Zen Peggy

I learned everything there is to know about crisis response from Peggy. 

Though Peggy can lose her marbles when the new plaid sofa is not upholstered correctly, or she can’t find her diamond rings again and she is convinced someone came in the house and stole them, or when Wes gets food on one of his new ties, or she is late for a church event (Dammit kids, get your white asses in the car you are making me late for BIBLE STUDY!)  . . .

she transforms into ZenPeggy when a true crisis arises.

Everyday Crises

If you choose to birth three children, there will be everyday drama.  Like when I was in middle school and had a zit.  See, my zits were rare.  I didn’t have one of those gross-crater-faces, and I didn’t have blackheads.  What I had were single solitary welts.  The welts usually appeared someplace central, like the top of my nose, or between my eyebrows.  And I just knew that these welts were an invitation “Mock Ashby!  Look how ugly Ashby is!!” 

And I would cry.  How could I possibly appear in school like this?  I would sob and beg not to go to school.

Peggy knew the first way to avert an everyday crisis was to throw money at the problem.  Peggy bought me this skin-colored zit cream that was supposed to cover and yet simultaneously dry up, scab, and disappear a zit all at once. 

The effect was disgusting.  First, because my skin is the color of white vinyl siding.  There is no variation, there is no shadowing, it’s just white.  So if you dropped a smudge of Clearasil medium tint on a zit between my eyebrows, it looks like I have run into a clay doorknob.

The second way to avert an everyday crisis is to try at-home remedies.  Peggy swabbed the zit with rubbing alcohol.  Then, she iced it. 

If those home remedies didn’t work, she’d put some prescription strength pharmaceutical-sales-rep-sample of hydrocortisone cream or maybe prescription strength pharmaceutical-sales-rep-sample of hemorrhoid cream on the zit. 

(In my household, prescription drug gift-bags were considered home remedies).

If money or home remedies didn’t work, she would impart wisdom:

Ashby, no one in your class is going to notice that zit.  Everyone is thinking about the zit on their own faces, or how they have B.O., or how bad their hair looks. 

No one is thinking about you. 

Now get your ass to school.

Crisis averted.

Quiet Crises

Once Peggy was driving up a hill in Greenville.  It was a high-traffic area, and she was in a rush.  Peggy has things to do.

She got to the top of that hill and something told her to pull over and stop. 

This was the same voice that told her to marry Wesley Willingham Lawton, Jr. 

It was the same voice that warned her that filling out the birth announcements for my little brother before he was born was probably a bad idea – since Mary Margaret Lawton came out with an extra accessory.

So she stopped the car and pulled over on Faris Road.

And a few moments later, through her windshield, she saw a woman slowly climbing the hill.  The woman was panting and carrying something heavy.  The woman was exhausted.  The woman was walking as fast as she could but her fast was not fast enough.

Peggy rolled her window down “Can I help you?  Do you need a ride somewhere?”

The woman told Peggy that she did, in fact, need a ride.  That she was late for work, she had no ride and her job meant everything to her. 

This woman had lost all hope as she climbed that hill, but that she prayed to God – to please help her.  So God interrupted Peggy’s train of thought:

“must plan Sunday School lesson, must buy Will new jeans – why oh why has he already ruined the jeans I just bought him?  I need to go back to weight watchers and quit eating slime.  Ashby has been so awful lately do we need to get her professional help?  Will she ever stop behaving like an ever-lovin-bitch?  Ginny talks and talks and talks and now she wants to have a friend over this afternoon and that will mean two little girls talking and talking and talking and I don’t know if I can handle it . . .

Is Days a re-run today?”

And God said:  PULL OVER.

After Peggy took the lady to work she went about her day – she bought some ice-milk, rented some movies, took some film to be developed at Graham photo, and picked a fight with the guy at the Chrysler place.

Serious Crises

Once when I was little, Mom and Dad and I were on our way back from the mountains.  Mom and Dad owned a (haunted) mountain house back then – more on the haunted part another time. 

We were winding our way down the mountain roads, slowly turning left then right, when I heard Peggy say:

                Wes, that was an accident.  Stop the car.

Mom and Dad pulled over on the side of the mountain.  They told me to be still and quiet.  And they left me in the car. 

I didn’t see an accident, and I was too young to know what “accident” meant.  All I know is, they were gone for a bit, and then Peggy came running back to the car.

She got our towels out of the trunk.  And she ran back to this thing called "accident."

I never asked her about it later.  I never asked why she insisted they stop for strangers, or why towels were needed.  But I will never forget her demeanor that day. 

Stopping for the car accident and helping the people who were hurt was a decision she easily made, no different than other swiftly-made decisions:  like the time she stretched scotch tape across Ginny’s bangs and cut the tape off, a new method of trimming hair in straight line. 

Or when I was 2 years old and I WOULD NOT SHUT UP about wanting my ears pierced, so she poked a safety pin through both my earlobes.  

In Peggy’s mind (and now in my mind too) in a crisis, whether yours or someone else’s, you don’t sit around and ponder whether you will be “welcome.”  Welcome is not a concept for consideration. 

You don’t worry about how “uncomfortable” you may feel – or how you might really just make them feel uncomfortable so maybe it would be best not to go. 

Priorities are instantly rearranged and renumbered, like on Netflix.  You stop the car, you go to the scene and you apply pressure with a towel. 

Or, you drive your car to the strange hospital, you bypass the giftshop because no one really wants that crap, you ride the elevator to the appropriate hospital floor.  You open the door, you sit in the uncomfortable chair.  You show your face.  You hold someone’s hand. 

You say all the wrong things or nothing at all but you show up. 

And that is 80% of crisis management Peggy style. 

The other 20% is luck – being lucky enough that someone tells you about the crisis at all.