Sunda's Snapshots: What is strength?

There are so many times where I feel like I’m just barely hanging on. The demands are so intense, the needs are so many, and I’m just hanging there, hoping I have the strength to outlast the weight of it all.

“You do so many fun things,” a friend tells me, and I’m stopped short. We do? We sometimes do.

Mostly our lives are spent at home because the world is so expensive, and crowded, and loud. We do the weekly free craft from the library when we’re lucky enough to get them. We go to local, kid-friendly events as often as we’re able. We take advantage of what our county has to offer that’s free or relatively inexpensive: gatherings at the parks, 4H, movies at The Rex, swim lessons, dance lessons, karate lessons.

This last holiday weekend, we spent Thursday chasing the county’s parades and events from Heron to Plains. Friday, we were home but riding bikes to the river to run the dogs, kayaking on our pond, completing a “rock garden” project, and working through one of those old-fashioned readers (Think "The dog. The dog ran.”). Saturday, we chased car shows from Kalispell to Eureka, then hiked the Kootenai Falls on the way home. Sunday, we cleaned house and then ran to Missoula for Cirque Ma’Ceo (think horses meet acrobats).

It was while watching the acrobats seemingly “hang” from things, saddles and silks, watching them appear effortless as their muscles bulged and their stage smiles appeared, that I realized how much strength it takes to hang.

So often in this life we serve up platitudes, I do it, too: “You’ve got this!” “Hang in there!” and the one that grates the most, “We’re never given more than we can carry!” This idea that we must be grateful for our strength, for the world’s restraint, for the idea that it could always be worse, but it will never be too much. It makes me want to scream.

People are given too much all the time, much of it in the form of taking away. We lose children before their time, spouses before ours. We are expected to carry the weight of everything with aplomb, to continue to smile when people ask us how we’re doing, to say “Good.” I am terrible at this.

When people ask how I’m doing, my instinct is to tell the truth, I stop myself and attempt to measure if they really want to know or if they’re just doing their small-talk duty. They seem taken aback if I answer with anything other than “Good,” and I have taken to rote repetition of “I’m doing well; how are you?”

After the circus we stopped in Evaro at a new restaurant in an old location.The food was phenomenal, but I was most impressed with the staff. Our waitress was clearly busy with several tables and yet spent loads of time at ours asking if there was anything we needed, answering questions about the new restaurant, discussing the raising of boys. Her outward persona implied ease and we even joked that waiting tables was almost a vacation compared to raising three children under three years old; a joke that precisely glosses over the circus act of raising three babies while working, that exactly requires she not honestly say how she’s doing but hang there “effortlessly” with a smile.

Back in grade school, one of the tasks we had to complete each year as part of our physical fitness exam was a timed hang. I couldn’t do a pullup, but I could hang until the person timing ceased being amazed and became bored. I learned to hang just long enough to cause wonder, but not so long as to lose it. I also learned it takes more strength, more bravery, to be honest with people, than it does to deliver a platitude and move on.

I’m working on being better at this. I’m working on answering honestly without info-dumping. I’m learning to recognize who really wants to know and who’s just following protocol. Beyond this, I’m working on answering “Great!” and having it be true, while also looking people in the eye when they answer me, gauging the truth of their response, sometimes asking a second time, “How are you, really?”

I’m working on being the kind of strong that gracefully accepts and welcomes the weakness in others, not trying to get them to rally, change, or fake it for my benefit. I’m working on doing all these things for myself as well and teaching it to my kids. Sometimes we do fun things, sometimes we over-do things, and sometimes we need a break from all the things. Sometimes we don’t need to hang in there to be strong but let go and help ourselves to be stronger by allowing ourselves to be weak.

Sunday Dutro is an internationally published writer living in Thompson Falls with her beautiful

family. Reach her at [email protected]