Friday, November 08, 2002

Carrying the Sun

A few years ago, when I finally completed my doctorate in English literature, my then-five-year-old daughter wrestled with the meaning of my degree, concluding, “So....you’re not a real doctor, then; you’re just a doctor of sentences, right?” Now, I am ready to defend the healing powers of language. I know that literature can literally make pulses race (this is why sensation novels seemed like such a danger to the tender sympathies of 18th and 19th century female readers). But I also know that the best-wrought sentence cannot jump-start a stilled heart, nor inflate the lungs of someone whose breath has stopped. My daughter’s words stuck with me.

And so, like many citizens, I have continued my education, and recently earned my certification in Red Cross CPR and Basic First Aid. I am also a Girl Scout leader, and this training is required as a practical extension of the Scouting motto to Be Prepared – not just for rain on a camping trip, but for disasters that could prove more shatteringly life-altering.

My fellow trainees in the two evening Red Cross sessions were, like me, folks exhausted from long days of work and family life, but willing to acquire knowledge that would make them different kinds of citizens. During those sessions, we trainees watched instructional videos of people guiltily backing away from the scene of an accident, unwilling, unable, or too fearful to help (this is Bad Behavior). And we were trained to become the Good alternative: a cool-headed, prepared citizen who knows enough to fulfill the Emergency Action mantra of “Check. Call. Care.” that we chanted over and over: to “Check” to make sure the scene is safe, to direct someone to “Call” 911 as quickly as possible, and to “Care” for the victim using Red Cross’s basic life-saving techniques until paramedics arrive. Who does not aspire to be the calm life-saver? And who does not fear that in the crisis of the moment, we are more likely to be the one backing shamefacedly away? I have to confess that the responsibility weighs uneasily on me. I have not yet placed my certification cards in my wallet.

I am confident about much of what I learned under the tutelage of the warm and witty nurse who was our instructor. I can now properly, gingerly remove latex gloves to avoid contamination; I know to carry Kotex with me at all times because it’s the best way to staunch the astonishing flow of a split-open chin; and I know that tourniquets are passé. And for those of you who took lifesaving classes in the distant past, I can happily report that those stale-breathed, stiff rubber resuscitation dummies have been replaced by high tech, lightweight “Actar 911” models, which look like sterile busts of Star Wars’ C3PO. As we practiced counting chest compressions and rescue breaths that inflated the white plastic bags of Actar’s “lungs,” I’m guessing most of us had the same anxieties: would we remember all the numbers we’d just learned for the written exams we had to take that evening? And, far more pressingly, does being able to pencil in on an exam the differing counts of rescue breaths and chest compressions that children and adults should receive guarantee we’ll be able to act on a real body in distress? As I said, I have not yet placed my certification cards in my wallet.

This new constellation of knowledge and anxiety hovered above me last week as my family attended a kids’ presentation at Kennedy Elementary School’s lovely little planetarium. Our teacher was masterful at explaining shooting stars and black holes to the enthusiastic children who clearly relished this talk of fire balls whose light takes hundreds of years to reach our eyes. To demonstrate the relation between the Earth and sun, the teacher put one child on a revolving stool as Earth, and gave another the responsibility of holding a hot lightbulb aloft as the unmoving sun. Then, she demonstrated the old hypothesis, asking the sun child to carry carefully the burning bulb around the unmoving Earth child, telling us, “Long ago, people used to think Apollo carried the sun around the Earth, but now we know different.” “Yeah!” the Earth boy interjected confidently. “Now we know that Jesus carries it!” And the child holding the sun looked a bit relieved, turning the hot bulb over to the teacher.

I can’t help but think that is what the moment will feel like, if it comes, when I need to use the Red Cross knowledge I now have to start a heart, to breathe air into another’s lungs. At those terrible moments of crisis when the earth stands still, I hope I am ready to carry the sun, burning in my fingers, for a short distance, until I, too, can place my faith in sources beyond me. My guess is that divine intervention often wears human hands.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on November 08, 2002
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Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe

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