Friday, July 07, 2006

I have missed this rectangle.  This blank space just waiting for my words to fill it and send it off to total strangers who somehow miraculously give me strength and hope and faith in myself. I have no business sitting here with my laptop when there is SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO (get the picture)much I'm already SO SO SO SO SO SO late for.  But this morning I realize there is such a hole in me that felt a tiny bit filled when I was blogging and I feel like the hole in me is getting so big I'm going to cave in, the center of me is going to get just totally filled with the stuff from the outside and there won't be any center place left for me to fill with myself. The miracle for today is that I let myself sit down and write.  And this fabulous song from Transamerica that I'm listening to- it is good for the soul.  Travelin' Thru by Dolly Parton...I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home...questions I have many, answers but a few...God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain, redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain. Redemption.  Where's my dictionary?  That is the miracle I truly need:  redemption.  What shape is mine? 8:28:39 AM    comment []

Friday, May 12, 2006

Such a loss One of you out there linked me to the blog of cancerbaby and I have followed her faithfully and read today that she has died.  I cannot believe how absolutely profoundly I am devastated by her death.  Her writing was so powerful- so brave and true.  So raw and real.  I am reminded tonight that for all the hardships I think I face, I have the luxury of being alive to face them, have the strength still to complain about them, the opportunity to still hope for a richer, fuller life.  My heart goes out to cacerbaby's husband and family and good good friend who has kept us posted in the last months.  The world of blog is a wonderful, but tonight cruel, thing.  How do you properly mourn someone you really don't know and yet have come to care for so deeply?  Prayers everyone please for the peace of Jessica's soul at last, and strength for her husband. 8:00:49 PM    comment []

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Have you ever heard anything like it?   My husband is trying to lose some weight, so I-  his 300 pound wife- have joyfully been making him beautiful, fabulous salads for supper- nice mixtures of spinach, romaine, radicchio, that gorgeous purple cabbage, bean sprouts, shredded carrots, finely chopped cucumbers (he doesn’t really like cukes but I figure they’re easier to bear in smaller pieces).  One night I sliced Cortland apples and green seedless grapes and topped the salad with walnut pieces.  He was clearly grateful for my efforts.  But then, last night, it hit me that though he was appreciative of his salads- even mentioning their eye-pleasing presentations, he was still grumpy and snappy and tired after his long day.  I jumped up from the table last night, pushed my chair in just hard enough for it to be noticeably too hard and stomoped over to get busy at the sink.  My husband said, “What’s the matter with you?” which was irritating and painful because of course he should know.   “What’s the matter with me?” I asked incredulously?  “I made you that wonderful salad and you’re still crabby.”    My mate looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.   “I said thank you.  It was great.  I said I really appreciate you making me a different supper?” his voice went up at the end.  Clearly he was clueless.   “Well that’s great.  You appreciate it but it doesn’t even make you happy!!”  I spit this in his direction, making clear his inability to ever be happy.   I will never forget the look on his face.  It was such a mixture of things, so painfully complex.  I couldn’t begin to imagine what he was feeling.  Then he said sadly, “Kay- food doesn’t make me happy.”   Have you ever heard anything so fucking crazy in your life?  What the hell kind of man did I marry?  It’s like a veil was lifted.  26 years later and I finally understand why I have no idea how to please this complicated man.  Food does not make him happy or unhappy.  I cannot even imagine such a thing.  How the hell does he get out of bed in the morning?  What keeps that man going?  What does he look forward to, what does he grieve with, celebrate with, suffer with, silence himself with?  How does he show his love to friends and strangers and family?  I know it’s not a guy thing because growing up with my big jock older brothers and my father of few words, I knew before I knew much else, how to make them happy with food.  Brownies, fudge, spice cake, mayonnaise cake, peanut butter cookies, whoopee pies, homemade donuts, and more, more, more.  So it’s not a guy thing.  I think it’s just a crazy weird thing.   If food didn’t make a person a happy- what would? 5:22:02 PM    comment []

Monday, March 20, 2006

Smithwick’s and Chips   I am a Lenten failure.  Let me just get that out of the way.  Unless Smithwick’s Ale and Lay’s Wavy chips are on my Lenten meal plan and count as lunch, then I am way off track.   Which I know I am.  Because, God help me, if I am not right in church kneeling with a priest nearby or worshiping at my laptop altar, I cannot seem to hold onto anything but my compulsion for food that hurts me and makes me feel sick and hateful- to myself and others.   I am in a bad way.  I am hoping it’s that menopausemonster rearing it’s monthly head and that this will pass and I will be able to  hold onto hope again before I think too many more crazy thoughts.  But in the meantime I would not want anyone listening in on my internal dialague.  I can’t tell which comes first- the crazy thoughts or the crazy eating, but they sure as hell go together.   Why can’t I just say no like Nancy Reagan drilled into us for eight ineffective years?  Say no to drugs.  Say no to Smithwick’s at noon and yes to tea.  I have found a favorite- cranberry apple zinger.  Nice and sweet with a little bite to it.  But when I drink it now I feel all depressed and miss my blogging back in November when I truly believed that tea and blogging would help me save myself.  Now I don’t know what would be more compelling to me than my bad eating- maybe it’s the self-hate I’m addicted to- not the food.  Maybe it’s not the donuts but the painful indigestion and self-loathing, the punishing it provides, the familiar feeling of failure and powerlessness and if only….  The hope of waiting- knowing that someday, when—something or other finally happens- my life will change and I will be the healthy whole person I have always secretly known I could be.  I’ve been waiting like this for as long as I’ve had the ability to think such thoughts.  Most definitely since first grade when I realized my whole life would be wonderfully different if Mrs. Rye my first grade teacher, the Baptist minister’s wife, would just adopt me- take me home and be her gentle, quiet, steady self for me.  I followed her around like a puppy- around the classroom, stood next to her instead of playing when she had playground duty, ate my lunch in my classroom, brought my paper to her desk first, finsished first, worked the hardest, volunteered to go get the milk, empty the trash, erase the boards, walked the long way everywhere I needed to go, huffing and puffing my chubby little self up the hill past her husband’s church hoping to catch a glimpse of her, have her see me out there not looking like I was looking for her.    I was so manipulative already in first grade.  Already perfecting my good girl persona, my “let me help you” self.  Knowing, without knowing I knew, that looking needy would turn people away, but that being smart and good and kind and helpful and never saying what I really wanted was the route to maybe getting a little bit of what I needed.    What is it that I need now?  I am not in first grade, there’s no Mrs. Rye out there to make my life better, to model something I knew I was missing.   Whatever that was I was looking for then I am not going to find now.  And yet I know, in my heart of hearts, I am still waiting for it in some way.  I don’t know what I think I’m doing when I eat.  What hole I’m trying to fill, what sin I am trying to punish, what flag I am trying to wave, but it is not getting me anything that I want.  Quite the opposite.  Or do I not really know myself.  Am I so unconscious that some part of me is getting exactly what I want?  Am I that badly damaged?  How do I make myelf whole??   I know this beer is not the way, though I love the taste of it in my mouth.  It’s bitterness.  I feel very masculine when  I drink it.  I’ve loved beer since I was a little girl.  It was a huge honor whenever my father would let me sip some Budweiser from his can.  I remember when I was very little and my dad was sitting around drinking with some of his friends who I found so scary.  I was loitering, trying to take in their conversation, enjoying the smell of the outdoors on them, loving the way they laughed their huge loud laughs and told and retold their funny work stories.  I remember my dad once gently putting his arm around me and pulling me into their circle and asking if I wanted some of his beer and I knew it was a great privilege and the men were all watching and I sucked down a big gulp and I hated the taste on my tongue- it wasn’t at all what I’d expected but I knew to moan and lip my lips and make a happy sound and ask for more and get a big laugh out of all the big men and for years to come I was proud that I learned young to drink beer like a man.  I learned to drink like a man, eat like a man, burp like a man, fart like a man.  My 3 older brothers had nothing on me.  It would make me glow with pleasure when one of my parents would say oh, she can keep right up with the boys.  As if eating, drinking, burping and farting big, are goals to aspire to!!   And here I am in my family of new boys.  Once again feeling so alien and yet knowing exactly how to make myself fit in the place I find myself.   Maybe I haven’t always been looking for a mother as much as I’ve been looking for womanhood.  For some idea of how I could be a woman in the world.  Not how to mold myself to fit where I find myself, but how to be myself in a world I so often feel I do not fit, where I feel foreign.   How do you find these really basic things when you’re almost 50?  Therapy was great for the first 20 years, but you know, at some point I got the picture that what I was missing wasn’t something I was going to find talking to someone.  What does that leave??   Time to eat some food to soak up the Smithwick’s.   I will keep looking for today’s miracle.  I have a sneaking suspicion it would have been easier to recognize if I weren’t slightly foggy with beer… 1:08:53 PM    comment []

Monday, March 13, 2006

Finding Home   I grew up in a little tiny town in New Hampshire where in first grade, when I kissed my “boyfriend” in the alley behind Joe and Tony’s corner store- my mother knew about it by the time I walked the 2 blocks home.  There was very little you could do or say that the whole town wouldn’t know within days, if not hours.  I grew to find this closeness stifling.  It was the late 60’s and I couldn’t wait to escape the eyes and ears of my little town.  Eventually I did.   When I moved  in 1980, my parents fretted.  My mother warned me about how “different things are in a big city”.  My friends and I would laugh at my parents’ fears and over-protectiveness and hum an under-the-breath chorus of “Beverly Hillbillies” when the family station wagon would visit from New Hampshire- my parents climbing out shaken, raving about driving in "the city".  I loved my little city partly, I am sure, because it so frightened my parents. Much to my mother’s dismay I insisted on walking downtown late at night and befriending strangers.  While my mother waited for me to come to my senses and move back home I dug my roots in deeper and deeper and began to dream of buying a house in the city, someplace where I could walk downtown and see at least a piece of the ocean.   Twenty-six years later I am still here, having bought a little house with a second floor trianglular view of the ocean when the leaves are gone, and a perfect walk to the library, the market and my favorite café.  My mother has pretty much given up on me ever returning to my rural roots.  Instead she comes to visit often and though the “crowds” bother her, the traffic horrifies her and she marvels that we can stand living on our “postage stamp” of land, in the end she always says at least once, “I guess I can see why  you love it here.  I guess this is your home now.”  And she is right- twenty-six years later,  this is finally feeling like home.  Not because of the shops I love, or the restaurants I savour, or the local heatre I’ve  enjoyed for three decades, not even because of the ocean.  It is because of the people.      When my son Walker was born with Down Syndrome in 1997 I told my mother, “That’s it, now I’m coming home”.  I wanted Walker to grow up in a little town where everyone would know him and watch out for him.  But then Early Intervention right here in town was fabulous and we were so close to the clinic at Children’s Hospital where Walker got his care, and then the local school was so welcoming of him and now it is eight years later… Many people we know have headed north for bigger houses at smaller prices and more than a sliver of a backyard.   I have a piece  woods in New Hampshire just waiting for me but I cannot go.  Not because it is a dream come true to be stuffed in my 1300 square feet of living space with two very active sons. But because last night when Walker went missing for almost 30 eternal minutes, neighbors from several streets immediately went out looking for him and they went looking because they love Walker and they care for us. Despite the fact we can go weeks (and in the winter- months) without actually conversing- we are neighbors- we are bound together by proximity and by more than that- by history.  Walker is building his history in this little city and that is why I will stay.  In his first school they called him “the mayor” because of his morning greeting for every single person he passed.  At his current school he loves “my fwiends” and knows all his classmates names by sight before the first week of school is over.  When we push our cart through Stop and Shop he is something of a celebrity- gathering schoolmates or their parents as we go.  Walker has far more friends in town than I will ever have.  And last night many of them turned out to search for him.  Amazingly, it was two older children from the Hannah School who spotted him, recognized him and took him to their house.  They knew his name and their parents looked us up in the school directory.  Walker returned home to us safe and sound.  And another layer of history was laid:  our neighbors shared those terrifying moments of waiting with us and the bond I felt in those moments- watching them scour the streets calling Walker’s name- made me know in my heart of hearts, that home is not the size of the house or yard or the view from the windows.  Home is where we are known and loved and kept as safe as possible.   I am grateful to live in a town and a time when a child with Down Syndrome can get lost and be found by friends who truly know know him and care for him.  This is my home now and it is Walker’s home probably far more than it is mine.  For that I am grateful.     11:35:38 AM    comment []

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Ash Wednesday   I am sitting here, ashes in the shape of the cross etched on my forehead.  Christ Church this morning- my annual pilgrimage to receive the mark of death, followed by the Eucharist- the promise of hope and life, of possibility, the victory really, over impossibility.   I am well acquainted with impossibility.  I must have drunk it with my mother’s breast milk.  Steeped in it, I was, like a helpless little tea bag, reminded again and again of all that cannot change and how to make do.  Make do, do, do.  God will give you the strength.  That was our hope- the God-given strength to bear what sometimes seemed unbearable.  I do that well- bear things.  “Take up your cross” Jesus says and people used to quote that to me as if it explained so much shit in my life and yet today waiting for my ashes I felt certain that that is not the cross Jesus meant for me to take up- the make due cross.   Father Lias read a wonderful quote by Somebody Holloway that I wished I could have written down but I had purposely taken no pen so that I wouldn’t be writing in my head, but rather be open and listening and yet as I listened and tried to stay open,  I was also writing in my head faster than my head could follow.   Mr. Holloway had a simple, yet profound, thought about the fact that we are physical beings who live in a state of waiting to die- of dying right from the start really.  And a state of marvelous grace with the hope of transformation and life.  He talked about the tension of living a truly spiritual life.  The sometimes painful pull of living both toward death and glory.  There was something that rang so true to me  about the juxtaposition of ashes and glory, death and transformation....   I am terrified of dying.  On the purely physical level I am terrified of it.  When I was little I would try to stay awake so I wouldn’t drift off toward death when I drifted off to sleep.  I would lie awake and fret about what if there is nothing after life, what if after all is said and done I will just have been a speck of dust, a box of ashes and bone fragment, what if there is no life after death, no reconnections, reunions, “better place”.  I still worry like this if something scary has happened or if I need a med. adjustment!  Now I mostly agonize over this in relation to my children.  The thought of not being alive to love my boys can bring me to my knees on a good day.  Never mind on a bad day.   This morning started as a bad day.  My husband and I spending yet another morning misunderstanding and feeling misunderstood and not being able to get past what seems all hurts past and present.  I went to church with that hurt heavy in my heart.  In my gut really.  It was churning around in there with all the crap I’ve eaten lately.  The Oreos and Suzie Q’s, the cupcakes, whoopee pies and Friendlie’s Forbidden Chocolate ice cream.    I wished for confession at church today.  I tried to create it in my own head but things always get so crazy and confusing inside my own head.  It’s like a maze and once I get started I seem to come upon little zigs and zags that I can’t help but follow and I end up all over the place and kind of frantic.  I was having a hard time concentrating today.  I was trying to listen about ashes and dust and lent and self-denial and fasting and discipline and doing without or adding works of mercy and I loved what I could hear but it’s like there was interference and my own voice kept talking over Father Lias’ and it kept talking about food.  About sugar and frosting and chocolate and donuts and ice cream and brownies and chocolate croissants from Cassis and I felt like I almost couldn’t kneel or pray there was so much food in the way.  And I realized what an ENORMOUS distraction food is to me.  Not the food itself but my feelings about it, my need of it, my fear of it.  I hear “self-denial” and I think “HOW?”  I am denied so much and feel like I have been since birth how the hell am I supposed to give up whoopee pies too and yet dear sweet Jesus I can tell you that a whoopee pie has never done anything good for me nothing, at all.  Not one blessed thing.  Well- that’s not true.  They connected me to my father.  The gift I always made him so that he would know- despite all we would never say- that I remembered everything and forgave everything and my perfect whoppie pies stuffed with the very best whoppie pie cream you ever tasted were the proof.  Whoppie pies are the tie that binds me to my father who I feel so sorry for it pains me.  But now-in the past 30 years or so anyway- I’d have to say whoppie pies and the like have given me nothing but the clogged vein and artery I am now stuck with.  So being denied of whoppie pies- why does it feel like a death sentence when really it would be more like a life sentence??   A life sentence.  That is what Jesus came to give us.  I believe that.  I heard it today during communion and when I was kneeling there listening I could taste hope.  “Bread of heaven, broken for you”.  A sliver of hope, a wafer thin taste of glory fading quickly on tongue-tip.  Followed by the bitter wine drunk from pottery goblet.  “Blood of Christ, shed for you”.  Crazy.  Crazy.  In my head I cannot believe it.  In my head it makes no sense at all.  In my head I am mortified to be kneeling there so desperate to receive.  And yet, in my heart, in my gut, something tries to rise up, tries to find ground, to stand.  It is hope.  It is faith to believe that I am not called to “make due”.  That actually, I was made, given life, to be so much, much more.    I am all about excess.  Extremes.  And so today I knelt and prayed and promised to give up sugar (except my bedtime hot chocolate), coffee (because it goes with sugar),  and CNN and Psychic Detective (ouch).  I contemplated NPR too but realized I couldn’t go quite that far.  And I decided to add, as my commitment to works of Mercy, to think first of what my husband is feeling before I obsess on what he is making me feel and why and blah, blah, blah.  But as soon as I prayed and promised I felt torn in half- crazy with hope and fear.  Through the haze of my own little Lenten extravaganza I heard Father Lias saying,  “feed on me with your heart and mind” and it was like I heard it on a loud speaker and it got through all the static of my internal drama and I kept saying it over and over.  “Feed on me with your heart and mind”.  And then Father Lias talked about excess- excess eating, drinking and smoking and how many of us have problems because of taking these good gifts too far.  He is giving up drinking for lent which I found pretty damn funny- I’ve never heard a priest give up booze for lent- times have changed since I went to my Christain college, pledged not to drink, smoke or have a boy in my room with the door more than half closed on open dorm night!  Father Lias made it seem so natural.  That this season of Lent lends itself to the death of old habits and the journey toward newness.   Can I take this season- this Lenten time- to feed in my heart and mind instead of my tongue and stomach?  Can I take one day at a time from now until Easter to try and live in the moment, present enough with my own self that I will know that I am a grown woman with children of my own and that a whoppie pie is no longer a conduit to any kind of love it ever even really was.  That the lard filled, artery clogging frosting sitting immoveable on top of my Stop and Shop cupcake does not bring back the little girl fantasy of baking in the back right corner of the kitchen with my mother, wearing my little matching home-made apron, throwing back my head, falling against my mother- laughing and licking our spoons and sharing that sweet, sweet place of sameness, of belonging.   In November I was lucky enough to get a warning that I am headed for serious trouble.  And as long as I stayed home and did nothing else I could drink my tea and look for my miracles and imagine the changes I would make as soon as- as soon as I got a nap, as soon as my husband did something different, as soon as I stopped working so much.  And now it is March.  It is Ash Wednesday and soon Easter and then summer and then fall and then November again, and hopefully November again and again and Jesus it is terrifying, but what kind of miracle would it take for me to really break free from the food gods, the false god of sweetness so that  I might have all those future Novembers?   I don’t know what kind of miracle it would take and that is what is so frightening and I am not really much of a believer in miracles although when I began this blog I did start to become a believer in everyday miracles and I suppose those are the miracles I will need to make it through Stop and Shop and past Dunkin Donuts and McDonald’s and the bakery and Coffee Time Bake Shop and The Hot Spot at work.    I am generally most motivated by fear.  I imagine most people who grew up surrounded by violence are pretty much hard-wired to respond instinctively to even the thought of fear.  That is a pretty great instinct and it served me well.  My brother- who sadly, lacked that gift of instinct, paid the price.  I feel incredibly blessed that I was able, as a child, to head off so much trouble.  Unfortunately, in middle age, living in anticipation of, and reaction to fear, is not  terribly conducive to creating a happy life for oneself or one’s family.  I fake it for them a lot.  And I am not nearly so afraid as I used to be of all life’s little suprises.  But I am still afraid of myself.  Of my own inability to choose health for myself.  To really choose life.   It just seems to me today that God is trying to tell me something about Lent and choosing that which could really sustain me, vs. the old crap that in my childhood stood in for real sustenance.  There was so much I gave of myself in exchange for what I knew didn’t feel like love but I needed to believe somehow was love of some kind or at least of being wanted and needed and I know that there is some way that there is a huge circle and in that circle is the abuse I withstood, physically and sexually, and the food I ate and the love, love, love I tried to get and give and could often really really feel and taste and then so often I couldn’t.  And when you are a child how the hell are you supposed to know what love is supposed to feel like when you are just god damn hungry for it and starving and just want to cry like a baby without a bottle or a binky or anything except there is frosting and there is touching and there is being close and hurt but also loved.   Every year when I get ashes at Christ Church, I somehow end up back in my childhood heart, being hurt again and thinking of food.   This is not the Lenten journey I signed on for.  I’m going to take a nap. 1:42:00 PM    comment []

Thursday, January 26, 2006

A Good Night with Walker Playing "shish" with Walker tonight- his first pretty much played right card game. Princess Fish- Jasmine, Snow White, Ariel, Cinderella, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Mulan. "My girls" he calls them. "Mommy have Ulan?" He asks, all seriousness, grasping slippery new cards in his fat little sausage fingers with the tell-tale bent pinkys. "No Belle mommy- go shish". Go shish. My miracle for today- A full ten minutes of playing a REAL game with my 8 year old angel face struggling to manage "go shish" and "ga wa I wated, go gen." A Good Night tonight with Walker. AMEN. 9:31:28 PM    comment []

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

I Give Up I've commented like an idiot 3 times on Rosies blog and NONE of the times did my blog address get on there right.  When you click on my name it just says blah blah can't display this page or whatever.  I give up.  Despondent,  Going to bed. 8:46:16 PM    comment [] What the hell, what the hell, what the hell Here's my big chance and I'm blowing it.  I'm on Rosies comment thing and she's reading them and when I put my blog address in the comment box provided it doesn't work.  If you visit her blog (rblog) and click on my name it won't open my blog.  It opens other peoples.  What the hell??  Is it a sign from God?  A sign I'm stupid???  Go visit her blog and try to find my blog from it.  Tell me if it works for you, OK?  Thanks . 7:37:55 PM    comment [] Who's Out There Tonight? Leric, Megancy and Jane- anyone out there reading tonight?  I am a wreck.  Someone post if you're out tonight.  I went for my daily visit to Rosie's blog and actually got on to comment at the beginning of her comments.  Which is no small thing.  I've never visited her blog while comments were still open and there are always a couple hundred comments.  Anyway- she is obviously at her computer reading comments because she responded to one rude guy so I commented and asked her if she got my letter and gave her my blog address (and all her readers too I guess. Yikes.)  I'm afraid she thinks I'm a loser.  I'm not.  Right? Right???? Say something!! PS. I resigned from my job today which I know is the right thing to do but I'm scared out of my mind.  PSS.  Do you like your combined names?  That's how I've been referring to you in my mind for a while now, so I decided to make it official.  Thanks for being out there.   7:29:00 PM    comment []

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Desperately Seeking Rosie   I have a confession to make.  It is pretty embarrassing.  I can’t decide if it’s as embarrassing or more embarrassing than admitting to being ah honest to god born again Christian when born again Christian is- to my mind- a swear word, not to be uttered in polite company;  akin to admitting I eat small children for breakfast -no small thanks to George Bush, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell , et al.   But here it is:  On Thursday I overnighted a letter and a bunch of my writing to Rosie O’Donnell c/o the Minskoff Theatre where she is in her last performances of Fiddler on the Roof.  I asked (translation: begged) her to read my blog and the children’s story and volumes of other stuff I sent along.  Like she asked.  Like she cares.   I read a book she wrote a few years ago about some crazy fan who duped her into an intense save-me-please-save-me relationship that went really bad and I can only imagine she doesn’t even read her mail now and even if she does will probably either pee her pants laughing or say “Oh no-not another one” and throw my from-the-gut letter in the trash.  And I certainly can’t blame her as she is a total stranger with a life of her own and millions of people who probably send her crap all the time.   But you know, I’ve always thought we’d be great pals.  And isn’t that the magic of Rosie- the gift she has- to make so many, many women feel like she could sit right down in their cheerio-strewn kitchen, drink out of a glass with dishwasher spots and be right at home sharing a swiss roll and some chocolate milk.    So what is it with me?  Why all of a sudden am I willing to mortify myself to get someone to READ ME??!  Because if Rosie doesn’t read my blog and email me and at least say,” you crazy woman leave me alone will you please??!” then I have other famous people I think would like me, really like me, if only they could read the real me.   Maybe this has something to do with feeling like I’ve always been hiding in these pounds and mounds of flesh.  Ever since I was- well- ever since I felt like people could be right on top of me- literally- and have no idea I was even there.  So that pretty early I knew that me- the me I desperately wanted someone to encounter and love- was not connected to the me that someone was bearing down on and well-  I think I’ve been looking for that INSIDE me for about 40 years now and somehow this “heart event” has compelled me to reach way inside and reach back, back, back to where I used to be able to feel things and what I keep coming up with is this little girl who just wants to be really really seen and even more- really, really, heard.  So God bless poor Rosie O’Donnell who if she receives her own mail will be holding my gut in her hands, I suppose I am not desperately seeking Rosie at all, but am desperately seeking me. 10:25:04 AM    comment [] Miracle of Blog   What magic What inexpensive Marvelous Therapy at $40 a year Radio User Land SalonBlog.com EricLizMegNancy And Jane.   A dear, good Generous Always-there-for-me-friend Feels I no  longer Carve out A place for her In my She-understands-it-is-busy Life.   I long for the Women friends I used to have so many Pieces To spread around with They made me Richer Fuller But now I can’t even find A piece of me For myself.   You wanna a piece of me? Get in line- I get a piece of me First.   It is snowing softly, My angeldevil with the Extra chromosome Will be scuffing down the stairs soon to Look out the window, Eyes Wide Shouting “Snow, Santa, Presents, Yee Hoo” Raising his arm above His head Swinging his imaginary Lasoo. My little cowboy Who loves the snow And all things Christmas.   He gets the Biggest Piece of me No doubt How could it be Otherwise?   I thank God for Trisomy 21 And the fact that if I am brave enough I believe I will AT LAST Learn to find Enough Inside of me And then Please-god-let-it-not-be-too-late Maybe have the Courage To get Smaller And Believe That somehow Someway there would miracle of miracles be enough of me to go around. May it be so.   Thank you God for Snow and Blogging And waking up before the boys And Elliott coming downstairs Just now, Lifting my hair up And Kissing the back of my neck. Wonder of wonders.   I hear the footsteps coming My Down Syndrome cowboy draws near To rope me in I am all his         8:19:22 AM    comment [] Pass Your Plate   Carve me up Like a side of Beef Rump roast here Tenderloin There. Shouldn’t there be Plenty Of me To go around?   But there isn’t. No where near Enough. Too little of Me Isn’t it ironic? How much of me would there Have to be For there to be Enough?                                             7:35:31 AM    comment []

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Death by Donut I am feeling more than sorry for myself.  I haven't found a miracle in days.  I'm too tired and too discouraged.  I don't want to write because all I can seem to do is whine and complain.  But not writing has led first to cookie dough, then to the actual cookies, then brownie dough, then some pop tarts, then some sugar wafers, then some chocolates, then some more cookies, a little pie, and then today- the bottom of the barrel- Dunkin Donuts.  I bought munchkins for a family on my caseload.  I felt I had to take them something because my sitter has been sick all week and I had to take Walker with me to work today while I visited them.  Talk about feeling like a loser- I am going to have to quit this job and I am so worried about how I will be without it.  Not just the money, which is so out of control now I don't even try to make sense of it.   Elliott is always saying we're going to lose the house so I guess my piddly little income isn't exactly saving the day.  But before babysitting became impossible to find I felt like working had saved my sanity.  But now- this week was the straw that broke the camel's back.  Every day has been a nightmare of juggling- Elliott staying home from work, me going in late, leaving early, begging friends, neighbors- mere aquaintances- to watch Walker.  Because I can send my older son to a friends house, but people aren't lining up to watch a busy little 8 year old with Down Syndrome and a developing behavior disorder.  You know how they say "it takes a village?" well when you have a kid with special needs it takes a metropolis and the irony is that there isn't even a street.  If Walker is going to go somewhere (with the exception of a few good friends who can occasionally watch him) it is going to cost me 10-15 dollars an hour.  It really hit me last winter when Blair and I had to pay about 40 dollars to go to a wake.  When I go to a doctor's appointment it's 15 dollars for the copay and then another 30 for the sitter.  Who can go out to a movie or out to eat when you have to save all your money to pay for the pleasure of going to a funeral or having a pap smear??  See what I mean about the whining?  Not to mention the screaming.  I have been so nasty to the boys tonight.  I hate it when I'm a crappy mother.  I just feel so alone and I take it out on them.  It's not their problem.  They are just being kids.  It's not their fault I can hardly ever find a sitter anymore, it's not their fault I have to pay the sitters I can find more than I actually bring home after taxes, it's not their fault the Lipitor I'm taking seems to be giving me terrible muscle and joint pain, it's not their fault their father wishes he were traveling the world not living in our stinky little house, it's not their fault the toilet is broken, that the caulking has peeled off the tub, that the tub is now leaking into the kitchen, that the house is falling apart and that I don't know how the fuck to make any money and take care of myself and take care of these children God must have thought I could take care of.  That is if God has anything to do with anything which sometimes I just really doubt.  And if Hesh* does then I think Hesh is sometimes just the slightest bit cruel or at the very least inept.  I know I shouldn't say that and it's just totally against my find-the-miracles program to be so negative about God but I guess I'm just pretty pissy today. *Hesh is what my older son decided to call God today.  He had the nerve to say to me that since God made Adam first and made Eve second- AND out of Adam (what a stupid, patriarchal story)then God is obviously a man and the earth is obviously male.  I threw quite a little fit and said not so fast there future misogynist.  I explained as sweetly as I could muster that in Genesis it says that God created Adam AND Eve in his image.  I said to my son- if we are ALL made in the made in the image of God then God is both male and female.  Which he found perfectly reasonable and then said, "Well then- shouldn't God be called HeShe instead of He.  No, wait- it should be Hesh(that's a long e, as in He)he decided.  I liked that.  Hesh.  Sometimes I just can't find God.  Or the miracles or really much of anything except worry over money and so many, many regrets and a deep deep wish that I could make my husband happy.  I love my boys- all three of them- and yet I seem so powerless to help any of them.  May God help me if that is how hesh works!!    7:39:11 PM    comment []

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Fake Christmas Tree, God Forbid   Last night my husband FINALLY climbed the ladder to the attic and brought down our- it's hard to even write-fake Christmas tree.  I never in my entire life thought I'd have a fake Christmas tree.  Not only did I grow up in the country where we grew and cut our own trees off our own ancestral land, we also sold Christmas trees- nice tall, thin, elgant ones.  And now I have a Christmas tree my husband bought on clearance one year. I finally gave in that year after a huge fight over my lousy housekeeping, pine-needles-stuck-in-the-rug-still at Easter, well-your-family-is-so-tacky-anyway, well-your-family's-tree-might-have-been-perfect-but-it-was-all-a-lie. After that text book, leading-up-to-the-holiday-stress-induced-marital-blow-out, I agreed to a fake tree while we still had a child who couldn't resist the temptaions of a real tree: playing in the water, putting things in the water, shaking the needles off the branches, etc.  I think we're finally past that point now actually.  And while my older son still longs for a real tree- having had them before, Walker is more than satisfied with the fake.  Last night he "helped" his father put the tree together.  This always makes me a bit queasy to watch.  It's like watching one of those surgery channels.  Some things I just think we're not meant to see.  One of them is the sawing into the skull of a person lying on an operating table.  Another is a naked pole covered with a slight green fuzz of something that I guess is supposed to suggest a trunk.  Except for being green instead of brown.??  It's kind of an embarrassing sight- I just wanted to throw a blanket over it or something.  However, Walker was absolutely delighted.  He knows most of his colors now and some of the branches are color-coded so he could help his father.  "I elp you daddy, here daddy, here ellow.  Yea tree.  I elp.  I big man elp daddy."  Yes I got out the camera and actually recorded the assembling of the fake tree for the first time.  Walker is like that.  He is always turning things around for me.  Last night I was so glad my husband had the foresight to get a tree his little boy with Down Syndrome would be able to help "build".  Now Walker calls it "my tree" which makes his brother less than happy.  But I know it's not my tree.  I can take no credit.  This years tree- fake though it is- is perfect to Walker.  And that's more than good enough for me. 6:45:26 AM    comment []

Friday, December 16, 2005

Can you spell M-O-O-D-S-W-I-N-G??   Whoa- sorry about that.  Menopause is not a pretty sight up close is it??  So sorry to have written on my worst hormonal day.  However, I think it did save me from killing myself slowly with donuts so, thanks for bearing with me out there.  And thanks to those who suggested I get professional help.  I haven't had  a med. adjustment in almost a year so I think it's probably time for the annual tune-up... Part of what feels so awful, so bound up, is that when I started this crazy blog I was so desperate it wasn't even a rational act, it was just a hand thrown out to the universe and then it blew me away there were actually real live people out there who would give a damn.  And now, well, now I'm all self-conscious and haven't been able to just free associate at the keys the way I did at first.  I'm afraid I'm going to be a bummer since right now there's so much confusing me.  And also, I suddenly got worried about who might find my blog.  It doesn't help that I was SO impulsive at 4 in the morning when I suddenly decided to set up my blog, that I didn't think it through and I put some of my real name there and the other day when I went back to work someone said, "Hey- do you have a blog?"  which I sure as hell would NOT have wanted co-workers to know.  And they said, "We were googling our names and an email you sent out asking for help getting your real name off your blog came up on google.  Do you have a blog?  Can we read it??"  etc. etc. etc. I felt sick.  So, how do you all handle the blog thing?  The last thing I need is one more secret in my life.  My blog is not secret, it's not like I'm ashamed of it, but there are a lot of people I wouldn't want to read it if I could help it.  I suppose there's no way I can get myself off google is there??  Experienced bloggers- tell me the inside scoops on the world of blogging and help me not make anymore stupid mistakes... I've been feeling too frightened and sorry for myself to find my miracle a day and I find I am thinking and missing junk food a lot.  Plus, I work with all women and I hate to sound ignorant but women DO talk about food a lot, especially chocolate and of course they eat it, and of course my dear, dear clients are giving me chocolate for Xmas because EVERYONE in the world knows how I love, love, love it, but just imagine if you tried to stop drinking and everyone around you was popping Champagne corks all day and expounding on the marvels of feeling nicely tipsy.  It makes me tired.  I have to spend so much energy visualizing and mantra-ing and centering and trying to be very eastern in my mind and imagine myself sipping tea in a tub, choosing health and life and light instead of donuts and the dark of chocolate and slow death.  But it's hard to meditate on The Light at work because I'm supposed to  be- you know-  working, and because I have to call government agencies a lot and that is just about the antithesis of The Light and is enough to make you want coffee, a donut AND a cigarette.  If there are many things that can make you feel more powerless in life than trying to maneuver through a state agency I don't know them. On the other hand, I love the clients I work with.  Most of my career I've spent working with families of children with disabilities and I always found it heartbreaking and inspiring but now I find it moves me at a level I don't even have language for.  I have mothers on my caseload who have given nearly every waking moment of their llives since having a profoundly disabled child caring for that child:  suctioning, doing chest PT, tube-feeding, changing diapers, wrangling and battling on the phone and at meetings to make sure their kid gets what they need.  And some of these moms have just about broken under the weight of all they must do but most have not only risen to the occasion, but transcended the occasion.  I don't know how else to say it.  The work I do feels sacred.  People open their doors and let me into their joy and their sorrow and now that I have my own tow-headed paradox of joy and sorrow, I am just amazed at the depth of love mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers share with children so many people do not think of as capable of loving.  I guess those were my miracles this week:  the mothers who were fighting for their kids against systems that are nearly impossible to move through.  Mothers who are wrapping presents for children who can't open them, probably won't even realize it's Christmas, the little girl in the hospital bed being suctioned by her mother who has braided her daughters beautiful, long dark hair and tied it in two big red bows that match her 3 year old sisters bows.  Her little sister climbing up on the bed saying, "aren't sissy and I pretty?" and then kissing her sisters wet, spitty face, kneeling on the oxygen tubing and her mom saying "get off Sissy's oxygen" as calmly as could be.  And then telling me she hopes I'm OK and taking care of myself and how were my kids while I was in the hospital. There are so, so many good people in the world.  That is the miracle.  So many good people, so much love. Thank you God for mothers who love with a love that is deep and wide and all-encompassing.  Who see their children through eyes more like your eyes.  Who see the core of their children under all the pain and brokeness- who see the heart of them, their wholeness.  Thank you God for people who love like that.  Thank you that you love like that.  And thank you that I am not in the pit today that I was in 2 days ago, that really sucked.             Amen. 6:26:55 PM    comment []

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Anxiety, Depression, PTSD, and so many others I don't have time to list them  I absolutely should not be writing in this state of mind.  And yet not writing is, I think, part of why I'm in this state of mind.  But mostly I think I am in this state of mind because I'm crazy.  You know.  You know how it is when you just don't fit in?  When you're too sane to qualify for long-term hopsitalization (which doesn't even exist anymore.  It's now called a homeless shelter!) and too crazy to feel at home in the world most people seem to inhabit.  And sometimes I inhabit that sane world too and that is such a little piece of heaven.  The ease, the slowness, the sense of relaxation and well-being, the lack of vigilence and worry and fear and downright paranoia.  The optimism, the infusion of joy, the taste of hope, the weightlessness of  living in the moment, inhabiting my own body without it feeling like lead, like it is in chains.   My son has just arrived home early with the sitter and I must now go look thrilled.  Prayers and good karma please.                 5:23:00 PM    comment []

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Correction/Clarification/Apologies, etc. Wow!  Did anybody see the marvelous post I was in the middle of writing (no damn it, not in Word because I was in TOO MUCH OF A HURRY to screw up pasting and all that stuff I find so challenging to my limited brain) Well, here's the UNbrilliant version of it:  Please note a change to Dec. 5th's Dirty Little Secret post.  I was informed by a very kind reader (thank you reader for calling my attention to it) that my subtitle could be misconstrued and if it was by anyone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered I deeply regret it.  The subtitle was my overzealous way of trying to make clear that though I was about to admit to being a Christian I was in no way identifying with what passes for "Evangelical Christian" in America at the moment.  Which from watching TV or reading the news one would think merely means you know that gays are the enemy of the family, that teaching evolution will lead our school children to ruin, that same sex marriage is going to make straight couples refuse to marry and have children and produce future tax payers.  I won't go near abortion, parental notification, just war( if there is such a thing does anyone really think Iraq would be in that category?)or any of all the rest of the blahblahblah that comes through the tube ever day when political people talk about the vast love of their God.  I believe in the vast love of God.  Big enough to cover a big ole girl like me, big enough to cover all of us, the whole of us, all that we are.  My oldest son always asks me if I think that includes Sadaam Hussein.  I myself always wonder about Hitler.  As I tell my son, I remind myself:  the love of God is a mystery I can't begin to understand  but I know it is bigger and more inclusive than anything we can imagine.  That is the good news I was trying to capture in my subtitle on Dec. 5th.  Sorry if it was misunderstood by anyone. Thanks again reader for your great comments.  Keep them coming... 6:56:31 AM    comment []

Friday, December 09, 2005

Trying again.  Is RadioLand down?? 12:47:19 PM    comment [] Hallo out there (that's how Pooh Bear says it)- Is this posting?  I wrote a post earlier and clicked on post and it is appearing on my page but not on my home page.  What's up with that??? 12:44:33 PM    comment [] Cafe Mocha, Rich, and Perfect Snowman Snow Falling It's a snow day.  No school.  I'm supposed to be at work, writing a very important report that will hopefully garner the family I am working with (who have 5 children, one of whom has severe autism) about $20,000/year so that they will be able to keep their sweet little wild boy at home.  That is what I should be doing.  I could have stuck my children in front of the TV and written the report though it wouldn't have been as cohesive as if I'd written it at work.  What am I doing??  I am sitting in the local hippy coffee hangout writing on my laptop and my children are outside building a snowman with a babysitter.  It is going to cost me $25 to blog today and it will cost me another $25 to write the report later.  It's a very expensive snow day for me who makes almost no money.  But I feel more present than I have all week, so it will be money well spent, I didn't blog this week because the only topic I could come up with was, My Seratonin's Fallen and It Can't Get Up.  Back to work this week all I could feel was how wrong it was for me to be there.  Wrong for my mental health, wrong for my physical health and especially wrong for my family who I had LESS than nothing left to give by the time I got home.  And I didn't enjoy my clients- wished they would take care of their own problems and leave me alone.  Worse than that I wanted THEM to help me.  I wanted SOMEONE, ANYONE to help me.  Social work is not a job for the depressed. Usually work is like a tonic- it gets me right out of myself.  There's nothing like the tragedy of someone else to remind you how very very lucky you are.  My clients usually inspire me- they remind what is best and strongest in people.  I am amazed at the love that people find in their hearts in the worst of situations.  But this week I couldn't stop thinking about myself, my kids, my heart... Speaking of which.  I haven't had time/space to process this yet but the test that went very well Monday also showed heart disease in 2 locations.  I am starting lipitor today and will be working with the cardiologist to decide whether to do a heart catheterization to determine the exact extent of disease.  Bottom line is- lose weight, lower cholesterol, reduce stress,get more rest, exercise, exercise, exercise.  Which would be a totally fabulous idea if only I could walk up a set of stairs without feeling in danger of cardiac arrest.  I am whining.  Which is not helpful, and definitely not appealing.  And I want you to read me so let's see... I am going to turn my life around.  I am thinking positive, I am hopeful, optimistic, determined.  I am going to do it.  I am going to get my heart so healthy I will become the Heart Association's Poster Woman- the If-She-Can-Do-It-You-Can-Do-It-Too inpsiration.  I will be running marathons before you can say "are you friggin' kidding?"  I will manage to do something drastic- even miraculous- this time, that I couldn't do any of the countless other times I've been scared shitless about the state of my body.  And I will do it not just because I don't want to leave my beloved children orphans but because I value my own dear life, my own fearfully and wonderfully made body, my very cells which hold the image of God.  That would be a miracle: to truly believe even a fraction of any of what I just wrote. For today the miracle is that I am here blogging.  That blogging is worth $25 I don't have to me.  That I am sitting in front of some of my very favorite chocolate cupcakes whose frosting I will not begin to describe because that seems as self-defeating as reminsiscing about the intimate details of really great sex when one is trying to keep a vow of chastitity.  So I will just thank God for the miracle of a new sitter who just loves my little boy with Down Syndrome, for the perfect snowman they'd scultped by the time I backed out of the driveway and for his angelic little voice which slaughters everyone's names, giving them a semblance only of their last syllables.  So that as I drove away Walker was standing next to his snowman- complete with wooden heart- waving his royal wave and shouting, "ankyou coming mommy.  ankyou Rich play snow".  Rich, is all he can get of his new sitters last name.  It kept rolling off my tongue making me laugh, "ankyou Rich play snow"...  Walker so often feels rich- rich in rain and snow, rich in music and his wild guitar strumming, rich in sloshing in our old mildewing bathtub shrieking, "Mommy- I swim, I swim!", rich in friends and family.  Rich in the love of his very dearest 6 year old friend Sophie. (Mommy, I marry Soph today?" he asks every Sunday putting on his tie for Sunday School where he will get to see his true love).  Walker is rich.  And he reminds me (OK, especially when I'm driving away from him!!) that I am rich. Thank you God for unexpected blessings.  Like Walker.  Like heart disease?? 11:12:48 AM    comment []

Monday, December 05, 2005

Dirty Little Secret   I am going to write something I almost never, ever talk about- particularly in mixed company.   On this day in 1971 I became a Christian.  There, I’ve said it.  And in those words.  And these:  I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior.  No, seriously. Those were pretty much the words I prayed along with the minister who helped save not just my soul (f you believe it works like that) but my life (I know it worked like that).   Yow!  Therapy moment- glimmer of illumination:  the week before I was “born again” my mother had the first of her “spells”- not a heart attack but the beginning of the long road to congestive heart failure, from which she now suffers quite literally.  We were Christmas shopping at Britt’s.  I’d either just eaten one of my favorite butter brickle cookies from their Bakery or was obsessing on when I could break away to go eat one.  Anyway, I remember a longing for butter brickle in my  mouth and then my mother slumping and saying she didn’t feel right and she sure as hell didn’t look right and she was very stern about us not making a scene and we would die first anyway so we just politely asked a clerk if he could call the ambulance for us and he took one look and then HE made the scene getting water, sitting her down, people gathering, expressing concern and even in her terror I could see my mother wanted to just disappear and not be the center of all the humiliating attention.  I just knew it had finally happened:  she was finally going to die.  I’d been waiting for this for as long as I could remember.  I knew she was heart broken and I’d known without knowing in the way that children do, that she was dying from the inside out.  Her nervous breakdown  several years before was not the first clue- certainly wasn’t the last.  Since then I‘d been vigilant.  More than vigilant.  I tracked her, monitored her well-being, emotionally checking her pulse ever few minutes, doing what I knew to do to keep her ticking along as best she could.  And then, goddamn, right there in Britts right before Christmas I think I was so busy trying to maneuver a way to the Bakery that I forgot to be watching.  Because one minute she was my mother shopping to make Christmas as nice as possible for us- though it was no secret that it was excruciatingly painful for her- and then she was slipping away quite literally- turning pale and cool and not speaking in her regular voice.   We followed the ambulance to the hospital and from the hospital I remember calling our new minister- a young man my mother and I couldn’t stand.  He was the quintessential 70’s Jesus Freak and let’s just say we were not and not amused either.  I didn’t call my father.  I wouldn’t have known how.  There were no cell phones and he worked out of his car and now that I think of it I wouldn’t have known how to get in touch with him if my whole family had been wiped off the map. And in truth, it wouldn’t have occured to me to call him for help.  My father doesn’t handle stress well. That is what you call understatement.  Before I knew how to tie my shoes I knew how to keep all manner of secrets and to read his face when he got out of his car after work- checking the barometer to know how much to reveal of what had really gone on that day.  So, I know he came to the hospital eventually but I didn’t call him and I don’t know who did.  I called Dick- the reviled minister.  And for the first time in my life I felt comforted, safe.  He talked a bit, he listened a bit, he joked a lot.  He didn’t assure me that my mother would be all right, but he assured me that I would be, that God loved me and would not leave me.  I remember getting really pissed and spewing out something like “actually God hasn’t done such a great job of taking care of me up to now” and I remember how soft and sad Dick’s face became and he looked me right in the eyes- no one ever had done that- and he said.  “If you have been hurt-it has not been God hurting you.  God came to heal us, to heal our wounds.” And although I’m sure I gave him a load of crap in response to that- I felt like I’d just won the lottery, been handed the golden goose, found the Holy Grail.  God was not the author of hurt but of healing.  Everything that had happened to me in my life had not been planned by a sadistic creator but could be made new, healed- redeemed- by a life-giving creator.  I remember Dick quoting Scripture I didn’t know:  abundant life, come that you might have life, never thirst, bread of life, knock and the door shall be opened, knows the very hairs on your head.  I knew many, many scriptures myself then- turn the other cheek, if a man asks for your shirt give him your cloak also, the good Samaritan, the Sermon on the Mt., do unto the least of these.  My mother was my best social work professor long before i got to college.  For her being a Christian meant loving others, giving to them, putting them first, yourself last, forgiving and forgiving and forgiving and then forgiving some more.  It was all about the other person.  I knew God loved others and that He would best love them through my loving them but I had never heard that God loved ME.  That I was beloved, that there was a plan for those God loved to be made whole and free.  Free from all the burdens and secrets and shame.  I knew then that this was the best news I would ever hear and though I fought it and fought it the way I would fight things when I was 14 and it was  1971 and I was braless with black armbands and all.  I’d been headed for a nice hippy life of free love on a commune somewhere protesting when I wasn’t planting a garden and singing alone with Joan Baez or Peter, Paul, and Mary.  And I didn’t really lose any of that hippy drive but over and above it it was like someone was calling my name, knocking on the closed door of my heart and begging me to believe there could be more for me and for so many girls like me and women like my mother.  And without wanting to, without knowing why, I said yes.  I believed.    I remember sitting in the empty church sanctuary with Dick, it was sort of dark, the horse hair pew cushion was not all that comfy, I was staring at the fabulously magnificent organ my mother had played since before I was born, where I’d stand beside her and turn the pages for her- ever the helper, ever close by.  And in that pew, in that church I told Dick I wanted to believe that Jesus had died for me personally, that he loved me in particular.  I wanted to be made clean, whole.  I remember saying vague things like there were things, things that had happened to me that were terrible and that I didn’t think Jesus could change them and Dick said, Jesus changed water into wine and death into life, there is nothing Jesus can’t change.  No one is too big for Jesus and I remember punching him in the arm and pouting a bit because I thought that was a dig about my weight which it was but which he also meant sincerely.  I remember Dick saying, “You are a beautiful young girl, you are special.  You are sweet and kind and funny and wise beyond your years and God is going to use you in ways you can’t imagine.  God does not want you to hide behind that pout and that weight.  God wants you to shine.  You’ve got to trust people.  No one can help you- I can’t help you if you won’t trust me.  I won’t hurt you.  God will not hurt you.  Ever.”  And then I remember weeping with such relief and when Dick put his arm around me I  felt like a baby in a mother’s arms, like the world was a safe place and now I had a Father and Mother who would not hurt me or let me be hurt.  I was not alone.   And this is the crazy, I can’t-believe-it-still part.  I felt something when I prayed.  Something beyond language, something so deep inside myself it is pre-verbal.  Something changed.  It was like a gaping hole closed.  My life still sucked.  Many, many bad things happened to me after that.  But I was never the same.  December 5th- it’s always felt like my real birthday.  It was like I left one world and went to another.  When I hear immigrants talk about leaving lands of persecution and starvation and abuse and then talk of their love of freedom, the hope of freedom, the power of freedom, I feel like that is me.  I lived in a world that was without hope and was blessed to move to a new land with hope.  With terrible pain and suffering but also with hope and love and redemption.    And for years and years afterwards I tried out many religions, religious practices, other paths to enlightenment (or cloudiness- smoking pot and drinking never made me feel enlightened as much as less bothered by what I couldn’t see) and nothing ever made me feel known, loved, forgiven, hopeful, except Jesus.   I so don’t want to believe in Jesus.  I think it’s a highly suspect concept.  Goes beyond all rational thought.  The Bible is not just full of inconsistencies but I hate many parts of it (See story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac- what the hell.  Can you spell mental illness?) Christianity is used by way too many people to hurt, exclude, judge, manipulate, and control (and that’s without even mentioning the White House) others.  But that’s Christianity.  I’m not at all proud of so much that is done in the name of Christianity.  In fact, these days, I’m downright ashamed.  But that has so little to do with me.  I am not really about Christianity, or the practice of Christianity.  I want to remember the day I heard an amazing truth about the love of God sent to the world in the body of Jesus and that that hippy Jesus hung with lepers and whores and shamed the political powers and died because he was just way too powerful what with preaching all that peace and love and put down your swords and get up and walk and feed the hungry and Remember Me, Remember Me.   Believing in Jesus ended up NOTHING like I expected it to.  It’s like a long marriage.  The passion only makes it to the surface every now and then and sometimes I forget believing ever meant anything so incredibly earth shaking.  But every December 5th in my heart I remember and I never talk about it.  What and look like a lunatic, not to mention a hypocrite -most Jesus loving Christians do not sprinkle their speech with the f-word or tell God if this is what you call loving the world your love is shit, the way I often do.   But beyond all rational thinking, when push comes to shove and especially in the month of December what with December 5th in it and baby Jesus about to enter the world in nativity scenes around the world, I just have to say out loud that even though “born again” is a corny phrase and been given a god-forsaken reputation in our culture right now, I am so glad that Jesus came into this world and that we can all be immigrants, delivered into a spiritual land of freedom and healing if we will make the journey and keep making the journey, mile after mile after hot dusty-will-it ever-end-mile.  It will end and I am no where near ready for it to end.  In many ways I feel like I am still just beginning.  So much still to learn, so much healing still to live into.  So much hope still eludes me.   And yet I blog.  Blogging is an act of faith.  Maybe even a prayer.    This December 5th I have just returned from the hospital after finally successfully completeing the CT Angiogram.  By Thursday I should know what’s happening with my heart.  What’s blocking it- be it birthday cake or secrets.   It seems an interesting coincidence that my mother’s first heart “event” (it wasn’t a full fledged heart attack) happened at just about the same time as mine.  And I was so frightened then that I had to reach out to Dick and then to God and then my whole life went in a direction I never could have imagined.  And for all the loss and pain that that has held it has held much more life and joy and love.   This December 5th I thank God for Jesus, for the Word made Flesh.  And I pray that as I first came to understand that God had lived and breathed in flesh and redeemed my life in doing that, God help me to come to understand my own flesh, how I can redeem my body and all the secrets it holds.  How I can allow it to be redeemed.   Right now all I know to do is drink tea and write and accept the blessing of the Faithul Four and the other kind souls who have encouraged me as I pull off the layers right in front of God and everybody.   Thank you God for the miracle of December 5th in my life.  May it always be so.   3:09:19 PM    comment [] I haven't posted this weekend because I'm feeling so damn sorry for myself all I would do is whine and complain and I hate that and besides the whole point of my blogging was to find a miracle a day but then I got too bogged down with the unmiracles to see my way to blog.  But guess what I found?  I couldn't resisit the sugar.  First a couple cookies, then a couple pecan squares, then a couple more.  Then last night I got out of bed to come downstairs and eat 3 chocolate chip cookies standing in the dark in the kitchen like some kind of crazy person.  And now this morning I am feeling like it is just too hard and I am too alone and I don't have it in me to do everything I need to do.  And did I mention my husband is so depressed right now I am worried for him and I don't know how to help him and that is a frightening thing. We found out Friday that my mother-in-laws cancer has recurred (for the umpteenth time) and she will be having surgery tomorrow and we are hoping for the best.  She is an amazingly healthy person except for this damn cancer and I feel hopeful that she will be able to beat it again.  As my older son said, "I can't imagine the world without Neena in it"... This morning I have a repeat CT Angiogram for which I'm being medicated quite thoroughly. I'm taking prenisone, benadryl and an anti-nausea med. and they think that will keep me from reacting to the contrast they inject.  I hope the hell- I do NOT want to go through that again.  I don't quite see how benadryl is going to keep my heart rate from tanking but what do I know?? I also am just pissed at myself that I don't know how to use the computer better.  I think of myself as fairly intelligent and yet, do you think for the life of me I can make the Word/Copy/Paste thing work?  I have a fun post about my son going to the Nutcracker that's just sitting there refusing to get pasted onto my weblog.  And yesterday and today I can't get RadioUserLand to open on my desktop and had to get in here through my history and if this won't post for any reason I pray to God I will not go eat the rest of the chocolate chip cookies. Is it true I can only post from my laptop since that's the computer on which I downloaded Radio User Land?  I must be able to post from work, or a friend's house or upstairs when my husband hogs the laptop like yesterday?? The house is silent (MIRACLE), Walker got up this morning, came downstairs and turned all the lights on, went to the bathroom and then came and woke me up and asked to watch TV.  I brought him into our bed and he fell right back to sleep (DOUBLE MIRACLE) and I got out of bed and he didn't immediately wake up (You got it- TRIPLE MIRACLE) and I came down here and am writing and not eating a cookie and I think I can't even have one cookie or square or anything like that for a while because you know where that leads. The sun is just rising.  It snowed yesterday- it's really very pretty and feels Christmasy.  I need to focus on the gifts I have- there are so many.  This place to write being one of them.  You who read me being another. 6:31:56 AM    comment []

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Can’t Comment Damn It   I’m sure I should know this, but--  why can’t people who aren’t bloggers on Radio User Land comment on my blogs.  Some friends are reading my blog and just desperate to comment and get rejected and this is really pissing them off and bumming me out because you know how I want those comments to pile up!!   So, can you only comment if you’ve paid to download RadioUserLand.  If this is a stupid question- sorry.   Eric- I’m trying to write this on Word and follow your 4 easy steps to posting.  I hope it works.  Let’s see…     Nope.  Didn’t work.  It won’t let me paste.  HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I need a computer tutor.   Trying again.         7:57:01 PM    comment []

Friday, December 02, 2005

I will not scream, I will not cry, I will not eat anything bad for my heart. OK.  Advice please. I was working on a fabulous post about my darling little son (which is going to make him late for school because he's still in his pj's thanks to my blogging)when POOF- it disappeared.  SONOFABITCH.  Where the hell did it go?  I'm pissed.  And bummed.  It was a good one (or is that only because it's gone.  If it was here to be posted guarantee I'd be agonizing over how trivial and mortifying it was.  Isn't that just the human condition??) Tell me real bloggers out there who probably know how to use a computer.  Do you write your blog somewhere else and attach it (as if I could)?  Have you ever lost an entire brilliant post to the netherlands of Radio User Land?  Have you ever lost a mundane one like mine?  It was trivial but it was MINE and I want it back.   7:07:39 AM    comment []

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Song of Cupcakes tiny little dots of happiness miniatures of glad-you-were-born love less cake to politely digest to get to the tower of love-this-is-love frosting on the top swirled into a perfect confection twist  at my favorite bakery cake only  canvas for The Chef  his purple- magenta frosting roses grow full inches above their chocolate soil... Last night I enjoyed Mack's Happy Birthday without so much as a lick of cupcake top I love Mack more than cupcakes who knew? 7:03:04 AM    comment []

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

So many flaps to go before I sleep... Hey out there- Faithful Four- thanks for the comments.  Yesterday was one of those days where acts of simple human kindness made me weep.  It started when I risked looking at my blog at work, right in my space 2 feet from the 2 people who sit right next to me.  I'd promised myself I wouldn't do that, having just returned from 2 weeks off.  But then I realized that actually I'm still sick and wouldn't be back at work if I had any sick time left.  And part of What The Doctor Ordered is blogging (my inner doctor that is!) and god knows, one of my new resolutions in my Change-My-Life-Regime is to follow my Inner Doctor's orders.  I truly panicked (how the hell do you spell that- panic,  panics, panicked-  paniced??) when I sat at my desk (which had been relocated while I was gone and all my stuff packed in a box.  So that what was previously a system- though completely disorganized- became just a mess).  But I didn't panic about the chaos- it was just the being there.  Having to try and focus on something besides the pressure around my heart, the terror I still feel remembering when my blood pressure crashed in the hospital, the way I could see my husband getting so tiny tiny and far away and I was crying "I can't see you, help me" and I felt so desperate not to leave him and then when I came back into my body it was like I'd been somewhere really far away and seen something I couldn't forget but don't want to remember. My husband is not a happy man- never has been.  His struggle with depression makes mine look like a picnic.  I'll never forget the helpless look in his eyes- I think there was terror right behind it but I just remember wondering why he wasn't doing anything to bring me back from where ever I was disappearing. I think my whole damn life I've been looking for somebody to "bring me back" from where I'd disappeared.  I didn't have the worst childhood, nowhere near it.  Some parts of it were great fun and a LOT of it was hysterically funny.  But it was a childhood you had to survive and I can remember always having had this feeling of being divided- of having a me living in the world physically but the REAL me, all kind of lost in the tunnel inside me wanting to get out but having no idea how. Maybe that's part of blogging to me.  Blogging and avoiding my binge foods- they go together.  Maybe this is a way of me trying to have my body and my soul in the same space at the same time.  I love the sound of my fingers pressing down the keys.  The little tip-tap of my fingernails, the feeling of pushing gently and having letters appear and then words and then sentences and then feelings and then things I didn't even know I had to say are being said and words are coming back to me from people who don't know me but for reasons I can't begin to understand, are encouraging me on my way- giving me a hope I can barely hold by myself.  I gave up hope for my body a long time ago I think.   After I lost my third pregnancy I decided what I'd always feared was true- that my body had been too damaged to do something good like bring forth life-or anything like health.  And then I had my boys, who both had special needs and  there hasn't been a lot of time to let myself think about what had been done to my body 35 years ago- there was early intervention to do, physcial therapy, speech therapy, sign language to learn, cardiologists to interview, open heart surgery to get through, services to fight for, therapists to research and find and somehow pay for and old wonderful friends who didn't quite know how to welcome a babies they hadn't expected and family who mean well but haven't a clue what it is like day in and day out.  And what is it like?  I suppose it's really like everyone elses mothering with some extra complications thrown in the batter.  I make it sound so hard, it sounds like I'm complaining and I try never to do that and yet I'm afraid I do all the time and I really wish I knew how to let people know that this is so hard I can hardly do it another day and yet I wouldn't undo it for anything.  I know more now than I ever thought I could about love- about love without conditions, love without the usual "rewards"- the dance recitals, the stellar report cards, the gaggles of friends, the birthday party invitations and sleep overs, the playdates, the school awards, the lead in the school play, the instruments played, the family history shared, traditions passed on.  It's still all so new to me.  Every day it's  new to me all over again and maybe that's just what motherhood is. This Saturday Walker has been invited to his first Christmas party just for children with special needs.  He swims with special olympics now and that's how they got his name I guess.  Santa is going to come and give Walker a Batman toy which I called and requested as the invitation instructed me to do.  It has been both heartwarming and heartbreaking to spend my Sunday nights at Special Olypmics watching Walker swim with all the other children and adults who want just as much as I do to be seen and noticed, to have an audience, an admiring public, fans, awards, recognition.  Love. It is heartwarming because week after week young people put on their bathing suits and get in a pool with children they don't know and help them-in whatever way they are able- to move from one end of a pool to the other in preparation for a swim meet in March in which everyone will swim and everyone will win.  And it is heartwarming because for free these young people give up a sunday night to sometimes  be drooled on, in my sons case thrown up on, and always with a smile and a cheer,  hugs and jokes and silly little rhymes made out of children's names and songs to swim in rhythm with and an invaluable gift given to every mother sitting poolside.   It is  heartbreaking because I am there.  Because I am a mother there- not a volunteer.  I am sitting on the bench talking with the other mothers about school battles, medical battles, marriage battles, sibling battles, family battles, friend battles.  The never ending battle of making a place for  children our culture does not really see the value in making a central place for. And I am one of the luckiest ones there.  Walker with his little tow head and his splashing, dog-paddling glee is a favorite.  He can walk into the pool by himself, he can pretty much swim, his heart defect is all fixed up, he doesn't have seizures, he can eat, he's pretty much toilet trained, and he can talk and tell me, "No mommy, bad mommy, kill my friend bird.  Bird alive fly sky.  Bad mommy kill bird" when he catches me preparing our Thanksgiving turkey!  And he answered me for the first time the other night when I prayed as I do every night, "Thank you God for Walker", then kissed him and said, "I love you Walker" he said, "ov too ommy" and I thought my heart would melt and that was my dance recital, straight A report card and lead in the play all rolled into one nobody-will-everknow-it-happened moment in the dark  by the side of the bed of this little boy I have been given to love and bless and be blessed by.  I know that to be true.  That he is really the gift to me.  Some gifts it takes a long time to realize how perfect they really are when they're not at all the gift we really wanted. Tomorrow we start our Advent calendar at home which is always a challenge as Walker throws huge tantrums when he can't open all 24 things on Day 1.  Waiting is hard.  Waiting for the gift at the end to be revealed is a hard, sometimes painful, process.  For Walker- no less for all of us. I love Advent and I have especially loved it since Walker was born.  I am certainly no VIrgin Mary and Walker is certainly no Christ child.  But I am comforted to think that I walk a path with so many unseen mothers past and present.  And not just mothers of children with extra chromosomes. Brian is a teenager at my church anxioudly awaiting a lung donor to save him from the CF he has battled for so long.  His mother didn't know the moment he was born what a long slog she was in for.  And she surely didn't know what joy she was in for.  Brian's family holds onto seemingly simple moments that most of us wouldn't even notice had taken place,much less consider nearly miraculous if only because we are still alive to experience them... I sure  the VIrgin Mary had no desire to end up unmarried and pregnant- if you believe the story- with the child of God.  That  makes having a baby with an extra chromosome seem downright  mundane- comparitively uneventful.  Mary couldn't have known what awaited her or her son.  Not the wisdom,not the miracles, and certainly not the suffering.  But as it came to her she lived it and walked on being the mother of a child she'd probably wished had just been a crooked tax-collector with hoardes of children instead of a man saying crazy things like "take up your mat and walk' and "turn the other cheek" and "I am the bread of life" and "your faith has made you well.  Go in peace" and "forgive them, they know not what they do".  I am sure Mary just wished for some quiet well-behaved young man taking her to temple and making sacrifices as expected instead of clearing the place out in a rage.  But we do not get what we expect and what I am beginning to realize- which is both frightening and exhilirating- is that my guess is  we don't really even truly know what it is we've gotten.  I am like Walker really.  In my own way I am pulling, pulling, pulling- trying to get the rest of the flaps of my calendar open before their time.  I am so at the very beginning of this motherhood journey- walking with these children who have so many complicated needs, carrying my own very  complicated unmet needs and I just want to know if any of the flaps coming up are going to hold some really nice surprises.  But of course  I can't know.  I can't open the flaps and even if I could I wouldn't know the meaning of what they held until long after I'd been living  what I found there. It isn't fast enough. It all takes too long to live into.  I keep wanting some certainty, a glimpse into the future- and I want to know that future will hold happiness for Walker- particularly after I am no longer here to kiss his blonde head at night and press my lips into the flat space between his eyes that I have grown to love- it feels like peace to me- that very same flat space that made me cry out in resigned recognition in the delivery room.  I didn't know what I had delivered.  I am still finding out.  And most of the time I am surprised by the joy.  The sorrow I expected.  The joy is a complete and utter surprise.  And blessing. Welcome to advent- no matter your faith or lack thereof.  Even when we don't acknowledge Advent I believe it is unfolding around us- we're alway on for the ride whether we know it or not.  3:02:40 PM    comment []

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

I think I can, I think I can... I'm going in to work today for a few hours and I'm having an anxiety attack!  I had to turn around and come back- I'd forgotten my tea bags and saltines with peanut butter which has become my focus in life.  It's like they have magical power and I was afraid if I didn't have them with me I'd find myself roaming the aisles at Brooks for butterfinger bits and hersheys kisses.  Oh God- I have some in my drawer at work. I'm afraid to leave my house.  Afraid to drive by Dunkin Donuts, to walk near the Hot Spot, to go to Atlantic where I get my daily whoopie pie.  I'm not sure I can work and not use those things to get through the day.  What if it's either work/keep our house/eat shit OR quit/blog/drink tea/peacefully at home?? I have to get in my car and drive.  But I didn't have the heart to do it until I blogged first.  When I was little and afraid to leave my house without my mother, throwing up everywhere she tried to make me go, so anxious in the world I could barely stand to be in my own skin.  She used to read me that stupid train story over and over- you know- the I think I can one.  Like that was going to begin to cover the shit we had going on in our 4 walls there at home.  But still- I guess it was something.  It was what she knew to do I guess.  And here it is 40 years later- popping back into my mind when I have that-can't-go out-there- the-world-is-not-safe-for-me feeling, so I guess it was better than nothing! I'm off into the dangerous world of donuts and candy and coffee and french fries and whoppie pies but I don't go alone.  I go with my citrus green tea and a few wild berry bags just in case the going gets really rough. I'd really like a gin and tonic.  When I didn't eat like a nut I drank like a fish.  It's always got to be something like I said.  It's probably good that the heart scare is really scary because I wasn't even tempted to drink.  I gave that up when I had children though I really only traded in I guess.  Still, there's no point in dwelling on that.  I've got to go to work, tea bags in hand. 10:32:39 AM    comment []

Monday, November 28, 2005

Sally Fields of Blogs- I like it, I really like it! I'm having a crappy night- I have to have another EKG tomorrow morning and make a decision about what kind of angiogram I think most safe (I'd love the cardiologist to decide that but what with liability and everything, now that I've had an adverse reaction to the first test I guess it's kind of up to me to decide how much risk I want to take.  how the hell do I know?? Anyway.  I'm blogging quickly while my youngest is trapped in the tub (don't worry he's 8- old enough to be alone for a minute).  I'm panicing because I just ate 2 chocolate chip cookies that a kind teacher sent home.  It's the chocolate I've had in 2 weeks and boy- it's all about chocolate.  Now I cant stop thnking about eating all the rest of the cookies and the house is such a mess we couldn't find my other sons math project (which is already a week overdue with special dispensation because of all our drama lately!).  I just had to blog to find the strength to resist anymore cookies.  It's chocolate.  I can't have any because when I do- it takes over mind.  I'm chocolate crazy.  I prefer blogcrazy. I smiled right out loud (ever done that?)I was so happy when I logged on and saw 4 comments.  Yes, I am the Sally Field of blogs.  I just might change my blog name again- what do you think?  Thank you Faithful Four for your encouragement. Whoever you are you're helping me keep my head above water.  6:44:04 PM    comment [] Cardiology Limbo I've been on hold with my cardiologist's office for over 20 minutes.   I haven't talked with a human yet, but I can't bring myself to hang up because I am enjoying being incredulous that their on-hold music appears to be one repeated track from the Disney Princess CD.  I've been listening to "So this is love", sung I think by Snow White, for over 20 minutes.  Wait- A human voice.  Oh, this is priceless.  I have the WRONG damn cardiologist practice.  Spring- the receptioninsts name no kidding -and she sound well over 40- informed me I've been waiting for nothing.  And when I asked  if her office was for pediatric cardiology she was taken aback and said "No, it's a practice serving adults" like I was an idiot, so I said way too sweetly, "Oh, I just thought it must be because while I was on hold for 20 minutes I listened to the same song from Snow White over and over" to which she got defensive though I hadn't exactly meant to criticize.  After that I called my REAL cardiologists office and didn't even get to hear 2 lines from one of my old favorite by Janis Joplin (Me and my Bobby McGee) before a chipper receptionist picked  up and told me the earliest appointment I could get with my cardiologist would be December 6th.  I expressed more than mild surprise as I'd been scheduled to have the failed angiogram STAT and now, what the hell, why not wait until the 6th?  In the meantime my boss is calling to find out when I'm coming back to work and I have no idea whether I should go back yet- I know I don't feel like it but is that physical, mental or what? I sort of joked to my husband this morning that I'm having a nervous breakdown and as soon as I said it I started hyperventilating and feeling the walls closing in on me.  I'd gone back to bed after getting one son off to school and calling the other in sick because of a big fat chipmunk cheek/tooth ache that had us up half the night.  But suddenly I felt I'd come unglued if I didn't get control of myself. "I've got to blog" I announced sitting bolt upright then throwing off the covers. But now that I'm sitting here I'm still feeling crazy.  OK, I haven't taken my Prozac in a couple days (haven't had it in me to get the pharmacy for my refill) but I don't think I'd be feeling that so quickly.  I think it's more that I'm so frightened for myself and once again having a full blown identity crisis. What is my problem?  Why am I writing this as if it's some kind of magic?  Why do I want- no need- total strangers to give me some affirmation I am clearly personally lacking?  How pitiful am I anyway? Yesterday when I read blogcabin (Ithink it was blogcabin) about the phenomena of blog "relationships" it gave language to what I've been feeling and got me really focused on what I am actually doing here.  This blog thing started at 4 o'clock in the morning the day after I got home from the hopsital and was convinced that I was moments away from dying of a heart attack and leaving my boys motherless with their depressed dad.  So, it started in an irrational state, but what kind of state has it continued in?  Blogging, I realized today, is a secret I am largely keeping.  Of the chosen few I've told of my new compulsion, I see mostly worry on their faces.  My best friend said, "What if you get weirdos commenting to you and finding out who you really are?".  And that has really stuck with me.  And just now I've realized that I'm trying to exchange one compulsion I'm ashamed of with another compulsion I'm ashamed of.  Now I have yet another secret I am keeping even from the people I love most.  I am all about secrets really, and I am sick and tired of it.  Secrets are enough to give you a heart attack, never mind high cholesterol and obesity. So I'm thinking now, as I blog- what's to be ashamed of?  That I am someone who seems to have to have an addiction in order to get through even the best day?  No, that's not quite it.  I can think of lots of people I consider bright, talented, even successful who have life-sucking addictions.  True, I'd feel a whole hell of a lot more respectable if I were a crack addict instead of a donut addict (and I bet I'd look a hell of a lot better too!), but it's not the addiction I'm so much ashamed of.  It's the need.  The neediness.  Yuck.  I am someone who so needs the approval of others that I will go to total strangers to find it.  And truth be known, it isn't enough that a handful of marvelous, kind people have emailed me and kept me going another day.  Now I'm greedy for comments the way I used to be greedy for food.  I want more.  I crave more.  What can I do to get more hits?  More fans out there?  More comments?  Even bad ones.  I am the Sally Field of blogs.  I am desperate for everyone (not just someone, but EVERYone to like me, or at least pay attention to me)  "You like me- you really like me" that would go further than donuts.  I know, I know.  I've had enough therapy to know that I can really only truly feel "full" if I love myself, and I have enough faith to know that I can only truly feel "full" when I know I am loved by God just as I am (isn't that the Billy Graham altar call song?) but in reality, in my heart of hearts, I believe I will feel full when enough people read my writing and then want more.  How distorted is that??? Well.  I began this blog promising myself to find at least one miracle a day.  Yesterdays involved my nemisis the Jelly Donut.  Someone left 3 unattended, fresh dunkin donuts in the church kitchen and I found them when I went to get my son a snack.  They were clearly left in the "help yourself" area, though even if I'd thought they belonged to someone who'd go looking for them I most likely would not have been able to resist stealing the jelly (and feeling quite pleased to only steal the 1)just 2 weeks ago.  But yesterday, I heard this voice in my crazy little head say, "Donuts are death, tea is love" and I actually laughed and said outloud, "Shouldn't that be 'tea is life'?" But the voice was insistent that it meant, "tea is love". And then I remembered that I'd written "Tea is love" in one of my early blogs here so I decided that that is some kind of new word from God.  So I have honored the voice by renaming my blog.  "The voice".  I am honoring "the voice".  Not my voice, mind you.  I am much better at honoring disembodied voices.  As soon as something gets connected to me I mistrust it in my own mind.  My own mind is a bit of a scary place as you can now see.  It seems to have a life of it's own.  Just the other day when I was hanging out of (vs. hanging out in!) my jonnie at Mass. General listening to the sane conversation of the beautiful Greek woman across from me in the waiting area, that same disembodied voice in my head suddenly said, "I never thought of my body as belonging to me before" and that was so fucking sad and so fucking alarming that I had to immediately forget it until just now when I remembered it.  Is it OK to say the f-word in blogland?? Well, my husband just called.  He's heading home with more poor sad 11 year old who needs a root canal.  What kind of shitty mother am I that I let him suffer for 3 days stuffing him with advil, letting him watch the Sci-Fi channel while I read blogs and drank tea.  The dentist's office was closed and I couldn't decide when the on-call service asked me if it was an emergency whether it was or not.  I am so not good at knowing what is really important and needs serious attention and what should just be suffered through.  I'm afraid I clearly lean towards always "suffering through" which is not something I ever wanted to pass on to my children and yet I think I model that for them pretty much every day.  Another thing to ponder... I'm suddenly trying not to panic about my unpaid leave, or all the time my husband is having to take off from his job, or the fact that we'll now be paying for a root canal which I'm pretty sure my 11 year old is not going to understand   might have to be his Christmas present as I'm quite sure the root canal is going to cost more than our 700 dollar Christmas club!!...But hang on-  wasn't I writing about miracles back aways?  The church-kitchen-jelly-donut miracle.  I've got to hang onto that.  And another morning without my beloved bitter coffee that always begs for donut accompaniment (is that a word?).  Wild Berry Zinger tea with no sugar eaten without the last piece of apple pie which I hope my husband is grateful I've left for him for 2 days now even though he hasn't had the decency  to eat it.  Some people!! I think I'll go take a bath.  The scary thing is.  At this point, I'd be happy to never leave my house again as long as I could read, blog and drink tea.  I'm worried that when I have to go out and face my real world again it's going to take more than just one donut.  A day at a time.  A day at a time.  One donut-free day at a time. 12:09:24 PM    comment []

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Blogloose and Childfree There are no children in my house right now.  I have not plopped anyone in front of the Square Idol (TV) so that I can write in relative peace (marred by the guilt of course).  Today my husband and I both sit, all by ourselves, at our dining room table, The Choir CD filling the space around us (so far I'm not missing the Madascar soundtrack even one little bit).  My husband is trying to pay months' worth of bills with nowhere near enough money and I'm trying to keep from eating leftover pecan pie or think of jelly donuts.  A blog referring to Lotus Birth (google Lotus Birth for excruciating details) has decreased my appetite only the slightest bit.  I have a great respect for placentas actually (again- see formerly mentioned web site for illumination)since my first baby was stillborn due to problems with the placenta.  I can't really grow a good placenta which is rather vital to growing a live baby.  I make placentas full of blood clots, tiny placentas.  3  injections a day and a couple months of bed rest finally resulted in 2 placentas healthy enough to sustain my two wild little boys.  I've always though it ironic that I would have trouble feeding my babies before they were even born since feeding people is what I've always done best.  If food is love than I am the Queen of it. Anyway, I don't know how I got there- I guess thinking of placentas and lotus birth.  Hmmm.  That blog was an eye-opening start to the day. Today's miracle is my friend Maureen who has graciously taken my boys so that I can relax today.  I don't remember the last time my husband and I were alone in our house together during daylight hours- think it might have been years.  It's kind of sad about the bills though- you know how it is with marriage and money- it's what we mostly fight about.  I am going to make it through this whole day without sugar or fighting about money.  That would be miracle enough for any day.  10:55:17 AM    comment []

Friday, November 25, 2005

Today's miracle was right there when I opened my eyes, blessedly before either of the children opened theirs.  Out my bedroom window- layers and layers of sky turning shades of pink and blue and lavender, stacked above my pie slice of ocean view  .  And when I came down stairs I blissfully tromped right across the cheerios crunching under my bare feet on the kitchen floor (obviously my 11 year old helped himself to a little snack while I was upstairs last night) and right to my laptop to sit in front of the dining room window to write and watch the casserole of clouds change from pastel to bold and now a dark fall gray with bright yellow sandwiched in the gaps.  I think it's turning out to be true- that when I write about food I don't have to eat it.  Even the sky now is practically edible.  Sunrise is better than donuts, though I am missing the jelly squishing out that little hole in the end and filling my mouth.  Still, this morning I've filled that space with a half a banana and my new compulsion-  Celestials Seasonings green tea citrus flavored.  I'm missing the idea of my coffee but yesterday after Thanksgiving dinner when I  had my first cup in 10 days it tasted so bitter and was making my stomach turn sour so I dumped it out and made my tea.  Right now- not going to work- I don't need something to push me into gear.  I'm just looking for something to keep my hands busy and sooth me at the same time.  Tea seem to be just the thing for that.  7:13:01 AM    comment []

Thursday, November 24, 2005

It's Thanksgiving and I'm looking for the miracles today.  Tuesday I came up short since I had a reaction to the iodine contrast used in the CT Angiogram- my heart rate dropped to about 25 and the attending physician came running and stopped them from injecting me with anymore.  We'd only gotten to 20cc's and to complete the test I'd need to receive 80cc's so they throught that might be just a little bit dangerous.  So- I'm feeling sorry for myself- a trip into Boston, getting stuck with needles and waiting in the tiny waiting room with 4 other women, me the only one in a johnnie several sizes too small.  I felt like a cow.  Everyone else there was thin and obviously had undeserved heart problems, whereas, it had to be obvious what my arteries were full of.  Incomplete test or not- I think we can be sure there are pounds of peanut butter fudge and Cinnabons wedged in my veins (with extra cream cheese frosting on the side, of course)  I do make the best peanut butter fudge in the world, and my cream cheese frosting is even better than Cinabons'.  I will miss fudge and frosting.  Terribly.  Holidays without them will be- what?  What are they about if not food?. Today is a day all about food.  Thanksgiving was huge in my family growing up.  All that last minute rushing around to clean, dust, vac, pick up clumps of dog hair, hide bags of stray papers and old magazines, my mothers to-do lists and her lists of her lists...The stess, the anxiety, the near panic.  The excitement.  You could taste it- sweet and heavy.  Hard to hold...  Up half the night grinding onions, celery and dried bread with the cast iron food grinder perched on the table edge..  My mother and me- talking, laughing, complaining, eating.  Rolling dates stuffed with peanuts in sugar, piling them so high on the beutiful cut glass plate that annually came out of it's safe hiding place.  Polishihng silver, putting the leaf in the huge claw foot dining room table.  Dusting out the chandelier over the table so that when my brothers started the annual Thanksgiving Day Dirty Napkin Toss, the chandelier wouldn't rain dust down on the beautifully set table.  My grandmother's china.  The table looking like my mother needed it to- everything just so, polished and pristine.  One day of the year she could pretend she was who she had once been, who she still hoped somehow she'd get back to being.  Someone with beautiful things, breakable things, things that spoke of taste and class and not the shame I know she felt every other day of our lives in our dirty, messy house that spoke of class lost, opportunity squandered... But that's not finding the miracle is it.  Today my parents sit in NH all by themselves  and I feel guilty but I know it is the best thing for them and the best thing for me this year.  We had a good day here today.  Our best friends Carol and Mary came with their foster son who last year was too traumatized to sit at the table with us and stood in the other room waiting for the next bad thing to happen to him.  This year he sat with us, held our hands and said grace with us, ate 2 pieces of pumpkin pie and had an all together great day.  There's the miracle for today- little Jonah looking safe and loved and whole.  Thank you God for foster parents everywhere who open their hearts and homes, and thank you for these two women who James Dobson and Pat Robertson and so many others on the far right believe are not fit to be parents, but thank God despite the judgement of many, these women have done what too few of us do- given the glass of water to the thirsty,  clothes to the naked, shelter to the homeless.  They have shared their love  and treasure with a little boy who came to them  a wounded stranger and is now  being healed through the gift of their love for him, through the gift of belonging.   A Thanksgiving miracle for sure.   4:42:53 PM    comment []

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Tea tastes pretty good suddenly.  That's a miracle.  The miracles are flying fast and furious around here- it's amazing.  I have to think they're always wizzing by me and that I just don't see them or am looking for the big ones that will "really make a difference" and so don't see the "little" ones that are making a difference. ... So far I like Celestial Seasoning Wild Berry Zinger tea best (with 1/4 tsp. of sugar though it's really fine without sugar), second is Lemon Zinger (I need the 1/4 tsp. for that), and third is Green Tea Citrus Flavor.  That has caffeine and everything.  The green tea doesn't require any sugar, the caffeine, I think, is  psychologically a sufficiently harmful substance  to satisfy my need to ingest things that hurt me! A concept which today, as I sweat out waiting for my CT Angiogram, should be no laughing matter.  Yesterday when I was enjoying having some dental work done, I felt I should inform my new dentist of my recent hospital stay and upcoming heart tests.  She pulled her head back a bit (is that weird or what- having someone that close to your face when your mouth is pulled wide open and stuffed with cotton and drool?) looked at me very sternly and said, "Well, I guess you're just going to have to join the rest of the world eating healthy and excercising." What could I say?  I saw it so clearly in that second as she looked at me expectantly, hopefully.  What was I going to say- "Don't you think I'd like to join the rest of the world?  Don't you think I've been trying to "join the rest of the world" my whole entire goddamn life.  Do you think I've spent thousands of dollars in therapy so I could sit fat  on my ass on the sidelines and die of congestive heart failure?"  But explaining (defending really) an eating disorder  to someone is nearly impossible unless that person has an addiction of their own hidden up their sleeve.  If I could have looked at her and said, "You know I've been using cocaine to self-medicate since I was a little abused girl, I guess as soon as I finish rehab. I'll be back for the rest of this costly dental work" maybe she'd have gotten it a bit.  But to convince someone you've been snorting ring-dings (sometimes it was pretty much like snorting them) for 45 years or so- it's a stretch to get any understanding there, never mind compassion.  So- seeings as Dr. Hayes was circling with a syringe of novacaine- I decided to just keep it simple. "Yes I will"  I replied to her "join the world" invitation.  Then she plunged in with the syringe and said, "Isn't it too bad it has to take some big emergency to get us to do what we know we should have been doing all along?".  "Mmm" I tried to reply through the needle and gloved hand wedged in the very back of my left jaw.  "Mmm"  It sure as hell is too bad.  And the truly terrifying thing is- what if  some "big emergency" isn't enough?  I'm as usual, wondering about visiting OA again but I have to say- I have never been able to stand up and say, "Hi, I'm Kay and I'm a compulsive overeater".  Can I write that into blog land, can I cleverly weave the words into pieces I read aloud at writing workshops?  Sure.  But to stand up in front of a  group of seen-some-hard-times-people who know exactly what you are and some of the things you've done in pursuit of food, and say out loud into what is usually a dingy room reeking of old coffee, human anxiety and too little air flow- "I'm a compulsive overeater"- just doesn't do the whole thing justice.  Or does it?  I don't know.  I am still pretty much clueless when it comes to this eating disorder thing. But this line of thinking is depressing me.  Back to the miracles.  The tea.  Ah the tea.  7 entire days- one full miraculous week (OK the first 2 days sick in the hospital on IVs probably shouldn't count) without a single cup of coffee and requisite donut, pastry, poptart or any of the perverse pleasures that have to accompany coffee for me. Of course I've barely left the house and avoided human contact but I have to start somewhere.  I have to get some ground under my feet.  I'm afraid for when I go back to work.  Work =donuts and coffee.  How would I drive to work without my coffee and jelly donut?  What would propel me there?  And what would I do at 10:30 when I've been up for 5 hours and I really need to lie down and take a quick nap?  What will the lady at the Hot Spot think if I don't trek across the street and buy one of her fabulous chocolate chip cheesecake swirl muffins?  I'll miss talking to her and hearing about her husband's book signings and then dreaming of my book signings as I try to concentrate the rest of the morning(never mind that half the book signings are hot little poorly attended affairs where people mostly want to tell him about a similar book they want to publish and maybe don't even buy a copy of his.  Still, envy is envy- it's not rational.  A book signing, hellish or otherwise, is a book signing.  It means you're real.  And don't give me any of that Velveteen Rabbit crap.  You're not real in the writing world until you've written a book.  Period.)at my desk.  And then lunch will come and pizzas and McDonald's and pasta and garlic bread and onion rings will smell everywhere and I will be SO ready for a nap by then that I will have to eat something truly stimulating to keep me going and then there's that midafternoon slump that often can be overcome with a brisk walk to Brooks and the purchase of chocolate kisses or bulls-eyes, or a 50cent bag of tootsie rolls if I'm able to resist the array of real (meltable)chocolate choices.  When I choose tootsie rolls it's a spiritual victory.  They're hard to eat fast and they have no fat (or at least low fat) and except for having pulled out countless fillings on them- I don't think they're all that harmful.  Nonetheless, with me it's a slippery slope.  I won't be able to go into Brooks, at least not for a while.  And how will I explain that to people?  Part of my cardiac rehab.- no browsing in drug stores?  This is so typical of me.  So perfectly typical...  My son is awake and roaming around upstairs  and I don't want him to wake his older brother so I need to go but now I feel all sad and bereft that I didn't get to "really write" despite getting up at 5:30 and despite my fingers moving most of that time.  Still- all I've written about is food.  I'm writing about it instead of eating it so I guess that's something.  And also, I'm writing about it because if I stop thinking about food I will think about the state that my body is in, the state I have let things get to.  I will think about angiograms and blockages, arteries and valves and stress tests and open heart surgery and my mothers cardiac arrest and her surgeries and my terror.  And my terror nearly every day when I was a little girl that her heart would give out and she would die and I would be left to fend for myself and even though she couldn't do much to protect me I had the hope that she would.  That she would find a way out and then I would find a way out because she would never ever leave me behind would she??  I can taste that fear.  The bitterness, the bile taste, the metallic taste- like the end of a gun.  The terror of losing her. The first night I was in the hospital my 11 year old son gave the sitter a terrible time, pretty much verbally abusing her which is not at all like him.  When my husband got home from being with me and talked to my son he asked him why he thought mommy was in the hospital.  My husband recounted to me how my son hung his head and said, "I can't say it- it's too terrible" and then absolutely would not speak.  Hearing that nearly broke my heart.  It is almost too terrible to speak of- the thought of being separated from my children.  Leaving them without my protection, my love.  How would they bear it?  What I've done(and what's been done) to my body over 40 years feels too terrible to speak of. And yet it speaks for itself.  Who have I been fooling? Do I dare pray for a miracle for today?  Another day without coffee and donuts?  Another day of finding tea not only satisfying but comforting?  A heart miraculously without blockages despite years and years and years of frosting, fudge, candy, cake, cookies, whipped cream, and donuts, donuts, donuts?? The other night an old friend called to see why I'd been in the hospital.  I was getting technical about the EKG's, stress tests, etc. when my husband yelled in the background, "tell him you've got a piece of birthday cake stuck in your heart" and I got hysterical even though it's way too true to be anything close to funny.  Birthday cake is my all time weakness.  Well, the frosting is anyway.  Frosting is love.  Frosting is me and my mother in the kitchen whipping up happiness in a bowl and spreading  it out for the whole family to consume.  I will miss frosting in excess.  I wonder if I could ever write "tea is love".  That would be something to pass on to my sons.  A love that wouldn't stick in their hearts and hurt them.  It isn't easy passing on something you never quite got.... Dear God of All- God of frosting and tea, of the pouring depressing, life-giving rain beating on my windows- help me stand the terror I can taste today and let me soothe it with tea instead of trying to cover it with frosting.  There's never enough frosting to truly hide in anyway.   7:18:00 AM    comment []

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Since 4 o'clock this morning I've been obsessing on this blog.  It took 8 hours to figure out how to change the title I screwed up and then- true to form- it wasn't me that "figured it out" -it was the sweet idiot savante (his words not mine) across the street who came to my rescue.  He must think I'm insane.  I called him and  said, "Alex, I'm having kind of  a nervous breakdown and I've been trying to set up a blog for over 8 hours, do you think you could help me before I come undone?" and before you could say Drama Queen he was at my door and God love him- he did it.  He changed my title.  My god-given name is no longer my blog title right there for the whole world (mostly my mother should she ever figure out how to turn on a computer) to see.  What a relief.  Now I can get started obsessing on writing instead of veins and arteries, calcification and plaque, CT scans and Angiograms and food, food, food.  All I can say is, thank God Al Gore invented the internet or I'd still be lying in a puddle of sweat in my bed lamazing my way through another panic attack! I take back every damning thing I've said about how computers are ruining our lives because just maybe this- opening the word vein,  literally "giving it to the universe"- will help me save my life.  This is my 4th miracle in less than 24 hours.  The first was that last night I stepped on the brand new Madagascar DVD (including the bonus feature:  The  Penguins In a Christmas Caper) that was hiding under the kids blanket and the DVD didn't break.  Even the case remained totally intact.  Miracle Number 2- I flopped down on the couch with my husband last night to catch a little of Greer Garson in Random Harvest  and didn't squash my husband's new glasses(replacing his umpteenth lost glasses) despite them coming in contact with the side of my significant left thigh.  Miracle Number 3 is that today is Day 4 without my drugs.  I've been clean 4 entire days.  Granted this was a forced withdrawl, what with the vomiting, diarrhea, chest pain and being in the hopsital and all.  I suppose technically the first 3 days with the IV drip don't exactly count as being clean because I couldn't have gotten room service to bring me anything other than a clear liquid even if I'd had a gun.  But still, this is my new tack, I am going to look for the miracles and claim them, even if I have to stretch it a bit.  My mother says there are no miracles, but I know she's wrong.  "Take a look around you" she says and I know what she means.  But still.  Still.  When I was in the hospital the first day I suddenly heard a sweet little sound over the intercom- something  like Tinkerbell's fairy dust being sprinkled in Peter Pan.  The nurse told me the hospital does that whenever a baby is born and the thought that a new life had just enetered the world made me weep.  When I said this to my mother she said, "Yea- but look at the crazy world that baby's coming into" and when I told my husband how touched I'd been by the fairy dust sound he said, "Yea- it's great unless your baby has just died" and you'd think I'd have thought of that having delivered a dead baby right around the corner in that very same hospital 13 years ago.  But truthfully, thinking about that- about even my lifeless, tiny little baby boy- I thought "miracle".  Miracle.  And I'm thinking Miracle still.  Day 4 and not a single jelly donut, chocolate croissant, sunshine roll, french creme horn, chocolate chip cheesecake swirl muffin, whoopie pie, wild berry poptart, double stuff oreo, Hershey's with Almond bar, or peanut butter cup has crossed my lips.  It seems the only way I know to not eat is to write.  So, here I am writing, not eating.  The other way I know to not eat is to sleep so I guess that's what I'll do next. 2:12:07 PM    comment [] Just trying to open up a vein.  Get things moving.  Pass the time until an angiogram Tuesday.  Keep the panic at bay.  Stay away from the sugar. 10:39:40 AM    comment []

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