Growing up I was never one for playing house.

 We played school a lot, because Ginny had a real chalkboard in her basement.

 We played Barbies, but our Barbies lived lives that more closely resembled As The World Turns then say Leave It To Beaver. Barbie traveled the world and had lots of boyfriends, she never cooked.

 But we didn’t play house.

Looking back I think maybe six year old me was on to something. Perhaps I knew that I was lacking the “mommy talents” or at least the things often attributed to mommies.

I can’t cook. I can’t decorate. I can’t sew, scrapbook, landscape the yard or take control of any school projects that require the skill set of cutting and pasting. Nor do I like to do any of those things. If I had my druthers the house would grow dusty and the beds would never get made, and we’d eat Oreos, and wait until visiting the homes of those we love who can actually make real cookies-(tollhouse my one true love). There are too many books to read and too many other things that call to me. Things at which I excel.

At the ripe old age of 45 I have come to accept that these “mommy talents” aren’t mine and my children seem to understand that while I will gladly supply cupcakes for the class party they will not be homemade. They also know that they need to assume control of the scissors when it’s project time, and they know how to call grandma if something needs sewing. I have accepted it, and have let myself off the hook about it.

 Most of the time.

 And yet there are times when I have craft envy, lust if you will. Mostly on the rare occasions I find myself in Hobby Lobby and I see all the kits for making Christmas ornaments or the make-it-yourself tote bags or the decoupage supplies. I can do that! I think, and soon I am off and running in my head making personalized reindeer ornaments for everyone I know. But I can’t do it, nor can I paint my house or wallpaper my kitchen-not that I haven’t listened to that voice and tried-with disasterous results.

Today I had one of those days when I thought I can do that.

My little one declared earlier in the week that she wanted to be a STOP  sign for Halloween. Not a witch or a princess or even Elvis like last year. A STOP sign. I requested a few other ideas “just in case” and she listed fire hydrant and rubiks cube. I spent the better part of two days searching for either of those costumes to no avail, and then I did it. I thought to my self  How Hard Can It Be? I Can Make A Stop Sign.

I’ll cut to the chase. Four pieces of red foam board, a sliced off finger tip, and a few crying jags later we are no closer to the stop sign. How hard can it be to cut an octagon? (Harder than one would think if you don’t have the sense enough to start with a square…)

I’m a failure as a mom, I thought, I can’t even make a damn stop sign. Now admittedly I am well aware that costume creation ranks very low on the What Makes A Good Mommy List, but nonetheless it was a long and frustrating afternoon.

 At one point while babbling some sort of ridiculous apology for my ineptitiude and promising that it would work out in the end, little one looked at me and said it’s okay mommy, you are good at lots of other things.

Really? I asked. Like what? (Fishing for validation from an eight year old, how low can you get?)

You take care of people, even people you don’t know. And you help me pick good books at the book fair, and you direct the plays, and tuck me in just right.

So I put away the exacto knife and proceeded back to Hobby Lobby to get professional help. I then let someone who knows how to cut do the cutting because I realized my daughter is far wiser than her mother- and she’s paying attention-

to what I do, how I live, and who I try to be.

Not, what I can’t do, not what I can’t make, not how I come up lacking. 

Now if I can just STOP and remember that more often I might get thru life with the rest of my fingertips.

Today I attended the dedication of the memorial for Harry “Suitcase” Simpson here in my hometown, and wrote about that here:   http://tammyr.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/suitcase-comes-home

After the event at the West Hill Cemetery we ventured over for a reception at the Emery Center, a museum dedicated to the history of African-Americans in our community. I had never been to the Emery Center before. It is housed in what was once the Emery School, where over the course of history the black children of  the community attended school.

I grew up in the South, and I will spare you the details of how I know that racism is alive and well in our little corner of the world; but I am too young to recall the realities of the segregated south. I learned about it in school, studied it, and have an “intellectual” grasp of what happened here; but it is only that, book knowledge.

Today I stood among people who lived it. They were celebrating “Suitcase” Simpson the baseball player, but also the man who accomplished so much at a time when everything was stacked against him. He played ball in the Negro League. I can’t even conceptualize that-an entirely separate  ball team, but today I stood next to those who knew all too well what that was like-separate ball teams, separate bathrooms, separate schools.

Separate hospitals.

That’s what took my breath away. There in the museum was an article about a man, a local Doctor, someone whose family I know well, who had, apparently, the first integrated waiting room in our community. An integrated waiting room. Separate hospitals, doctors who didn’t treat black patients, separate ambulance services.

And I thought to myself, wow, look how far we’ve come; knowing all too well that as far as we’ve come there’s still miles and miles to go. We may not have legally segregated health care, but the realities of  medicine in this nation prove otherwise. Try being poor, a minority, un-insured in the south, or anywhere else for that matter. All is not equal, and we continue to fight and argue about it a if we have all the time in the world.

The musuem had the water fountains, the signs, the relics of a time “long ago” for someone like me. It’s history, it’s a museum.

History, right. But then I saw the cafeteria exhibit and the sign

No Dogs   No Negroes No Mexicans.

History.

Maybe not.

Try being a Latino immigrant in this town. Turn on the tv and listen to a United States Congressman call the President a “liar” over health care for undocumented workers. Listen to the vitriol spewed forth in our daily paper about how our town was so much better before “they” got here. They, the Latino immigrants who work in the very factories that are the economic backbone of our town, they without whom our town would collapse. (And dare I say much of the economy of countless other towns across this nation) They-the object of immigration debates on the television and ugly signs at Tea Parties.

It is so very humbling to stand before the water fountains and to try to imagine what was like, and there’s no way to know, no way to ever comprehend what it was like at all.

We’ve come so very far, and yet…

www.crooksandliars.com and cnn(   http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/17/obama.witchdoctor.teaparty/index.html )

image LIFE

trailblazers.com

image: huffington post

Have we?

Shortly after Tony the Tiger finishes telling us “it’s grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat” an announcer’s voice reminds us that “Frosted Flakes are part of a balanced breakfast.”  I’ve always found that amusing, part of breakfast? Not at my house. The bowl of cereal, the poptart, the nutrigrain bar is breakfast in its entirety. I grew up that way, and alas many mornings so have my children.

Until now.

One of the things about having a child with type one diabetes is that food management becomes very important. The better she maintains a healthy diet, the better her overall health. We are three weeks post-diagnosis and I am becoming a pro at carb counting, so is little one. Our challenge on most days is getting enough carbohydrates in her diet. Breakfast is especially challenging.  One bowl of cereal-not enough carbs and not a balanced breakfast meal (balanced is for the record-two breads, one fat, two fruits and a milk) . So, Tony was right. Part of a balanced breakfast-now I get it!

The first days and weeks have been consumed with the details. Learning about food, learning about medication, educating the school, and bringing myself up to speed. It has been busy-mentally, physically, and emotionally. There has not been a lot of time for contemplation, but that’s the norm for parenting anyway isn’t it? We live each day carpooling, homeworking, feeding, bathing, clothing. We tuck them in and wake them up and occasionally get to stop and say wow, it’s halloween already, where do the days go?   It’s only when things go really well, or fall apart, that we  stop and think about life with our children and what it really means to have little ones walking around in the world carrying our heart with them.

Today we had our first post-diagnosis doctor’s appointment. The doc came in and she talked. She talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. There were charts and graphs and numbers and information, and it all boiled down to one thing: My little one has type one diabetes.  As she talked and talked and talked all I could think was Oh please please please shut up. Just. Shut. Up. Because with every word she spoke I suddenly heard my brain announcing See, see this is real. I didn’t want to hear her talk about sugar levels, I wanted her to say Oh, good news, we made a mistake. Your little girl is fine, so go home now. I wanted my own little miracle.

I didn’t get it. What I got was good news-she’s doing fine. As well as can be expected at week three. She’s a healthy, smart, funny, happy little girl.  So I took that news to the parking lot , and after sending little one on her way with her dad, I sat there and cried. I cried and cried and cried as much as the doc had talked and talked and talked.  Then I stopped and drove home.

I guess that ’s the way it is going to be from now on so I’d better learn to listen.
I need to hear the good news-she’s doing fine

and I need to understand that that in itself is my own little miracle.

Every day any of us have with our children is just that-a miracle. A gift.

Not to be squandered.

That makes it all grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat.

Upon learning that we were to become parents again, ex and I reacted with the cool, calm aplomb that comes from having survived five years with child number one. Or rather, having had child number one survive with us. Our most common refrain was something along the lines of “well we didn’t kill the first one, so we should be just fine.”
In hindsight I think we had it backwards. Of course the first one made it to five relatively unscathed . She was the first, and with first children parents tend to be hyper-vigilante against all possible calamaties. We read the books and followed all the directions.

 
-Outlet plugs 
-Baby sleeping on her back
-Nothing smaller than a basketball in her hands prevented choking 
-Never ever left alone in the room with window blind cords. 
The first one never had a chance because we never let our guard down. 

 
So with an arrogance possessed only by the truly stupid, we pressed on with child two. 
She nearly choked on Barbie shoes. (Child one never had a Barbie until it was age appropriate so there were no shoes lying about the house)
She climbed over the sofa onto the the counter, grabbed a knife and a tylenol bottle and proceeded to attempt to saw the top off. 
She wandered around after her sister getting into everything. Climbing stairs, falling down stairs, eating dirt, swinging high into the air (not securely fastened in baby swing seat),  pulled the few remaining outlet guards from the wall and juggled them. 

It is a miracle child number two made it to eight intact. But she did. 
Magically we arrived at an age when most parents allow themselves to exhale. They are  8 and 13 and we are now comfortable with the knowledge that neither will likely choke on candy or the string of her jacket. They won’t run out into the street without looking, touch a hot stove, drink the cleaning solution. Yes, they are safe. 

Granted, like all parents I harbor the big bad fears-kidnapping, car accidents, freakish acts-of-god. I kiss them on the forehead and whisper a prayer as they head out to school and  worry, but it is a worry that is buried deeper below the surface, the constant worry that comes from having my heart walking around outside my body. 

But all in all,we made it! 
And then, this. 

 
Chronic illness.

Wait a minute, this wasn’t supposed to happen. I never imagined it, never allowed it to cross my mind (lest tempt the fates), never prepared myself. 
Now my little one, who can finally buckle herself into the seat, ride without training wheels, dial 911, is sick. Seriously sick and will live with this for the rest of her life. 

I know, we are lucky. It could be much much worse.  She can be medicated. She can do everything right and have wonderful odds of living a very long life. We aren’t battling cancer or any number of things, we’re battling Type One Diabetes.

 It could be much much worse. And yet, how could it get any worse?

 The side effects, the risk factors, the odds.

For the rest of her life, this will be a part of who she is.
For the rest of my life, this will be a part of me.

I will never again truly exhale and think

We made it.

He called.

Him, you know, the one that threw me under the bus and then ran over me a few times just for effect. Yes, that him, most recent companion turned companion- to -someone -else -at -the -same -time (geez I’ve got a track record…)

But I digress.

He called, and it was really quite kind, he didn’t have to . He asked about little one and said all the right things. It was  nice and it made me think that maybe way down deep inside the decent guy I believed in still exists.

And it made me cry. I haven’t cried much during all this, but I did then.

Not because it was him. Not because there’s any love left or sentiment or such.

 Rather, because it made me remember.

I remembered that it wasn’t that long ago that I cared about someone else, laughed with him, talked with him, enjoyed time together. It wasn’t that long ago that I worried about someone, and the choice he made and the things that  I know and the truths that are hidden and the heartache yet to happen.

I remembered getting angry about stupid things, and shedding tears over someone who clearly didn’t care.

I remembered actually giving a damn about all that and more.

I remembered a time when my thoughts turned to a million different things and I had the luxury of worrying about nothing worth worrying about at all.

It reminded me of a time before

this.

A time when I cared about something other than my daughter’s mortality.

He called.

It made me cry.

Not for him.

But for her.

And for days before this

And all the days that will come when I will never again be completely free to worry about nothingness.

I tried out for the cheerleading squad in the seventh grade. Me, the girl who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time tried to jump and twirl and clap and chant, in sync with other girls, in sync with myself. Needless to say I didn’t make the team. It was no great disappointment, just a rite of passage-doesn’t everyone try out for cheerleading at least once?

So I never had to wear the little skirt or toss the pompoms or dare to crawl to the top of a pyramid, but, in the end, I still became a cheerleader. It seems to be in my DNA.  I’m a social worker, I help people. Or at least, I try. I cheer them on along life, helping them realize their destiny, their best self, or  a way out of chaos and sadness. I love my work with everything I’ve got.

I’m also that way in my personal life. In intimate relationships, in friendships, in everyday encounters, I try to be the one that is a helper rather than a helpee. I’m no saint, not even a truly good person-but I try. Each day. I try.

Sometimes I think that’s my biggest mistake in life.

Today, the first day back at school for little one and I felt like I spent my day singing “two bits four bits” or some variation of rah-rah-rah. Everyone was concerned for her, everyone wanted to know how she was, how she’ll be, how this all came to pass. So I smiled, I recounted the tale, and reassured everyone, truthfully, the she is doing well, that she’s quite the trooper, that  it would all be alright.

At the end of the day I noticed my jaw was killing me.  I realized I’d clinched my teeth for the better part of the day, trying not to cry. I pulled it all off- walking across the playground toward her cottage, helping her make lunch selections, e-mailing her sugar levels to ex.  I got through the day on autopilot.  I answered all the inquiries, smiled, said thank you. I was cheerful.

It’s a defense mechanism I know. Say it often enough and it will be true.

She will be alright.

This is just a curve ball.

We can handle this.

But this is big, bigger than anything I’ve ever dealt with.
Bigger than a divorce. Bigger than failed relationships. Bigger than my health, ex’s health, the health care debate.

I’ve yet to fall apart. I’ve yet to sit down and think. I’ve yet to get quiet.

Because if I get quiet I know  what I’ll hear.

I’ll hear my ex, my baby’s father, ask the doctor about

life expectancy.

She’s eight years old.

We should be talking about playgrounds, and Barbie dolls, and third grade math.

Not

life expectancy.

This is the loneliest I have ever felt in my life.

I feel like a cheerleader without a team. Without a uniform or a damn pompom.

Just me, naked out here without a clue. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

I’ve got friends and family. I’ve got people I don’t know in any way other than their @name and avatar. I’ve got a network. I’ve got an ex.

I am so far from alone in this.

I just have to re-learn this lesson:

It’s okay to cry.

It’s okay to ask for help, or guidance, or a listening ear.

It’s okay to ask to sit on the sidelines and watch someone else cheer for a while.

And in the end, it really will be okay.

There  simply is no other option.

Driving home from school with my youngest today the radio was interrupted by the sounds of the Emergency Broadcasting System. The horn like noise followed by the beeps followed by more horns then the robotic voice dispensing the information that severe weather was headed our way. I knew that already, as I’d seen the lightning strikes down the road before me.

  Years ago ,when I  first moved to Chicago, I found myself at work one day when I heard sirens wailing across town. I panicked as I knew that sirens means DISASTER! BOMBS! GET UNDER THE DESK! yet no one around me moved, or even seemed to notice the shreaking sounds of impending doom. That’s the civil defense alarm, shouldn’t we try to find out what’s wrong? I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.  After what seemed like years, but was most probably a few seconds, my office mate informed me it’s Tuesday, they always test the sirens on Tuesday at ten.  With that I thought to myself  if we ever are bombed I hope it doesn’t happen on Tuesday or we’ll all die sitting here at our desks thinking it’s the test.

I liked the sirens. I like the EBS horn on the radio. I like knowing that something bad may be headed my way. Knowledge is power. Knowledge means I can get under the desk and pray before the bomb hits.

There are no EBS warnings in life.

This weekend we took my little one into the pediatrician for what was to be a routine visit. Within ten minutes the doctor, a personal friend, looked up at us and said- Her blood sugar is over 500, so we will get her up to the children’s hospital and you can see the pediatric endocrinologist and take it from there.

Or he said something like that. In all honesty time stopped and I’m not sure what he said, or what I heard. I just know I looked over at my ex and he had tears in his eyes, and I knew something was wrong, very very wrong.

Over the course of the weekend we heard a lot of different voices telling us the same thing. Our baby is a Type One diabetic at the age of 8.  She will be insulin dependant for the rest of her life, in the absence of new discoveries, cures, or any other miracle. And believe me, when it’s your baby, suddenly miracles become rather important.

In an instant everything changed. Life as we knew it erased in one fell swoop.

I wish there’d been a siren, or a horn, or something to warn us that this was coming.

Though I wonder if it would have helped. Would knowing make any difference? Is there really any way at all to prepare for this?

The past four days have been a whirlwind. I’ve yet to sit down. I’ve yet to rest.      I’ve yet to allow myself to think, to acknowledge, to let it all sink in.

I’m waiting on the little robotic voice to come on after the horn , you know the one that says, in the event of an actual emergency this message would be followed with instructions…

I need my instructions.

I remember writing something here, in this place once long ago. I was speaking of my ex and of my disappointment over how some people in our community were reacting to his affair, and the ease with which they passed judgement on him, me, our situation.  I said that I believed that we all deserve to be remembered in life for something other than our very worst moment, our worst action, our ugliest thought or words spoken.

I am staring 45 in the face, so I am of a different generation than some. I did not know the Ted Kennedy of Chappaquiddick. I didn’t know the man who struggled with alcoholism, divorce, affairs, and all the other true or rumored activities of his life.  That’s not to say they aren’t important, or are to be diminished, it just says that I knew him when….a different when.

I grew up with  Senator Kennedy,oft presidential candidate. I grew up with an awareness of a man who dedicated his life to the very people most often ignored in our society. The poor, the disenfranchised, the hungry, the sick, the children,and the elderly. A man of great wealth and privilege who championed the cause of those who would never know a life like his. I grew up knowing that despite great personal loss and tragedy, Senator Kennedy never gave up on the things in which he believed. 

Re-reading the obituaries and commentaries of the day are awe inspiring. The realities of  just what this man accomplished, how many lives he changed while working the halls of the Senate, can not and should not be diminished by the memories of his flaws and failings. 

I became a social worker because I wanted to make a difference in the world, and I had no idea what that meant at the outset. Now, many years into my career, I realize how clueless and naieve I was to even think that my work would be a ripple in the waters.  I have done nothing that much I know, but my life has been changed by those I have had the privilege to meet along the way. I have learned how blessed I am, how good my life is, and how thankful I must be for all that I have and all that I simply do not deserve.There is no reason that I have and so many do not.  There is no reason in this wonderful world for children to go to bed hungry, or frightened, or alone. No reason for mothers to worry, fathers to cry, and families to suffer because they have not…no insurance, no job, no home, no hope. There is no reason  for little ones to have cold fingers as they walk to school or for the oldest among us to fear  their final days will be spent alone, forgotten, neglected.  There is no reason that this, the greatest nation on earth, can’t rise above disagreements, partisianship, selfishness, fear, hatred, ignorance, to find a way to take care of one another.

Senator Kennedy may have been a lot of things. He was, no doubt, flawed like all the rest of us; but I believe that he should not be remembered for such, for the worst that he ever was, rather for the greatness, for the effort, for the willingness to try. He didn’t have to do that.  No one has to do that.

But if no one does, than what happens to the rest of us?

I believe we can choose to remember a life of greatness, or to focus on the moments, the very tragic moments, that cast a shadow over his life. I believe we can choose to remember how we would like to be remembered.

Not at our worst, but at our best.

I believe in doing so, in believing in the goodness of a man, and of one another, we save our own souls.

Rest In Peace Senator Kennedy. Godspeed.

“The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.”

I’m going to park this link here for a while.
If you drive, watch this. If your child drives, watch this with them.

It is graphic, but important.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGE8LzRaySk

This from today’s Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Medical care is important. But of all our basic needs, even medical care comes in a notch below food. Most of us could survive longer without health care than without food.

So, why not create a government-run “public grocery store option” to compete with private grocery chains, just as President Barack Obama wants to create a “public option for health care” to compete with private insurers? President Obama says a public option would keep insurers more “honest,” lest they make what he considers “too much” profit.

But if that’s true for insurance, why not for groceries? If health care is a “right” to be guaranteed to tens of millions of Americans by a “public option,” then shouldn’t government set up grocery stores to compete with private grocers?

That was evidently the point that John Sorrow, Mid-South region president for Cigna Healthcare, made during a recent Times Free Press forum at Erlanger Hospital.

“Do we need a publicly run grocery store to keep Bi-Lo and Publix and Wal-Mart honest?” Mr. Sorrow asked. “I would contend that we don’t need it in health care either.”

He warned that a government-run plan that does not actually face the cost of patient care leaves everybody holding the bag.

“What you create is a death spiral of people that are going to fall out of the private plans and into the government plans, which is going to leave all of us in peril financially,” Mr. Sorrow said.

In understandable concern about rising medical costs, Congress unfortunately is risking imposing far greater costs upon us all through ObamaCare.

I’ve written about the health care debate here recently. http://tammyr2.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/an-apple-a-day-if-it-were-that-simple/

I don’t even know if I have anything else to say, but things like this upset me to the core.

Here’s why in a nutshell:

1. He’s a health care  CEO. Of course he is opposed to any change that might limit the out of control profits of health care corporations and insurance companies.

2. This isn’t funny. Going without food isn’t something to joke about. The statistics on the number of Americans, and American children, who go to bed each night hungry and with no idea when they will eat again, are unconscionable and the numbers are on the rise daily. Don’t make jokes about a public option grocery store-until you’ve had to stand in line at a food pantry to feed your child, or you’ve gone to bed hungry. 

 http://feedingamerica.org/default.aspx?SHOW_SHOV=1

3. His facts are all wrong. T here isn’t an ObamaCare plan. The  White House has not formulated any plan. It is leaving that up to  Senate/Congress-and they haven’t even come up with a specific plan. And ANDANDAND, there is NO PLAN for “government run health” currently on the table.  But, we already HAVE such-it’s call MEDICAID. And while Medicaid may be a flawed system, it has managed to provide health care coverage for American seniors for years, many of these same people  are screaming out against “government health care”.

4. Yes, “most of us” could “survive” without health care, in fact a lot of Americans are doing just that-surviving. I just think that in a nation such as ours we shouldn’t be talking about mere survival of our citizens. How about thriving? What’s so wrong with that?

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2009/aug/16/8-16-fp2-how-about-public-option-groceries/?opinionfreepress