Feeling Small

“Before my addiction, I used to love rock climbing,” so says, James Browning, one of the tough Appalachian guys Arlie Russell Hochschild interviews in Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and Rise of the Right. Hochschild’s concern is an ill-fated march by neo-Nazis, a prelude to the 2020 “Unite the Right” Charlottesville protest. What Hochschild wants to explain is the profound drift toward far-right politics the region has taken in the last few decades.

But this man Browning finds his way through the tribulation of joblessness and a besotted drug culture to moral redemption elsewhere. A rock-climber before his own addictions, he regains some balance high above the Appalachian Mountains. “Look out at these mountains on one of my first post recovery climbs, I felt part of life, “ or so says Mr. Browning. “I felt big. And I felt good.”

For four weeks now I’ve been institutionalized, a citizen of a land and a people unknown to me before. I’m in a nursing home, my third, because I’m crippled. I hope not to be thusly maimed in some distant future, but for right now I’ll say it again: I’m crippled. For some unknown reason, my legs don’t work. My quads, as the PT likes to say, have simply checked out, which means I’m largely subject to the loving hands of what seems a hundred nurses and CNAs, most all of which, let me say, I’ve discovered to be delightful. They dress me, take me to the bathroom, bathe me, pull up my drawers, and put me to bed.

They’re here, as am I, but they leave, end of shift. I don’t.

It would be vainglorious, in an odd sort of way, to think of myself as incarcerated, but I can’t help feeling that way some times, given the fact that in an earlier institution if I even stepped out of bed, alarms would shriek and the room would soon be thick with CNAs, most of them equally flustered and fascinated as the boss takes hold of my helplessness and returns all that doesn’t work on its own to the sheets.

If you’re asking yourself right now if it’s easy to get down about things, the answer is yes, of course. What I know about depression is camped far, far way at this point, but it’s not particularly difficult to feel the darkness. My wife is here daily; she leaves in early evening, so that the absolute worst part of my day is her going home. On the other hand, it’s a joy to send her off, knowing she’s going to the place I’d love being.

She called me last week, late morning, because she had news, “Big news,” she said, proudly, confidently. Honestly, I didn’t know how to react since she’s not one to overuse superlatives.

She couldn’t tell me about some miraculous healing—how could she know? I had no clue. “I give up,” I told her. “What is it?”

“You’re a great-Grandpa,” or so said a brand new great-Grandma.

I was alone, of course, in my cubicle. No one to grab. No one to hold. Maybe that was why—I don’t know, maybe that’s what explains the tears coming up like minor flooding. I found myself helpless to stop, even though, believe me, I tried. They just came. I didn’t ask--in fact I don’t know that before in my 76 years I’ve ever, ever bawled my eyes out for sheer joy.

I put the phone down and cried some more.

Neaveh Kay, eight darling pounds. Mom, Dad, and baby all well.

There wasn’t much to say. Maybe that’s why the tears.

So one of those CNAs dropped by just then and found me slobbering, still wiping my eyes. I told her the news without sparing superlatives and tried to apologize for the water works.. She told me not to be stupid. I had her crying too.

It’s probably idiotic for me to wonder why the waterfall? What was it in me that prompted emotion unlike any I’d ever felt before; but right there in the institution I kept seeing a lovely picture of fresh snow on a broad field. That fresh snow held footprints—my Mom and Dad’s out front, then mine and Barb’s, then, slightly smaller but no less distinct, Andrea’s and Piet’s—the brand new grandparents.

Finally, came two more, Joce and Lucas, the new mom and dad,

Then way at the end, two tiny little footprints. Right there in the snow lay five stories, that new one pinched and pigeon-toed, tagging along and holding its own.

Somewhere in Appalachia, I can’t help but hope that this James Browning, who beat the rap to which so many of his peers fell, is staying up there on the top of the Appalachian Mountains. “As time went on,” he remembers, “ and I felt more reattached to the world, when I reached the top, I felt something different. . I felt small,” he says, “and I felt good.”

That too, I can’t help but think—that too made me cry.