Thoughts, feelings, etc.

(it has been a few weeks since I wrote this, not sure why it's taken me so long to share, but here you go ... this was all before the shooting at the church in Charleston, before the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, before that one week that I will remember for a long time. But those will all get their turn ... )

I think, I think, that these various thoughts are all somewhat connected. Hang in there, perhaps we’ll both be sure by the end.

1. Here’s a little story I frequently share with my clients:

Right after graduate school I moved to Charlotte, NC, and got a job as the social worker on an inpatient psychiatric unit at a hospital (gratuitous background info). One morning on the way in to work, I heard someone on the radio talking about a common instance of a road rage, of sorts, one that I could immediately identify with - You know when you’re on the highway and there are signs announcing that one lane is closed X miles ahead, and being a reasonable person you go ahead and get over into the other lane somewhat expeditiously? And then when you get up to the actual lane closure there’s some jackass who has been speeding along in the to-be-closed lane and waiting until the last minute? And in your self-righteousness you say to yourself, Shoulda got over sooner, dude, now I’m not going to let you merge in front of me? … I have never considered myself a stressed-out driver over the actions of others, but this definitely sounded familiar. The the deejay (I really wish I remembered what station/who it was, so I could write him a letter) said, “Just think about how much better your life would be if you just … let that go?”And right that instant, I said to myself, “You know what? I’m going to let that go.” I let it go, and have never picked it up again. 

And no, this is not necessarily a life-changer, except it was a little bit, and it’s a somewhat simple issue, but think of all the people you know who have never considered letting this particular thing go, all the folks who have one little second of mean-spirited triumph brought about by … doing what? Punishing the other person? You don’t really think that works, do you? You don’t really believe that person is going to say to themselves (and perhaps their close loved ones), “Wow, how inconsiderate that must have seemed! Thanks to that guy in the blue minivan, I have learned a life lesson and will never err in this way again” - do you? You being “right” in this instance does not do a damned thing - yes, you feel a little superior, but that’s not exactly the way I would want that feeling to be brought about. 

I just shared this with my younger sister over the weekend, and she notified me that her husband is in the “hasn’t let it go yet” camp, that he says out loud in these situations, “That guy needed to learn a lesson.” To which my wonderful sister (you can tell we had the same pragmatic mama) replied, “You know, you are teaching the lesson, but he is not learning it. You can teach the lesson all day and he is never going to learn it.” Ah, yes, grasshopper, simple yet profound. :)

Speaking of teaching, I heard this little gem from a Special Education/Exceptional Ed teacher, a loooong time ago, using the example of learning to make a bed. Just about everyone with the ability to move around can learn to make a bed, right? I mean, it takes some effort and practice to get it just so, but nearly everyone should be able to learn. This teacher’s statement was, “Just because I can’t teach you to make a bed, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn.” Adapting your strategy, basically. There’s something to be said for dogged persistence, but there’s also something to be said for “not banging your head against the wall.” 

2. So here’s a supposedly Zen little story: 

A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.”

Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?

The monk replied, “I have eaten.”

Joshu said, “Then you had better wash your bowl.”

At that moment the monk was enlightened.

From the mnmlist blog: “I’m not going to try to explain that story, as I am far from enlightened enough to understand it. Instead, I’d like to focus the wonderful simplicity of that advice: Have you eaten your rice porridge? Then you had better wash your bowl.

This is something I think of every time I eat, and in fact whenever I’m done doing something. “Done eating? Then wash your bowl.” There is something profound and yet minimalist about this advice. It’s: don’t get your head caught up in all this thinking about the meaning of life … instead, just do. Just wash your bowl. And in the washing, you’ll find all you need. I’ve found this to be true. I literally wash my bowl after eating, slowly and with mindfulness. It’s satisfying, and takes no money and little resources.”

Now, my guy (Josh of becoming.minimalist) was referencing the other blog post, which references the story, in the midst of a blog post about how he stopped using his dishwasher and started washing everything by hand. The mnmlist guy continues his take on the Wash Your Bowl story to include not only hand-washing his dishes right after he eats, but also hand-washing out his clothing as soon as he takes it off, if it’s needed. I was already on the verge of laughing myself into a stroke about the no-dishwasher thing, but the handwashing-clothes bit put me over the edge. However the blogger is correct that there is wonderful simplicity in the advice - finish what you started, don’t leave a mess for someone else to clean up. Concentrate on one thing at a time, and finish that thing before moving to the next one. I’m not sure that it’s revolutionized my life just yet, but I do find myself doing a lot more of the little tasks (putting away shoes, taking something upstairs that’s waiting by the steps) that I would normally put off until later. 

2. In two consecutive days, I saw this as a meme on Facebook that said it’s a Zen proverb, and then on a magnet at Barnes & Noble that called it an American proverb. So whatever, it’s “Let go, or be dragged.” This was followed on one site by a David Foster Wallace quote, “Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.” It’s often difficult for me to assist my clients in striking a healthy balance between being proactive and optimistic, vs. letting go of what is (obviously?) hopeless. This is also somewhat relevant in my life at the moment, but not with anything I’m ready to share. 

3. Here are some thoughts about being kind to others online - I mean, it’s not just online, though that’s the example he starts off with, but generally being kind and the idea of “What I’m about to say - is it true, necessary, kind and helpful?” and if not, maybe don’t say it. 

http://www.becomingminimalist.com/answer-softly/

4. Shhh! I think the Crap-tacular Project is beginning to produce some results! Certain areas of the house do look less cluttered. There’s still a long way to go, but I am beginning to believe this may be possible …. hooray!

The Crap-tacular Project, Part 2: A New (Re-)Purpose and See, this is what I'm talking about

The craptacular project of ridding our home of 2,015 items this year continues full-force. I’m not sure that getting rid of stuff has helped overall cleanliness thus far, but it has made me hopeful that we will one day achieve that, whereas before I simply looked at all the clutter and basically gave up on ever having anything that was consistently pleasantly organized. By the end of March, we were a couple of hundred items over/above the number we needed to achieve in order to complete the whole thing by year’s end. But I’m guessing the first 1,500 - 1,800 will be relatively easy and the last couple hundred will be nearly impossible. 

One thing I’ve started giving myself credit for is not only recycling, but repurposing/up-cycling some stuff that’s been hanging around doing nothing. This also helps with the mental clutter aspect I mentioned in my last post - I have a number of projects that have beens sitting around half-finished for YEARS, and I’ve either picked them up again or have concrete plans to do so. There are a couple of dresses that combine the repurposing and the baggage-ridding: (1) my bridesmaid’s dress from my sister’s first wedding, and (2) a really nice, once-favorite dress from college.

(not a great photo; I couldn't get the light right)

(1) Bridesmaid: simply a full-ish simple ball gown skirt of this lovely scarlet-red satiny stuff and an off-the-shoulder black velvet top. This is not a bad memory - we have consistently liked the guy and thought well of him, and both parties are now re-married to others and by all accounts are quite happy. If it were a bad marriage, I would’ve tossed it a long time ago. This photo is not that great; I couldn’t get it looking that great no matter what light, and this was the best I could do. I wish now I’d just cut off the waist and left it as a large circle of fabric, because I’ve decided to make a hooded cape/cloak, in the spirit of this one featured on Urban Threads (an awesome site, BTW) but I’m hoping to get it even 50% this cool. The plan is for a black velvet outside (I have the above-mentioned black velvet top and a couple of others over the years; if needed I might pick up something at a thrift store) and the red fabric will be the lining and maybe the trim? Who knows? I have a number of other things to do before I get serious about this one.

(2) Little black dress: not that kind of little black dress, it was a sort-of hippie mid-calf affair with this lovely little floral pattern. It is well-made and fairly expensive, considering I bought it in college. It has the potential to be completely shapeless (like many hippie-chic dresses) but there were little ties in the back that gave it some curves. Why slice it up, then? The ties have fallen off; I was going to sew them back on but then I lost them. That likely could be worked around, but … every time I wear the dress, or even see the dress, it reminds me of the guy I was dating at the time I bought it. This was a very short-term … ? relationship ? … with a guy who went to a little private college somewhat near mine. I remember when I bought the dress, I was excited for him to see me wearing it, thinking he would really like how it looked. And maybe he did, I don’t remember. Our time together was disastrous and thankfully brief. In the spirit of, “that was a long time ago,” we connected for awhile on social media and that ended similarly un-well. So I don’t really want to wear the dress anymore. Why not just pass it along to someone else? Because it’s my dress, dammit. He is not going to make me get rid of this beautiful dress I bought with my own money, a long time ago. That is horribly contradictory, I know. But the idea is, make something lovely out of a life experience that was ugly, which is something I encourage my clients to do all the time. 

On the more straightforward de-cluttering front, here’s a recent project. I realize that the kitchen table is cluttered for a lot of people/families, but I am repeatedly shocked (well, maybe I used to be, now it’s more of a “dull dissatisfaction”) by the absolutely random, un-food/eating-related items that end up here and stay here, for no good reason. I give you Exhibits A-C:

This is all the stuff I cleaned off our kitchen table one day.
You will note nail clippers, paint, jewelry, glue stick and
Post-It pads ... nothing to do with preparing or
eating food. Nothing. 

Contents of the red box (in the foreground of the above photo). Goodness. 

And of the tray in the background. The pencils
and eraser are legit because this is where Simon does
his homework, but that's all. 

And the final product (isn't it lovely?):

A Crap-tacular Project ...

I have undertaken a personal challenge for this year - in 2015, I (and helpers) will divest our home of 2,015 items in an effort to beat back clutter. I know we're only 2 months down, but I'm still feeling pretty good about it.

I vacillate between a sort of cheerful, lazy acceptance of the state of our little home, and a soul-crushing level of frustration, guilt and shame. I have never been the world's most terrific housekeeper, probably, and having two little boys adds exponentially to the clutter. The result being, OMG look at this house I can't believe a person (neighbor, family) just came in here with it like this. Sometimes I'll post a candid shot on Facebook of the boys doing something super-cute, and then later I'll look at it and think, OMG look at our house I can't believe .... etc.

My younger (by 3 years) sister has been part of my inspiration on this. She does not have any kids, but even before we had the boys, her place was much neater than mine. I recall this very specific instance maybe 10 years ago when she'd moved into a small one-bedroom apartment, and she was simply puttering around the house, and I was idly watching her, and all of a sudden it hit me, this exact thought: OHHHHH! She.Puts.Sh*t.Away! I'm a little embarrassed to admit this was such a revelation, but yeah. She puts things away when she is done with them. I do this well while cooking, but that's it. Then a couple of years later, she moved into this really cute but very small house, and mentioned that she'd simply had to be intentional about living with fewer possessions, making difficult decision about parting with a lot of her belongings.

Then about six months ago I began following Joshua Becker at the blog Becoming Minimalist. He has convinced me that it's time to get rid of a major amount of stuff. One of the themes is de-cluttering, which is exactly the correct term for what I need. He is basically anti-organizing - to him organizing is just moving your stuff around, and it always has to be repeated, and for goodness' sake don't buy things to (theoretically) organize the stuff you have : Have Less Stuff. I have re-branded this as, Have Less Crap. Because that is a lot of what we have - crap. Arts and crafts crap. Kid crap. Paperwork crap. Etc. Another blog I just found is 365 Less Things; this is not an official recommendation because I'm still checking it out, but the titles of the posts seem promising. Also, unclutterer. And our family's birthday season is upon us - all four of our birthdays are within a six-week period, and I'm going to try my best to keep everyone to one toy, one book, one outfit. Making a concerted effort to keep anything new that's not really necessary (pens, stickers, birthday party favors, etc.) from coming into the house in the first place.

I'm also trying to de-clutter my mind and my to-do project list; there's an e-mail and social media component. Pretty sure I'm going to delete my twitter account, I'm deleting Pins like crazy. I've made a list of projects I've undertaken over the years that I never finished, and have established an order in which to complete them. My office, which is actually pretty good (that's likely 90% due to the fact that I share it with someone). Our spare bedroom is atrocious, but we're slowly making progress. I think I finally have my husband on board; initially he was concerned that I was going to give away everything we have. I explained it's not my goal to get rid of it all, just about 50% of it all :). (Yes, really). I got pretty discouraged over the weekend - we've done so much, and there's still so much to do. But today I'm feeling more hopeful. We are climbing out - slowly clawing our way to the top of the heap. My ultimate goal is to feel more at peace in a cleaner home, which will be easier to keep clean once there's less stuff collecting dust bunnies, and I won't be hunting/swearing/mentally collapsing every time I need ... anything :).

In case you're wondering, 2,015 items breaks down to:

168 per month

39 per week

5.5 per day.

I'm sure you're thinking, 2,015 items is a lot, especially given the above-referenced blog titled 365 fewer things. I've been unsure what a fair way is to count things - like, if I donate a box of 24 crayons to Simon's Sunday School class, is that 24 items or is it one? I have been sort of splitting the difference, doing half one way and half another. You know, approximately. A pair of shoes is 2, a set of plates and bowls is whatever number of individual things; paper and other stuff gets a lowball estimate. Hey, if you can do it better ... go do it your way :). By the end of February, we'd given up 292, which is 44 short of the goal of 336. But on March 1st, we'd boxed up 77 kid items (toys and books) for the consignment sale (see below), tossed 26 Happy Meal-ish type toys and 1 old makeup brush, and donated 7 glove/scarf/hat items to Goodwill (here, counted a pair of gloves as 1). So that's 111 items in one day!

"Divest" in our case means get out of the house, period. We are donating a lot to various places, we'll sell a ton of kids' toys and books at our church's consignment sale (and what doesn't see automatically gets donated), paper is being recycled and shredded, and various junk items are simply trashed.



Here are some projects I have completed (three Pinterest wins):

Cupcake "bouquet" for my sister's birthday

(She loved it)

Mason jars painted on the inside

I did these quite awhile back
but the photos I took were awful.

Why three shots of the same thing?
'Cause I'm like that :)

This is a melted-crayon project. I started out with the usual
vertical drippy lines, but then saw some like this. Tip that I include
for no particular reason at all - melted crayon will come out of light-colored
carpet easily, just using Resolve. Other tip: use your brains
and don't do this project on light-colored carpet. 

I Am Not Ashamed, But Maybe You Should Be - Part 5

(IANABMYSB: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four)

I recently read a lovely little story on NPR's website about the prohibitive cost of diapers for low-income families, the resulting health issues for the babies and toddlers, and a nationwide network of diaper banks, where folks in need can get diapers free. To read the article, click here - it's really pretty short. 

(Again, this is why I am not allowed to read comment threads). A couple of folks seemed to really get what I would consider to be the "point" of the article, that this is a need, we all complain about how much diapers cost but for some folks it is huge deal, and it's nice that there are folks out in the world who are trying to address the need. One person in particular said yes, cloth diapers are really ideal but folks may not realize that even in difficult circumstance it is possible to wash them, and perhaps we can more toward educating people. A few took the opportunity to vilify disposable diapers. 

And, this was the first comment to follow the piece, and it had 9 "thumbs up" votes. I have deleted the author's name from this post, but it's right there on the npr.org site for all the world to see. I will hereafter refer to her as "the Lady," because I'm really trying to write this without any profanity. All I can say is, I'm glad I do not know this Lady, I'm glad she is not my mother or my sister or my friend: 

(emphasis near the end: that's mine)

 

• 2 days ago

"As young parents, my spouse and I were quite poor. We were graduate students, lived in the country in a tiny rental house because it's what we could afford. We grew our own food and made our own baby food, etc. etc. Before having our first baby, we accumulated a large enough supply of cloth diapers and received a diaper pail as a gift. We maintained the soiled diapers and diaper pail in accordance with sanitary practices which we took time to learn about and practice. That pail was extremely heavy by the time it was necessary for me to drive the 15 miles each way into town after loading the heavy pail full of wet diapers into the car, the baby and baby equipment, to the Laundromat. I washed the diapers at the laundromat but rarely dried them there. I would load them into a clean receptacle and load the (still heavy but now clean) diapers into the car and drive us back out to our rental spot which had a clothesline outside. There, in all seasons, I would hang the diapers outside to dry. It was all difficult, labor intensive work and required planning ahead and conscientiousness - but those are just a couple of the many important qualities necessary for being a good and responsible parent. My own parents were always very poor. They had five children. My mother would never, ever have re-used a soiled diaper. She would have stayed up at night and hand-washed diapers if need be. There were times when we couldn't afford "feminine hygiene products" and we would use cloth and laundry and labor! This report is just absurd and reflects a kind of helpless, hapless, dependent, irresponsible, whining point of view and probably describes people who should not BE parents at all. Life is not for the lazy and parenting is not for the helpless."

whoo …. …. …. goodness knows I read a lot of crazy stuff online, but I think my mouth was actually hanging open by the end of this. Even a day later I'm at a bit of a loss for words. But here are some. Matt said, "I'm glad her hardscrabble upbringing has led her to be so judgmental." I say:

(Did you also walk 10 miles each way to school and back every day, uphill both ways, in a snowstorm as my Grandpa did? That's kind of what this sounds like)

Since we are talking about mamas and cloth diapers, let me throw my two cents in. When I was about 2 years old, my family was living in a small apartment in a small city. My dad worked his construction job during the day and then went to the plot of land they'd found to build our house in the evening. We ended up moving into the house earlier than planned, before all the indoor plumbing was completed; I believe this is because a super-creepy neighbor in the apartment building was bothering my mom a lot. So when we moved in we had a well with a pump, and an outhouse (suck on that, Lady, we had no indoor plumbing). This meant little to me as I was still in diapers and I have no memory of it, but I'm sure the other members of the family (mom, dad, older brother) were relieved when that was alleviated. It was a long time before we had a washer and even longer for a dryer. My mom, too, schlepped (although this is rural North Carolina, so probably "carried" is better) a stinking pail of diapers to the Laundromat week after week, and we still didn't have a washer long enough that I can remember packing a lunchbox and going with her, so I'm assuming that meant my little sister, who arrived when I was almost 3, was in cloth as well. And, my parents grew a lot of our food, and my mom canned everything she could, and she sewed a lot of our clothing and between her various skills and my dad's, they managed to keep us fed on little money.

And  you know what? My mother would DIE (I mean, she's deceased already, but go with it) - she would absolutely kill herself and die, before she used any of those details to make some other mother feel like crap because they did any of those things differently, much less because they used disposable diapers. She would never ever ever have used any of her life story and choices to imply that the way she did it was better, that everyone should do it that way, or that other choices were somehow "less than." 

Life is not for the lazy and parenting not for the helpless, indeed. Jesus H. Christ - what in the world is that, Lady? We ("we" being "reasonable people") are talking about two pretty specific things here, diapers and how much they cost. I'm glad you have some sort of forum where you can air your superiority, because I can't imagine a person sitting and listening to you actually speaking your point of view for very long, because … it sucks. Sorry, I have a graduate education and a huge vocabulary, but sometimes the simplest phrase is the best. You may be a fine person but you are coming across as a total jerk, and apparently at least a few people agree with you to some extent.

So there are a couple issues here, and because it's me I'll go one by one:

1. Cloth vs. disposable diapers (this is the smokescreen issue here, but it is an issue): I've told you about my mother, Lady, now let me tell you about myself. I am the mother of two small boys, and we used cloth diapers on the older one for the first year. We chose this because we, too, are concerned about the impact of disposables on the environment, and cloth does feel more natural and the boy had hardly any diaper rash whatsoever. But, and, we used a diaper service because we lived in a hippie/yuppie environmentally friendly apartment building and several other families used the same service, and we had the money to do it. Because I worked 45 - 50 hours a week, and my dear husband was working and taking care of the baby 4 days a week, and I was pumping breast milk and there was plenty of laundry anyway, and … yeah. I didn't need the additional hassle.

And my second son? Let me tell you about him; he is the inspiration for this blog. He's now 3 and 1/2 and is doing splendidly, but he was in the NICU for 3 months and had to have open-heart surgery at age 4 months and had a million doctors' appointments and tons of medications and supplemental oxygen and we were exhausted and scared and if some uppity … other mother … had approached me at any point and suggested I "really should be using cloth," I quite possibly would've punched her in the face until she fell down, kicked her until she was unconscious, and perhaps then suffocated her with a Boppy breastfeeding pillow until she was dead. Yes, really. And before someone says, well, that's different, I'm going to go ahead and say, you do not appreciate the crushing stress that chronic, severe poverty can create. And Lady, please don't cite being poor in graduate school because you know everyone's poor in grad school, right? 

Disposable diapers are a modern convenience, one of many. If I were this kind of person, I might ask why you got to use the Laundromat - why weren't you in the creek out back, pounding the little jokers on rocks? That'd be real mothering. There are lots of good things that come with modern parenthood, like cribs your baby won't strangle in and better car seats and carbon monoxide detectors … and diapers that, when they are full of poop, can be folded up and thrown away. 

And, Sister/Lady, we moms and women need to stick together, not turn on one another over something as silly as this. Don't you know that whenever you denigrate one woman "doing it the easy way" and hold up the old-fashioned as the ideal, you're taking us back to when this kind of crap wasn't a choice - it was our duty by virtue of being born XX that we got to spend every waking moment taking care of someone else. 

2. So here's the "But Maybe You Should Be" part:

Lady, you seem to be an absolutely unkind person, and probably not just on this particular subject but on the general subject of what makes someone a good person who deserves to be happy and raise children. At least one other person commented that the solution to not being able to afford diapers is, "maybe don't have children you can't afford." I can't … I can't even really begin to thoroughly address this, I don't know where to start with y'all. There's one idea of, who the hell can afford kids? I mean, really, they are expensive and yes there's the concept of relative poverty and women in lesser-developed countries raise multiple babies and they breastfeed and use cloth diapers because there aren't really any other options for them, but that's not what we're talking about, right? We are talking about judgment and superiority and security/insecurity in the choices you.have.made, not really about the choices any other parent makes. 

Congrats to you, Sister, that you did all this back-breaking work and successfully raised your kid in this particular way. You need to be validated in what you have done, you need to feel it was not just the better choice but obviously the only correct choice, because otherwise … it was all for nothing, right? You coulda gone the easy route with the exact same results, so obviously what you did Has To Matter.  You are obviously A Good Parent.  Congratulations! But you understand that (a) there are approximately 100 million other ways to be a good parent, and (b) even if you are the World's Greatest Mom (you know if you got a coffee mug that said that, it's not real, right? It's not an actual award? :) ), please hear me: that does not make you a better person than someone else. That does not make your life worth more. That does not make God love you any more than Poor Parent with Disposable Diapers X. We are all the same, that's the great thing about living in the United States and/or believing in God, if you do - we are equal in the eyes of the law and God. 

We are all afraid, and a lot of us are afraid all the time. Once you have kids, and you hold a tiny fragile newborn, or an adopted older child with a nightmare history in your arms, it's a long time (if ever) that you feel 100% relaxed again. We make a million decisions about our kids (breastfeeding, immunizations, education, religion and yes, diapering) and ourselves (career, whether to move, how to manage money) and sometimes it turns out horribly and sometimes it turns out awesome and most of the time it's somewhere in between, but really in the end we are just sending the kiddos out into the world every day on a wing and a prayer, hoping like hell they don't get sick or hurt and that they learn how to make good decisions and we do all we can and then realize, shoot, it's not all up to me/them. 

Sometimes the world just does horrible things to you and ultimately, there is sometimes not one single thing you can do about it. Being "a good and responsible parent" is difficult to argue with, but (again) - a - there are lots of different ways to do that and - b -  it is still not a guarantee. God, I wish it were. I wish there were some formula by which you could chose Option A + Option B + Option C and that all equals a kid who is going to complete college and have a career and be a productive American taxpayer, and chances are pretty good that they'll do all that to some measure. But they might not. They might end up with a mental illness or substance abuse problem or do something stupid and go to jail or they might end up getting shot in the face in the first grade a couple of weeks before Christmas - and none of that says anything about anything, other than that "life sucks, sometimes, and terrible things happen." Life is not for the lazy and parenting is not for the helpless. God, what a heartless person you seem to be. 

The reason my Mom was so super-non-judgmental? Something pretty sucky happened to her, when she got pregnant in 1967 at the age of 16. She was treated so poorly and judged so harshly that I think it became sort of her life's work to do the opposite. She was kicked out of high school though she was a straight A student and cheerleader; the father of the baby (my half-brother) was allowed to continue because, well, life in fact is not fair sometimes and though I would contend was as fully responsible as my mom for creating the situation, this was 1967 and he would not be "showing." 

It was only thanks to an understanding school counselor that my mom was allowed to finish high school by correspondence. Her parents eventually kicked her out of the house, they reconciled at some point but in between she was basically all on her own. She eventually worked her way through college and met and married my dad. So she Pulled Herself Up by her Bootstraps, yay! And guess what? Again, she would never hold herself up as some success story, especially if it meant the fact that she ultimately succeeded was used in some way to make some other teen mom (or anyone, for that matter) feel they had to do the same thing. 


My mom and I didn't have many conversations about this experience, but I know the difficulty she encountered was the reason she always immediately called us out for criticizing other people. And I can say with virtually 100% confidence that if you held her and her Pulling Herself Up and her cloth diapers and sewing Halloween costumes and all that up as an example? She would say, "Yes, I did that. But it was so hard, and I was sad and alone and stressed most of the time, and I would've loved some help." She would never use herself as the reason why someone else should be treated, or spoken of, or even thought of, unkindly. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Lady. I'm tired of talking to you. 

What is there NOT to be afraid of?

All righty. We're here in the New City, obviously, except at the exact instant I'm writing this we aren't, we're in Wilmington (NC). What I mean to say is, we continue to settle in to the New City and we're taking a break to visit some friends of Matt's from college. This is nearly a yearly (rhyme) event, about the closest we've gotten to vacations since Simon was born, and certainly since David arrived. It is a trip to the beach, great company, and a free place to stay so that's no complaint, but I guess it'd be nice to do other things in addition.

At the Bog Park in Greensboro NC

A bazillion turtles to feed in Wilmington

When we made the trip last August, I had this really great, peaceful experience with David at a Starbucks where we were hanging out waiting on the others (see Simple Happiness). I thought about repeating that exact trip this time around, even though I knew it wouldn't be the same, but I guess I was simply curious to see what it would be like. But the opportunity didn't really present itself, and David and I have gotten to hang out a lot, snuggle a lot, and generally enjoy one another, so that's okay. It was nice to be reminded that this time last year, David was not yet walking - that is unbelievable, it seems I've been chasing him everywhere for at least half my life, but that's correct, he didn't start walking until last September. 

David still has not been sold on the wonders of the ocean, and he protested a lot whenever we tried to put him down on the sand or even take him into inch-high water while holding him clamped around our waists. We went swimming in two different pools, the first he liked about as much as the ocean, but the 2nd one he did eventually warm up to. What made the 2nd one nice for Matt and me was, there was another little boy there who had Down syndrome. We got to meet his mom, dad, and older sister. I'm pretty sure his mom said he will be turning 5 very shortly, so he's got a year and a half on David. This little guy has been through the medical wringer worse than David, having spent a total of about 2 of his 5 years in the hospital (I think that's what the mom said); in addition to whatever else, he had leukemia (there is a type of leukemia that kids with Down syndrome are prone to getting, generally it is kind of harmless and self-resolving but that does not seem to have been the case here). While it was nice to talk to his family members, I got the most out of seeing the kid himself - he was pretty good-sized, not scared of the water at all, jumped off the side several times and was paddling around, strong and healthy.

David at the Bog Park, tracking a bug

This would be David, NOT enjoying the water

You know how when there's a big disaster or something and you are told to
"shelter in place?" Due to David's reluctance to move down to any other
part of the beach, this is "Sand-Castle-ing in Place."

Note: when I say "we" went swimming, that means that Matt and the boys went swimming and I provided support from a deck chair. It's not that I don't like to swim, I do (though I freely admit to being terrified to go any deeper than my knees into the ocean, I can swim in a pool) … it just seems like a lot of trouble, aside from swimsuit issues.

Note: I once confessed to a friend that I am really leery of the ocean, and she said, "What is there to be afraid of?" What is there to be afraid of? What is there NOT to be afraid of? (1) sharks (2) rip currents (3) sharp coral and shells to cut your feet on and draw said sharks (4) jellyfish (5) tidal waves (6) stingrays (7) other causes of drowning (8) seaweed brushing against your leg and you thinking it is a shark. Etc. I love aquariums, I am fascinated by sea life, but I do not need to actually touch it. 

Simon's another year older too; it's funny to watch him interacting with the (slightly) older kids, wanting to be like them and adopting all their little phrases and mannerisms. It's also a relief that he's more independent; we don't feel the need to check on him nearly as often and he's just generally managing himself better. But there were also plenty of reminders he is still a little kid (Shh! Don't tell him, "younger kid" is what we say), especially when he tripped over some cypress knees/roots and skinned up his arm - he needed me to hold him and kiss it better. That was nice.

Simon at the Bog Park

Yes, that sign says there are ALLIGATORS in this lake. We looked
for a long time, but never saw any. Oh, and (9) alligators and crocodiles. And caimans,
though I know they are small. Also piranhas, though I guess they live in rivers.

I'm just glad he has his swim trunks on frontwards. And
FYI that lady in the black swimsuit is not me.

Postscript: Now we're home, kind of exhausted. We're getting ready for the school year to begin - David starts his new preschool on 8/21, Simon begins the 1st grade on 8/26, and after that I'll start job-hunting - I'm hoping for part-time, mornings and early-afternoons only. 

Child Greatness, Part One. And some follow-up.

(Follow-up):  Everyone's a Critic (other blog), in which I discussed the funeral of a teenaged boy Matt and I both knew, and various aspects of the service with which I was satisfied, dissatisfied, or had no opinion about. Following the service Matt and I discussed a number of, ah, funerary preferences, from his perspective as a minister and mine as a daughter whose mother died suddenly when she was in college. One topic was the music, and last week we Matt and I were listening to this song, and he said this version would've been "perfect" for this kid's funeral, that it instills hope and faith in God: I Know My Redeemer Lives.

On a related note (music, note, gosh I'm hilarious) one of the other songs they played at the service was "O Glorious Day," which I really like (I am not generally a fan of contemporary Christian music, though I like it more than I did 5 years ago) - we also heard this at our Wednesday night contemporary service, when we were visited by a group of residents from this program in South Carolina. It's not a substance abuse treatment facility per se, it is not licensed or advertised as such, but all the men there are in recovery from substance abuse issues. It is a faith-based (Christian but non-denominational) program where the average length of stay is 2 years; there is daily chapel attendance and Bible study, in addition to AA/NA, vocational training and life skills, etc. It's a great place, our church designates some funding for them every year, and various groups have been down to visit the facility. I was really hoping my older brother (he's the Loved One I talked about earlier, in case you thought it might be my dad) would go there after he completed detox, but that hasn't come to pass. Anyway, they have a choir of about 20 - 25 men who came to perform for us, mixing hymns, contemporary music, and testimony/witness (I am really uncomfortable with both those terms; I'd rather use, "story"). "O Glorious Day" was the first song they sang.

Random Ramblings

The last few weeks have been really busy for the Hudson-Smith crew, lots of developments and changes. We have secured a townhouse to rent in the New City, and have visited Simon's new school and the New Church, where David will begin attending a 3-hour per day "summer camp" as soon as well arrive. We feel much better about the move now that those major issues have been resolved, and it's a great little house and it's exciting to think about everything that's coming up in the next couple of months.

We'll be living in a little town home community off one of the major streets in the New City; I am nearly dizzy with anticipation of all the retail (that will be open on Sundays; yes our current NC mountain town is so small, the blue laws or whatever prevent anything but gas/groceries/restaurants from being open. Or are blue laws just about alcohol? We didn't have that either, Sunday or no, until last summer). There is a park right next door - there are a couple of short paths through a little patch of woods, so we can walk over with the boys any old time. 

Surgery Summary

Happy Anniversary, David!

Two years ago today David had successful open-heart surgery to repair his AV Canal defect, at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. I have written plenty about what the (emotional) experience was like for Matt and me. This is a summary of what David went through physically – some of it is hard to read, and the pictures are hard to look at, but this is everything we had to see and think about, so I’m not too sympathetic:

This is an article in the online magazine for the University of Texas. It is sort of worshipful, in the way a college magazine is going to be about an alum and chief surgeon. This was not David’s doc nor his hospital, but I imagine it’s pretty similar. The images are all stock photos, none are of David, nor did they accompany the article:

Excerpts from “To Save a Child’s Heart: Chuck Fraser and the Unbelievable Life of a Pediatric Heart Surgeon,” Tim Taliaferro, Alcalde: 

“They keep it meat-locker cold in the O.R. It smells of sterilizing chemicals. The bypass machine, a maze of tubes and tanks, whirs quietly next to another machine that keeps the temperature of the patient’s blood below freezing, inducing hypothermia. It hums like a refrigerator. Several monitors show a continuously updated bank of color-coded numbers with coordinating line graphs. The surgeon’s saw, high pitched at first, drops several octaves when its teeth meet breastbone.

Today’s operation, a complete atrioventricular canal defect  surgery, is a complex one, even for Charles Fraser, BA ’80, chief of congenital heart surgery and cardiac surgeon in charge at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston … Fraser likes his operating room silent. He doesn’t tolerate chit chat. You can feel the force of his concentration, a total, all-consuming focus. He’s a meticulous surgeon, preferring to make his way deliberately rather than quickly through the layers of flesh surrounding the heart. When he gives directions to his assistants it’s in that nearly inaudible voice one stop above a whisper. Everyone’s on their toes. He gets everyone’s acknowledgement before stepping up to the table, crossing his left foot over his right, and holding out his hand. “Scalpel,” he says.

… Every heart surgery has four basic steps. The first involves opening the chest by cutting through the breastbone. Step two is getting the patient on bypass. For a surgeon to open up a heart, he or she must stop it, requiring a machine to then circulate and oxygenate the body’s blood. They call it bypass because the surgeon will insert tubes into the aorta and the inferior and superior vena cavas that will divert or bypass the blood away from the heart. Step three is stopping the heart and repairing it. Step four is getting off bypass and sewing everything back up.

Each step takes considerable time, and each has its particularly tricky moments. Choosing the size of the bypass tubes is one such moment: a tube that’s too big could damage the artery or vein, while one that’s too small might hinder bloodflow. And moments before you begin the bypass, the patient must be given blood thinners, which means from that point on any cut or puncture will be much harder to stop from bleeding uncontrollably.

Once the patient gets on bypass, the room goes totally quiet. The monitors that had been softly beeping go mute, and after an injection of potassium into the surrounding coronary arteries the heart very suddenly ceases beating. Now, with one quick movement, Fraser slits it open.

Even though he’s seen the insides of hundreds of hearts and has seen many scans of this one, Fraser can’t know exactly what he’ll find until he looks inside. No two hearts are exactly alike, and when dealing with congenitally defective hearts, anything is possible.

… Yet something happens the first time you peer into an infant’s open heart, formerly beating, currently stopped, while a surgeon manipulates its innards, correcting with scalpel and stitch what went wrong when some tiny strands of genetic coding crossed. The sight defies belief. This isn’t a real 5-month-old on this operating table, with its chest sawed open and its strawberry-sized heart sliced down the center — it can’t be.

… All these things hit you as you watch the painstakingly delicate handiwork a heart surgeon must perform to correct a problem without causing a new one. Infant hearts are tiny, the arteries and veins smaller still. There’s little room to maneuver the sharp surgical tools. The heart is bloody and slippery, and manipulating its shape or orientation to get at the chamber that needs attention calls for an elaborate system of strings, which must be passed through sections of heart muscle like a marionette then pulled gently to roll the organ left or right, up or down. Meanwhile, the baby’s life hangs in the balance.

On his way toward the heart, Fraser had cut a small piece of the pericardial sac, which surrounds the heart and lungs. From that he’ll create a patch to separate the two atria, another the two ventricles, and repair two valves that let blood into the heart. Measurement after measurement, stitch after tiny stitch, Fraser goes to work. His hands move rapidly and with purpose. He changes instruments often. An assistant squirts his hands down to keep the latex gloves from sticking. There are a few false starts, a couple of darnits uttered, but in time the patches are in and he stitches the heart back up. Three steps down, one big one still to go.

… Every time they try to back off the bypass, the patient responds poorly. The problem doesn’t appear to have to do with the heart, which is beating fine. Apparently the lungs are to blame.

Fraser seems mostly frustrated at not being able to do something. There doesn’t appear to be a surgical fix for the problem, so he must stand there, his hands restless, watching the monitor, hoping in the seconds between each update that the numbers will improve.

As the minutes turn to half-hours, the experience drives home what an audacious idea the notion of heart surgery is. There’s no such thing as a minor surgery. It is risky, intrusive, Promethean work trying to fix what nature got wrong. And even the very finest surgeons in the world sometimes get stumped.

Fraser tries again to back off the bypass, this time in smaller, slower increments. Ninety percent. Stop, wait. A few beeps and a slight downward slope on the graph. Then steady. Now 85 percent. A few more beeps but no crisis. Slowly, and with caution, they back off the bypass completely, and in time Fraser is satisfied that the patient is stable. He begins the long, slow effort to stitch up the child’s chest and wire shut its sternum. At 6:15 p.m., he finally steps away from the operating table for the first time.

When surgery goes well, and Fraser manages to fix and restart the heart, ease the child off of bypass, and sew up its chest; and when, after eight nonstop hours of intense concentration, he finally steps back from the operating table; and when, hours later, the infant opens its eyes and sees its parents’ faces, the whole episode seems, in a word, miraculous.”

To see David's surgeon, click here

We have had sort of a … not love-hate, but maybe love-dislike, relationship with both the surgeon and David’s regular outpatient cardiologist, Dr. Aaron. For the record, they both have fallen into the “love” category for over a year now. We totally acknowledge any dislike could be justifiably responded to with, “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.” We met them both on two of the most difficult days of our lives (getting David’s diagnosis, and the surgery) so there may always be some degree of distress associated with them, no matter how great they are. And they are great, both of them. Hey, docs: You are the best at what you do, and we can’t thank you enough. Our beautiful little boy is doing so well, and you’ve both had a big part in that.  

I'll close with this image because Dr. Aaron told us before we left for Atlanta it was difficult to predict success because even with the best echo equipment, "the surgeon doesn't really know what he's got, until he's got the heart in his hands." This is confirmed by one of the paragraphs above, but at the time it was a really hard thing to hear. And of course David's heart was in his body the whole time, but this is still how I think of it. 

Listen Up, Folks

I'm currently working on an essay for a contest in Real Simple magazine, with the goal of winning $3,000, getting my essay published, and getting a trip for two to New York City. The theme is your life's greatest regret or something you really wish you had done differently. Without giving away the farm, I am writing about my tendency to believe that I know much more than I actually do, and the resulting lack of receptivity to feedback, and not paying attention to new information. My social work career has humbled me greatly in this area, and I realize most people probably do this at least some of the time, but it's something I want to improve and be on the watch for. (Keep reading, there's more)