Thresholds of pain

My mother taught numbness as a way of coping. She called it good immunity. Our bodies were built of sterner stuff. We did not get sick, and if we did it was readily overcome. No need for doctors, even for her and my father unless things were desperate or pregnancy related.

And even then she liked to remind us, in third world countries, places like India women had their babies in the fields on the job and then picked themselves up, hoisted their tiny newborns onto their backs and got back to work.

Remarkable bodies and beings, and we too could be like this of we chose. It was easy. Do not let aches and pains get to you.

So an earache could be managed with a scarf around your head to keep out the cold air. A tooth ache I managed by rubbing toothpaste on the cavernous hole in the back of my molars and clenched down hard before going to sleep on the pain.

This way worked up to a point. It left me with a high pain threshold which my mother argued would be helpful in the making of babies and the living of life.

I once saw a kinesiologist who looked into my eyes.

‘You have a good immune system,’ he declared as if a fortune teller. How could he tell simply by looking into my eyes, and even then not like an ophthalmologist who can track the course of veins running through my eyes. This man saw something that told him about the state of my body, including ‘a tendency towards constipation,’ he said.

I believed him because it was true then. Not now. Not since increasing my intake of water and regularly drinking prune juice. A wonder drink. Not that you need to know this. No one knows to need these things, which is another thing my mother taught us. To be silent. To keep whatever thoughts and feelings we were permitted to ourselves.

And last night in my dreams a familiar dream, one in which I had not attended a single history class all year and the exam was looming. Would I drop out ahead of time and what might this do for my record, or would I flip open books in the nick of time, skim read as much as possible on the big themes and then wing it?

‘You’re good at writing,’ my dream companion said. ‘Better to go this way than to drop out.’

Another of my mother’s teachings. Go through life lightly. Wing it. Don’t ponder too long on the imponderables, except for religion and even then don’t torture belief too much, just live your best and all will be well.

Be adaptive, my mother taught.

Roll with the punches. Behave as though nothing is wrong, and he hurts you only because he loves you. How much these messages have stuck and now on the edge of adjusting to life with a new computer, forced to upgrade given my old computer, which was perfectly serviceable as far as I could tell, could no longer receive updates because it was too out of date. 

How I despise the inbuilt redundancy of physical items. Another of my mother’s messages. Make do with what you have. Recycle and re-use. All good messages, up to a point. 

As a child, same underpants five days in row, same socks could get smelly. A bath once a week. Not her fault of course but circumstances. A lack of amenities. I don’t hold her responsible for the lot.

Still I wonder these days about my own anesthetising sensibilities. My tendency to dissociate when the going gets tough and my readiness to hide from feelings even when my heart is thumping.