A Sense of Humor

My Dad with Henry and my niece Mary
2006 and 2017

Humor keeps us sane. I’m in Hilton Head for the annual family “vacation.” It’s a whole lot of “fun” and a whole lot of family. Need I say more?

Speaking of humor, don’t forget to listen to this week’s episode of Who Lives Like This?! Jason and I have a great discussion with Sandra Stein about humor in caregiving — how to nurture it and how it can help in even the most challenging situations. Here’s the link

https://www.wholiveslikethispodcast.com/single-post/2018/07/31/Sandra-Stein

Hilton Head Family Vacation

I don't even know where to start! If what happened last night hadn't happened, I'd probably have titled this post Hilton Hell Family "Vacation" instead of the more prosaic Hilton Head Family Vacation. Because of last night's vote by the Senate to NOT repeal the Affordable Care Act, and because I only found out about it this morning when I woke up in Los Angeles, (much to my shock because when I went to bed it looked like it was going to be the opposite, and I did go to bed filled with anxiety and dread, much like I've gone to bed for the last six months), I would have had a harder time getting on the old blog not sounding bitter and angry. As long-time readers of the old blog know, there is some pretty hard-core partisanship in my immediate family, and things can get very testy. I have a mother who is half Syrian and a father who is full Italian. Let's just say that the three daughters are opinionated, our progeny vocal and we're all -- well -- passionate.

It's a beautiful house, but it's not big and all of us stay there. It's tight and it's raucous.

Long-time readers of the old blog know that every year my extended family meets for a week or so at my parents' home on Hilton Head Island. We've been doing this for over eighteen years, and the kids adore the experience. My experience is, let's say, less joyful, but that's because for the first decade or so I brought Sophie along and have a bit of PTSD, I think (if I were an atheist, I would have become one during "vacation" on Hilton Head Island with Sophie), as well as this aching feeling that she will never truly be a part of these kids' lives or memories. That's a big, complicated feeling that those of you in similar circumstances will probably understand better than those of you who might have the fleeting (and somewhat accurate) thought that I need some gratitude or awareness of my privilege or -- well -- whatever.

The Progeny

The kids are all getting so big, and despite the geographical distances between us (Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.), with social media and this annual get-together, the cousins remain remarkably close and are a joy to watch. Not only are they all, literally, beautiful, but they're also a kind and very funny bunch. We had many a laugh, particularly one night when we each used our Bitmoji characters and texted one another from the same room, with one text more clever than the next, all of us laughing so hard that we cried. 

O.K., I cried. 

I'm really proud to say that most believe my Bitmoji to look exactly like me:

Where was I?

The Big O with his drone

Genes are mighty strong

Family meals

The best-looking incoming freshmen in any university anywhere

My amazing 81 year old father with Henry

Beautiful Atlantic ocean

We're a big crowd on the beach (and those giant houses behind are not ours)

My sexy, adorable sister who fights in her home state for safer gun laws. You don't want to mess with her.

Look closely at what's in the lagoon right behind my parents' house. Scroll down for details.

I love this picture of me and my father. 

What I wore in lieu of actually screaming at every single person I saw in South Carolina that I suspected of being a Trumper

I showed them, right?

Ha. Just kidding. I felt desperate sitting out there on the hot beach, under a tent, watching our beautiful children play volleyball. I felt angry and nervous and anxious all afternoon on Tuesday, and when I checked my email and saw that the Senate was taking up the debate, that McCain had voted yes, I stood up and stormed off the beach and back to my room where I sat for the next hour, furiously dialing people through my Indivisible resistance app, speaking to constituents in West Virginia and Nevada. One 83 year old woman told me that she'd called Senator Capito every day for weeks, but she didn't think her voice mattered. I asked her to please call again, that her voice did matter. I hope it matters, I said. The calling helped me to feel sane and productive and less anxious, but can I tell you something? This whole thing has made me, generally not an anxious person, a very anxious person, often filled with dread and -- yes -- anger. The thing is that it's not only about me, about Sophie -- it's about so many of the people I've met over the last couple of decades and what I've learned about community and disability and vulnerable people. It's existential.

My beloved sons and I in the best light of the day

In the lagoon behind my parents' house

It was also Henry's 19th birthday, so we celebrated by going to a Mexican restaurant.

I won't show you the picture that my brother-in-law took of the my sistahs and I shooting birds into the camera. As Mary said when I showed her, I'd party with ya'll.

Speaking of Mary, I hope you wish her a happy birthday because today's her birthday and I love her to pieces.

What else?

I arrived back on the left coast and walked down the baggage claim and out into the not-humid Los Angeles air and to my love.

Waking up this morning to the good news -- well -- it was awesome. I know we'll still have to fight, but I'm ready and willing. The relief that I don't have to worry that Sophie's health insurance will be ripped away or her access to MediCal messed with, at least for now, is indescribable.  The Turtle put his head back in the shell, 45 is still tweeting insanities, and we've got a dude in charge of 45's communication who seems like he stepped out of the show Entourage. There's a lot going on, right?

It's Hot

and it's about to get even hotter. The boys and I are leaving for Hilton Hell tomorrow morning. While I'm looking forward to seeing my family, I am not looking forward to the heat of South Carolina. It's toasty here in southern California, but I've become a weather wimp since I moved here nineteen years ago, and the southern humidity kills me. Despite the beauty of the east coast, I swear I have PTSD from the decade I spent dragging Sophie there once a year. I'm not going to belabor it as I have before, but suffice it to say that if I were an atheist, I was converted to one during one of those weeks. I hate to say it, but I'm just sayin'.

No offense to you liberal southerners, but I'm also dreading seeing the bumper stickers, the posters, the Confederate flags -- you know the rest. Yeah, I know we've got Drumpfers out here in Californee, but they generally stay hidden. Did you know that someone built a tiny wall around Drumpf's star on Hollywood Blvd? It was built by an artist named Plastic Jesus, and there are tiny American flags flying at each corner. I have actually never even seen a Drumpf bumper sticker in the wild. I might live in a bubble out here, but it's extra nice in an election year. I'm not certain if any of the people with whom I will be fraternizing  next week in South Carolina are voting for Drumpf, but I intend to stay slightly buzzed all week and not say a word. 

On a more pleasant note, rumor has it that California might organize and build a wall along its eastern border if Drumpf is actually elected. My friend Sylvia suggested that Jerry Brown can be the first President. Oregon and Washington can be included, which would solve the water problem. Since we're the sixth biggest economy in the world, I'm thinking it could work. Names floating around for the new country are: CalGone and CalExit. I'm thinking Calorewash.

What do ya'll think? Too much levity? Shall I be more serious?

Pacific and Atlantic

Yesterday, Oliver and I swam in the Pacific, me up to my waist in blue water with seaweed wrapped around my ankles and Oliver all the way in, laughing and sputtering. The beach was an uncharacteristic gray yesterday, but the water was the perfect temperature -- the kind of cold that takes you a moment to acclimate to but then restores to what, for me, I imagine is my primitive, free self. The Pacific is infinitely colder than the Atlantic, at least the Atlantic of the south, and much of the year it's frigid cold, but in August and September, it's just about perfect. I've morphed into a Californian, and my boys are natives. Oliver agreed with me that the ocean in Hilton Head, where we most recently submerged ourselves, is more like a bathtub than anything else, and while that easy, gentle warmth is relaxing, the bracing blue of the Pacific is what we really love. And there are no jellyfish! Oliver shouted to me, over the roar of the surf.

Forgetting Rain

I'd almost forgotten what rain is like in the late afternoon -- what it sounds like coming down through the moss of the live oaks, the sun shining even as thunder rolls. The devil is beating his wife.

The temperature doesn't drop so much down here in the south, even when it rains, but there is relief all the same.

These days are "vacation" to me, but to the children, they are rich in mayhem and chaos. Their happiness and obvious enjoyment of one another is beautiful. 

I hope it rains again today.

Vacation Subtext

Hot and humid
Alligators
Family

I couldn't call it a day without replacing those raptor-headed women on the previous post with these lovely children

Home from camp for less than 24 hours, Oliver was already outside in our yard, watering the lemons and vegetables. We have a serious drought going on, if you hadn't heard, and we're obeying water restrictions. That's why our lawn looks so awful. I wish I could enlist someone to do a complete overhaul of our front and back yards -- make them drought resistant. Maybe we'll do it ourselves in a grand, homeschool-style effort this fall.

Henry and I went to see the movie Boyhood the other evening and then took a bunch of photos on the top of the Arclight Cinemas parking garage. The glorious sunset helped to mitigate the obliteration I felt watching the film. It was incredibly beautiful and interesting, and I haven't gotten around to writing a three-line movie review, but I will. Here's what the sky looked like:

And here's Henry's hand in the sky:

I'm going to miss those boys. They're leaving tomorrow for a trip to my parents' house in Atlanta and then onward to Hilton Head Island. We've been joking all night on when they might catch sight of a person carrying a gun -- legally -- in either state. Good Lord. I will join them for a few days next week, but this house is going to be quiiiiiiiiieeeeettttt, for sure.

Dear Delta,

As I ready myself to join the boys and the rest of my family -- my sisters and their husbands, the cousins, the nieces, the nephews, my parents, etc. -- for our annual trek to South Carolina at my parents' house in Hilton Head, I am reminded of the letter that Oliver wrote earlier in the spring. I used to take Sophie to this "vacation" (and I put the word in quotes because it's so NOT a vacation) every year -- did so for a decade -- but it was like going to hell on earth.

At best, I called it my life in a different location, a location with none of the accommodations and routines that we rely upon to stay sane.

At worst, it was four scary plane rides, the expectation that I would have to change a diaper in the airplane bathroom, endure the looks and stares of countless people as Sophie hummed, agitated, a week of no sleep, grotesque humidity, Sophie's seizures, Sophie's accidents (she split her head open, cracked a tooth, fell a number of times with minor head injuries), my own resentment that everyone's life went on as normal while mine did not, and sheer loss and sorrow, magnified a million times over as only proximity to extended family can provoke. 

Don't call me dramatic.

I now go to Hilton Head and join my boys and family for a shorter period of time and leave Sophie at home with her father. It's better all around, an easier loss to bear, at least for me. What I didn't expect -- or failed to realize -- is the effect of all of this on my boys and their desire to travel -- together -- as a family, including Sophie. We often overlook the profound impact of disability on siblings, the ongoing impacts -- both seen and unseen. When Oliver's teacher sent me a copy of the following letter, it hit me like a sledgehammer -- but not hard enough to make me change our plans and drag Sophie back east, again.

However, if Delta would kindly reply to this letter from Oliver, we might possibly venture back east again as a family. 

Dear Delta,

Hi my name is Oliver and I am in the 6th grade. I am 12 years old and I have 2 siblings. One of them is my brother Henry who is 14 years old and in 8th grade and my sister Sophie who is 18 and is severely disabled and has seizures almost every day. Me and my family love to go on vacations but we have to leave Sophie behind. It's not like we don’t want to bring her it's because the plane rides are just not right for her. There is not enough room for her to spread her legs and the hard surfaces are bad because she will hit her head on them and I think you know the rest of that story. So I have been thinking for a long time about making a handicap accessible plane for people like my sister and for people that are elder or have some kind of a disability. I love delta airlines but I think that this would be a huge jump for your company. I am not doing this to be famous or be rich I am doing this for people like my sister and how they might never get to experience or go anywhere on this magnifsent planet that we call earth so pleas delta pleas make this dream of mine come true.                                                                                                                                     Sencerly, Oliver.B

Saturday

Let the Day Go


            who needs it
I had another day in mind
something like this one
              sunny green the earth
just right having suffered
the assault of what is called
torrential rain the pepper
the basil sitting upright
in their little boxes waiting
I suppose for me also the
cosmos the zinnias nearly
blooming a year too late
forget it let the day go
the sweet green day let it
take care of itself

Grace Paley
   

Hilton Head Island

It's hot.