Brother, Can You Spare a Fifth?

Last week, when we learned that a friend had severed his Achilles tendon and would be undergoing surgery, my husband’s immediate response was, “Wow, I’ll need to take him a bottle of Scotch.”

This reaction typifies the way many men “lend a helping hand”; Rich and his buddies gift bottles of booze when a friend undergoes anything from rotator cuff surgery to a vasectomy. They “help” the recently “downsized” and divorced in a similar fashion.

In contrast, after our friend Kimberly’s brain surgery last month, a battalion of some 40 women signed up for duty: delivering lattes, walking dogs, helping with shopping, chauffeuring kids, running errands, cooking meals and, as her recovery progressed, taking her out for brief lunches.

Kimberly’s rapid-response team was not unlike groups of ladies nationwide who organize to help friends who have lost loved ones, endured surgery, undergone chemotherapy or suffered a break up. In fact, an entire industry has formed to help women help others, with special calendars, how-to books and internet-based companies such as Lotsa Helping Hands, Caring Bridge and Share the Care.

So, is the assumption that when a woman is ailing, it takes a well-organized village to fill her shoes, but when a man is bed-ridden, all it takes is a good friend or two to keep his flask filled?

I’d hate to think our society has progressed so little. Do we really adhere to the June-and-Ward-Cleaver stereotype that offers up a husband needing slippers and a stiff drink after work, and a wife who handles every detail of home and family life, all while beautifully dressed and coiffed?

Please click here to read the rest of this blog at PermissionSlips (http://permissionslips.wordpress.com/) -- a blog written in collaboration with my friend and fellow Mercer Islander -- and consider the real motivation behind these acts of kindness.