Personality Type and Tough Life Stuff
You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, by Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn is a realistic look about a sweet and hilarious marriage, and while I thought that it was just going to be funny, (which it was – they’re two comedic writers after all), they actually had to go through some very tough things very early in their marriage when their son was born with extreme birth defects.
Many people might assume that two people who are incapable of keeping a neat house would be ill-equipped to deal with crisis and stress. But Organic Freedoms and Smart Freedoms are a pretty darn good at dealing with the unexpected, even if they’re not as perfect at it as Funs.
Their child Ezra was born with a host of birth defects, known in the medical world as VACTERL. It’s an association of birth defects that are related — V for vertebrae, A for an unopen anus, C for cardiac defects, T for tracheoseophageal fistula or bad connection between the winpipe and food tube, E for esophogus not connecting to the stomach, R for renal (kidney) defects, and L for limb defects like missing or extra thumbs and fingers. So pretty sure poor Ezra had all of these except the L. What’s interesting is that Annabelle and Jeff proved themselves to be a formidable team when it came to taking care of Ezra and all his issues.
People who aren’t natural planners (Organic Freedoms and Smart Freedoms and Funs) are very good at handling unexpected surprises, um, like a child with serious birth defects. I’m not saying it’s easy for anyone to deal with such serious and difficult life and death matters, but out of all the type, the ones who can more easily take life as it comes and live in the moment are best equipped.
Annabelle and Jeff supplemented their natural proclivity in handling disaster with a generous dose of therapy and SSRI’s but they have a very sweet, talented and lovely young son on their hand, so they did something very very right. Plus they’re still married, and I suspect rather happily. This quote about dealing with crisis made me laugh out loud and is very telling of a Smart Freedom:
“One of the unexpected side effects of having a kid with a chronic medical condition is that you are always primed to leap into crisis management mode at the smallest sign of trouble, so when Ezra was in the kindergarten and he yelled from his bedroom, “Mom, my tooth fell out,” I screamed, “Oh my God, Jeff, his tooth fell out; let’s go to the hospital!” I was already herding a confuse Era into the car before I remembers that young children’s teeth are supposed to fall out.”