My first trip to New Orleans is imprinted on memory like the aftermath of a flashbulb when you close your eyes. I was in my twenties. Before kids. Before dogs, even. We were staying in a really pretty Hyatt, with multi-floor interior elevators and garden cafes. During the day, we toured southern plantations, where, to recreate historical ambience, docents in pastel gowns drawled, “Can’t y’all just smell the cane fires burnin’?”
We could not smell the cane fires but nodded encouragingly. In the South, good manners are everything.
One soft September evening, as we were leaving the hotel in search of jambalaya, I glanced back across the massive lobby just as an elderly man in a rumpled suit teetered to the very top of a multi-story escalator, pitched forward, and began to tumble head over heels down the grillwork of the moving steps.
I stood transfixed. He didn’t cry out, which was surreal. Surely something flying through space should make a sound– but he cartwheeled towards the lobby in silence—for seconds, for minutes, for years.
When he hit the bottom and was ejected out onto the marble lobby floor, the spell was broken, and I ran to him, calling out for an ambulance. I knelt over his splayed body–his eyes open but dazed, uncomprehending— as blood seeped from his forehead. His glasses were bent askew but still on his face, as if the glasses had been in a car accident without him and would need to be taken to a body shop for repairs.
But no one called an ambulance. The hotel manager had countermanded my alarm until he could assess the situation. He was a corporate man with large eyes and a high forehead, well-versed in emergency protocol. Apparently, commercial establishments want to avoid flashing lights and emergency vehicles at their entrances.
Someone in the small crowd that had gathered speculated that the injured man was drunk, although I was thinking old. Did it matter? Did intoxicated mean he didn’t need help? I was 23 and had never had a drink in my life so I was uncertain. I also don’t think I’d ever tried to comfort a bleeding stranger.
I remember being embarrassed at the canceled ambulance as if I didn’t know my place. And it was true, I’d called out before I’d reached him, and my intention to help far outweighed any skills with which to do so.
This is often the case.
Last week, my grandchildren Maisy, Emerson, and I were heading to Five Below, where you can spend $50 in Below Five minutes, and a man delivering cases of water to some businesses on Melvin Avenue lost control of his dolly spilling water bottles all over the street just at the entrance to a major intersection.
The delivery driver was groping about in traffic for rolling bottles with cars veering dangerously around him in both directions. The first person to come upon him should have stopped traffic and gotten out to help, but since that person hadn’t, cars continued to squeeze past him attempting to make the light. I tried to stop but couldn’t pull over safely in the melee. Powerless to help, I was forced to drive on.
What do you do with the instantaneous desire to serve, which I think we all share, and the knowledge you can’t? I was meeting a friend for Happy Hour at the Chart House the other night. The wind whipped up white caps like ice had become air. It sliced right through my white puffy jacket as my boots rang out on the boardwalk over the water to the restaurant’s entrance. The sun sank orange-gold behind the drawbridge, sailboats next to the pier rocked on the winter waves, and the halyards sang. And, of course, I thought what everyone thinks as they approach a warm, waterfront restaurant where a friend you hope snagged a table by the fireplace is perusing the Happy Hour menu.
“If the lady in front of me fell into that ice water right now…. would I jump in to save her? Or look for a long stick?”
A gust of wind whipped my hair in my eyes, and I pulled my jacket tighter around me. What if my dog fell in? Would I jump in for Leah?
…What if it was Maisy?
Who would I dive in for?
I used to hope that this was not an indictment of love but an exploration of courage. Currently, I’m contemplating a new theory.
I wonder if “what-would-I-do” scenarios come to mind because we are inundated by injustice, violence, and innocent victims—about which we can do nothing. Students pinned down by active shooters, cries coming from under bombed buildings, terrified little girls pleading into cellphones amidst gunfire, “Can’t you come get me?”
Maybe we test ourselves to be sure we’re ready to serve because we want to serve, should service ever be an option. Because the burden of our helplessness is crippling. If you’ve ever loved anyone, the child crying for help is your own, and the brother under the rubble is your own, and the mother, father, sister, wife held hostage, left wounded or perhaps starving, is your own.
In the book Sapiens, historian and science writer Yuval Noah Harari documents the evolution of man from the first multicell organism to now. Our destiny, he determines, is that of so many bright and beautiful species before us. We are time limited. Given the current trajectory of our evolution, we have, at best, a thousand years.
Where do you put the grief of your powerlessness?
Wherever you can.
Maybe you run to the old man who has fallen with a call to action no one will follow. You park in a crosswalk and scramble to help the delivery man on his knees in a busy street.
You hope that the desire to serve serves in some way as you throw off your jacket and take off your shoes.
You pray evolution is not done with us yet.
You dive in.
Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.
Wilson W Wyatt Jr says
What an excellent, relatable description of the concerns and feelings of so many of us today. We’re all evolving through this life journey as best we can, and it helps to stop and visualize where we are in the Time continuum…along the way. Laura Oliver’s writing shines.
Laura J Oliver says
Thank you, Wilson. As you know, this column started with you. I’m so glad we share both a sensibility and a time continuum.
Kate LaMotte says
Thank you for sharing this thoughtful piece. There is an interesting book that touches on this topic, Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices and the Urge to Help, by Laura Farquar. In it, she describes several examples of those rare people living lives of “extreme ethical commitment” and tells their stories.
I also remember touring the plantations outside New Orleans in the mid-80s and have often wondered if the tours of those plantations that still stand (despite frequent Gulf hurricanes) have been updated to reflect a broader, more enlightened and ultimately more historically accurate telling of what made those plantations work — i.e., human enslavement and all its horrors. During two trips since to the Big Easy, it never crossed my mind to suggest a plantation tour — are plantations still a popular tourist destination?
Laura J Oliver says
What an interesting book, Kate. Thank you for sharing. I’ll definitely look for it.
As for plantations, your thought is mine as well. I too, wondered what the current status is of the “plantation” tourist industry. How has it changed? Hoping it has. Thanks for writing!
parsons says
I like this story. Thank you!
Laura J Oliver says
And I like hearing that you did! Thanks!
Michael Pullen says
It takes courage just to be who we truly are. Opportunities surround us everywhere, every day. It’s just these moments that define us. We run to them to embrace these moments because we need to know ourselves; we need to know we’ve done our best.
And if we miss one, another presents itself. Another chance to become who, deep inside, we know ourselves to be. It is love.
Thank you for another great story.
Laura Oliver says
Michael, your comments are always so insightful and thoughtfully crafted. Thank you for reading and sharing.
Patrick says
Patrick Bushby
2/24/24
This is an experience I’ve never fully written of until now, in response to Laura Oliver’s thoughtful and exigent question posited in her article following my response here.
*
INSTINCT, Laura Oliver.
Certainly the will to act may be tempered by the ability to act.
So much of it is luck and happenstance.
By the time I was twenty-two years old, on two separate occasions, I had to dive down into frigid waters and pull up from the depths, two drowned men. No chance of survival for those two. They had been, unseen, underwater for too long.
At age 18, as I was driving at the 45 mph speed limit around a blind curve, three preteen boys were playing in the middle of the highway. They froze on the spot.
Instinctively, I swerved around them, just clearing them as I swung back, clipping the front end of a large, yellow dump truck.
It threw me across the highway, shattering my legs, shoulders, arms, ribs and lacerated my face to the tune of over one hundred stitches.
I carry the scars and ambulatory disability of that instant, to this day.
I would not change a thing considering the horrific alternative.
I acted instinctively, though, with zero time to consider otherwise.
In my forties, I had bought a new boat.
I was working on it below decks at our local marina.
As is often the case, squads of ducks and large geese flop around the boats noisily as was the case that day.
But it kept on for a just moment longer before my brain registered a difference.
There were no quaking noises as is the norm.
I scrambled above deck to find an submerged elderly woman, flailing helplessly beside my boat.
I grabbed my newly mounted orange life-ring, jumped in old school lifeguard style, feet first and splayed apart, arms out in a cross, both catching air, keeping my head above water so as not to lose sight of the drowning victim.
I slung the life ring over her, pulling her up through the ring.
She was both spitting up water and gasping for air as I wrapped my arm under her and the ring.
Then I received one of the biggest shocks of my life.
It was my mother. 😳
She was wide eyed and panicked, not a swimmer, struggling against me as I pulled her to the swim platform, aft of my boat to the new, unwrapped boat ladder.
I repeated as calmly as I could, “I’ve got you Mom; I’ve got you.”
She was crying now, shaking from the cold. It was early morning, just past seven.
No one around to help with
Phase two: untying the heavy duty plastic ties then dropping the ladder down and attempt to haul her up into the boat and render trauma first aid.
I had to hold her above water with one arm while I grappled with the stubborn ties with my “free” hand.
Fortunately, as I did in those
days being often on deck and around sailboats and cruisers like mine, I carried a survival fixed blade rescue knife for just such an emergency.
SOP for sailors; if you or a shipmate get tangled in, say – an anchor line as it is released(a not uncommon occurrence aboard ship) you’ve got a few seconds to grab, cut and release with a cool head, or you are going down.
I unsheathed my razor sharp knife, cutting the half dozen ties as my Mom, continued struggling against her momentary best interest. Finally cutting the ties, I sheathed the knife and began phase three of the Coast Guard training I received working on cruise boats.
Holding on to my mom with her shoulders draped in the ring
I crab crawled up the five step ladder swung my feet in, and after three attempts gauging her sodden, fully clothed weight, I leaned back with
all of my strength, pulling her aboard.
She was crying, embarrassed she had fallen in. In the first thirty seconds as I wrapped her in a heat blanket, she made me swear not to tell anyone.
Which, having successfully warmed, dried her off, fed her hot soup and tea, spending the night with her to make sure she was her old rambunctious self,
I never did.
Until now.
She passed at age ninety-four, twenty-five years after the event.
Often, I mourn the two I couldn’t save, though I know there was zero chance for that.
The answer Laura, is timing, opportunity, ability, luck and not a little praying as you engage.
I was so fortunate four out of the six times I was called
to help.
So very fortunate.
I have never written about all of this; it seems like someone else’s story.
I’m grateful I was a sailor, athlete, and young enough to execute in the moment.
I’m shaking a bit myself now. 😔
Laura J Oliver says
Glad you were inspired, Skip. (And survived!)
Jeff Staley says
Laura,
What a magnificent topic to cover…the desire to serve. There are many among us who are now consumed not by a desire to serve, but by a desire to win, a desire to command, a desire to correct those with whom we disagree, a desire to redesign the state of things despite our reputed commitment to “freedom.” I have read about many situations that caused me to say, “so what would I do?” Since I think of myself as “one of the good guys on earth.” I invent a scenario in which I intervene to ensure the outcome is as positive for all involved as possible. Clearly, these are fantasies, but I like to think I am just a bit more prepared to meet future challenges for having thought about it. “If you have ever loved anyone, a child who cries out is your own.” There is no question I would risk my life to save my children, or anyone else’s for that matter. We are genetically programmed for that response. But, I would like to think I am prepared to meet harder challenges and not succumb to a sense of powerlessness. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Change takes a long time, but it does happen. Let’s not succumb to a sense of powerlessness, but use our efforts, monetary contributions and votes to bend the arc of our wonderful country toward justice and liberty for all. Justice and liberty for some is not enough.
Laura Oliver says
Jeff, what a great letter. Yes, I think, however irrational it might be, we do feel as if we are preparing to serve, and are perhaps more able to serve, by imagining how we might do so. Ultimately, the ways you identify, while devoid of a lot of flash, are the tried and true, and emotionally mature ways to help make this world a better place. Thanks for that clarity and for writing.
Sandy Brown says
HI Laura.. truly moving and maybe this relates to my turtle saving escapades.. which get ready people.. its upon us soon!
Laura J Oliver says
Thanks, Sandy, and yes! Turtle saving is no less part of the impulse to protect, save and serve!