Mutual Dependence Bingo, Week 3

Knock on a neighbor's door, training for calamity

We’re three weeks into the Mutual Dependence Bingo Challenge! Remember, you can generate your own bingo board here to play along. At the end of the month, everyone who scored a bingo will get a secret pdf of the first chapter of The Dignity of Dependence. And I’ll do a drawing to send two of you an early copy of the whole book. (Full rules/announcement here).

Here’s my current board:

This week I knocked out two customized boxes I overlayed on the grid. I Borrowed Clothes when it wasn’t clear if my kids’ school uniforms would arrive in time for the first day of school. And I particularly enjoyed adding Knock on a Neighbor’s Door. (We were out scooting to a welcome to school event, and detoured to ask another family to come with us).

I overlaid them one square that I (a non-driver) was particularly unlikely to hit (Pick Up a Prescription for Someone) and one square I hit kind of trivially (Spend Time with Someone Much Younger).

I did not expect to hit Talk to Someone About End of Life Plans, but landed on it unexpectedly when chatting with mom friends, and we all started talking about our parents and what the next decade or two would hold.

I got a great suggestion for a “should have been on the board” from a good friend.

“Ask for help and get a no.”

It’s hard to know if you’re taking some risks unless you sometimes hear a no when you ask.

---

Kate summarized the shifting stances she took:

Sometimes giving or accepting one kind of help means putting down another. I babysat between one and three children every day this week and so I missed my weekly phone call with a friend because my hands were too full. Another friend told me some intense prayer requests this week and I wanted to immediately make a meal for his family, but with babysitting and having two two-year-olds in my house I couldn't pull off making an extra meal this week.

Hannah had a need-help cascade:

I think you’ll appreciate an experience I had today. I was signed up to bring a meal to an acquaintance who recently had a baby. But today, I ended up in the ER for some concerning symptoms (everything is fine!) and I accepted a friend’s offer for help by asking her to bring a meal to this acquaintance in my place. She graciously agreed even though she had never met this woman! A bit of a circle of dependence here!

When Em invited over a woman from church (to her messy home) it made her realize a new goal:

I realized lately that when I was a kid, I could ask my mom why a particular family wasn't at church on a given Sunday, and she would nearly always know. If we're away or sick, the chance that anyone at my church knows why my family isn't there is low. Trying to raise the chances of both knowing and being known about.

Even before I was Catholic, I appreciated the way my college boyfriend’s church did spontaneous prayers of the people during Mass. There are drawbacks to this approach, but it did create an immediate census of need every Sunday.

Elizabeth had a bring someone food that was almost a fail at something:

Our neighbors were traveling and asked us to watch over their garden, and take whatever veggies we would use. The day they got back, I was using their cucumbers and tomatoes in our dinner, and they got back mid-afternoon. It occurred to me to offer to bring them some food as they unpacked, then as I actually made the offer, it morphed into “Why don’t you just come over to eat?” Yes we almost ran out of food because I didn’t plan very well…but it was fun and impromptu!

It is nice to think about what options you have to stretch food so that you can have unplanned guests. I keep portioned cookie dough in my freezer so I can break out homemade cookies for unexpected guests.

---

Good friend of the blog Mary Ellen received a cancer diagnosis recently, and included a number of kinds of help she accepted/solicited:

• sent my 9 year old for a week to a different sister in law, after it all got to be too much

• asked a friend to come stay for 2 weeks because we dont have enough help at the Catholic worker i direct and i need help getting my kids back to school

• asked my inlaws to go school supplies and uniforms shopping

• accepted a number of dinner invites and was treated to meals from well wishers

Most of all, she said:

I’ve decided to be very public with my diagnosis as I think thats the only way to be honest about my limitations and also open to receiving things I might need but don't even know to ask for, and things I explicitly do need to ask for. I’m also trying to stay in the mix of reciprocity as much as possible, knowing that I’ll be facing a surgery and radiation later this year, and I hold a lot, so I’ll need a lot. I will say, "I’m not worried at all these needs will be met. The Bingo exercise is fun, but its an exercise meant to develop a muscle that we might all need but hope not to ever use, to prepare us for the cancer diagnosis or its equivalent, and when I got mine I thought "my circle of care can hold this."

Now it’s your turn:

What did you take on this week?

What would you like to try this week?

What did you do that’s not on the board but ought to be?