22 Jun Helpers Want to Help
Emma celebrated her birthday at a water park with several of her friends from school. My job was to be the Holder of All Things. I sat in a chair, my lap filled with water bottles and goggles and hats and sunscreen. I loved watching Emma run around happily with her friends, enjoying her special day.
My overflowing chair was next to the park’s lazy river. I watched as people floated by on bright yellow rafts. A boy who looked to be about three years old stood by the edge. His grandmother, floating by in a yellow tube, greeted him with a wave.
“Grandma, come out,” he called to her in a sweet little voice. She smiled and pulled the tube over her head, holding on to the side of the wall to steady herself in the flowing water. “Now get out so we can get ice cream,” the little boy directed.
The grandmother began trying to climb out from the spot where she had stopped to talk to her grandson. She first tried to push herself up on the wall using her forearms. Then she turned around and put her back to the wall and tried again. I watched her struggling.
It was then that I knew what she needed: me.
I pushed the towels and goggles and water bottles and hats off my lap. I looked at my arm muscles, silently thinking this was the moment my almost-daily 10-minute arm workouts had been preparing me for.
“I will help you,” I said with authority as I walked over to her. She looked slightly taken aback. (But don’t all people about to be rescued by a superhero have this same wide-eyed “are you sure about this” look?) I bent over from my waist, reached under her armpits and pulled with all of my might. The grandmother emerged from the water and her bottom landed with a gentle thud on the deck.
I felt my back pop. I tried to stand up straight, but I couldn’t. The light arm workouts had not prepared me for appropriate lifting techniques, and I had thrown out my back. So there was the grandmother, sitting somewhat dazed after I yanked her out from the 3-foot deep lazy river. And there was me, hunched over, trying hard not to show her I was injured, lest she think I was being dramatic or, worse, insulting. I waited until she walked toward the ice cream stand with her grandson, acting like I was very interested in the people moving through the lazy river until she was out of sight.
From my bent-over position, I happened to notice that less than 4 feet away from the place of my epic rescue were some steps and smooth silver bars – the designated exit for people wanting to get out of the lazy river.
Four feet.
As I lie here with a heating pad under my back, I wonder how the grandmother is feeling. My face reddens as I imagine her saying at dinner, “…and then this strange lady came running over and stuck her hands under my armpits and yanked me out, when I could have just walked a few feet and used the steps that were right there…”
I pull a pillow over my head in embarrassment as I remind myself that sometimes the help we offer – stemming from our beliefs that people won’t be successful without our intervening – is not so helpful to others or to ourselves.