Blind Spots

This morning I read a headline about a kidney donor. In the article I read, "Moore, his friend since junior high, called him last year and said he wanted to be tested to see if he could donate a kidney."

Imagine! His friend offered. It meant he had to lose 50 pounds in six months, but he cared enough to do this to help his friend. More importantly it occurred to him to offer. No one asked. He just offered.

I don't understand how I could have been so completely blind to Grant's need for a kidney that it didn't occur to me on a conscious level that I might be a suitable donor. We talked about kidney transplants in the abstract; about how he was on a waiting list but since he hadn't ever had Epstein-Barr his chances were not good. But he never asked and I never offered ... and I honestly never thought I COULD be a donor. Was it because I had high blood pressure and was ten years older that my mind just dismissed the possibility before it reached my consciousness?

One thing I realize now is that there were many things that never occurred to me when I was younger. It was as if I were coccooned in some way that young people today are not; in a ways that other people generally are not. Coccooned is too soft a term ... encased in plastic is closer to what I mean.

What made me unable to see? I understood and cared about political issues. I was a teacher who gave her all. I was intelligent and knowledgeable about other things. But there were so many blanks in my understanding. There still are, I am sure, but until someone or some thing makes me aware I will likely remain blind to those too.

I wonder whether all this is the residue from a childhood lived without unconditional love or whether I simply inherited a gene from parents who couldn't love me the way all children need to be loved.

My friend Linda thinks about others; she offers before she is asked. So does Tammy. And Patrick. And Layla. And Sarah. I seem to need to be asked for help before it occurs to me. Maybe that is why I found it easier to be generous in Kenya. Children asked for help to go to school and my heart was touched. Maybe that is why I have been a better mother to Kerry and a better grandmother to her children. She asks when she needs my help.

It may be related to my inability to ask for help too. I don't ask for anything. All my life it has been a point of pride that I manage alone; that I do things independently. Now that I am getting older I know that I can't do everything myself, and when I cannot pay to have things done or have nothing to barter, I leave those jobs undone.

I wish that people would just offer to help; that they would insist. Sometimes they do.

Grant likely felt that too. He couldn't ask me. Perhaps because he didn't know me well enough. Perhaps because he was too independent, just like me. After all, we shared half a gene pool.

I am so sorry I didn't offer. It might have saved his life. But even if my offer had been in vain; if the medical people had said I was not a good candidate, he'd have known how much I loved him. He died without knowing that. I didn't know myself until it was too late.