When Giving is All We Have

I've been in a self-absorbed rut.

Today is Giving Tuesday.

I'm no philanthropist and have difficulty with the philanthropy model, so much so that I've long given up fund-raising for medical charities, etc.  But today, on Giving Tuesday, I'm pulling my head out of my navel and raising money for a non-profit foundation that is particularly dear to my heart. It's the place where Sophie goes each day that she is able, a community of disabled young people and their aides or "coaches," who help them to access the community, to work, to be a part of something bigger than themselves and their diagnoses. The staff of Creative Steps/Aurelia Foundation expands these young people's lives and sees beyond their limitations, and it's a beautiful thing. They run on a shoestring budget, partially reimbursed by the State of California, but I learned yesterday that they also run on a consistent $350 a month per client deficit. I'm reaching out to you today to donate whatever you can to The Aurelia Foundation -- even a tiny amount is a good thing!

Here's Sophie's and my page:

Aurelia Foundation/Creative Steps





Here's a poem:

When Giving Is All We Have

       One river gives
       Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it —

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give — together, we made

Something greater from the difference. 

From “A Small Story about the Sky,” by Alberto Ríos (Copper Canyon Press, 2015). Reprinted with permission from Copper Canyon Press.

McMansions in Los Angeles: Curses and Imprecations, Part 2

So, in lieu of having a heart attack, I thought it might be more constructive to document the bullshit going on in our neighborhood. This morning, the 75 year old house directly behind us was razed to the ground in about two hours. Disgusting, right? Now the lovely people who are doing this are uprooting trees that line the three borders. I snapped that picture from the front of the used-to-be-1924-house -- it stood where you see all the dirt; that's the driveway that the guy is sweeping, that red peak is our garage on the other side of the fence. At some point after 12:00, when I was leaving the wonderful Dr. G's office (who provides us with our medical marijuana card! It's been one year and we had to have it renewed!), I received a very tearful call from Oliver. He was beside himself, in agony, really, because they're cutting down all the big trees!

I still had to drive all the way home, and I did so wishing that my southern Italian ancestors would somehow materialize and take care of things. When I reached the street where the devastation was occuring, I made out who were workers and who was a boss. I was tempted to take a photo of the guy in charge, but to tell you the truth, I felt a frisson of not just disgust but fear. He was --- well --- large. In every way. He was smoking a big, very fat cigar and talking on his cell phone when I pulled up in my sexy white Mazda and rolled down my window.

So, are you in charge here? I asked in my lacrosse/disabled kid/homeschool mother voice.

Reader, he didn't even take the cigar out of his mouth, and like someone out of central casting just down the road in Hollywood, he said Yep, and I said, It would have been nice if you'd let us know you were taking out the trees and the fence, and he said nothing and shrugged his big ass shoulders and continued talking on the phone so I rolled up my window, put the pedal to the metal and tore around the corner and into my own driveway where I proceeded to race to my computer with my sons and google stinkbomb.

Just kidding on the last part.

Helping Hands Needed

A reader sent me a lovely email about this blog and about the community that has grown up around it. She is a mother of two children, one a young girl with Down Syndrome and the other a teenager with significant and crippling anxiety and depression. I asked her permission to post her question here, because I just have a feeling that someone out there reading might be able to help her. If you can answer, please leave a comment or email me your contact information. If you yourself write about these issues, please let us know! My email is elsophieATgmailDOTcom.

Do you know of any blogs written by moms, or dads, of teens with major depression/anxiety?   I've been looking for a really insightful one, with really good writing. 

Thank you so much. 

Literary Supper

This picture makes our bungalow look a whole lot bigger than it actually is!

Last spring The Husband and I offered to host a literary supper for our charter school's fundraiser. People sign up and pay to attend a small gathering, and all the money goes to the school. Last night, we had about a dozen people over, some we knew and some we didn't, including our school's principal who led us in a great discussion of Toni Morrison's powerful, spare novel Home. The Husband made an amazing stew of lentils, sausage and chicken with a big green salad and crusty bread. We drank wine and laughed and talked -- a lot about the book and a lot about the world in general. We ate Hallelujah Cake and talked some more before everyone left around 10:00. It was a wonderful community gathering and made me grateful, again, to live in such a diverse city and to be a part of such a progressive school.

Here's the recipe for Hallelujah Cake, which I've posted before and which comes from my Texas friend Johanna. It's a weird recipe that goes against the pastry chef in me's grain, but it works and it's incredibly good. Evidently, it's named for the exclamation one makes when you take a bite.

Hallelujah Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Butter a cake pan. I used a large oval Le Creuset, but you can probably use a 9X12 rectangular

Sift the following ingredients together in a mixing bowl:

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
pinch o salt

Melt together in a microwave:

1 stick of butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
6 heaping T of good quality unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup of water

Pour that wet mixture into the dry mixture and then add:

1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Mix well and pour into baking pan.
Bake for about 30ish minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

When cool, spread with this icing:

Mix the following together and beat in an electric mixer:

1 stick of butter, melted
8 heaping T good quality unsweetened cocoa powder (I use a very dark Belgian one)
1/3 cup milk
1 box of powdered sugar

Losing community

Bridge Studio: Jason Schmidt
via NY Times

Another good neighbor friend called me today to break the news that he's moving his family to Irvine. Their only child, a boy exactly Oliver's age, is one of several boys in our neighborhood whose families are either moving up and out into much bigger houses and fancier 'hoods or the opposite: simpler lives in smaller areas. This boy and the other boy live across the street and around the corner, and for the ten years we've lived in this house, our neighborhood has resembled Maybery of Andy Griffith more than a couple of residential streets in an enormous city.

I cried in the car in the parking lot of Trader Joe's when he told me. I cried because it means my boys won't have easy access to neighbors' houses -- the banging of doors as they come in and out -- the tribes on the trampolines and the wars in the front yards. Sure, new people will move in, but relationships take years, and most of these homes are small, starter ones -- I'd anticipate young couples with babies and toddlers moving in, not tweens and teen-agers. The trouble with living in this city -- for us -- is that we are not particularly upwardly mobile and most of the people around us are. People don't blink an eye at spending millions of dollars on homes and hundreds of thousands on private schools. They have the means to sequester themselves behind boxwood walls with pools and media rooms, and settle on sending their children to schools that are in distant neighborhoods. I'd venture to say that they don't live in neighborhoods but in beautiful houses on beautiful streets.

If they don't have the means, they have the sense to move out and beyond to where their lives could be simpler, easier on the foot, the planet and the pocket. I wish they wouldn't, but I understand their choices.

I'm wondering about all of this, feeling sad and not a little trapped. Even if I could afford it, I don't want a bigger house or a fancier neighborhood. I love my house and I love my neighborhood. I don't want my children to go to exclusive private schools in far-away neighborhoods and be surrounded by those who only know huge privilege.

 But I don't want to be left behind, either.

(I loved the photo above from this wonderful article.)