Confessions of a failed fixer
by Stephanie Piper
It's pushed to the back of the closet rack, buried under a navy-and-yellow rep and a maroon paisley. It's a red silk bow tie patterned with tiny, intricately drawn fly-fishing lures, and it's headed straight for the Goodwill box. Someone will buy it, and since it's never seen the inside of a shirt collar, someone will get a great deal.
On the other hand, maybe I should keep it—hang it on my mirror, or preserve it under glass. The tie is a token, and it binds me to an undeniable truth about myself. I'm a failed fixer.
I bought the tie to cheer someone who was feeling blue. He loves fishing, and it seemed an inspired choice. It didn't work. He didn't need a tie. He didn't need the perfect gift. At that moment, he didn't need anything except a little room.
Fixers abhor a vacuum, emotional or otherwise. They rush in, proffering fishing ties and petit fours, antique books, inspirational phrases, sound advice. Fixers do not let the sun set on your unresolved problem. If you are needy, they will come.
I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, sister, friend. I have had years to hone my fixing skills, and a sizable stage on which to practice them. I have whipped up impossible Halloween costumes at 5:30 p.m. on October 31, and I have crossed state lines at dawn to snag the sought-after Christmas toy the second it went on sale. I have gone out for poster board at midnight to complete the science project, and I have typed the history term paper. I have explained "Paradise Lost," because it was going to be on the test. I have explained teenage rejection, because it was the test. I have sent chocolate cakes wrapped like Waterford crystal to college dorms. I have conducted long-distance telephone therapy sessions with despairing siblings and convinced old college roommates that the biopsy would be negative. I have paid 162 parking tickets, none of them mine.
Not all of this is bad. Some of it might actually pass for generosity, or fidelity to duty. On a good day, a dose of compulsive care-giving might even alter a mood, or brighten a dark passage. But lately, I have come to believe that "generous to a fault" means just that.
The fault is the mistaken conviction that fixing is the same as helping. The fault is the subtle message fixers inevitably convey: You are broken, and I am not.
I had to be on the receiving end of this message before I finally got it. Struggling through a crisis, I found myself smothered by a fellow nurturer. She called. She wrote. She sent me spiritual advice by e-mail. I felt like a wounded bird, gasping for breath under an avalanche of stifling kindness.
I didn't want to be fixed and I didn't want to be rescued. I wanted someone to sit still, listen, and nod. I wanted to be with someone who had no answers at all, only a calm center.
I wanted the only comfort worth giving, the gift of a quiet heart.
April 25, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 17
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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