Global Reflections

On Monday, Jeff and I took advantage of the holiday and spent a couple of hours visiting the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It was a nice day, a little warm but not too hot, with a brightly shining sun, perfect for the short walk from our BKK neighborhood to Tuol Sleng, located on Street 113 near Street 360. All the information I’d found on the internet indicated that Tuol Sleng was right on the corner, impossible to miss; although it was impossible to miss, thanks to the huge sign on the corner, Tuol Sleng itself was a block north of Street 360. We paid our $2 entry fee (each) and splurged on the $3 brochure, but said a polite “Qat tee, akuun” to the tour guides offering their services, then entered the former prison.

 

 

At first glance, Tuol Sleng appeared unremarkable, much like the many high schools scattered around the city. Not too surprising, as it originally was Tuol Svay Prey high school. It was converted into the secret torture prison S-21 (Security Office-21) shortly after Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. One of the signs now present at Tuol Sleng explains that Pol Pot and his regime shunned education and viewed it as a corrupting influence, so I guess for him, it was poetic justice to transform a school into a prison for “traitors.” I assume that the moniker Tuol Sleng, meaning “Hill of the Poisonous Trees,” was attached sometime after the prison was discovered by liberating Vietnamese forces in 1979.

We entered the facility at the corner of a large courtyard. This courtyard is now a gravesite: It holds the tombs of the last 14 victims of the prison, those whose mangled bodies were found by the Vietnamese liberators. The courtyard also displays a sign with a list of rules the prisoners were forced to obey, including prohibitions on talking or any noise whatsoever, even during beatings; on contradicting the guards in any way; and on taking any time at all to think before answering a question.

To the left of the courtyard is Building A, where high ranking Khmer Rouge were held and tortured. This building now displays grisly photographs of the remains of the last 14 victims, as well as a few beds and other objects that were used in its days as S-21.

Building B, located behind the courtyard, was used for the mass detention of prisoners. Now, it’s filled with room after room of photographs. The administrators at S-21 apparently were diligent record-keepers: Each prisoner, upon entry to the prison, was seated in a chair and photographed. Detailed information was obtained about the victims’ lives, starting in childhood, and later, information from the “confessions” was added. At some point, the photographs were separated from the information files, so even though the pictures were recovered, most of them have not been identified. Building B displays a massive amount of those photographs. What is striking about the pictures is the diversity: Although almost all are Cambodian, they range in age from a baby in his mother’s arms to old people; males and females are included; and the prisoners could be anyone from a farmer accused of stealing food to a Khmer Rouge officer accused of being a secret agent for the CIA … or it could just as easily be a farmer accused of working for the CIA—the regime didn’t seem too particular about whether or not the accusations made sense, just that they had been made. Guilt by association also was assumed; if a father or mother was accused, both parents and all the children were arrested, and quite possibly the extended family and friends as well. Although I was disturbed by the sheer number of photographs, I was most disturbed by the pictures of children, sitting bravely in the chair, unaware (I hope) of the horrors they would soon endure.

In the middle of the facility, to the right of the courtyard, is the administration building. We did not enter that building, as it continues to be used mostly for administrative purposes—though two of the survivors of S-21 now spend their days around that building, speaking to tourists and selling their autobiographies. On the other side of the administration building is a second courtyard, with Building C behind it and Building D to its right.

Building C is the one that, on the face of it, appears most disturbing. Barbed wire covers the verandas, to prevent prisoners from committing suicide by jumping. The classrooms in the bottom two floors were converted into tiny individual cells, constructed of brick on the ground floor and of wood on the first floor (second floor, for Americans). Narrow holes were blasted into the walls of the classrooms to make a single long walkway from one end of the building to the other. The second floor (or third, to Americans) was left as larger rooms for mass detention; prisoners were forced to lie on the floor, head to foot, utterly silent.

 Building D contains more photographs, as well as displays of some of the original equipment. The chair on which victims sat for their photographs is displayed there, as are several instruments of torture and a couple of artists’ renditions of life in S-21: a painting of a mass detention room and another of a man in a brick cell. One room on the ground floor houses a memorial stupa, where bones of the victims are displayed and people can leave offerings of food, drink, and incense. The first floor contains a Peace Exhibit, which is a cooperative effort of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Okinawa Prefecture Peace Memorial Museum. I wandered through the exhibit but did not look closely at most of it, as I was too wrapped up in my thoughts of genocide at S-21 to want to read much about Okinawa, and I feared that if I did read it, I would find the inexcusable equating of the genocide perpetrated by the Pol Pot regime and the American military administration of Okinawa during and after World War II. Jeff, who did look more closely at the exhibit, told me that my instincts to avoid it were right; it did indeed draw inaccurate and offensive parallels. [Edited to add comments from Jeff: The focus of the Okinawa portion of the exhibit was the unfortunate civilian casualties that happened during the battle for Okinawa between the U.S. and Japanese forces. To my mind, comparing the collateral damage done to a third party during a battle to the tortures and murder inflicted by a regime upon its own people invites a moral relativism that I find repugnant. As a technical collaboration to share/learn artifact/evidence preparation and preservation, I think it's great, but the display presented left me feeling like there was a comparison being made that was unwarranted and unfair to the victims of Tuol Sleng as well as to the American forces (probably the Japanese too, but their record of wartime atrocities makes me less sure) at Okinawa. I found it somewhat akin to comparing a police officer who accidentally shoots a hostage to one who abducts, tortures, and then murders their neighbor. The end result is the same, but the level of evil is dramatically different.]

Building D also is the location where an hour-long film about S-21 can be viewed twice a day. Because it was almost time for our housekeeper to get off work, and we had left Alexa in her care, we chose to skip the film and instead head home.

I am glad that I visited Tuol Sleng, though it is a difficult place to visit. I cannot say that I enjoyed my time there, and despite my interest in the film, I’m almost certain that I will not return to view it. At the same time, however, it feels somehow necessary to me to visit once, to pay homage to those who suffered and died there, or who suffered there before being sent to Cheoung Ek to die. It’s as if a part of me wants to ignore places like Tuol Sleng and Cheoung Ek, to retreat from the horror of what people can do to other people—but another, larger part of me realizes that if we don’t acknowledge and remember the evil that has been perpetrated in the past, we leave ourselves vulnerable to forgetting that it’s possible, failing to defend against it, and repeating history. So as difficult as it may be to go, as tempting as it is to look at Cambodia’s ancient history rather than its more recent history, I do recommend that visitors to Cambodia visit Tuol Sleng and Cheoung Ek, every bit as much as I recommend that they visit Angkor Wat and the Royal Palace. I believe that we owe it to the victims, to ourselves, and to our children to remember that against which we must guard.

The stories were true.

Our first glimpse of our new home—once we got past the forbidding, barbed-wire topped wall with the gates that can be opened only from the inside*—was of a lovely villa with a large porch and a small garden (or yard, as we’d call it in the States, though “garden” is more accurate, since it contains crabapple, mango, and other fruit trees). The welcoming patio set in the tiled driveway more than made up for the huge generator and the small guard shack. Despite my expectations, the house looked bigger, grander, and lovelier than I had imagined.

 The inside of the house continued the initial impression of a huge, beautiful, rather formal home. High ceilings, arched doorways, and gorgeous crown molding contribute to the formal feel of the place, and multiple chandeliers and large windows ensure plenty of light. The place is huge, even the kitchen, in a land in which kitchens often are tiny cubbyholes that feel more like closets than “real” rooms. Although readily-accessible storage space is limited (the “walk-in closets” hold about the same amount of clothing as the not-walk-in closet of my childhood), we quickly learned that there’s an attic with almost as much floor space as the rest of the house, so there’s plenty of room for seasonal or seldom-used storage.

 I immediately decided that I would write a blog post about this enchanting new home of ours. And then I decided to wait until after we had the walls painted … then after our stuff arrived so it would be all decorated and homey in the pictures … then after we got most of said stuff put away so you could see something other than stacks of boxes … then after we had the pictures hung on the walls … then after we had the playroom fully set up with our new toy storage, wall decorations, and carpet … you get the idea. I satisfied myself (and my family) in the meantime with pictures that I could just throw up on Facebook, so I never felt any real urgency to get that blog post written. But now, as we’re preparing to leave in just ten weeks or so, the urgency is back—I want this post to be included in the blog book that I’ll have printed after we depart. So, now—finally!—I’m blogging about this enchanting “new” home of ours.

As you enter our home, you’re greeted by the sight of a large foyer area, which is divided by an arched entryway with open shelving on each side. To your right is the living room. When we arrived, this area was set up as a formal seating area, with no television or other media. We realized we would not use it that way, so we turned it into a more traditional American living room—with the television as the focal point. The natural light in this room is so wonderfully bright that we ended up having blackout curtains made, so that we could make the room dark enough to be a proper home theater. Now it gets practically cave-like when we draw the curtains at night, and very gloomy-looking if we draw them during the day. 

Through the arched entry, you enter the second half of the open foyer area. To your right is the dining room, which we use mostly as a large office. When people come over, we move the laptops to the chest that houses the router and other computer equipment, bring out the tablecloth, and just assume that people will be polite and ignore the computer paraphernalia in the corners. The more traditional office is across from the dining room, where a pretty little seating area had been set up when we arrived—we moved the desk there from the third bedroom, believing we’d use it there … we’ve ended up using the dining room table instead, though.

From the dining room-foyer, you have a choice: you can continue straight into the rest of the main living area, or you can turn left. If you turn left, you’ll pass a half-bath before entering the laundry room and turning right into the huge kitchen. I have enjoyed this kitchen. It isn’t as pretty or modern as my kitchen in Egypt was—no dishwasher—but there are lots of cabinets and drawers, especially with the extra utility shelving provided by the embassy. And we enjoy the casual dining set in there each morning for breakfast.

If you continue straight from the dining room-foyer, you enter the playroom. When we arrived, this room was the family room, set up for television viewing. It worked well in that there are no windows, but it worked poorly in that it’s nestled right between the three bedrooms—a key consideration when the toddler has an 8pm bedtime. So we had baby gates made to enable us to contain Alexa in there as necessary (and to allow us to leave the door to the third bedroom open for the cats to access their litter box and water without concern over whether Alexa would access it as well), and we converted it into a playroom. There’s still a small TV viewing area, mostly used by Alexa to watch Curious George and other cartoons, but there’s also a reading corner, and the bulk of the room is toy storage and open play area, with soft mats and carpeting on the hard tile floor. I’m particularly proud of the whimsical elements in this room—the butterfly mobile in the corner, the colorful tapestries, and the silk geckos on the wall (though the geckos were Jeff’s idea).

Off the playroom is the third bedroom, affectionately referred to as the “cat room.” It houses the litter box in its attached bathroom, a lot of Kleenex and other consumables in its closet, and the cats’ water fountains in the bedroom proper. It also houses our workout equipment, and on the one occasion when we’ve had overnight guests, we’ve moved the cat stuff out and the inflatable mattress in, converting it to a passable guest bedroom.

A short hallway opens up off the back of the playroom. The hall houses another utility shelf, transformed into something rather pretty by the addition of draped fabric to hide its contents (more consumable goods). The doors to Alexa’s room and our room also are off the hall. Alexa’s room is a small cave-like room. It gets relatively bright if the curtains are open, but we rarely bother to open them, since we’re not in there during the day. There’s just enough room for Alexa’s nursery furniture and the doors to her closet and bathroom.

Our room, on the other hand, is huge. It’s big enough that when we emptied Alexa’s room of the embassy furniture, we moved the two dressers into our room rather than having them taken back to the warehouse. In our room, we experimented by painting not only the walls, but the ceiling. The light grayish-blue provides a relaxing atmosphere—and they make the crown molding pop. Our bathroom also is large, especially when compared to the other bathrooms, which are functional but small. Our bathroom has the only tub in the house, which caused me much consternation at first, though we adapted just fine.

Overall, I have little reason to complain about this house. The closets could stand to be larger, and I’d love to have a tub in Alexa’s bathroom, but those are very minor complaints. This house is much larger and nicer than anything we’re likely to buy or rent in the United States. I’m pretty sure that at least six rural Cambodian families could live here quite happily with the addition of one shower head and drain in the half bath, two walls to close off the living and dining rooms, and two doors to close off the playroom. When you add in the fact that every major room has its own independently adjustable air conditioner, I’m certain that this place would be a wonderland for most of the world’s population.

As for me, I still look around in awe sometimes at this beautiful villa that we call home.

*When we first arrived, I anxiously asked Jeff how we were supposed to let ourselves in to our own home—it really bothered me that someone else would be controlling our access. He had to remind me that because we have a guard on duty 24 hours a day, access wouldn’t be a problem for us … and it really isn’t any different from our time in Egypt, when the guards had to open the gate to our apartment building. Now it once again feels normal to ring my own doorbell, wait for the guard to open the gate, and then make my way to my front door.

I have come to appreciate and to miss American zoning laws. Why, you may ask? Because businesses, particularly restaurants of various kinds, are a noisy lot, and it really does make sense to separate them from residential areas in which people prefer to sleep, rather than party, all night.

No, this is not a new realization. However, it has become much more personally relevant in recent days … weeks … months … Let me go back to the beginning.

Cambodia, or at least the part of Cambodia known as Phnom Penh, is noisy. Aside from businesses that exist cheek by jowl with homes, there are weddings and funerals, both of which can last for days and which involve very loud music. However, we didn’t really consider that when we filled out our housing survey, expressing our preferences for the type of home to which we wanted to be assigned upon our arrival in Cambodia. We were coming from an American compound in Egypt, where the walls were thick and the apartment building was designed to minimize sound penetration. So noise didn’t enter into our thought process when we discussed housing in Cambodia. We discussed the commute, proximity to shops and restaurants, villas versus apartments. We requested a villa with a short commute and close proximity to shops and restaurants, because in Egypt I loved being able to walk almost everywhere I wanted to go.

When we arrived, I was a little disappointed in our villa’s location. The commute is short, and we’re in a Phnom Penh neighborhood that is known for its shops and restaurants, but we’re in a corner of it that is primarily residential. The shops and restaurants were within walking distance, but they were a longer walk than I’d really expected (although since then, I’ve discovered a couple of nice little restaurants that are tucked quietly into apparently residential villas within just a block or two of our home). The short commute and the beauty of our spacious villa quickly overcame any disappointment, however. We proceeded to settle in to our new lives, not really noticing the blessing of peace and quiet that we enjoyed.

Then we experienced a Cambodian funeral. A wealthy man who lived just a couple of doors down died, and his funeral, as is expected here, was long and loud. I think his lasted five or seven days, with music playing around the clock or close to it. We endured the disruption—it isn’t really diplomatic to complain about funeral customs, after all, and we are the guests in this country. Nevertheless, we were happy when the funeral was over and our street became quiet again … until the customary 30^th-day remembrance event, which mercifully lasted only a couple of days.

After that, we continued in our blissfully quiet lives. We watched as an apartment building went up on the corner, and two restaurants were built and opened on that same corner. The houses between us and the corner provided a nice buffer to the noise, which we heard but not at a disturbing volume. When the restaurants opened, we tried one of them and decided that it definitely was a welcome addition to the neighborhood.

And then … sometime last October or November, a year after our arrival, the villa next door began undergoing a conversion. My days became filled with noise. It’s bearable in most of the house for most of the time. For the first few weeks, a particularly loud noise sometimes startled Alexa out of a nap, resulting in a terrified, screaming, sleepy toddler. But she adapted, and as long as I don’t spend too much time outside or in the kitchen, which is located right beside the construction, I tolerate it with no major problems. However, as the restaurant nears completion, it’s becoming apparent that my ability to ignore it will soon change.

The restaurant going in next door looks like it’s going to be a beer garden.

The owners say it isn’t going to be a beer garden, simply a Khmer restaurant, patronized mostly by families. But there are at least six speakers mounted to the rafters of the wall-less roof they’ve erected in the courtyard. And they’ve tested those speakers a couple of times. They get loud enough for any beer garden, though the owner says they’ll only be used at half volume once the restaurant opens. I’m not so sure I believe that, though. So I find myself hoping that the construction next door takes a few more months … I’d rather have noise during the day than noise at night.

In conjunction with the “not a beer garden” going in next door, there’s a restaurant behind our house. We’ve had very little problem with that restaurant, and I didn’t even realize it was a restaurant until recently. I thought it was a home where they occasionally have loud parties. Usually, it’s nice and quiet, though there occasionally have been events that resulted in music and loud conversation drifting over our wall.

Last night, however, was the party to top all parties. I suspect it was a preview of what we can expect if the establishment next door opens before we leave. The music was so loud that I could hear it clearly in Alexa’s room when we put her down for her night’s sleep, which may account for why she didn’t fall asleep until a good 90 minutes later. In Jeff’s and my bedroom, I could identify the words to the songs that had English lyrics. In our living room—clear on the other end of the house—I could hear the thumping bass and the periodic cheers from what sounded like a massive group of people. The mobile patrol came and tried to let the partygoers know that they were causing a disturbance, hoping they would quieten down of their own volition—to my knowledge, there’s no law here to compel them to keep it down—but they chose to keep the party going. When I tried to go to bed around 11, I put in my earplugs—the ones I use at the range to make bearable the deafening roar of guns in a confined space—and I still heard the music and the chatter of multiple conversations so clearly they could have been right outside my window.

Shortly before 1am, I gave up. I went into the living room … and still heard the party raging. The extra distance muffled the noise enough that I thought that maybe, just maybe, I had a chance at some sleep … but no. It wasn’t working. My brilliant and loving husband thought of the solution for me: he downloaded a track of a heavy rainstorm from iTunes and had our TV playing it (loudly!) while I lay on the couch and finally fell asleep. I offered to take the loveseat so he could have the couch, but he decided to go to our room and see what happened—but not until after he sent an email to the embassy’s housing office recommending that they strongly consider dropping the lease on this beautiful villa of ours. He told me this morning that the music stopped at 2am, the loud voices went away around 2:30, and he fell asleep shortly thereafter. I woke up at 3:30 to blessed quiet and abandoned the couch for the comforts of my own bed.

Needless to say, we didn’t make it to church this morning.

Also needless to say, we have a new priority for our housing in Kosovo: Despite the longer commute, we most definitely will be requesting housing in an international housing development, far from any shops, restaurants, or beer gardens.

My mother was in a car accident last night. I’ll skip ahead and spare you any worry—she has three breaks in two bones in her right arm, which is her non-dominant arm, as she’s left-handed. She most likely will require surgery in order for it to heal properly; she has an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon tomorrow for evaluation. Her car most likely is totaled. There were no major injuries to anyone in the other car. The accident was the fault of the other driver, who failed to yield before making a left hand turn. In theory, Mom won’t suffer financially because of this accident—she won’t even miss work, technically, since she already was scheduled to be off until the first of the year. Not exactly the holiday she’d planned, but all things considered, not too bad.

I was running the water for Alexa’s bath when I heard Jeff’s phone ring. I vaguely registered that his voice grew tense, and then he came into the bathroom and told me to leave the bath water, leave Alexa, and go call my sister. (She didn’t have my temporary phone number immediately accessible, so she had called Jeff’s sister to pass a message.) He told me that my mother had been in a car accident while on her way to church. He proceeded with the next breath to tell me that her arm was broken, but in the moment between his breaths … I’m amazed at how quickly our minds can generate horrible possibilities. In that small moment, I saw my mother lying dead in the morgue, or covered with blood due to horrific injuries. Then, in an instant, my fears were relieved. A broken arm, we can deal with. It’s painful for her, and I’m sympathetic, but the tunnel vision receded and my calm, rational side kicked in. I called my sister and left a message when it went to voice mail. Upon Jeff’s advice, I went ahead and bathed Alexa while waiting for her to call back.

My sister called while I was bathing Alexa and spoke to Jeff. After I finished, we loaded up to make the 30-minute drive to the hospital in my hometown. (We’re on vacation in the States right now, staying at a hotel halfway between my hometown and the town where Jeff’s sister and father live. We arrived the night before last and had dinner with my mom, my brother, and his wife, but we hadn’t even seen my sister and her family yet.) On the way to the hospital, I posted a status on Facebook explaining the situation, then scrolled through looking at others’ statuses and photos. Right after I clicked “like” on a photo of a friend’s baby parked in a stroller beside Platform 9 ¾, I looked up at Jeff and asked, “Am I a bad daughter because I’m not frantic?” He pointed out that after what I went through in Egypt during the Revolution, this situation is not cause for frantic. Upon further consideration, I decided that he’s right.

Frantic is being told by security officers to lock yourself and your infant daughter in a room and hope that the bad guys, who are only a block away, either bypass your building altogether or are content to take your stuff and not take you, since the security guys don’t have the means to defend you and you’ve been forbidden the means to defend yourself. (Yes, I severely regretted the Department of State’s policy on guns for home defense that night, as I thought longingly of my husband’s Glocks and my Springfield XD that we’d left in storage in the States.)

Frantic is driving from your mother’s house on your way to church and coming across your mother’s totaled car just moments after the accident happened, or maybe even seeing it happen, and not knowing what you’re going to find inside that car, which is what my sister experienced last night. When I saw her at the hospital an hour after the accident, she was still showing residual effects of the adrenaline.

Frantic is receiving a call from your sister before things have had a chance to settle, and knowing only that your mother was injured in an accident and is on her way to the hospital, and you’re 30 minutes away but you make the drive in 15 because you don’t know what’s waiting for you at the hospital. That’s what my brother experienced last night—at least I hope that he didn’t make that unsafe drive knowing that Mom was okay, because if he did, then he risked putting our family through two accidents last night for no reason.

Frantic is not being told in one breath that your mother was in an accident and in the next that her most severe injury is a broken arm. That situation prompts concern, and sympathy, and prayers, and of course you go to her and help in any way you can, but frantic doesn’t enter in to the picture.

When we arrived at the hospital, I saw my brother standing outside the emergency room, talking on the phone. A quick glance through the windows showed no trace of my mother, my sister, or anyone else I knew, so I grabbed Alexa and made a beeline for my brother. Along the way, some concerned members of my mother’s church tried to dissuade me from taking Alexa inside, as the emergency room had received several patients with flu-like symptoms. I think I was polite—I tried to be polite—but I had laser focus, and I made the briefest of replies while not even slowing down as I approached my brother and we went into the emergency room together. He told me what he knew, which wasn’t much more than I’d already been told.

I waited with my brother, Jeff, and Alexa. I saw my niece, nephew, and brother-in-law for the first time in over a year—not exactly the reunion we would have preferred, but it was what it was. Then my sister came out and motioned for my brother and me to come back to see Mom.

Mom was lying in a hospital bed, propped up to a semi-reclining position. Her shirt had a little blood on it, but not much. Her arm was positioned so that the part that didn’t look injured was up, although I could see the edges of bruises and bloody cuts. She obviously was in pain, but she gritted her teeth and bore it—a hallmark of strength. It was hot, and a nurse aide brought some Sprites and some cups of ice to keep us all cool as the emergency room technician—maybe he was a nurse, I’m not sure—set and bandaged Mom’s arm.

My sister, as I mentioned before, was showing the effects of the adrenaline. Her eyes were red and puffy. She seemed to be shaking a little, and she was talking and moving more quickly than usual. She was reactive enough to Mom’s pain that I worried a little for her, but it turned out that she didn’t need my concern. She and my brother both were fine.

I was not.

When the nurse lifted my mother’s arm and put the wire things on her fingers to hold them in the air, forcing her bones to straighten, and my mother gritted her teeth in pain … I’m not sure what was going through my mind. Maybe an overactive imagination, thinking about what was happening inside her body and how it must feel. Maybe not any conscious thought at all; I don’t remember any. But I became aware of how the skin of my face felt, and I recognized the feeling. I was growing pale, and if it continued, I would pass out.

I looked away from my mother’s arm, tried to deafen myself to her quiet indications of pain, and tried to think of something—anything!—else. It didn’t help. I started experiencing some tunnel vision, and I knew I had to sit down or better yet, lie down. So I squeezed past my sister and went into the hallway, dodging left so my mother wouldn’t see me sit down in the floor. That didn’t help either, so I lay down right where I was. There was a gurney right beside me, but I avoided it for two reasons: I wanted to leave it available in case anyone had a real need for it, and it was positioned right in my mother’s line of sight. The last thing I needed was for her to be worried about me (although in retrospect, she probably noticed my abrupt departure and guessed the reason for it).

A hospital employee noticed me and told me to lie down on the gurney. I declined, indicating that I didn’t want my mother to see me. She moved the gurney a few inches down the hall and said “She can’t see, now get on!” I complied. My sister—about whom I had been concerned so recently—stepped out of Mom’s room to ask me if I was ok, if I needed a Sprite, if I needed a bucket. I lied through my teeth—“I’m fine, don’t need anything, just a minute.” After a short battle with faintness and nausea, I felt better. I sat up slowly, staying on the gurney for another moment. When I realized that I was much improved and getting better, I went back into Mom’s room, pretended like nothing had happened, drank my sister’s unopened Sprite, and was able to make it through the rest of the procedure without additional problems. Of course I’d missed the worst of it, for which I am both grateful and a bit embarrassed.

I’ve always been a little sensitive to the sight—even the thought—of serious injuries and their treatment. But I never imagined that I would be incapacitated by that sensitivity. I don’t believe in being incapacitated by anything but the most severe trauma; I never considered it an option. My philosophy always has been that whatever life brings my way, I just have to get through it and do what has to be done. When it comes down to it, there really isn’t any other choice but to give up and let life beat you, and what kind of option is that? I always assumed that if I were incapacitated by anything, it would be by physical reality—some injury that my body simply couldn’t overcome, like my mom couldn’t lift her broken arm—or by psychological trauma so severe that death would start looking like a viable option. I never imagined it would be something as simple as me not being able to tolerate the sights, sounds, and thoughts generated by watching a friendly emergency room employee set my mother’s broken arm.

I could console myself with the thought that my body got away from me because I was just watching—there was nothing that I had to do, but if there had been, I would have been able to do it. I could say that if my brother and sister hadn’t been there, and I’d been needed to help the medic lift and reposition various objects like he had them doing, I’d have been able to keep control of myself enough to help him, or if it had been Alexa who was injured, and she needed to see her Mama there by her side, that I could have done that. But the reality is that I can’t quite convince myself that that’s true. There’s a real possibility that I would have had to leave the room even if I were needed, and the only way I’ll ever know for sure is to be in a similar situation in which I’m needed. I’d just as soon never know for sure.

I could console myself—and have consoled myself, somewhat—with the knowledge that at least I recognized what was happening and removed myself from the situation, doing everything I could not to distract those who were doing what needed to be done. At least I didn’t give that medic more work to do. This knowledge is a comfort, but it’s still just a consolation prize.

So I’m left with this conundrum. I am a person who believes in doing what needs to be done. I am a person who believes that obstacles that must be overcome can be overcome. And I am a person who has run into an obstacle that one day may be a must-overcome obstacle … yet who has real doubts about her ability to overcome it. And I’m wondering what to do about that.

Should I take a first aid course? I had a friend who took one, years ago, and I looked through her workbook and recoiled in horror at the illustrations. But if I could make it through the course, then I’d be at least a little desensitized, and even better, I may be able to help someone one day instead of standing around calling for someone else to help. I’m having a hard time thinking of other options to overcome this, but I don’t even know if I’ll be able to find a first aid course in English in either Cambodia or Kosovo.

So tell me: what do you think? Should I try a first aid course? Can you think of any other options to help me overcome this … problem? (Yeah, I know I titled this post “Weakness,” but I still can’t force myself to use that word in relation to myself … apparently I need to write a post entitled “Pride.”) I need to do something, but I'm not sure what. I welcome your suggestions!