Nurse-maiding

My wife has been ill lately and I have updated my view that I have no patience for nurse-maiding.  It would be closer to the truth that I have no talent for it.  Perhaps even closer to the truth to say that I lack the confidence for it.

Good nurse maids have a kind of instinct for what to do and how to soothe.  Massage, treat, lullaby, caress, wet cloth on fevered brow?   Or if they don’t have that instinct, they think they do, so they keep on nurse maiding and something they do helps.  I don’t have that instinct or that confidence, and so I have a hard time keeping it up.  Is this doing any good?  It doesn’t make any obvious difference.

“Just ask them,” you say, and you can do this but the best nurse-maiding occurs in advance of what the person himself  knows what he needs.

My wife has the talent.  She nurse-maids like a savant.  When doing back rubs she unerringly homes in on knots I didn’t know I had and switches from pressure to strokes when it will do the most good.  She once told me that she finds it extremely rewarding because I give off these little purrs and rumbles and grunts throughout.  I said I did it because otherwise how would she know it was helping?  She looked at me as if I was from Mars.  She knew.

Sometimes she needs one and I’ll dutifully and laboriously go through the procedures.  Afterwards I’ll say it didn’t seem to do any good and she’ll say it did a world of good and have me touch some area that she said was stiff before and now isn’t.  Can’t I tell the difference?  Maybe?  a tiny bit?  No, not really.

The irony is that sometimes people who are sick or beat down just need to be left alone and I have world class instincts for that and she has none at all.

You’d think it would be otherwise.   You’d think a real sensitivity for when people need some space would also translate into a sensitivity for when they don’t.  And vice versa.  But it doesn’t work that way.  Instead of the radar giving a negative return, its more like its just not working.

The virtue synthesis just looks like a judicious mix of personal nurse maiding and personal leaving folks be, as their needs warrant.

The vice synthesis: