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Posts Tagged ‘intangible gifts’

Imaginary Bears, Ella, and the Water Park in February

Posted in Down syndrome awareness, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Children re-invent your world for you. (Susan Sarandon)

Ella and I play in the shallow end of the water park. We pretend to be in a world where blue, green, and red bears roam with white, brown, and black bears. With mock fear we run from all of them. Ella has told me blue bears eat grass and red bears eat cake, although it could be the other way around. She remembers. I don’t.

Her six-year-old imagination enlivens me.

But when another little girl enters the water with her grandmother I step out of the way and give the children a chance to meet. The other girl hugs toys to her small chest.

Ella notices. “Toys,” she says softly.

The other girl, obviously several years younger, sits in the water next to Ella. She hands her two of her treasures.

“Wow!” I say to the girl’s grandmother. “Unusual for such a young child to be so generous.”

“Well, she isn’t always like that.”

While the children play we grandmothers chat. I celebrate the moment and watch the kids’ stages of interaction, sometimes distant, sometimes close. Never expected.

The girl’s grandfather enters the water. The little girl goes to him and I carry Ella through the oval channel of the Lazy River. Ella points to the little girl and calls her, sister.

I feel blessed by my granddaughter’s simple love. Another woman in the channel comments on the beauty of Ella’s large blue eyes. They relay the honesty of her spirit. Down syndrome limits her body; it does not limit her being.

After Ella and I are dressed and ready to leave, the little girl’s family is in the lobby of the Y. The little girl wants Ella to come to her house. A precious, yet unrealistic request. Ella’s mommy will be picking her up in less than two hours.

I see again the gift of Ella when Mommy and Ella are seated on the floor in our living room. I wish I had a camera ready as our granddaughter leans into her. Ella lets her light shine. Our little girl reaches out to soothe and comfort Mommy, as if she knows she had a long work day.

My world gets complicated even if I don’t work an official eight-hour day. I plan more for one twenty-four-hour period than a planet-toting Atlas would. Then life comes along and adds more. I need to spend time with Ella, choose love first, and then realign my priorities.

No, Ella isn’t an angel. She is human and has her stubborn moments just like everyone else does. But, she doesn’t live in a funk, and she doesn’t hold grudges.

For her each moment is what it is, no more, no less. An incredible opportunity simply to be. I suspect that since I read too much into situations, I have more handicaps than she does.

Thanks for the fun day, Ella.

the world as it should be

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First Hug of the New Year

Posted in inspiration, kindness, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 6, 2016| 1 Comment »

Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile. (Franklin P. Jones.)

 On the first day of January I am in the locker room at the Y—that sacred realm where children run naked and women hide their extra flesh behind wrapped beach towels. I see Kathy. Actually, I’m not sure she spells her name with a K. I only know her from the Y. She wears a beautiful soul that emanates enthusiasm for life.

Kathy generally arrives at the pool at about the time I am preparing to leave. Several months ago she bought place mats with the characters from Frozen for my granddaughters. She greets me as if I were family.

I finish dressing and wait to make eye contact with her. She is talking to someone else on the other side of the aisle.

“Oh, Terry, Happy New Year!” she exclaims. “I love your smile. It is so contagious.” She hugs me. Not one of those quick, in-a-hurry embraces. A healing squeeze. A you-are-important-and-I’m-letting-you-know-it hug.

And I choose to remember it.

“First hug of the new year,” I say.

I decide to pass the gift on, leak it out to others as the cold outside deepens and the warmth inside my old ’97 Toyota blows rich comforting air toward me.

In “The Curse Under the Freckles” I tell my readers that Chase doesn’t think much of himself, but he is important. He needs to break the curse; the cousin he relies on for almost every move can’t. Chase faces the impossible. He  sees himself as the kid at the bottom, both in class and in life.

Sure, I will need to go outside into the chill soon. Utopia exists only in the dictionary. However, beginnings are important. And every New Year’s resolution I’ve considered reeks with negativity. Perhaps fictional Chase and I have more in common than I realize.

Thanks, Kathy! You’ve made my day. No, correct that statement. You’ve started my year off right.

beginning makes the conditions perfect

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Lessons on How to Be a Four-Year-Old Kid, from four-year-old Dakota

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 17, 2015| 1 Comment »

Love as if never getting tired. (Mother Teresa)

My energy level isn’t where it belongs—I choose a get up at 4:30AM, write, start-crockpot-soup and-then-marathon-until-10:00 PM regimen. At mid-afternoon I would crawl into bed and call it a day if I could. Four-year-old Dakota comes to my side. Jay and I are babysitting. I would be fatigued even if my schedule were as blank as copy paper sealed inside the original packaging.

“Play with me,” Dakota says.

He’s wearing his ubiquitous tool belt. I suggest we find something suitable to repair with a plastic wrench. But his pretend mind and mine aren’t in sync yet. Eventually I pick up my iPad. We find scenes from “Home Alone II.” Then he discovers a game where Santa’s beard is decorated—or mangled—in a barber shop. I help him find a razor in the set of game tools. Santa will be bald this year, with green fuzz. We laugh. Dakota’s dark eyes light up brighter than our tree’s.

The world as he recognizes it during each moment, is all that exists.

We are not officially his grandparents. Perhaps, someday, his mommy and my son will marry. In the meantime, I painted him in as the fourth cool snow-person grandchild on our seasonal wall hanging. I bought it several years ago and added the details.

Dakota is two years younger than our youngest granddaughter. The only boy. He creates an even number to our children’s group. The two older girls have already made future family plans for the fuller set, far beyond a reasonable expectation, including home-away-from-home rooms in our house. I don’t care. The girls’ enthusiasm is both encouraging and beautiful.

When Grandpa Jay arrives home Dakota meets him at the door. Jay has achieved rock-star status in this little guy’s eyes. And all Jay needed to do was take him to the YMCA to shoot baskets. My husband wore out long before Mr. Dakota did.

Later Jay fights sleep at our son’s house and Dakota reaches into the refrigerator for two tubes of yogurt—one for each of us.

“Want to see my room?” he asks.

Really I’d rather ask Jay to move over. I won’t. My neck is begging for a hot compress. I feel twice my age, a feminine form of Methuselah reincarnated.

Instead I answer, “Sure.” Mother Teresa did not leave the words “as if” out of her statement about love. Real life limits remain.

The rewards, however, continue.

4 grandkids

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For My Husband: the other half of our ordinary kingdom

Posted in positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2015| 2 Comments »

Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom. (Thomas Carlyle, historian and essayist, 1795-1881)

At dinner my husband Jay compliments my cooking and then suggests we go shopping soon. For my Christmas gift. “I don’t want to get something you need,” he adds. He knows I have a pair of shoes with heels that have been losing a battle with city sidewalks. The soles would not be road-worthy if they were tires.

“We will get whatever you need; I want you to get something extra,” he says. “Something you want.”

I understand the difference, yet don’t have a ready answer. Certainly, if I think about thing-possibilities long enough I could probably come up with an idea. But what I want most no one can give me. I want more people to get along. I want violence to stop, listening to come first and speaking to arrive second. I want my friends who are suffering to see an end to pain. I want the depressed to see a purpose in their lives, the grieving to find comfort, the people I have hurt without knowing it to find healing. I don’t feel well now. Neck spasms. Lying down and getting up again has suddenly become monumental. Health cannot be purchased and wrapped.

I smile and tell my mate we will shop this week. And we will. Probably. Next week at the latest.

I recall driving through a fog to my small community’s church service. I was halfway down a long winding road, no other car in sight, when I realized my lights aren’t on. I could see reasonably well without them, but turned them on anyway. Light, one small passageway, created a clearer path.

One small change in perspective makes a difference. Perhaps it is not the item, the purchased thing, that matters. The gift is no more than a symbol. I think about the built-in imperfections of life. Many people have complimented Jay and me on our ideal marital relationship. I smile because we live the muddy, you-said-what real as well as the let’s-go-to-a-park fun times. Moments arise when work-it-out hasn’t found a solution yet.

We don’t live in Utopia. We have our moments of discontent. Neither one of us has sprouted angel wings, levitated, or prophesied before the masses. We are 100% human, flawed, and complicated. Mind-reading 101 could help with the misunderstandings, but it exists only in fantasy. One of my characters in “The Curse Under the Freckles” has this gift. But, even this character finds it noisy, distracting, and annoying at times.

I suspect a perfect world would be predictable and boring—even in fiction.

So, I have no idea what toy I will choose on shopping day, but the product isn’t my focus. I imagine a journey with someone I’ve known most of my life, yet don’t completely know yet. Even if that journey includes a mundane thirty-minute mall walk. In the meantime, sweetheart, I’ll take your hand and you take mine.

At ages 69 and 70 neither one of us is too old to learn. From a geological point of view we are infants. From today’s practical position it doesn’t matter anyway.

how awesome you are

 

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Yesterday’s Mirror: a long-ago memory

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 20, 2015| 3 Comments »

Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it, but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance. (Charles A. Lindbergh)

Strange how memories hit when they are least expected. I’m looking into the mirror at my 69-year-old self. I remember seeing the same younger face at least 53 years earlier. The scene is in my parents’ bedroom at my mother’s vanity. And I’m trying to turn my thin, curl-resistant hair into the bouffant my peers wear. I know nothing about regularly scheduled haircuts. That could help. But the money for such frivolities isn’t in the family budget.

However, the expression I recall is not mine but my mother’s, reflected behind me. She’s exasperated with her superficial daughter, focused on appearance. I admit the color is fine, a bright strawberry blond, but the gold never reaches below the follicles, into my scalp, into my being. I believe what my classmates have told me since first grade. I am the outsider. The kid with names that come with a taunt.

Mom complains that she has taught me to be a larger-minded girl, a Ten-Commandments person. I cut my rant short, but a deeper less-than has set in. I put down both the comb and my own sense of self as well.

My mother did what she believed was right. I don’t blame her. On an intellectual level she had a point. However, perspective needs to be discovered through example and experience, not imposed.

Now I look into the mirror in my own bedroom. My hair is cut short to avoid a need to style. I no longer care about beauty. Don’t ask me about fashion; I don’t follow the trends. And I don’t apologize for my wrinkles. They carry experience. Some of that experience continues to be incredible. Some of it cracked me more than I want to admit. Some of what-I-carry-from-the-past involved others’ hurts. And I couldn’t always help.

But the holes are what create the beauty in lace, the negative space in art, the places that force a person to recognize need. The cracks are where the light shines through. And I’m not sure I am sorry about the difficult times. They taught me to look into the eyes of another person and see more similarities than differences.

Moreover, I had good friends along the way. I meet with some of them every week—others less often. But I know I am not alone. Not an outcast. The notion is an illusion.

I have learned to rewrite the script and speak for a mother who didn’t know what to say, to ask questions to get to the real issues. “Yes, I know this is important to you now. However, this is the gift I see in this moment…”

Then, perhaps, any mirror could reflect more than an image that appears backwards, and permit possibilities. I can’t say I know where they will go. I don’t. Today’s landscape shows no more than a few clouds along the horizon, never within reach, always changing. Always, always changing.

beauty of the broken

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Halloween, Dressed in Kid-sized Generosity

Posted in Down syndrome awareness, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The soul is healed by being with children. (Fyodor Doskoevsky)

Halloween. And I offer to stay at my son Steve’s house to wash dishes. But his girlfriend Cece says, “Let’s all go. I will wash the dishes when we get back. Then you relax and play with Ella.” Cece doesn’t want me to miss out on the fun.

And fun is only the beginning. “Candy. Look. More candy,” Ella exclaims after she has stopped at only a few houses. Her costume is inexpensive and hand-wash-only fragile, the kid-popular, Doc McStuffins. However, Ella’s sweet smile brings her extra treats at several stops.

At first she approaches each house with her bag behind her back. Then she eagerly opens it with an excited “trick-or-treat.” Her cautious move has become a run. The neighborhood knows how to celebrate. Groups gather outside with bonfires, cackling witches, lit pumpkins. Kids fill the streets. Two children are in wheel chairs. I pause to say Happy Halloween, but don’t linger for conversation. Tonight is the time for action.

“Look,” Ella says to passers-by. She opens her bag and displays her treasures with pride. No one chides her or mentions that she has special needs.

At one house an empty chair blocks the sidewalk, but the front door is open. Ella runs toward the golden-glow space inside the house. The empty chair signals my intuition. I decide to follow her. An elderly man answers.

“Oh dear,” he says. Apparently his wife, who should be holding down the fort, has left with the treats.

Instead of responding with disappointment or anger Ella reaches into her bag and pulls out a box of candy. The man doesn’t understand at first. Then he realizes that Ella is sharing from her bounty.

His wife arrives and gives Ella a few extra pieces. Our little girl grins. Wearing her gratitude on her face.

As Ella descends the stairs toward Daddy, Cece, and Grandpa I tell the couple that our granddaughter with Down syndrome has had two open heart surgeries. She is resilient. Her open heart touches anyone who will recognize her gift.

The man has tears in his eyes. He did not accept Ella’s candy. He did receive her touch of love. And all Ella needed to do was to be Ella.

And I am grateful to Cece, too. Sure, I would have been happy to stay back at Daddy’s house, wash dishes and hand out candy. Instead I have the privilege of watching beauty in action.

The plates and utensils wait until we came back. Ella does not fuss when Daddy does not allow her to have all of her bounty at once. She savors each bite. I hope to learn how to savor each moment, too.

learning from children morning coach

 

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Internet-free, Temporarily

Posted in positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2015| 3 Comments »

The answers you seek never come when the mind is busy; they come when the mind is still, when silence speaks loudest. (Leon Brown)

I am off the grid. No Internet. No cell service. Nature presents the better show at Hocking Hills State Park. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. My husband and I have just arrived. Nature hasn’t had enough time to tell stress to cool-it yet.

The weather couldn’t be better—mid-fifties in the morning climbing to the mid-seventies in the afternoon. Few clouds. No rain expected. I ignore time. My husband and I don’t have a schedule. Our cabin provides no frills. We don’t need them.

People who go to parks tend to be friendly. Striking-up conversations is easy. Serendipity brings unexpected gifts. Since Jay loves to talk about travels, conversation with folk who have already checked out the area directs us to the better trails and the most beautiful views.

I relax—well, somewhat. The restaurant area has a Wi-Fi connection. I am like an ex-smoker opening a pack of cigarettes or a gambler entering a casino. I say I will post just this picture. Then write this message. Then…

The grid becomes gridlocked. And I need a lot of self-talk to press the off button on my iPad. Answers never come when the mind is counting likes on a post. Okay, that is only part of the problem. But I get it. I get it!

Search for

serenity. One more time.

Sun. Hemlocks. Red. Yellow. Orange.

Sandstone caves. One crow calling to another in the distance.

A single step followed by another. Peace. Harmony. Yes, it is possible.

hocking hills sun through trees

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One Little Girl, One Huge Heart

Posted in Down syndrome awareness, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 19, 2015| 3 Comments »

Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.  Clive Barker

Ordinarily when Jay and I pick up Ella from school he drives and I sit in the back with our granddaughter. I monitor snacks, play games, or read books with her.

Today I am at the helm of my ’97 Toyota. Ella repeats, “Grandma’s car.” She wants to know where Grandpa is.

“He went to the doctor. He will be home later,” I tell her. But I can’t see her face in the rear-view mirror. My mindset is in sync with her older cousins. They think that a hypodermic needle is to be avoided at all costs. But since Grandpa is a grownup, he would be just fine. I assume Ella’s viewpoint to be similar.

“If Grandpa gets a shot we will give him a big hug!”

There is silence in the back seat, followed by, “Grandpa be okay. I be okay.” Ella’s sweet voice cuts through me as the chorus repeats.

“Yes, he will. Grandpa will be home soon.”

The drive from Ella’s school to our house is just over ten miles. I feel as if I am driving cross-country.

Text Grandpa as soon as you get in the door, Ter. Tell him to call so that Ella can hear his voice.

On the outside I would appear calm. The car remains on the road. I stay within the speed limit. Inside I chide myself for a stupid mistake. Ella has had two open-heart surgeries and one minor surgery on her wrist. The word doctor opens a Pandora’s Box. She does not want her grandfather to fall prey to its powers.

Fortunately Grandpa hears the beep on his phone. He is leaving the office. “Grandpa be okay” takes on a new tone as Ella hears his voice.

“Let’s hide,” she says, anticipating hide-and-seek when Grandpa returns. Our little girl has no sense of time. Jay will not be home for another twenty-five minutes. I hold her in my arms and look into her huge blue eyes, possible now since I am not behind the wheel of the car and she is not bound to her car seat.

Sure, I will play this mock-game with her. The hiding place she chooses is in plain sight. And so is our little girl’s incredible beauty. Her internal powers shine: the gifts to love unconditionally, to simply be without comparing herself to anyone, and to bounce back after every fall.

I suspect there are people who look at us as we go to a park or enter a restaurant and think, How sad! That little girl has Down syndrome. Or worse, they identify her as a tripled chromosome and call her a Down syndrome child, throw around an R-word or two, and dismiss her importance. I can’t change that notion on my own. But I can make a dent in that perception.

Organizations like the National Down Syndrome Society and our local group, The Down Syndrome Association of Greater Cincinnati, help to crush myths and show how valuable each individual is. Success for many more persons with Trisomy-21 is possible, even inevitable. Yes, the child born with the genius IQ someday may create formulas, ideas, new drugs, and inventions that change the world. But the child born with an extra chromosome has the knack for changing the heart. Now.

Ella may not be able to express Osho’s quote pictured below in words. However, she lives it. I am fortunate to be her student.

life is not logic Osho

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Same Kind of Different—the Hidden Everyday Gifts

Posted in book review, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »

There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story. (Frank Herbert)

From my grandchildren’s point of view my published book is something like an honorary mention trophy. Nice on a shelf. When I gave my eight-year-old a copy of “The Curse Under the Freckles,” she wanted to know where the pictures were. The girls are more impressed by ice cream—chocolate chips blended in sweet raspberry flavoring. Or a day of pretend with Grandma. Touch a child’s life directly; that is what matters. The words will hit later.

My older son, Gregory Petersen, is also a writer. His book, Open Mike, was published through Martin Sisters several years ago. He is working through an agent with his next book. Greg is capable of writing thousands of words a day even though he has a full-time position that includes a leash phone; he takes his job as daddy seriously. I am more proud of him for his excellent relationship with his daughters than I am for his incredible ability with words. And his gift for expression is exquisite.

All life can be presented as a story. I often have difficulty turning that perception off because imagination doesn’t always fit the moment. For example: in the middle of the night. Oh sure, I’m told to write ideas down, whenever they come. But that doesn’t seem to be realistic when the notion isn’t a one-liner. The rolling avalanche of a plot and the inevitability of sleep deprivation are counter-productive in the long run.

Sometimes relaxation comes from reading—letting the thoughts of others feed me, especially when those thoughts lead to the profound. My sister Claire shared a book she had already read, Same Kind of Different as Me. It fits into the grab-the-soul category. Thanks, Sis.

Authors Ron Hall and Denver Moore tell a true story. Ron is an international art dealer. Denver is a modern-day slave, a sharecropper, who runs away into a life as a homeless person and decides it is better than being unofficially owned. The love of Ron’s wife, Deborah, leads toward an unlikely friendship.

Denver Moore says, “I found out everybody’s different—the same kind of different as me.” What and how he discovered that similarity, the human center-core spirit, is where the beauty of the story lives—sometimes clothed in miracles, or incredible pain, or deep sadness.

Stories never really end. The characters in my own tales develop a kind of reality. But in fiction, at least before publication, entire chapters can be erased and rewritten and then changed again. The past, present, and future are as pliable as soft clay.

In Hall and Moore’s story the facts of their lives remain solid because “The Same Kind of Different as Me” is non-fiction. At the end of the narration at almost seventy, Denver admits he has a lot to learn. The last page is not the last page.

In April Paramount plans to release a movie starring Greg Kinnear, Renee Zellweger, and Djimon Hounsou based on Ron and Denver’s New York Times best seller’s impossible journey. I did not know this until I checked the Internet for more information about the original publication.

Impossible, hidden, a forgotten acorn that becomes an oak…who knows? The story continues…Any story can continue…

same kind of different as me

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Wisdom, Second-Grader Style

Posted in positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 4, 2015| 1 Comment »

I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening. (Larry King)

Rebe, my soon-to-be-eight-year-old granddaughter, loves to play any game that involves mommies, dolls, and the lives of families. My role changes at her whim. And I am okay with that. My pretending stays within the realm of fiction. Reality intervenes, even in fantasy. Plot, grammar, logic, and a reasonable timeline are required. Even an insane character requires motivation, albeit skewed.

Play doesn’t come naturally for me anymore. Unless it includes humor. Then it isn’t really pretend; it’s called drama. Too much time has passed since I wanted toys for Christmas. Sometimes I act the part of Rebe’s offbeat daughter.

“Mommy, can I drive your car to kindergarten? I won’t smash it into a tree this time.”

That makes her laugh. Or, she tells me I’m in fifth grade not kindergarten, and the event never happened. Another reason why following Rebe’s imagination is impossible to follow. For the most part however, I listen, and discover who my young descendant is.

At first she is the mommy. Then she takes her baby with the soft tummy to the doctor. And she assumes the role of pediatrician. I’m not sure whether I am the sit-in for the mommy or an older child as she examines baby with makeshift instruments: a plastic spoon and knife, a key chain, a puzzle piece.

Her expression turns serious. “Most babies are normal,” she says. “And that is good.” Then she pauses after more pokes and probes and faces me. “But this baby has special needs. And that is good, too.”

She hands me the doll. My jokes have disappeared. I am in awe of a second-grade girl who speaks with wisdom. The softness of the toy and the softness of her words sink into me.

I have nothing to say.

doll

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