Ants vs Dragons

My sister wrote this fabulous article once about being able to face the dragons but it was the ants that got her down. Isn’t that true for all of us? When the big disasters happen in our lives, we gird up our loins, take a deep breath, say a prayer and launch into action. But daily, we face all the “ants” - those tiny little biting, annoying issues that just drag us down. Often, we try to be “Wonder Woman or Superman” and solve everything for everyone else, but we don’t take care of ourselves and we let those pesky ants keep knawing at us – the daily grind of our jobs, the disrespectful and demanding clients, the children who need to be taken here, there, everywhere and who often forget to give us a hug or forgot their folder somewhere along the way and we have to retrace their steps (since we drove them) to find their missing stuff. The spouse who suddenly wants us to change our schedule to accommodate something they forgot to do (like go sit at the DMV for several hours to renew the car’s license plates that they put off till the end of the month). It’s picking up a pen and it’s out of ink, then the pencil tips are all broken and the crayons melted so we can’t leave a message. It’s planning a fabulous meal, only to discover in the middle of cooking it that someone used up the one crucial element we need for it and we didn’t realize it until everything else was already mixed together in the bowl. Or planning lunch with a friend, then forgetting to put it on my calendar and meeting a client when I should be at lunch with my friend, without calling her and spending the next week wondering if I was developing dementia because I may forget many things but not lunch dates with friends!! I can remember so vividly the day the ants were really getting me down and I decided I needed to take a break. I sat down with a cup of tea and some dates my hubby had brought back on a TDY (fresh wonderful dates, straight from the source) – it was heavenly – until I bit into the date with the worm in it. That put me over the edge. I retreated to a hot bath and refused to come out for several hours. But then, I pause for a minute and think about the times the ants DIDN’T get me down. I can remember living in Germany and going to a Dietetic conference in England with some colleagues. First we all met in Heidelberg where the gal who had planned our travel lived. Her husband took us to the train station and we all boarded a sleeper train for the coast. We were having a great time getting reacquainted since we typically only saw each other once or twice a year, and were just starting to get ready for bed, when the conductor came along and told us that there was a transportation strike in Belgium and the train couldn’t go passed the Belgium border as a result. That meant that we had about 5 min to get dressed, make sure we had all our belongings and GE T OFF THE TRAIN AT THE BORDER! So now, here we are, a group of American women, totally stranded at the German Belgium border. BUT, up drives a bus and he’s headed to the port! Dumb us, we initially thought he was contracted by the transportation department to get us to the port. Nope, he was a freelancer who saw a Golden Opportunity. He took whatever type of currency you had (German Deutsch Marks, French Francs, American Dollars…) and didn’t give change. He also drove non-stop across Belgium without a bathroom on the bus. If I had been by myself, I would have gone crazy. BUT, with us was a gal who had lived and worked in Belgium and she told us that it happened quite often and when it did, if you were working at the hospital, you just had to stay, cause your replacement couldn’t get to work. We had gals with us who spoke the different languages of the passengers around us and the bus driver and who could translate what was being said around us (the bus driver and other passengers, of course, spoke no English). Then there was the gal who had brought GIRL SCOUT cookies with her – We weren’t going to starve as long on this very very long bus ride cause we had Girl Scout cookies!! Everyone shared, everyone volunteered what they had, whether a skill, a calm presence, or cookies. When we finally arrived at the port, the very first thing we did was find a bathroom, then look for our ferry across the channel to England. It had just left without us. So we regrouped, figured out that we had enough money between us, and bought new tickets on the Hovercraft (which at that time was fairly new crossing the Channel). We got some food and water, then boarded the Hovercraft. We actually got to England before the ferry we were supposed to be on and were able to make our train connection at the port to take us on to London. When we got to London and checked in to our hotel, we were beat, but WE HAD DONE IT!! We had survived the many, many ants along the way that if any of us had been alone, would have put us in a panic. And that was the answer – we weren’t alone. We were in a group and we shared our strengths and what we had which made us a stronger being then one person alone can ever be. The next day, England had a transportation strike and the people coming in that day didn’t make it until later!