Hurricanes

In group.  Denise, a teacher, looks haggard.

“This always happens at Christmas.  My classes go out of control.  The kids get excited and antsy and rude and it’s impossible to get them to focus. I can’t settle them down, hard as I try.  And I feel helpless and angry and like the worst teacher in the world.  Today a kid gave me attitude and I wanted to slap him.”  She wipes her eyes.  “It scared me.”

“Same here,” says Edie, an alcoholism counselor at a busy outpatient agency.  “My clients start relapsing all over the place.  The ones who haven’t picked up are scared that they will.  They come in begging me to save them from themselves.  Suddenly I feel like I’m carrying the whole bunch on my shoulders.  It’s too much.  I can’t save them all, and I know it.  I start to hate them, and I feel guilty.  Then I can’t sleep for worrying about it, which makes everything worse.”

I look at them.  The phrase orphans of the storm comes into my mind.

“Question for both of you,” I say.  “Imagine a hurricane is headed your way.  Big hurricane, the kind that blows away houses.  What do you do?”

They look at me blankly.

“Do you go out and stand on your lawn and yell at the hurricane to go away?  Try to push the winds in another direction?”

They frown and shake their heads.

“Of course not.  You go inside, hunker down and ride it out.  You don’t pretend you have superpowers.  You don’t try to control something so much bigger than you.  You protect yourself as best you can, and you wait for the storm to pass.

“That’s what you need to do now.  It’s all you can do.  This is not a test of your professional competence or your worth as a person.  It’s just hurricane season.  People go Christmas-crazy.  You can’t stop it, control it or escape it.

“So you lower your expectations.  Do the best job you can do — teach the ones you can teach, help the ones you can help — and wait for the crazy to pass.”

Denise and Edie look relieved.

“By the way, this is what lots of us have to do around now,” I add.   “Especially those of us with dysfunctional families.  We get this idea that this year will be different, that we can arrange things so everyone gets along and is happy.  It’s a fantasy, and we have to let go of it or make ourselves sick.  You can’t control Christmas crazy.  Sometimes all you can do is hunker down and wait for crazy to pass.”