Up Close and Personal

September 17th 2014

9: P.M: My baby girl is lying in wait in a hospital bed 1,502 miles away, and she’s preparing to deliver a baby of her own….Her second.

 September 18th 2014
3:28 a.m...…I’m awake. I begin to toss, turn, fret and fret some more. I tell myself to get a grip… It isn’t like I haven’t had experience with this baby business before… I delivered four of my own and I have managed to make it through 6 little doll baby grandchildren as well. ….. Maybe it’s just the high humidity from the hurricane down in the gulf that has me all twisted up in this tither…

At 4:43 a.m. I give up on the idea of sleep and pull my restless body out of bed. I make some coffee and begin writing in my journal.

At 6:02 I see the first crack of sunlight. I grab my cellphone and head out the door, hoping to walk off my anxiety. As I move alongside the canal bank I hear the doves singing their morning songs and I watch the irrigation water flow as I pray: “Faith not fear…faith not fear”, I repeat this mantra ….”Faith not fear”.

When I arrive back home, my husband asks if I have heard any news. Sweat is dripping off my back, my arms, my legs, and my face. I pretend it’s also sweat dripping from my eyes. I respond. “No, I know nothing more…but I can tell you one thing I do know for sure…..I feel like I’m undergoing a unique kind of torture test!”

Then I hear a familiar sound “It’s a text ….a text….!” I was getting a text! I quickly looked at my phone, (if the option had been available at Verizon, I might have had it surgically stitched to my body for this occasion… That way I could be certain I wouldn’t miss anything.)

The text was from her, my pre-natal daughter. She was dilated to a 4, feeling strong contractions ……..and considering drugs!

“She’s considering drugs?” I mistakenly say way too loud …..”I’m the one that needs drugs! Where’s my Hive medicine?” ....I take a deep breath and quickly text the laboring mother back with cheerful, positive, soothing words. I then turn and bark at my husband, “How is it that she’s there and I’m here, and I have to get labor and delivery news from a cotton-picking cellphone! Do you think it’s too early in the day for me to have a cocktail?”

“It’s 7 o’clock in the morning, Karen”, my husband replies calmly. He then kisses the top of my head, tells me to make sure and call him if I hear anything, and to have a good day. He uses the excuse of work to quickly run out the door. I say under my breath, after I hear the door shut …”it’s not 7 o’clock in the morning…it’s 7:15 in the morning”.

Perhaps I’ll call one of my other faraway children and commiserate with them? But then what if I get another call or text in the meantime and I’m just not sure how to switch over with my call waiting? (I know…my kids have all tried tutoring me with this technology business…but I’m hopeless!)

I begin pacing the floors like an expectant father from back in the day. Hours pass……… actually maybe more like 10 minutes. I am now yelling to myself, “Holy Mother of Cows… This is just way too stressful! Holy Mother of Cows?” I repeat… “Where did I pull that phrase up from?”

I walk around the house, cell phone in hand, checking every room….several times.

I then go outside, with my cell phone, and wander around in the yard. Near the dirt mound by our Palo Verde tree I spot our resident roadrunner. He and I both stop and stare at each other for a while,,,, neither of us moves. I’m the first to speak. I ask his advice …. “So, what’s your opinion…do you think I would be bothering my daughter if I text her back and ask her, ‘So, what’s happening now?’ ….….I could tell by his scowl he didn’t think it was a good idea….
No...You’re probably right….
I go back inside to wait…
and wait…..
and wait…

 I eat 8 cookies and drink 3 more cups of coffee. As I’m getting ready to pop cookie number 9 in my mouth I suddenly remember and moan….”These puppies are chucked full of oatmeal, and oat bran and flax seed!” Would the word ‘shit’ be inappropriate to use here?

 It’s now 8:40 a.m. and it feels like days have passed ....And still no news
Quiet seeps through my front door like a heavy cloud
The only sound is the clock ticking….
                             One second-
                                                  Tick…
                                                          Two seconds-
                                                                   Tick
                                                                          Three seconds…
                                                                                        Tick,
                                                                                             Four seconds….TICK!

How about if I read a book? I start to grab the one on my bed stand, The Winter of Discontent, Oh Yeah… that’s perfect… Nothing like John Steinbeck to perk you up and make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside! I toss the book back down and notice a picture of my daughter…she was only four then… posing so sweetly for her school picture, with that big ole cast, lying in her lap, protecting her frail, broken arm, . “O.k. now”….I say to myself, “Don’t you get all sappy on me.”

I will try and watch TV. I fumble with the channel changers. “Does a person always need these three different doohickeys to turn on a television?” (My husband doesn’t usually let me touch them…he says it makes him frantic to watch me messing with them.)

Don’t worry…I’ve got it figured out…Hmmmm. Let’s see…Do I want to be a millionaire? Or… I could watch Thomas the Train. How about a movie? Ohhhhh, here’s one….The Omen IV…Uhhh….I don’t think so….How about Sex and the City? NOT! That’s the very thing that got us to this place to begin with!”

 I glare at my cell phone; I try and drill my will into it! It responds with only silence. “You’re killin me!” I shout at it!

 At 9:01 a.m. I decide to work on the day’s crossword puzzle…that’ll get my mind on something else….1 Across – (I read it out loud) “Who was the director of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’... I should know this…How about 44 Across- What’s a 5 letter word for ‘irritable’…hmmm, could that be... bowel (like after you’ve eaten 8 oatmeal/bran cookies?)
18 Down- How about a 5 letter word for ‘forsaken’ … that answer would be ‘Karen’ 
Here’s another one…31 Across- ’a great weight’ …I think I have an answer for that one: Being alone at home, with a roadrunner, when your youngest child is one thousand five hundred and two miles away, having your grandchild number seven, that happens to be our first boy? …. How many letters is that?”.............I drop the stupid, annoying puzzle into the trash…...

 It’s now been well over two hours since the text… two very, very, very, long hours…..What in the world can I do to keep myself busy?.... I’ll do a load of wash…. Is it ok to put in a load with just two pieces of clothing? At least it’s something for me to do.

9:47 laundry is done… I decide…What the heck! And I type out a text message to my other kids and my husband. It says, “Am I the only one that is going ‘freakin’ crazy waiting to hear something?”

I no sooner push ‘send’, and I get a text from my daughter’s husband, giving the family an update. It says, ”We’re in the delivery room… dilated to 7, took an epidural and doing great!” 

Another text arrives…this one from my son. I see he has quickly typed out his response…it says….”Ok…don’t know what any of that means…but thanks for the update!” I chuckle …and shake my head…and that’s coming from a man whose wife just delivered a child of their own 20 months ago….

10:15……… on my knees…..

10:58 a.m. Another text …. This time a photo is attached with the message.
I start to giggle………It’s from the daddy!
“Everyone meet my son, 7 lbs. 12 oz. 21.25 inches.
All healthy and good reports…mother and son are nursing”

I gasp and try to breathe it all in…

I examine the picture….How, in the name of Pete, do I make the photo bigger on my cell phone? These confounded contraptions! Oh…I see him now….Whoa…he’s so beautiful, so adorable, our little lamb. He’s just perfect!

I struggle with the alphabet letters on the keyboard as my tears fall and I plink out my response, ”Praise the Lord from whom all blessings flow….Hallelujah!”

I sit quietly for a time, my hands folded. A soft blanket of peace wraps itself around me and I can feel my heart pound with God’s overflowing grace….…. I whisper….. Thank you…thank you.

 I again peer at the text message, with this picture of my brand new precious grandson…and try and figure out how to forward it to the world.

Some Things Never Change




'If you can't make it better you can laugh at it' Erma Bombeck

I was shopping at Big Lots the other day and saw a teen with his mother; walking down the aisles…..I smiled to myself as I noticed the look of total pain and disgust on the adolescent's face.  He barely spoke to her…just grunted and kept his eyes to the ground. I imagined he was praying that none of his friends would get wind of him being there….He was way too cool to be with Mom or at Big Lots!

It brought back memories of an article I wrote some five years ago.  I came home and dug it out of my files.  I read it and smiled…….I thought maybe some of you might enjoy it as well….. Feel free to share it with someone you know who is currently going through the fire and could use a humorous perspective on raising adolescents.  

The Good, The Bad and the Adolescent  (by me)

I was watching a daytime talk show a few weeks ago and one of the hosts was sharing her recent family vacation photos.  She showed picture after picture of her family enjoying themselves, smiling, and having fun…everyone that is except for her 12 year old son.  No matter if they were at a family fun park or shooting down slide rock, the photographs captured this preteen’s scowl that remained on his face as if it had been surgically implanted.  I found myself laughing out loud as I remember my own frustrations of those adolescent years of my children.

It seems to happen right before your eyes…or nose.  It might be while you’re on the way home from your child’s basketball practice and you get a whiff of the odor coming from the back seat. You find that even with all the windows down and the newly sprayed air freshener, you still can’t get that smell out of the car.  

Wasn’t it only yesterday, I asked, when my child was begging me to come and bring cupcakes to his class to celebrate his birthday?  It just seemed so natural for me to volunteer to come and help out at the first Junior High dance…why did that cause him to throw himself on the floor, grab his stomach, writhing in pain?

What moment was it that he no longer wanted me to walk with him to the classroom door and give him a big hug and kiss in front of his friends?  I felt truly wounded one morning on our way to school when my son suggested I drop him off a block away from the building and he would just walk the rest of the way?  I pouted, “Maybe I could just do a ‘drive by’ and hunch down below the steering wheel, that way your friends won’t suspect that you have a mother.”

When my daughter reached middle school she no longer wanted to speak to me.  Her answers sounded like  the cave man days.  “How was school today?” I would ask.  “Mmm” she would mumble.  I questioned her about the upcoming weekend and her eyes would roll back in her head and then her reply…”Mmm.”  We would drive to soft ball practice in complete silence until I figured I could threaten to put on my Kenny Gee cassette tape and just keep playing it if she didn’t speak to me.  At night I would go in her room to tell her goodnight and she would grunt for me to give her a back rub.  I bartered with her…”Only if you talk to me.”  “Do I have to?” She would moan. 

Even experts agree that this time in life can be challenging for both the child and their parent.  James Dobson suggests that when your children reach adolescence you should put them in a whiskey barrel, nail the lid shut and feed them through a knothole.  Bill Cosby refers to this age group as ‘brain damaged’.  Erma Bombeck’s husband recalls his traveling with these youngsters as being ‘as giddy as the Nuremberg trials’.

I must admit that when my children were going through their middle school years, I should have perused the library shelves and found the section on parenting adolescents…. I would have seen just by reading the titles of the books that I wasn’t alone.   Titles like, The Teen is a Four Letter Word, by Joan Ander, Why Do They Act That Way, by David Walsh,  Yes Your Teen is Crazy, by Michael Bradley, The Agony and the Agony by Betty Landergan, and my own special favorite by Peter Marshall, Now I Know Why Tigers Eat their Young.

There was so much I didn’t know about raising this age group of kids. I’ve since done some searching on the internet. I found an entire list of laws about parenting teens…, many of which are actually unwritten laws, for example; The Law of 20 Feet - This law of distance states that at this certain age, you must walk at least 20 feet away from your teen if you are in a public place. Thirty feet if you're at the mall.

I also read about a study that was reported in the Journal of Child Development that explained ‘Why Teens are Lousy at Chores’. The researchers actually came up with a reason, other than pure laziness, for why teenagers can't shower and brush their teeth or unload the dishwasher and wipe down the counter. We can blame it on "cognitive limitations" they explained.  Their brains can not multitask as well as those of the taskmasters. The part of the brain responsible for multitasking continues to develop until late adolescence, with cells making connections even after some children are old enough to drive.” (Now that should cause us some concern)

That would certainly explain the high car insurance rates for our  teens who actually attempt to text message, drink a latte, put on makeup and catch up with the drama from the rider in the back seat;  all this while the music is blaring loud enough to re-form the Sand Dunes!

And who knew that I should have been reading the decisions coming from the American Bar Association, especially concerning juveniles and the death sentence.

         “[They] frequently know the difference between right and wrong and are competent to stand trial. Because of their impairments, however, by definition they have diminished capacities to understand and process mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand the reactions of others…. Their deficiencies do not warrant anexemption from criminal sanctions, but they do diminish their personal culpability.”        Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 318, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 2250 (2002)

So, my son was right when he tried to persuade me that his personal culpability was somewhat diminished when he lit the trash can on fire, and singed off his best friend’s eye brows. As well as the time he tried to pry loose the tennis ball that was wedged in the palm tree by slinging a hammer up at it?  Do the words ‘impulsive’ and ‘poor judgment’ come to mind?

But alas, I smile for I have made it through the tunnel.  My children are now all adults.  Perhaps you have the journey still to come and want to gird yourself for the coming challenges. In closing, I offer you Michael Bradley’s 10 commandments from his book Yes, Your Teen is Crazy, by Michael J. Bradley.” And best of luck when you are handed the ultimate test of parenting an adolescent:

1. Thou Shalt be as the Dispassionate Cop Unto Thine Own Child: Be cool, Not the Fool
2. Thou Shalt listen even as Thine Own Child Shouts
3. Thou Shalt Not Shout: Speak Thou Wisely
4. Thou Shalt Add 15 minutes to every interaction involving thy teen
5. Thou Shalt Vanquish Thy Foolish Pride
6. Thou Shalt not kill (Even though thou may entertaineth thoughts of killing)
7. Thou shalt apologize at every opportunity
8. Thou Shalt honor thy child’s identity (even though it maketh you ill)
9. To Thine Own Self Be True
10. Know that this too shall Pass
     
     

Watch Out for the Cracks!





We see the world not as it is, but as we are”
                                            Stephen Covey



I came in the door after my morning walk and my husband called out…”You’re up and out early this morning.”  I replied, "Yeah, my leg cramps are to blame for that.” He asked, “How was your walk?”  I answered, "It’s so hot and humid out there, and the neighbors are bailing their hay so my allergies are acting up.  The duck hunters are shooting their weapons like crazy and working on decimating our total bird population!”  I held up a pile of trash I had collected along my walk and dumped it in the garbage….. “Why can’t people take care of their own trash!”

I picked up my journal and started to write.  I remembered an incident that happened this summer.  when my husband and I were talking our 3 year-old granddaughter out for a walk to the park.  She was hopping along the cement pathway, and in her precious sing songy voice called out, “Don’t step on the cracks,  you break your mother’s back…watch out for the cracks! I followed alongside her, parroting her steps and repeating her words.  Suddenly she stopped, looked at my husband and sternly scolded him.  “Grandpa, you’re not watching…..you’re stepping on the cracks!  Look, you’re stepping on another crack!”  My husband smiled as his shoe went down once again on another crack.  He replied.  “You know baby, when you are just looking for the cracks you miss out on seeing all these pretty flowers.”  He spread his arm out to point to some beautifully manicured bright yellow roses alongside the road.  “I sure don’t want to miss out on that, do you? If we are just looking at the cracks, we will miss seeing the flowers.”


As I began putting my pen to the paper, I noticed out of the corner of my eye our roadrunner prancing under the Palo Verde tree. I saw drops of water atop the newly mowed lawn glistening with the rising of the sun.  And oh my goodness, that Bougainvillea vine, flushed with spectacular chartreuse colored flowers!  How had I not noticed that before?  I felt a smile beginning to grow…….Maybe I was too busy looking at the cracks!“

Read more »

What Would You Wish For?

"Retirement is the last opportunity for individuals to reinvent themselves, let go of the past, and find peace and happiness within." Ernie Zelinski

After announcing my retirement in May I went on a 3-month hiatus, which included traveling through some 16 states: a 5-week road trip with my husband, a family reunion in the pines and several ‘mini’ vacations’. I have now returned home for a bit; rested, renewed and reinvigorated…sort of.   

I am finding that my conversations with people; whether friends, family,  or co-workers, sound very similar when it comes to the discussion of retirement.  So many people tell me they are jealous …and express their desire to have the opportunity I have.  And of course, they ask me the questions everybody asks someone who is retiring….”So, what are your plans? What are you going to do now?” And although I am sure my deciding to retire meant must have meant that I had a clearly formulated answer in my mind….that answer seems to have dissipated like a thin, wispy cirrus cloud on a breezy day.  And now, I hear that same question coming, not just from someone else’s lips, but also from within.

What the heck am I going to do now?  And, what the heck am I going to do tomorrow?

I’m sure I thought all this out before…didn’t I?  Oh yes….now I remember. Retirement is my chance to let go of the past, pursue my passion….to explore my calling…to sleep in…..enjoy peace and happiness…. and of course; I can reinvent myself. 

When I think of this opportunity to reinvent myself…I create an image of a genie arriving in a poof of smoke…. I can’t help but hear Robin William’s voice doing his genie gig in Aladdin. I visualize that hysterical, big blue shaped, cartoon character,  magically appearing before me with an over exaggerated bow. His voice bellows out like a megaphone, while he contorts into all sort of shapes; “Hellooooo. I am at your command.  I was sent here to grant you your wish. What is it you want most?”

I respond to my genie, “Wow, Genie...You're so cool! It’s like a fantasy come true! You mean you can grant me a wish for a chance to reinvent myself?”

And then the genie will ask,   ”So is that your official wish? …If so, then tell me what is it you want me to reinvent you into?”

Hmmm….I think to myself. Since this might be, according to Ernie Zelinski, my last chance to make this wish, perhaps I should give it some more thought.

How about you…what would you say if the genie appeared to you and told you your wish was his command….how would you reinvent yourself? 

While you are pondering your answer, I thought you might enjoy this tribute of the Genie himself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR9eL8cVRXc