tim Sipe \u201978, Karen Handley, Howard Hewitt, Pat White, Ethan Hollander, Christie Byun, Pete Prengaman \u201998, Tom Runge, Greg Castanias, Beth Swift, and David Phillips contributed; the photography of Kim Johnson, Quentin Dodd \u201994, Jim Amidon \u201987 and others that so enhances this issue. I\u2019m lucky to have had such creative, talented, dedicated collaborators on this project. I\u2019m looking forward to telling you about that work. In some way, it\u2019s about unexpected connections we have to each other, present and past, and it\u2019s a little risky in its own way. Not too far off from yesterday\u2019s lesson.<\/p>\n

We mean more to each other than we ever dare say. But if getting older brings any wisdom, it\u2019s that we\u2019d best find a way to say it once in a while. If not in words, then by doing nothing, with those we care most about.\u00a0Maybe we should add to the Wabash curriculum an essential lesson for a liberally educated person of any age: learning how to sit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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