Saturday Morning West Coast Re-Post

I got nothing. I clicked on one of those LinkWithin thingees at the bottom of my posts yesterday, though, and pulled this up. It made me laugh, and lord knows, I need those.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Extreme Parenting and Teeth Brushing

After my shower this morning, and while I brushed my teeth, I started thinking about parenting. My father sent me and my sisters the article about how French parents are better parents, and I read it with a sigh and then deleted it. I saw it pop up on Facebook and then on blogs and now it's a book or something and everyone is talking about it and it's making a million dollars while legions of American parents, mainly mothers, are debating again whether they're doing it right or doing it wrong. I'm going out on a limb this morning to say that these debates bore me to no end, in the same way that I'm bored by the agonizing over breast-feeding or Tiger mother parenting or working mothers versus non-working mothers and all the rest of it. I'll admit to possessing one of the ultimate trump cards (parenting a disabled child which makes nearly every other kind of parenting sort of a walk in the park, as they say), but I'll also admit that my parenting Sophie is a walk in the parkcompared to the parenting of the Sophies of Bangladesh, perhaps, or the myriad children all over this country and the world that are far sicker or more involved, and while I know it's all relevant, in some ways it's not. There's perspective for one, and my belief that it's my responsibility to have some. Do I begrudge the writing of another blockbuster book about the parenting tribulations of the upper classes? Am I jealous? These are the things I thought about as I paid special attention to my back molars, dreading the visit to the dentist on Monday and the tut-tutting of the hygienist when she asks whether I've flossed since my last visit. I started thinking about the self-esteem wars -- important for our children to have it or not important? -- and that led to the giving out of trophies for nearly everything and how that sends some parents into a parenting tizzy. What are the repercussions of a child receiving a trophy when he's an abysmal athlete?  That thought segued into my own son Oliver's collection of trophies, half of which are not his, but which he acquired at a yard sale down the street when an unfortunate married couple went through a terrible divorce and divested themselves of nearly everything they owned. You can read about that here. I have one of those electric toothbrushes that buzzes and changes subtly every thirty seconds and while I usually only brush for 23 or so seconds, today with all this heavy thought, I got to the two minute mark and was awarded with an extended vibration and a smiley face on the panel. I thought about that, too, and how here in America, the U, S of A, we're given pats on the back for brushing our teeth for two minutes.

Saturday Morning West Coast Re-Post

Here's a bit of an update from Silent House (silent because The Brothers are not here), and then I'll post something I wrote on the old blog years ago. Sophie is doing all right these days -- having more seizures than she was having in past months but still dramatically fewer than before Charlotte's Web. We continue to believe it's not because of a "tolerance" for the medical marijuana but, rather, a need for a higher ratio oil. We tried the THCa for a bit, but we didn't notice much of a difference, so we stopped that and are waiting to hear what the next harvest brings us. Sophie has always been exquisitely sensitive -- as many people with epilepsy are -- to changes in their environment and to medication. It's not too big of a leap for my tired brain to imagine she actually needs the higher ratio oil in order to get maximum seizure protection. But, as Sophie's old osteopath, the estimable Dr. Viola Frymann used to say, We shall see. 

I've written before that my favorite book in the bible is probably Ecclesiastes and that's mainly because it seems almost Buddhist in its incantations. I've actually memorized my favorite lines:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity! What does man gain by all the toil by which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness, a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.

I don't know about you, but that passage gives me comfort -- it's that acknowledgement of one's relative insignificance in the grand scheme of things that makes me feel not just relief but gratitude to even be here at all. As I wrote that out, though, I felt a tiny pinprick of fear that I generally don't feel -- and that has much to do with the environmental degradation of our planet, how the phrase the earth remains forever could very possibly be presumptuous.

Anywho.

Here's the re-post of an old post:

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Changed by a Child

You know how when you're ambling around, sipping a cup of coffee from Starbucks, sitting in the driver's seat of the car with the door open and not wanting to get out because the sun is shining perfectly on your face and outstretched leg that's perched on the handle of the door and you know that inside are unmade beds and bills piled up and the thought, forever lodged, about what to do with Sophie, about Sophie, for Sophie.

Well, five minutes ago, there I sat. And I sighed (there's nothing like a good sigh), stood up and out of the car and went inside. When I checked my email, one of my dearest friends had sent me this on Facebook, and if that isn't what Jung calls "synchronicity," I don't know what is.

Accommodation by Barbara Gill

A relentless southwest wind blows in the Laramie Range of Wyoming. It has blown for eons, scraping the mountains bare of soil, carving out the landscape. It causes trees to grow at an angle and lifts into the air things that ought to stay on the ground. It complicates all manner of human activity. People who live there successfully have reached an accommodation with the wind; some who couldn't went insane.

Disability is a steady west wind in our lives. It permeates our existence, altering the topography of our days and causing our families and our life to grow at an angle. Without judging the wind as good or bad, we can observe the truth of it, acknowledge the force of it in our lives, and take the measure of our accommodation.

Saturday Morning West Coast Re-Post

I've obviously long since forgotten about the following post, but it popped up the other day and made me laugh. It's hard to believe that I've been blogging so long -- and where the blogging has taken me. I'll thank all of ya'll for that --

Friday, December 5, 2008

Yams

I've been wondering all day what and how much to post. I just got up off of Sophie's bed where I've been lying for a half hour or more, curled around her. She had had a bunch of seizures and I was trying to somehow breathe calm into her. When I closed my eyes I started reciting the Hail Mary prayer over and over but instead of saying "pray for us sinners," at the end I said, "pray for Sophie." I also visualized us, together, flying through the air and could swear that I saw something golden behind my shut eyes. What it was kept escaping me but I knew it had something to do with the words shook foil which I think is a line from a poem. But I'm not sure. It was a beautiful image.

So I had that to post but I really wanted to title the piece "Yams" because of a conversation I overheard last night while waiting for Mark Doty to read his poetry at the downtown public library. Mark Doty is one of my favorite writers of late -- his memoir Heaven's Coast is a touchstone for me, and I was thrilled to see him and listen to his poetry and wise, warm comments about poetry and life. But before the show started (and he read with two other poets), I sat in my seat and couldn't help but eavesdrop on the conversation behind me. I knew the women were on the edge of the end of middle age or already a few years into whatever comes after middle age. I knew this by the sound of their voices and later, when I looked, I was right. But I digress because here's the conversation I heard:

Lady #1: "I'm so sorry that we didn't make dinner beforehand."
Lady #2: "Oh, don't worry."
Lady #1: "No, I feel bad. Why don't you come over afterward for a yam?"
Silence
Lady #1 (again): "I had half a yam this afternoon but have the other half leftover. You can have the rest.
Silence
Lady #3: I do love a yam.

I found the image above on a google search, and weirdly enough it led me to a site called the Yam Art Museum. What are the chances of stumbling on something so strange and wonderful if I didn't have a blog?

And when I checked google for "shook foil," I got this which I knew I knew from somewhere:

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.


And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

- Gerald Manley Hopkins

Saturday Morning West Coast Re-Post

I stumbled upon this blog post from a few years ago, and while the circumstances are different today (and largely unbloggable,) the post spoke to me:

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Trapeze Artistry and Humor

I think it was Mark Twain who said that behind all humor is sorrow.

I believe that.

I have a good sense of humor, actually, a superb sense of humor. An old boyfriend once told me that I was the person for whom humorists wrote. I liked that comment, felt flattered by it. I guess that means that I appreciate a good humorous anything, although I admit to wanting it tinged with a bit of intelligence (I do hate those gross-out movies and slapstick was never much for me). I giggle like a girl at a couple of my friends' incessant silly jokes (they both write for television), and I don't think sorrow is behind their humor.

My sense of humor can be as dark as it gets and is often the only thing that sustains me. I would add faith in there as well, but I think it's more a faith that God provides something for me to laugh at or see the absurdity of, just when I need it.

I laugh, therefore I am.

That was a riff, I think, on Descartes, but it's Pascal that I really love. I studied Pascal as an undergraduate when I worked on an arduous double degree in English and French literature. I despised French, except for some medieval stuff and, particularly, Pascal.

If I saw no signs of a divinity, I would fix myself in denial. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I would repose peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to deny Him, and too little to assure me, I am in a pitiful state, and I would wish a hundred times that if a God sustains nature it would reveal Him without ambiguity.
pensee no. 229

And what is all this about? I watched Sophie have what seemed like hundreds of seizures today -- the small ones, the big ones, the drooling kinds, the physical jerking. Etc. I heard the voice of my Chinese doctor in my head along with all the mindfulness training advice and I tried, I really did, to remain calm and mindful, to go with the flow, to not be "attached" in that desperate sort of way. I can do these things, often in a powerful way, but I'm also aware of the thin, thin rope upon which I walk and sometimes hang like a trapeze artist, the rope that threatens to buckle then come loose, then probably snap if I let

it


it only takes one


misstep


and then



that's it.


I'm a wreck, instead of a balancing act.

Humor is peeled back and only sorrow shows.

Trapeze artists are in the circus, after all.

Saturday Morning West Coast Re-Post

Saturdays are slow, no? The next door neighbor's dog is yapping and yipping, The Brothers are arguing over television shows, Sophie is taking a morning nap, I have a pile of federal grants to read and review, there's a baseball game in a couple of hours and I guess I'll get dressed and get on with it.

Here's a post from a year or so ago that popped up today. I like it.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

What's given and what's handled

Is the ability to hold two opposing feelings and/or thoughts something that one is graced with or something that comes with time and experience and exposure? I don't know the answer, but I see it all the time in those who share the experience of caring for a child with disabilities or who have lost a child to illness. I can look at Sophie and grieve for the loss of "normalcy," but I can also exult in her being exactly the way she is. I can sorrow over the absurdity of changing a near-seventeen year old's diapers and marvel at the gift of intimacy that entails. My friend Jody's beautiful daughter Lueza suffered from severe cerebral palsy due to gross medical malpractice when she was born, and she died unexpectedly nearly a year ago at the age of sixteen, but Jody told me the other day that it was such an honor to have cared for her daughter so intimately for so many years. I'm not talking here about all that unconditional love blather, although trite expressions are trite for a reason. I'm heading toward an understanding of openness -- of what it means to be truly open to experience, to the relinquishment of false notions of power and control, to, dare I say it, Love. I wouldn't be able to live, one person might say, hearing of the death of someone's child.  I could never do what you do, another says, I just couldn't handle it. 

Contrary to what some might say, we're not given what we can handle. We're opening to handle what we're given.