*
Taking care of others and receiving care are key parts of social life, sticking with us throughout our lives (Barnes, 2012). Most English dictionaries define “to care” as “serious attention or consideration,” “to attach importance to something,” “to provide the needs of,” and “to feel concern or interest.” We’ll see later that these ideas are also found in the medical field. Ha. However, this literature often limits “care” to social activities like bathing, feeding, and dressing, leaving out health. But the line between health and the care for it isn't always so clear.
*
If you went looking for me in my visage, I’d be somewhere in the space between the right retina and my left eye socket. Vulnerable in how sharp. Raw-boned and menaced, the loneliness of supportability is tinged with the hunger for a hug, the crimson out of a pen fresh out of the factory. I’m in the miasma of its disuse. Rubbing alcohol’s still dissatisfying. A needle, the acceleration of its sliding into torment. A bottle of pills clatters against the drum of a second thought.
*
Care has become a hot topic in almost every society (Kröger, 2009: 399), especially when it comes to caring for older people. With populations getting older, there’s a worry about a “caring deficit” —which means that soon, there might not be enough caregivers to look after the increasing number of dependent older adults (Tronto, 2013). As populations move across the globe in search of a safe refuge (as climate, political, and religious refugees), families, healthcare systems, and policymakers are all grappling with how to provide adequate care to all of those who might need it. The fear is that without enough caregivers, many adults, as well as children, might not get the help they need, leading to significant social and health challenges. This situation calls for innovative solutions and policies to ensure that all can be cared for properly.
*
One person sits on a couch, surrounded by a fluffy white blanket. Over the past two days it’s starting to darken, accumulating dust, shards of paper ripped out of notebooks, loose fragments of nothingness: lists, countdowns, mantras, prescriptions, half-finished sentences, obligations. The living room’s empty but for this piece of furniture. A dysfunctional fireplace lingers, with a mantlepiece topped with a candle, unlit. A computer’s sitting on the other end of the olive couch—it’s a TV for now. I shiver every three seconds. Dust coordinates into a PTA meeting after lunchtime, crossing over the ceiling. I protest. My voice croaks out of disuse. A frog hops across a pipe underground.
*
On the flip side, research on caring for older people has really taken off in recent decades (Phillips, 2007). Governments and organizations worldwide recognize the growing need to support the aging population, and they’re putting more resources into understanding and addressing this issue. This increased attention is leading to new insights and innovations in elder care, from better medical treatments and technologies to improved support systems and services. However, it’s not just older populations that need care. Younger populations, including children and young adults, also require significant care and support. Research into their needs is equally important, covering areas like early childhood development, education, mental health, and social services. For children, especially, care encompasses ensuring proper nutrition, healthcare, education, and emotional support to foster healthy development. Young adults, particularly those transitioning out of foster care or those with special needs, often need additional support. Programs and policies aimed at these younger groups are critical. Effective care for younger populations can prevent issues later in life, reducing the long-term burden on social and healthcare systems. Their lives, too. By investing in care across all ages, societies can create more comprehensive support networks that benefit everyone, from the youngest to the oldest folks. This approach to care ensures that the needs of all age groups are met, promoting social stability. Overall well-being is another question.
*
The walls, wooden. Stretching my index finger against the surface of a door, I’m liquid. Oil darkening this into something closer to gray, I’m the rainbow, too many months past Pride for remembrance. But the hills on the other side of a glass window, they’re becoming clearer. I can see the orange of them in a not-so-distant past, the ones I ran across when I needed a day to scream without being heard. Not so lazy. It takes half a second shorter to lift myself up off of where I’ve disintegrated, but there’s a pathway I’ve marked on the tile with the dust that’s flickering. The chandelier above my head, the accordion player from centuries ago, and the winemaker sitting on the kitchen table, all pour onto me too many glasses for antibiotics to resist and my eyes flicker. On top of my lids dust marches, as I drool into stickiness. The numbness that overtakes a body once pain has razed it of texture, it communicates with a force beyond language.
*
In research and policy, it’s widely recognized that care involves relationships, practical activities, love and affection, and responsibility (Phillips, 2007). On a bigger scale, care is about figuring out individual needs, informed by institutional research, historical. At the personal level, care is all about the connections we have with others and the everyday actions we engage in for each other. This includes the love and responsibility often found in family relationships. Or in friendship or alternative communal-based networks. Essentially, showing up for the particular ways someone is in need and helping out practically. At the societal level, care involves bigger questions like which organizations and systems should be in place to support these everyday acts. We must create structures and policies that ensure people get the care they need, whether it’s through healthcare systems, social services, or community programs. All levels are crucial for making sure everyone is healthy.
*
Open and flexible, when they’re healthy the lines connecting my knuckles to a wrist, they’re straight. Straight? Not exactly, but they wish they were as smooth as a river, rippling from one point to another. I’m levitating away from the ground floor. Flippering, I can’t focus on finishing a thought. Bony one moment, ribbed the next, blood shatters through eczema-ridden hands, cracking from a mismedicated cold. More than cold. Not sure where the trembling’s coming from, I may need to respond to emails. The doctor for my yearly appointment, I’ll miss her again. I need to send my invoices so I can be paid before visiting the local hospital. I can’t get around it; each task on my list’s a weight pressing me down into residue. Up’s too hard. Down, on my skull I can’t press, oh so soft. I stretch. Rotate each finger in a circle. I flick the tip of each against a table or a keyboard or a doorknob or a book or a nipple or a kitchen counter. Maybe making lunch will help slow it all down? But no, the bubbles, they’re still popping. There’s no known cure for the disillusionment of a self.
*
A perusal of the Merriam Webster dictionary reveals various interpretations of “care.” One definition emphasizes a sense of concern or interest, as exemplified by the phrase “I care about my friends’ well-being.” Alternatively, care is depicted as fulfilling the needs of others. Furthermore, the term extends to denote fondness or affection, as shown by the statement “I care for chocolate ice cream.” Evidently, the nuanced meanings of care underscore its contextual sensitivity and the range of possible applications. This variety of definitions leads to different findings, making it hard to compare studies and develop theories about how best to cultivate it. Is it something that needs to be encouraged, since birth? Can a knack for it be acquired? This lack of a consistent definition means that research results can vary widely, which complicates efforts to understand and improve caregiving practices. Regardless, community seems to be the glue holding the various meanings together.
*
Suppose I had never received care in my life. Anytime I experienced pain, I knew how to fix it. Sore throat? Cayenne pepper. Congested nose? Ginger. Shaky hands? An unexpected revelation. A shattered knee? Wrap it in gauze and don’t move it for 3 months. A swollen mouth? Ice. And so on. There was never any use for a professional to diagnose any of it. Only a pharmacy, where I could purchase cures; a clear line, between pain and its solutions, a break and the glue to twist it back into a line. Entirely self-sufficient aside from those who picked the medicines from the ground and those who sold it to me, I’d need no help at all. From a nurse or a doctor, a hospital or an emergency room, I could live entirely at the mercy of my attentiveness to my own body. What a dream. No more long waiting lines to be seen by a professional with an overbooked schedule. No need to put my ass on a dirty chair in a disorganized, tiny room without a window. No shaming of my body by having it weighed when weight’s irrelevant to finding out if I have herpes, or grabbed at by some assistant without asking when already I’m too weak to give a loud enough no, or an endless list of medications prescribed in names only a pharmaceutical company could come up with using AI, unpronounceable in human speech and in nature. What a dream, to avoid the hospital bills, the debt I get into if I ever need an ambulance without warning or the cost of a surgery that could prevent me from paying rent for months, force me to move back in with my parents. What a dream, to never have to smell a hospital again. That cross-section of disinfectant mixed with despair, the long hallways of white haunted by the taste of bubblegum-flavored cough syrup and needles dipped in antiseptic. The underside of a dirty nail, the sound of it against this glass window, the violence of a squeak without a break, masquerades the benefits of solitude into an incessant yowl. The pressure from the doctors, rushing rushing rushing, to find the mother to break a death to, a sister to bring to an operating room, for a drink from a water bottle before their next surgery; all on barely three hours of sleep—I’m not in the path of their too much. Still, it’s been days away from anyone and I can’t carry on for much longer. Nothing left to eat. I can’t really swallow. I’m imagining people who aren’t here. I can’t hold this all together. Every time I look into my phone, shards of light electrocute my eyeballs. Texting anyone’s an impossibility. I can’t maintain a phone call for long enough to convince them to leave me alone. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to see me, it’s that once they arrive I’ll need to find energy. I just can’t imagine where anymore could be stored, I’ve become emptier than a bottle of overturned shampoo. Why, when I’m sick, do I think of myself as a burden of a lump, nothing more? Nothing to offer. No conversation. No affection. No questions. No revelations. No gossip. No cooking. No walking. No cleaning. Nothing to offer. Nothing to offer. Nothing to offer.
I’m trapped by the transactional.
*
I need help, though. Establishing a robust understanding of the concept of care holds the potential for enhancing everyone’s resilience, as well as that of future generations. Such an action would not only facilitate a clearer understanding of the phenomenon but also emphasize the importance of reciprocity, of acts of exchange and interplay between individuals and their communities, medical professionals and patients. Furthermore, a comprehensive review of empirical research on care is invaluable and necessary. It would reveal existing gaps in knowledge and stimulate the identification of novel avenues for inquiry, enriching the scholarly discourse on the subject for the purpose not just of research but of real-world applications.
*
This might seem sort of random, but I had a transformative experience yesterday, when I visited a public clinic in Buenos Aires to get treated for how sick I’ve been. In the hospital everyone was super kind, there were clothes left out for homeless folks, art classes available, books for kids . . . It all ended in this moment when I asked Sofia, the nurse who treated me, how much the antibiotics would be, and she told me it would be completely free. I’ve never felt like I have at that moment, when I realized I actually didn’t need to pay anything for CARE. But I also earlier had chatted with her about the political situation here and in her eyes, when she told me about the antibiotics, it was clear she was implying it might not be the case for that much longer, because of the fascistic president here. Though there’s public healthcare in Japan where I grew up, a lot of my exposure to the medical system is the one from the United States, where everything costs so much money. If I’d gotten sick like this there, I would have had to make sure I could afford it that month, which I probably couldn’t; in any case, nothing about healthcare feels like care.
*
As a result of this experience at the clinic yesterday, it’s become obvious to me how the devaluing of public health as a result of so-called “neoliberalism” has created such an increase in paranoia; the feeling that we have to “pay” something to be “owed” consideration, care, and/or thoughtfulness—all because we’ve been lied to that we should value individualism.
*
Care is thought of as disposable, as if it’s a commodity, when it’s not.
