Not only have I turned that corner of Fifty and Forty Street but now I’m flying down Highway 53. And it’s dawned on me that I am loving this ride. I love the wind in my face and my grayish hair blowing wildly about the car. I am comfortable in this seat and the steering wheel feels at home in my hands. I have learned, not completely but better, how to take a deep breath and to let go.
It started in my 40’s, I think when I took a drawing class. I have no natural art talent yet I love art and museums. So when I saw an ad in our local paper for a community drawing class, I thought I’d give it a try. It was cheap. It was in our local high school at night. I could walk there. No reason not to go. And I loved it. I loved it because I let myself love it. No expectations. No Picasso wannabe or even a Grandma Moses. No requirements for a grade. Just me, drawing a circle over and over and over again. It was the first thing I remember attempting, in my life, where I allowed myself to not even try to be the best. Just to enjoy. It took a long time to get to this one point. Like 3 years of weekly classes.
And the lesson I learned there has bubbled over into other areas of my life. I can see it in my relationships with people.
A young woman came into my office today slightly tearful. She is deeply in debt and desperate for a solution. She asked my opinion about making a dramatic move in her life. She needed to act.
I listened to her and then asked her to take a deep breath. And to imagine the very worst thing which could happen. And what would her life be like if that thing she dreaded happened. To take a breath and to let go.
Lately I’ve noticed I’ve become better at listening to the other side of an argument. I think I’ve gotten more patient. And I’m smarter about knowing which battles to fight and which ones won’t matter. It’s a lot less stressful to little things go.
Lydia was one of my dearest friends. She was at least 50 years older than me when we met. She lived across the street from me when I was a young mother and I idolized her. A sort-of-family member distantly related to my husband’s mother, Lydia took an interest in me. Eccentric and independent, a staunch liberal and highly educated, she was and is what I would like to be. “Never get in a battle of wills with a two-year old,” she told me. “Dishes don’t have to match,” she said on another occasion. And my favorite advice was this: “Don’t worry about something unless it will matter when you’re Eighty.”
Dearest Lydia, thank goodness it only took me thirty years to absorb this.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Publisher's Clearinghouse
From the time we were able to watch TV and understand the commercials, my sister and brothers and I were convinced that we would win Ed McMahon’s Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes. Our mother assured us that this would happen. It was a given.
We sat in her cozy kitchen, drawing endless designs of the houses we would build once we cashed the check. Our houses were always set on compounds not unlike what we envisioned the Kennedys owned. THE Kennedys. As in Jacqueline and John F’s family home. A compound where we would each have our own little house and my mother would rule supreme in a matriarchal style. When we heard a knock at our door- very uncommon since my mother didn’t encourage drop by guests- our hearts would pound and we’d push each other down to get to the door first. We knew as soon as we opened the door we would have to battle balloons and reporters while the Sweepstake van idled at the curb, spilling Ed out with that giant cardboard poster of a million dollar check made out to Us.
But usually the only person knocking at our door was someone to read the electric meter, little old women trying to save our souls or Aunt Julia Mae with her yipping dog who never failed to bite us. The dog. Not Aunt Julia Mae (who, if she could have gotten away with biting us, would have I am sure).
So we waited. And Waited. Filled out multiple subscription and entry forms. Spent uncounted hours arranging the furniture in our imaginary houses. Imagining the cars we would drive…. The horses we would raise on our huge estate…. The parties we would hold! The optimism and hope we stirred up among ourselves.
So we Waited. And Waited. And we lived in limbo for years, always expecting that we would win and be transported from our modest poverty into “A Comfortable Life.” And yet, we did not win.
There was a time when we each realized that this money was not likely to come our way. We set about going to school or joining the Air Force. Having babies and making homes. We moved on. But we could see no plans our Mom was making to take care of herself after our father died. She never lost the conviction that she would win it big. After we grew up and moved away she traveled, gypsy style, between our houses, living with first one and then another of us for several years before moving on to the next child’s home, the next grandchildren to spoil and pamper.
She sat at our kitchen tables drawing diagrams of extensive family compounds and pulled her grandchildren into her spell of expectation. Soon it was the grandchildren running to answer the door, imagining a giant cardboard check.
And while none of us ever did win that million dollar sweepstake, Mom did achieve her fondest wishes as if she’d won. She had her family around her. She lived A Comfortable Life, out of poverty and fear of where the next dollar would come. And she reigned her own little kingdom, Matriarch Supreme.
We sat in her cozy kitchen, drawing endless designs of the houses we would build once we cashed the check. Our houses were always set on compounds not unlike what we envisioned the Kennedys owned. THE Kennedys. As in Jacqueline and John F’s family home. A compound where we would each have our own little house and my mother would rule supreme in a matriarchal style. When we heard a knock at our door- very uncommon since my mother didn’t encourage drop by guests- our hearts would pound and we’d push each other down to get to the door first. We knew as soon as we opened the door we would have to battle balloons and reporters while the Sweepstake van idled at the curb, spilling Ed out with that giant cardboard poster of a million dollar check made out to Us.
But usually the only person knocking at our door was someone to read the electric meter, little old women trying to save our souls or Aunt Julia Mae with her yipping dog who never failed to bite us. The dog. Not Aunt Julia Mae (who, if she could have gotten away with biting us, would have I am sure).
So we waited. And Waited. Filled out multiple subscription and entry forms. Spent uncounted hours arranging the furniture in our imaginary houses. Imagining the cars we would drive…. The horses we would raise on our huge estate…. The parties we would hold! The optimism and hope we stirred up among ourselves.
So we Waited. And Waited. And we lived in limbo for years, always expecting that we would win and be transported from our modest poverty into “A Comfortable Life.” And yet, we did not win.
There was a time when we each realized that this money was not likely to come our way. We set about going to school or joining the Air Force. Having babies and making homes. We moved on. But we could see no plans our Mom was making to take care of herself after our father died. She never lost the conviction that she would win it big. After we grew up and moved away she traveled, gypsy style, between our houses, living with first one and then another of us for several years before moving on to the next child’s home, the next grandchildren to spoil and pamper.
She sat at our kitchen tables drawing diagrams of extensive family compounds and pulled her grandchildren into her spell of expectation. Soon it was the grandchildren running to answer the door, imagining a giant cardboard check.
And while none of us ever did win that million dollar sweepstake, Mom did achieve her fondest wishes as if she’d won. She had her family around her. She lived A Comfortable Life, out of poverty and fear of where the next dollar would come. And she reigned her own little kingdom, Matriarch Supreme.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving
Yesterday I went into a natural food store. I love going into this store. I buy milk there, in the glass bottles which remind me of when I was younger and the milkman twice a week left our order by the front door. I buy yogurt there and cheese. I can always find vegetable broth in the big cartons. The produce is organic and the meat is free range and hormone-free, the breads whole-wheat and natural, boasting no preservatives. I know this food must be good for you. And yesterday it was brought home to me- only the well to do can afford to eat these healthy foods.
The woman in line in front of me was buying a fresh 12 pound turkey. The cash register: $51.53.
Fifty dollars for a turkey.
My frozen turkey, bought at Piggly Wiggly, was $7.87. Full of hormones, I’m sure, and probably raised on a turkey-mill farm. But affordable to many.
I was stunned, to be sure. Then I looked at the people around me, buying last minute Thanksgiving goodies. WASPs, all of them. White Anglo Saxon Princes and Princesses. Well-dressed- and I know this because they wore very expensive shoes….Danskos and Naots and Keens and Merrells….( I’d just been in the shoe store next door which, once upon a time, used to carry shoes which were much less than $259 and $112 on sale). The women carried expensive handbags in their manicured hands. No one was overweight. Everyone looked well-cared for.
They carried their purchases, in environmentally friendly reusable bags, out to Mercedes and Volvos. Not one car in the parking lots showed rust. None of the cars looked older than 5 years. None were held together with baling wire and pop rivets. Only the well-to- do can afford to visit this store.
But even in the chain grocery stores the more healthy foods are expensive. Whole-wheat bread is more expensive than the white type. Hormone-free eggs are more expensive than the Piggly Wiggly brand. Vegetables marked “organic” cost almost twice as much as the ones without that designation. Brown rice is pricey.
So you’re poor and you have a limited budget. You have a family to feed and you must take a bus or walk to the grocery store. The “health food” grocery stores in my region are not located in poor neighborhoods. Neither are the farmer’s markets. Neither are the truck farm stands, set up by local farmers, on little vacant lots or in church parking lots, offering fresh, locally grown produce.
Fifty dollars for a turkey. At least that store collects donations to our local food bank.
This Thanksgiving I’m thankful for my health and that of my family and friends. I’m grateful my family has steady jobs. I’m glad I have a church community where my liberal ideas are not only welcomed, but encouraged. That I’ve found friends with whom I laugh and cry. And that I do not have to battle poverty in order to make sure my family lives in a safe and healthful place. Even if we will be eating a seven dollar turkey chock full of hormones.
The woman in line in front of me was buying a fresh 12 pound turkey. The cash register: $51.53.
Fifty dollars for a turkey.
My frozen turkey, bought at Piggly Wiggly, was $7.87. Full of hormones, I’m sure, and probably raised on a turkey-mill farm. But affordable to many.
I was stunned, to be sure. Then I looked at the people around me, buying last minute Thanksgiving goodies. WASPs, all of them. White Anglo Saxon Princes and Princesses. Well-dressed- and I know this because they wore very expensive shoes….Danskos and Naots and Keens and Merrells….( I’d just been in the shoe store next door which, once upon a time, used to carry shoes which were much less than $259 and $112 on sale). The women carried expensive handbags in their manicured hands. No one was overweight. Everyone looked well-cared for.
They carried their purchases, in environmentally friendly reusable bags, out to Mercedes and Volvos. Not one car in the parking lots showed rust. None of the cars looked older than 5 years. None were held together with baling wire and pop rivets. Only the well-to- do can afford to visit this store.
But even in the chain grocery stores the more healthy foods are expensive. Whole-wheat bread is more expensive than the white type. Hormone-free eggs are more expensive than the Piggly Wiggly brand. Vegetables marked “organic” cost almost twice as much as the ones without that designation. Brown rice is pricey.
So you’re poor and you have a limited budget. You have a family to feed and you must take a bus or walk to the grocery store. The “health food” grocery stores in my region are not located in poor neighborhoods. Neither are the farmer’s markets. Neither are the truck farm stands, set up by local farmers, on little vacant lots or in church parking lots, offering fresh, locally grown produce.
Fifty dollars for a turkey. At least that store collects donations to our local food bank.
This Thanksgiving I’m thankful for my health and that of my family and friends. I’m grateful my family has steady jobs. I’m glad I have a church community where my liberal ideas are not only welcomed, but encouraged. That I’ve found friends with whom I laugh and cry. And that I do not have to battle poverty in order to make sure my family lives in a safe and healthful place. Even if we will be eating a seven dollar turkey chock full of hormones.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Lifting Up Your Face
OK. I’m jealous. Not normally the jealous type, but I have to admit that deep down, I’m jealous. Of the type of woman who Takes Very Good Care of Herself. Perhaps you know the type. Perhaps you’re one of the types.
This woman can wear very short skirts at any age and extremely high heels and not look ridiculous. She pays A LOT of money for high and low lights at the salon and she does that very frequently. If she works, it’s at a job that encourages her to have weekly acrylic nail things done. Her makeup is flawless. She drives expensive sports cars and looks good doing it. She is thin and petite and her clothes come from an upscale store in downtown Charleston. Probably that Pulitzer woman's place and I’m not talking about the writing prize.
She plays tennis fairly well, not competitively well, but socially well, once or twice a week. She does not golf. She has a sprayed on tan so that she looks good while lying by the pool at the club and still protecting herself from damaging UV rays.
And she has had work done. Every woman I know understands what that term means. None of my friends have had any work, but we all know women who have.
And today I realized some part of me envied those women.
It hit me pretty unexpectedly while my daughter and I were in a crafts store. We were in line at the checkout. I was scrounging in my beat up leather handbag to find a coupon so I could save a few pennies. And my daughter mentioned that the mother of a friend of hers looked really good at 50-something then offhandedly remarked, “She’s had some work done, though.”
BAM! A ton of bricks landed on my head. I wanted to be that woman who looked great at 53 and wore cute little dresses and didn’t have to hunt in the bottom of my bag to save a buck. The woman who doesn’t work but who has Married Well and has time and money for expensive personal pursuits.
“Where in the hell did THAT come from, " I wondered to myself because I’m usually pretty happy in my skin, sags and all. I can only imagine that it was a leftover ghostly desire from my weekend. I spend this past weekend at a conference in Hilton Head. I enjoyed it and the company I was in: nurse educators from all over NC and SC. Most of us at the peak of our careers. Most of us definitely over 45 years old. Very similar in backgrounds and careers, we all spoke the same language. Yet in the ballroom next door to ours, I think the women spoke a very different language.
It was a conference of cosmetic saleswomen.
They women were young and wore beautiful blue suits and 3 inch heels and their makeup, well, all I can say is, they DO sell makeup…. We could hear them clapping and laughing and music blaring. Our lectures were "How to give presentations when money is tight," and "what are the new NNSDO standards for career specialists." Not the sexiests subjects.
During one of our breaks these women were also on a break. A colleague turned to me as we walked down the hall behind a group of these women. “Ever wonder if we did something really wrong?” she asked. “I have torn discs in my back so that it’s hard to get out of bed. I must have gained weight but since I wear scrubs to work I didn’t realize it and when I was packing, and couldn’t find anything to wear, I had to run out to the only store open, Wal Mart, and buy an outfit that actually fits. I’m too tired after work to try to work out and I eat crap because that’s all the cafeteria sells.”
“I hear you, sister,” I told her. And I did. But today it really hit home. I could spend $44,000 on a brand new gas guzzling SUV if I wanted to, I guess. I could spend $180 every 6 wks at the salon if I really wanted that. Or I could have bought a book on how to land a millionaire husband.
Yet somewhere on earth a child starves to death every 7 seconds. Every Friday my Unitarian Universalist church provides 40 students with back packs filled with food to tie their families over until the next Monday when school, and free meals, is available to them again. Instead of knitting blankets for cancer patients or driving elderly people to social events or building Habitat Houses or providing a safe haven for a woman fleeing her home, my friends and I could be engaged in weekly "all about me" days and save our money for $7000 boob jobs and $15,000 face lifts and tummy tucks. But somehow it just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps I operate from a warped sense of guilt over my own life's good fortune or maybe I suffer from a wacked desire to feel good by helping someone else.
So I haven’t pampered myself and the real reason is probably that I really haven’t thought about it. I look in the mirror when I brush my teeth and hair in the morning and don’t look in the mirror again that day. I am too busy with life to even wonder if I have crow’s feet.
“I can’t imagine you getting any work done, “my good daughter nonchalantly told me in that checkout line. Had she seen the brief look of longing on my face? “Because you know that kind of stuff isn’t important. Besides,” she went on, “How would we know if you were smiling?” Then she gave me her own megawatt grin.
My daughter has an impeccable sense of how to bring me back to reality.
This woman can wear very short skirts at any age and extremely high heels and not look ridiculous. She pays A LOT of money for high and low lights at the salon and she does that very frequently. If she works, it’s at a job that encourages her to have weekly acrylic nail things done. Her makeup is flawless. She drives expensive sports cars and looks good doing it. She is thin and petite and her clothes come from an upscale store in downtown Charleston. Probably that Pulitzer woman's place and I’m not talking about the writing prize.
She plays tennis fairly well, not competitively well, but socially well, once or twice a week. She does not golf. She has a sprayed on tan so that she looks good while lying by the pool at the club and still protecting herself from damaging UV rays.
And she has had work done. Every woman I know understands what that term means. None of my friends have had any work, but we all know women who have.
And today I realized some part of me envied those women.
It hit me pretty unexpectedly while my daughter and I were in a crafts store. We were in line at the checkout. I was scrounging in my beat up leather handbag to find a coupon so I could save a few pennies. And my daughter mentioned that the mother of a friend of hers looked really good at 50-something then offhandedly remarked, “She’s had some work done, though.”
BAM! A ton of bricks landed on my head. I wanted to be that woman who looked great at 53 and wore cute little dresses and didn’t have to hunt in the bottom of my bag to save a buck. The woman who doesn’t work but who has Married Well and has time and money for expensive personal pursuits.
“Where in the hell did THAT come from, " I wondered to myself because I’m usually pretty happy in my skin, sags and all. I can only imagine that it was a leftover ghostly desire from my weekend. I spend this past weekend at a conference in Hilton Head. I enjoyed it and the company I was in: nurse educators from all over NC and SC. Most of us at the peak of our careers. Most of us definitely over 45 years old. Very similar in backgrounds and careers, we all spoke the same language. Yet in the ballroom next door to ours, I think the women spoke a very different language.
It was a conference of cosmetic saleswomen.
They women were young and wore beautiful blue suits and 3 inch heels and their makeup, well, all I can say is, they DO sell makeup…. We could hear them clapping and laughing and music blaring. Our lectures were "How to give presentations when money is tight," and "what are the new NNSDO standards for career specialists." Not the sexiests subjects.
During one of our breaks these women were also on a break. A colleague turned to me as we walked down the hall behind a group of these women. “Ever wonder if we did something really wrong?” she asked. “I have torn discs in my back so that it’s hard to get out of bed. I must have gained weight but since I wear scrubs to work I didn’t realize it and when I was packing, and couldn’t find anything to wear, I had to run out to the only store open, Wal Mart, and buy an outfit that actually fits. I’m too tired after work to try to work out and I eat crap because that’s all the cafeteria sells.”
“I hear you, sister,” I told her. And I did. But today it really hit home. I could spend $44,000 on a brand new gas guzzling SUV if I wanted to, I guess. I could spend $180 every 6 wks at the salon if I really wanted that. Or I could have bought a book on how to land a millionaire husband.
Yet somewhere on earth a child starves to death every 7 seconds. Every Friday my Unitarian Universalist church provides 40 students with back packs filled with food to tie their families over until the next Monday when school, and free meals, is available to them again. Instead of knitting blankets for cancer patients or driving elderly people to social events or building Habitat Houses or providing a safe haven for a woman fleeing her home, my friends and I could be engaged in weekly "all about me" days and save our money for $7000 boob jobs and $15,000 face lifts and tummy tucks. But somehow it just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps I operate from a warped sense of guilt over my own life's good fortune or maybe I suffer from a wacked desire to feel good by helping someone else.
So I haven’t pampered myself and the real reason is probably that I really haven’t thought about it. I look in the mirror when I brush my teeth and hair in the morning and don’t look in the mirror again that day. I am too busy with life to even wonder if I have crow’s feet.
“I can’t imagine you getting any work done, “my good daughter nonchalantly told me in that checkout line. Had she seen the brief look of longing on my face? “Because you know that kind of stuff isn’t important. Besides,” she went on, “How would we know if you were smiling?” Then she gave me her own megawatt grin.
My daughter has an impeccable sense of how to bring me back to reality.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Miracles
Miracles. They glide by us every day but when we became teen agers we stopped seeing them. And now that we're adults, we don't even remember that miracles were ever a part of our lives.
Today I drove under a rainbow. One end started in downtown Charleston and the other end reached across the harbor to James Island, bouncing it's prismatic colors across the sky. In fact, it's pale twin glistened above it, a double rainbow. I've only seen a handful of those in my life. And what surprised me today, other than rounding the bend by Ellis Creek to come face to face with this small miracle, was how many people in cars around me didn't bother to look up. For the most part, their cell phones seemed to hold more attraction than did this vision.
I am still thrilled by the sight of a rainbow, always unexpected. And excited when a dragonfly visits me. Blue wings drumming the air. My mother once tied a string to a dragonfly and threaded the string through my grandmother's kitchen screen door so I could sit safely inside, holding the end of that string, while my pet dragonfly buzzed on the otherside of the door.
I've watched moonflowers slowly open when the night sky sparkles above. The flowers glow white- a white that glow-in-the-dark colors can never mimic.
Venus flytraps enthrall me. I cannot bear to watch a naive fly succomb to the flytrap's allure. Man eating plants. Science Fiction in my back yard.
I hold crystals to the sunlight and watch prisms dance across the floor. I gather precious Southern snowflakes on my tongue. I gasp when I see a harvest moon hung low in the sky, peeking betwen pine boughs.
I contemplate how the universe could ever have begun. And watch stars twinkle and blink at me.
And I wink back.
Today I drove under a rainbow. One end started in downtown Charleston and the other end reached across the harbor to James Island, bouncing it's prismatic colors across the sky. In fact, it's pale twin glistened above it, a double rainbow. I've only seen a handful of those in my life. And what surprised me today, other than rounding the bend by Ellis Creek to come face to face with this small miracle, was how many people in cars around me didn't bother to look up. For the most part, their cell phones seemed to hold more attraction than did this vision.
I am still thrilled by the sight of a rainbow, always unexpected. And excited when a dragonfly visits me. Blue wings drumming the air. My mother once tied a string to a dragonfly and threaded the string through my grandmother's kitchen screen door so I could sit safely inside, holding the end of that string, while my pet dragonfly buzzed on the otherside of the door.
I've watched moonflowers slowly open when the night sky sparkles above. The flowers glow white- a white that glow-in-the-dark colors can never mimic.
Venus flytraps enthrall me. I cannot bear to watch a naive fly succomb to the flytrap's allure. Man eating plants. Science Fiction in my back yard.
I hold crystals to the sunlight and watch prisms dance across the floor. I gather precious Southern snowflakes on my tongue. I gasp when I see a harvest moon hung low in the sky, peeking betwen pine boughs.
I contemplate how the universe could ever have begun. And watch stars twinkle and blink at me.
And I wink back.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Story Tellers
I'm convinced there are two types of people in the world: Those That Tell Stories and Those That Listen to Story-Tellers.
This fact became clear to me when my sister and I visited our brothers in New Mexico. I was struck at how quickly we settled into our familiar story-telling selves. As if we'd never left childhood to travel the world of adults.
My husband's family are not a tribe of story-tellers. In fact, they don't talk very loudly, they don't like to bring attention to themselves, and they use an abbreviated form of conversation that, after 5 years, I still haven't learned. "You go on up that street to that corner and turn." How far, up which street, to exactly which corner and is that a left or a right turn? Their shorthand is familiar to them and among themselves they don't have to ask, "What the HELL are you talking about?" I'm sure they're perplexed by my need to know why we're going up that street and what chain of events prompted the journey.
My family, on the other hand, have no need for shorthand. We will tell you, in greater detail than you ever knew you wanted, why the street is named for the person it's named for, exactly how many blocks/feet/miles we're travelling before we turn at the exact name of the corner and any interesting landmarks we'll be passing on the way.
We want you to understand the circumstances of the travel. How the decision came to be made. The precipitating events. We'll want you to know a brief history of everyone in the car. And the relationship those people have to us. We'll tell you what time we're leaving and when we'll be back. And it will be FUNNY! Now, occasionally, we find ourselves taking poetic license with our memories. But this, too, is never planned.
My family is hilarious. And my sister is the Queen. Won't someone offer her a daytime talk show? Not content with a mere recitation of events, we'll give you all the side-splitting anecdotes you can stand. My family's perceptions are just a little off center- not enough to be truely bizarre- but certainly not average. It's like being in a Cohen movie. And our stories go on and on ... and on and on.... and on some more. My husband's niece, also not of the Storytelling genre of humans, calls my ramblings, "side bars." I love it. She succinctly describes us. She may not have been giving me a compliment, but that fact flew right over my head when she told me.
Some people do not want to call attention to themselves. My sibs and I don't purposely do that, but sometimes it just happens. We're often so wrapped up in telling a funny story to one another that we don't realize that people have gathered to listen. Wrapped up in our yarns, they nod and smile and laugh when we do.
And if you look closely, the people listening are... Those That Listen to Story Tellers.
This fact became clear to me when my sister and I visited our brothers in New Mexico. I was struck at how quickly we settled into our familiar story-telling selves. As if we'd never left childhood to travel the world of adults.
My husband's family are not a tribe of story-tellers. In fact, they don't talk very loudly, they don't like to bring attention to themselves, and they use an abbreviated form of conversation that, after 5 years, I still haven't learned. "You go on up that street to that corner and turn." How far, up which street, to exactly which corner and is that a left or a right turn? Their shorthand is familiar to them and among themselves they don't have to ask, "What the HELL are you talking about?" I'm sure they're perplexed by my need to know why we're going up that street and what chain of events prompted the journey.
My family, on the other hand, have no need for shorthand. We will tell you, in greater detail than you ever knew you wanted, why the street is named for the person it's named for, exactly how many blocks/feet/miles we're travelling before we turn at the exact name of the corner and any interesting landmarks we'll be passing on the way.
We want you to understand the circumstances of the travel. How the decision came to be made. The precipitating events. We'll want you to know a brief history of everyone in the car. And the relationship those people have to us. We'll tell you what time we're leaving and when we'll be back. And it will be FUNNY! Now, occasionally, we find ourselves taking poetic license with our memories. But this, too, is never planned.
My family is hilarious. And my sister is the Queen. Won't someone offer her a daytime talk show? Not content with a mere recitation of events, we'll give you all the side-splitting anecdotes you can stand. My family's perceptions are just a little off center- not enough to be truely bizarre- but certainly not average. It's like being in a Cohen movie. And our stories go on and on ... and on and on.... and on some more. My husband's niece, also not of the Storytelling genre of humans, calls my ramblings, "side bars." I love it. She succinctly describes us. She may not have been giving me a compliment, but that fact flew right over my head when she told me.
Some people do not want to call attention to themselves. My sibs and I don't purposely do that, but sometimes it just happens. We're often so wrapped up in telling a funny story to one another that we don't realize that people have gathered to listen. Wrapped up in our yarns, they nod and smile and laugh when we do.
And if you look closely, the people listening are... Those That Listen to Story Tellers.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Spooning My Patients
One of my patients this past week was a 19 year old young man, a victim of poor judgment and an ATV. Broken in several places and now sporting a tracheostomy tube, this young man also has a slight head injury. For him this means he'll do what you ask...for about 30 seconds...then he forgets and has to be re-directed. During my time with him he was focused on getting out of bed but, being unable to stand on his own, he wasn't allowed to. So someone had to sit with him constantly to keep reminding him to stay put.
He was a squirmer, too. He pulled things and tried to take his equipment apart. He sat up, then lied dow. He turned on his stomach. He lied at the foot of the bed. He hung his legs off the bed and then his head. We tried everything to keep him comfortable. He wasn't hurting, he told us. He wanted to drink water- but he can't because he chokes on even ice chips and would breathe liquids into his lungs if we let him drink. He was getting feedings through a tube- at least for a while until he pulled that tube out of his nose. When asked, he told me he didn't know what was wrong.
He had several episodes of diarrhea and had to be cleaned up. I know he was embarassed but he put up with 3 people in his room moving him from side to side while we cleaned his privates.
Several times he just grabbed my hand and rubbed it. He's the age of my nieces and younger than my son. I found myself rubbing his head and talking to him like I would one of my sick children.
He was tugging on my arm. I was sitting on the side of his bed. Before I realized it, I was holding this child in my arms, rubbing his head. I stopped being his nurse for a while, and became a mom. The young man settled down and went to sleep. I sat there with him for a long time, speaking softly to him, telling him he was safe and that he could go to sleep.
I went out with some friends afterwards and one of them, when he heard a colleague joke with me about 'spooning my patients' told me, "What if you had been a male nurse and that patient a female?"
WOW. He's 100% right. A male nurse probably wouldn't have done this if his patient had been a woman. Not if they're savy. Is it sexism? I do know it's the reality of the world we live in right now.
And the most common word used to describe a nurse is the word, "caring". Can a male nurse care for a patient in the very same way a female nurse can? Could a male nurse be a surrogate dad to a brain-injured young female patient?
Or should I have in a chair at the side of the bed, like they taught us in nursing school....
He was a squirmer, too. He pulled things and tried to take his equipment apart. He sat up, then lied dow. He turned on his stomach. He lied at the foot of the bed. He hung his legs off the bed and then his head. We tried everything to keep him comfortable. He wasn't hurting, he told us. He wanted to drink water- but he can't because he chokes on even ice chips and would breathe liquids into his lungs if we let him drink. He was getting feedings through a tube- at least for a while until he pulled that tube out of his nose. When asked, he told me he didn't know what was wrong.
He had several episodes of diarrhea and had to be cleaned up. I know he was embarassed but he put up with 3 people in his room moving him from side to side while we cleaned his privates.
Several times he just grabbed my hand and rubbed it. He's the age of my nieces and younger than my son. I found myself rubbing his head and talking to him like I would one of my sick children.
He was tugging on my arm. I was sitting on the side of his bed. Before I realized it, I was holding this child in my arms, rubbing his head. I stopped being his nurse for a while, and became a mom. The young man settled down and went to sleep. I sat there with him for a long time, speaking softly to him, telling him he was safe and that he could go to sleep.
I went out with some friends afterwards and one of them, when he heard a colleague joke with me about 'spooning my patients' told me, "What if you had been a male nurse and that patient a female?"
WOW. He's 100% right. A male nurse probably wouldn't have done this if his patient had been a woman. Not if they're savy. Is it sexism? I do know it's the reality of the world we live in right now.
And the most common word used to describe a nurse is the word, "caring". Can a male nurse care for a patient in the very same way a female nurse can? Could a male nurse be a surrogate dad to a brain-injured young female patient?
Or should I have in a chair at the side of the bed, like they taught us in nursing school....
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