Want an Ice Pack?

Today I watched my sister-in-law make her way across the room on crutches, knee dislocated. She wasn’t in excruciating pain, but she wasn’t comfortable either. Without thinking about it, I asked if I could get her an ice pack or anything. She said yes, happily. I went and got it. On the way back I passed another sister and my parents. My mom said, “Aww, that’s sweet.”

It struck me in that moment. It’s not sweet. It’s what I would expect any adult to do for another person. It’s how I’ve lived every day for decades—noticing the people around me, asking how I can help, and then helping. But it’s apparently not normal in either of our families to care about others in that quiet, practical way.

That small exchange opened a wound that still hurts. The sisters I had always helped - decided, at some point, to twist my intentions and actions into something strange and abnormal in their interpretation and sharing with others when they knew they weren’t. As if standing in the cold to hand them treats for their day as they drove by in the morning had some ulterior motive. As if giving them money for gas and their car on my way home each day during track season was for any reason other than wanting them to still be able to enjoy their lives while they couldn’t work to pay for it. As if sending a picture every single day without fail with a “P” for praying for them—even back when they were thirteen—was anything other than love. As if asking them how they were, or if they’d like to come over to hang out with us, or if they wanted to talk, was somehow crossing a personal boundary.

I think one of them actually regrets that now. I think she actually thinks of me each day now too. But I also think she’s afraid that even this is still weird, because it’s not “normal” in her family to have people care about one another like that. Almost like she’s convinced herself that if she thinks of me each day, something must be wrong with her too because she doesn't have that with others she wishes she was closer to. In her family it’s more normal to crack a joke about what the injured person can’t do than to ask how they are doing or what can be done to help them.

“Can I get you an ice pack or something?” should be a normal question. Routine. Regular. Ordinary. But for both my family and my wife’s, it isn’t. So even the sister who may regret her three years of mistreatment toward me still doesn’t quite know how to ask it. That way of interacting - being truly cared for each day - hasn’t been normal from her with most anyone in her family over the years. I did it anyway, all those years, it used to be normal for her up until they decided to change it years ago. But yet I still did it, even when it got me labeled as abnormal, or worse.

Now she doesn’t know how to take the words back. She doesn’t know how to take them back from what she’s said to her family and friends about me either. Having a real place for me in her life would mean coming clean to the people she told those stories to—that some of what they heard wasn’t the real story, full story, or the story at all. That I wasn't the bad guy in the story. In a small town, the impact of those stories that were twisted and shared runs deeper and lasts longer than she will ever fully know. I loved her and my other sister enough to take that on anyway.

But the other sister has lived the lies so fully and habitually that she still believes I’m a problem for caring. She is the one who once told me she intentionally doesn’t communicate with caring about or receiving care from others. That leaves the sister who has realized the harm she caused in a tough spot. She can’t really talk about me to the sister who is still stuck in the old narrative. She also can't care about or be cared for by this sister that operates that way in treatment of people. She doesn’t want to leave her sister. She sees it as loyalty. But loyalty is harmful when it isn’t rooted in what is true. The lies and distortions of intentions and actions they shared and spread to others hurt more than they know, and went wider than they know. Most ironically, those lies hurt themselves most of all.

I don’t care what other people think of me. I know, without thinking, that when I see someone in need I ask if they need an ice pack or anything. I know who I am. But they’ve spent years trying to convince themselves of a narrative about me that isn’t true—searching for evidence that doesn’t exist, hoping for something that might justify three years of mistreatment. Truth has a way of exposing how small those grievances they thought they had actually were.

I don’t think my sisters ever stopped to ask the simplest question: why did he stand in the cold to give us something as we drove by those days? If they had, they would have been forced to see that the harm in the words they spoke to family and friends for a cheap laugh and a little attention wasn’t cheap at all—for others, or for themselves. They would have been forced to see the actual truth, because he loved us just for our own sake.

What they said to others isn’t the part that settles heaviest. The heaviest part is the one who still chooses to speak wrongly and, in doing so, holds her sister back from healing, keeping her stuck in what isn’t true. The heavy truth that she is like both of our families that still treat ordinary care—simply asking if someone needs anything—as something unusual or above average, or suspicious even. It should not be sweet. It should be expected. How do you change a culture like that? You model it. I’ve lost years with my sisters because of it, and I won’t apologize for continuing to live that way. It hasn’t worked fully yet. But it began to with one brother, and now one sister now seems to be wrestling with whether she wants the freedom and peace that might come if she lets the old story go and chooses it.

I still know who I am. I’ll get anyone an ice pack. I hope someday they’ll know who they are too.