A Neighbor, A Family, And Christianity

“Do you have any motion?” texted the mother of the Baker Street Irregulars.

She uses voice to text, and the voice-to-text software doesn’t always understand a Northern Appalachian accent, or much of anything else.

“Motion?” I texted back.

“Yea.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“They didn’t send me home with any painkillers.”

The mother of the Baker Street Irregulars must be very healthy, generally speaking. She’s given birth to six human beings, but she’d never had a surgery before this week. This week, I got a terrified text of “I’m scared” at two in the morning. She explained she was in the emergency room by herself with a severe belly ache. Her mother, the Lady of LaBelle, couldn’t be with her, because she had taken the autistic Baker Street Irregular into Pittsburgh to the children’s hospital for something or other. The Man Called Dad had to stay home in the crammed rental house to watch all those children himself.

I wished that my car was in working order so I could floor it to the hospital and sit with her. But of course it isn’t, so I sat up in bed, texting reassurance.

The next day was the first day of school. The mother was kept in the hospital under observation, in considerable pain, and cross that they wouldn’t let her eat.  I don’t know how the Man Called Dad managed to get everyone onto their appropriate buses– but Adrienne saw some of the Baker Street Irregulars at the middle school, so he must have. I wished I could chauffer them home at the end of the day, but again, the car was a doorstop.

The next day she texted “I have gull stones” and my autistic mind made up a lovely image of a circle of ancient stones, vaguely bird-shaped, in the tall green grass on an isle off the coast of England. But the voice-to-text had meant to say “gallstones.” Less than forty-eight hours later she was at home, minus a gallbladder, with bruises from some bad IVs. And she was in pain.

“Oh, Motrin?” I said.  If there’s one thing I know about, as a person with chronic illness, it’s cobbling together a pain management routine. “I have Aleve and Tylenol. You can take them both together at the highest dose it says on the bottle, two pills each. I’ll be right over.”

The autistic Baker Street Irregular was rocking on the porch when I got there. She ran the bottles of pills in to her mother, and then cane out to demand a hug, which she got.

Her mother was texting me more questions by the time I got home. The hospital had apparently not sent her home with any instructions at all.

I’ve had six surgeries, so I knew the instructions by heart. Yes, the yucky clear ooze from the incision was normal. It’s only a problem if you bleed heavily or start to swell or stink. You should eat low fat for a few days after gallbladder surgery, but you should be able to eat normally soon. Lie as still as you can and make friends with a good TV series. Have broth and crackers if you don’t feel like dinner. Don’t forget those painkillers whenever the last dose wears off.

“Why do the Baker Street Irregulars always ask me for advice like this?” I wondered aloud to Adrienne. “I’m not a doctor.”

Adrienne, who has lived in Steubenville her whole life and who code switches easily between my snooty English and the scratchy Northern Appalachian dialect, shrugged. “It’s because you talk like a smart person.”

I talk like an absentminded professor from a bad movie. But I suppose she had a point.

The next day was Saturday. Adrienne had her very first cross country running meet, but I couldn’t be there to cheer her on. She took the school bus to the track an hour away with her teammates, and I couldn’t very well hitchhike there. Michael was running the Saturday errands on the bus, which takes hours. The Mother of the Baker Street Irregulars was still laid up at home. It was far too hot to go out to the garden or go for a neighborhood stimming walk. I was lonely and anxious with nothing to do.

I started to bake.

I used to be a pretty good baker. Getting diagnosed with a gluten sensitivity made me an even better baker, because I had to engineer gluten free versions of all the old treats I’d loved. But I haven’t baked very often lately, because of the PCOS and because Adrienne gets plenty of treats with the school lunch.

We had a fresh new bag of gluten free flour and a jumbo sized can of pumpkin, and then we didn’t, because I was baking. I put on loud stimming music and danced around the kitchen, still baking. I filled my largest mixing bowl.

“All the leaves are brown,” I sang, on a blistering hot green August afternoon. “And the sky is gray. I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day! I’d be safe and warm if I was in L. A. California dreaming!”

I lined the muffin tins and filled the cups to the top. I turned the oven down from 425 after five minutes, and went to vacuum in the dining room,  singing along with Cass and Michelle about hating Mondays.

When the timer went off, I had twenty-four tall, stout pumpkin spice muffins, as uniform and appealing as the kind you get in a bakery. Plenty for Adrienne to eat after her run, and a baker’s dozen for the Baker Street Irregulars.

“I wouldn’t want to be a chimney sweep, all black from head to foot,” I sang along with the Mamas and the Papas, as I set the muffins out to cool.

Just then, I didn’t want to be anywhere except in Northern Appalachia, in an ugly kitchen in an ugly house in an ugly neighborhood, cooled by a noisy window air conditioner and perfumed by the smell of pumpkin spice muffins.

When it cooled off enough to go outside this evening, I brought the Baker Street Irregulars their treats. Their mother was well enough to get up and answer the door. She proudly showed me her incisions, which are healing up.

I remembered that I’m happy here.

I remembered that Christianity, if it’s anything worth my time, isn’t something you have to go somewhere else to find. It’s about being who you are, in Christ, and being Christ to one another when there’s a need. Being a neighbor to your neighbors, like when the mother and the Lady of LaBelle gave me that turkey and that Easter basket, or when they split half their vegetables from the church food pantry box with me, or when their child invited me to her concert. And here I was being a neighbor to them in turn, and it felt good. And I hope we go on being neighbors to one another until Christ returns, because it feels like having a family.

Christians are always calling each other family, but they don’t usually mean it. Just on this one little block in LaBelle, it seems, we do.

“Thank you, that’s very sweetie you,” the mother of the Baker Street Irregulars texted through the garbled voice-to-text.

Life felt sweet just then.