Crying child

I was at the hospital Tues for a check up and was sent for blood work. When I arrived at the lab- a small room with 2 technicians- there was a small girl inside the lab room screaming. I could see her father sitting in the chair holding her, utterly silent as the techs tried making her arm straight as she screamed. The tiny room has no table and is not at all set up in any way for children to have blood drawn. And so as the chairs filled outside in the hallway, we listened like prisoners in our own mental cells as one of us was being tortured, silent and upset. We were next, we could not intervene, though some quiet comments were made.
It was not callousness that upset me, everyone seemed upset, some more for the extra long wait as this girl was inconsolable trying to hold her arm against herself. I guess maybe white women think differently about children, their own or others. I began digging in my bag for anything to offer the tech or father to distract her. She was crying so hard she was gasping. This just went on and one, the techs, the father all focused on a tiny vein, ignoring the pleas and screams, and the first attempt went wrong as a collective cry came up, they reached for paper towels and withdrew whatever they had done. And began again to plunder their way around to get blood. The hallway was standing room only. By this time after over half an hour of listening to this girl cry and no one doing anything, I went from digging for something for her, to digging for tissues because the tears were running uncontrolled down my face. When this happens it useless to try not crying, it just keeps coming in waves. A couple of people noticed and looked at me like what a jerk and said nothing. All lower income, english as a second language-does this sound racist? its a fact of life-because where I live kids are left to scream themselves silly, they're kids! About the only thing a parent may do is give a smack and tell them to shut up. There's nothing like whacking a crying child, because they're crying and telling them to stop crying while hitting them more....you see the circle I'm sure.
Working in a university I had a number of students over the years who came in for work study and were in various states of emotional and financial distress. I learned more about my colleagues during these incidents than if I had taken a PhD in psych. I was questioned once for feeding a student about my 'relationship' with her (me, a mother of 3 daughters) and one young woman had asked if she could store her 3 shopping bags in our office storeroom, she had just become homeless and without family had no where else to ask or turn. There didnt seem to me to be a question here, these were bags of clothes, it was temporary and she was a student-and our work study student, we help her and be quiet about it, and more so, ask her what else we can do...food? pocket money? where are you sleeping?
It turned out these were not matters for anyone but student services and all they did was make mental health referrals.
This may read like a jump, but something happened last night while watching TV. You know when you cant find a word and then move on, it will come flying by when you least expect it? This is what happened, out of nowhere like it was waiting for the right opportunity I had a freakin flashback to elementary school.
I recall sexualized behavior pre-1st grade. With after school programs, day camp staff, neighbor boys, a female cousin-Decades ago it was considered normal for kids to play 'doctor or house' and touch one another.
I suddenly was aware that for me sexuality was the mamalushen but where did I learn this at such a young age? Is this something innate in girls, we flirt with boys and men to get what we need and want? Is this the normal course or was this an abberation of abuse I cant recall as my childhood remains mostly blank.
Thinking of how my mother's generation manipulated men into marriage by pregnancies or sexual blackmail, thinking of how life in the Middle East for women remains exactly this way to this day, its honestly stunning to me that this appeared to plainly and suddenly like newton's apple on my head...and of course its no news at all. Egyptians say, "P@ssy runs the world..." and Egyptian women exploited that mentality while tearing their hair and hearts out at the betrayals and grief done woman by women.

So this note began with a crying child...it may have nothing at all to do with early abuse, but somehow sexuality is involved. My mother's overt indiscretions so lacking in sexual nuance served to teach me you just do whatever is needed, to get where you gotta go. Right after my father died, she sold the apartment of antiques and moved to her mother's house in Jersey. I returned after a year in Israel, running pillar to post and went to work doing the only thing I knew, cooking. I became a 'grillman' at a luncheonette in the small town where everyone knew everyone, folks all went to the HS football games in the center of town, people got their morning paper and coffee at the luncheonette and the owner was a rotund frey Jew married to a huge blond non Jewish woman. One morning while unloading stock delivered in the back, my boss came in and pushed me into the bathroom panting and pleading with me to have sex. The type of sex he requested was the variety that President Clinton claimed is NOT sex, a type I was unfamiliar with. My concern at age 19, fatherless and penniless was keeping the hard found job. Each day he picked me up, dropped me home and my mother began hinting "J--has a crush on you I think" One day after numerous ongoing pleas from him I asked her what to do. This was the first time ever I spoke to my mother about a man in such a way. She chuckled and told me men ask for these things all the time and if that's all he wants, make him pay for it. Let him get you an apartment, pay the rent and take care of you. In short, be a whore. I trotted back to him not expecting anything and he quickly found me an lovely small apartment, increased my salary, paid my rent and said the same thing Clinton did, its not really sex. I've read and heard this same idea from Jewish men, if you dont have intercourse, you havent had sex...seems its a Talmudic concept that excuses alot of behavior.
G-d protects orphans, widows and fools...at the time I fit into 2 out of 3 categories and so after purchasing a small motorcycle, I crashed driving it to my little nest and was laid up for weeks with a crushed meniscus and no health insurance. Lots of time to read and think. Thinking as been the bane and savior of my life. It was clear that I was not my mother's child but my father's and had to find a path for my life that was not dependent on manipulation and sexual exploitation for success. I thought becoming chassidic was the answer. I probably needed some grief counseling about my father's death and sudden homelessness...yes I know what triggered all this crapola last night, I was watching as Carrie Bradshaw (Sex in the City-my first time seeing this really out of date series) was in Paris thinking Baryishnikov had taken her there as his lover and muse and it was all a romantic dream, love would conquer any difficulties. But it was not her place...NY was home, her base, her people. That being a script and Carrie being a fictious woman was rescued by her American man who just happened to be driving by as she was crying by a fountain, bereft and forgotten once again by the artiste she thought loved her more than his art, more than himself or at least as much as himself...isnt that how love is supposed to be? We love the other as we would want to be loved? But Love doesnt think about itself that way--ideally it works out that way, it happens because that how love works, we do 100% because we love, not for an apartment or a trip to Paris or for our rent to be paid.
I am dealing with so much physical pain, with adult children who are actively choosing now to withdraw from speaking with me. So that watching Carrie, out of place, touched a nerve. It may be that as I was searching as my father's daughter to find a place, the same crying child continues to resonate wherever I look, be it women abused in Egypt or Crown Heights, around the corner in the neighbors yard, in a lab having blood drawn, what I lack is the ability to differentiate the nuances of abuse, and frankly while it is a difficult way to live in this world, I would not change my ability to grieve so deeply. I've come to realize it is only with G-d's help I can learn how to temper and manage what feels unspeakably painful all around me. Without meaning to sound sanctimonious...it really is a hard learned lesson that has to be pounded in daily and that hammer is prayer, tehillim, learning. This must be what its like being an alcoholic, minute by minute, hour by hour..cant let your guard down, there's always a child out there crying and I always seem to be the one who hears her.