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Posts Tagged ‘wisdom in unexpected places’

A Gift for Daddy—A Gift for All

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2014| 3 Comments »

There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million. (Walt Streightiff)

Ella runs into our house. Enthusiasm exudes from her being. She carries a present for her daddy’s birthday—from her. The package is about the size and shape of a pound of delicatessen hamburger; it is gift wrapped in her artwork.

Daddy Steve laughs. “She told me in the car what it was: coffee.”

Of course we can’t wait for the traditional present-opening moment: dinner and then a loud rendition of the birthday song, careful cake slicing that gets messy anyway, followed by ice-cream scooping. “Do you want to help Daddy open his present now?” I ask.

A spoken answer is unnecessary. Her jump into action is response enough. A bag of bold-flavored coffee appears under the wrapping. And Ella doesn’t know that her real gift is the love of a blonde five-year-old girl with a spirit that could charm a wolverine.

She will need that power soon. Ella was born with an A/V canal defect. Only half of her heart worked. Her surgery was successful. She plays with the same vigor any other young child displays. However, a routine echo cardiogram showed a blockage. It is causing no apparent problem now, but as she grows it will interfere. She faces open-heart surgery again after the first of the year.

Her surgeon has an excellent reputation. In these days open heart surgery is almost a routine procedure. However, the gentleness of her heart requires no repair. She draws people to her with gravitational power. She gives lessons: in patience, spontaneity, forgiveness, and resilience. Moreover, she charges no fee, only a willingness from her observers to change, to be aware of perspectives, to see hidden beauty that has always been there. Unnoticed.

I think about how I felt as a child as I stood, the top of my head at a grownup’s belly button. A higher stature seemed unreachable. Moreover, I felt perpetually unworthy. An adult was another species, a creature-from-another-world who didn’t spill juice or make too much noise in church. The importance of rules of behavior was ingrained into my soul long before I could read or prioritize. So, life’s directives were vague, negative, built on shame.

Since then I’ve learned to see differently—I don’t live in the past. It’s simply a place to visit now and then. However, I make sure that my grandchildren and I live on the same planet and that we learn from one another. As an adult I may have the advantage of years, but my granddaughters offer freshness.

Ella has Down syndrome. Many people may look down on her because of it. But those who look into her eyes know that she offers all that she is—and she doesn’t even know that is unusual.

when a child gives you a rock

 

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Lively Conversations on a Dead Cell Phone

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2014| 1 Comment »

Innocence is one of the most exciting things in the world. (Eartha Kitt)

My old cell phone hasn’t had a battery for who-knows-how-long. However, five-year-old Ella picks it up and brings it to life with her imagination. She mimics the motions she has seen in adults, complete with subtle movements and voice tones. When her conversation has ended she closes the flip top slowly, deliberately. I’m the follower in this scenario, the fortunate observer. Ella understands but is not able to fully verbalize what she knows.

I guess the phone has rung again as she says, “hello,” hands the blackened screen to me, and adds, “It’s Dy,” short for Daddy.

She grins when I say that he is playing baseball and not at work. Daddy is working, but explaining an office setting to a five-year-old doesn’t create fun play.

“Should he stop at the store and get bananas on the way home?” I try for mock seriousness and hope she buys it.

“Yes,” she answers.

“What else?”

“A bike,” she adds.

I refrain from laughing. Nothing seems random in a child’s world. After we finish with several quick turns saying hi, bye, and what-are-you-doing-now, we enter a pretend playground where Dora, the Explorer; a tennis ball; and a plush ladybug all take turns going down a plastic slide. Reality is suspended for a while.

And I feel strangely free, privileged, invited to this spot on the floor surrounded by toys on an ordinary Thursday morning.

The folk who read my blog regularly know that my youngest granddaughter has Down syndrome; Down syndrome does not own my granddaughter. She continues to play as I get her ready to leave for the day. I have trouble getting her shoes on properly. They need to give her adequate ankle support. She seems to understand my frailties and doesn’t fuss. I thank her for her patience and wonder how much she intuits. This little blonde with the huge blue eyes is amazingly easy to love.

I envision her at Daycare after school some day as she plays with a toy phone. Does she ever say, “Hi, Mawmaw?” This isn’t the kind of thing I am likely to know. My hearing isn’t that good within the same room, with amplification, much less from one part of town to another. Nevertheless, I smile thinking about it.

She smiles back now. That’s more than good enough.

the world as it should be

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One Small Part of the Whole

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 9, 2014| 1 Comment »

How much does one imagine, how much observe? One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water. Elspeth Huxley

My granddaughter Rebe and I go to a small local park. She has brought four of her children, dolls of varying sizes crammed into a single doll carrier.

When we arrive we see another woman holding an infant surrounded by five to seven children as well as a dog tied to a bench. The older children seem to be attending to the younger; I assume that the group is part of some kind of daycare but don’t ask. The woman has enough to handle.

One young man, who could be twelve-years-old tops, attends to a boy on a baby swing. The smaller child appears to be approximately two.

“Is he your little brother?” I ask.

“No, he’s my step sister’s baby,” the boy says. He stops pushing the little one on the swing and grabs an adjoining swing. When the baby swing slows and the little boy whines, Rebe pushes him.  I had considered pushing the little guy, but decided to wait until he became accustomed to my presence. Sometimes children are afraid of strange adults. Kids accept kids immediately.

“Thanks,” the older boy tells Rebe. He pumps his swing higher and then quickly lowers himself when my granddaughter decides to play elsewhere.

“You take good care of him,” I say.

He looks at me as if forming an unspoken response, but doesn’t share his thoughts. Something in his eyes startles me, a look suggesting complexity beyond his years.

A few minutes later the woman carrying the baby, leads the other children toward a shelter down a slight hill. The boy jumps from the swing mid-air, and then hands the little boy a cell phone, perhaps to distract him. “Got to go now,” he says.

The child in the swing shakes his head.

“Come on,” he says gently. “We have to go.” He lifts the toddler from the swing and puts him in a stroller.

I smile at the boys, in a reserved kind of way. I don’t know this pair’s story, not sure what I need to say—In fact, I sense that the caretaker doesn’t want to talk. I don’t know the boys’ names! Perhaps the older child is babysitting for an hour. Perhaps this situation is an everyday, overwhelming task.

The older boy pushes the stroller out of the park.

Rebe runs to the slide with her dolls and drops them down, one at a time. Our middle granddaughter hasn’t begun first grade yet. Her everyday world is relatively simple.Today she creates scenarios where we need to dive from play equipment into shark-and-alligator-infested water. Rebe magically turns into a mermaid. Then without warning, our six-year-old innocent child becomes Rebe again when she decides it is time to leave for lunch.

I am grateful for one-on-one time with my granddaughter, yet sad because I was not prepared to meet the young man and his step-sister’s son at the park. Perhaps I could have been helpful, perhaps not. Life’s whole does not belong to me.  Rebe tells me later that she loves me as much as the whole world and back again. If I could have one wish I would zap that kind of love around. But, I don’t know any genies, so with just one day at a time, guess I’m going the slow, uncertain route.

In the meantime I trust the evidence and my gut. Sometimes I will be right-on. Other times I won’t know one way or the other. I am only one small part of a very large whole.

everyone fighting a batle

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From the Mouths of Pretending-to-be-babes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 29, 2014| 4 Comments »

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. (Albert Einstein)

While I loved and admired my grandmother, we didn’t share that many secrets and stories. I treasure the few incidents from her life that she did tell me. Her health wasn’t good. She lacked the stamina for running or getting down on the floor with an active child. Moreover, those were formal times. The generations were held together with a love focused on respect instead of interaction. I’m grateful for a break in the generation barrier that allows me to play with my grandchildren—to enter into their imaginative realm.

During an out-of-the-box moment I try to teach pretending-to-be toddlers Kate and Rebe how to say Mama. They refuse. They can speak in full, well expressed sentences. The word, Mama, however, isn’t on their list. They giggle at the absurdity of it, and I roll my eyes.

“You can say paparazzi,” I say with an exaggerated sigh.

“Paparazzi,” they repeat with perfect diction.

Their laughter fills the room.

“But not Mama?” I plead.

They shake their heads.

“What about historiography?”

“Historiography!” the girls say, not missing a syllable.

Then Kate breaks the tone of the game. “What does it mean, Grandma?”

“That’s a college word. It is the study of history and how it is put together from the tellers’ viewpoint. The South would have a completely different way of seeing the Civil War than the North would.”

She nods, appearing to understand.

She runs to get a note card to write down the information. It is storming, so I am glad that I don’t go to the computer for an official definition. Dictionary.com presents a meaning less easy to process—true, but nowhere near as child-friendly.

“More words! More words!” Kate exclaims returning to character.

But Grandpa enters the room. It is time for a different activity.

I hope we play this game again. We reach from the real into the unreal and back again, with elastic minds. Sometimes I learn from my girls; sometimes they learn from me. Our time is always an adventure.

believe in magic

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Age, Youth, and Discovering the Moment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2014| 1 Comment »

Old age ain’t no place for sissies. (Bette Davis)

My 94-year-old mother-in-law sleeps on a narrow couch. She looks as uncomfortable there as she does inside her fragile body. She smiles and seems emotionally touched by the gentle stories I tell her about her grandson and great-grandchildren. But, I suspect she would agree with Bette. I have enough tact, however, not to discuss the obvious.

While my mother-in-law rests I elevate and ice an amazingly painful foot. I injured it the first day we arrived. This isn’t the out-of-town weekend I had in mind.

At the same time I sit with my youngest granddaughter, Ella, on the back porch of my brother-and-sister-in-laws’ house. Ella watches Peppa Pig on my iPad as I watch my ten-year-old granddaughter learn the art of hooking a bass with a lure. Ella and I are at the top of several rolling hills so I can’t see Kate’s face, but I know she has wanted to do this for a long time.

The action on the porch is different, subtle. Several ruby-throated hummingbirds flit close by. Then other species of hummingbirds appear—long enough for me to see their color, nothing more. A striped lizard makes an appearance. The next heat wave hasn’t passed through yet. The shade brings amazing comfort.

I think about my mother-in-law sleeping inside. My limitation, even though this one seems temporary, reminds me to celebrate what I can do—not what stops me. Sure, I can’t trek through the woods right now, but someone needs to stay with our youngest granddaughter. A four-year-old could create a hazard among swinging hooks. And who would have volunteered to be a companion to our littlest one, even if she didn’t have a foot the color of bad sunburn? Uh, Grandma?

Ella points to the screen as Papa Pig dives into the water without making a splash. She grins. Perhaps she realizes the absurdity of diving anywhere without making an impact of some kind. Ella already knows life isn’t easy. She approaches Down syndrome with an up attitude.

I study the striated skin on my arms. The challenges of aging occur slowly. I have no idea how many losses it will ask of me. But I’m not living in tomorrow. Today a blonde beauty smiles at me with a love of life that’s contagious. She doesn’t count wrinkles; she looks straight into the heart.

I chose to spend time with Kate shortly after she was born because my mother-in-law had bonded with my children. She showed me how much that connection is worth. Nothing less than priceless. That lesson isn’t lost because my mother-in-law is now in the winter of her life.

Here’s to the older folk of the world. We’re all headed that way. Eventually.

enjoy little things words of wisdom

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A Boat Full of Imaginary Soup—And Pie

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 3, 2014| 2 Comments »

Dare to be naïve. (Richard Buckminster Fuller )

Our youngest granddaughter, four-year-old Ella, sounds out words but doesn’t talk in many sentences yet. Down syndrome has affected her speech. She understands, but is limited in her ability to speak fluently.

I am giving Ella a bubble bath as she plays with water toys. The boat soon becomes a cooking pot where she makes soup.

“What kind is it?” I ask.

“Green.”

As she pours that pot out into the tub, she dips more suds into her boat-pot. “White soup.”

I suspect that she wants to add some dessert to the menu when she says, “pie.”

“What kind?”

She grins—with an energy that reaches across her face, pauses, and then mouths what sounds like flatulence.

That is not the answer I expect. Apparently her interaction with other children at school and daycare has extended her life appreciation in multiple directions. “Fart-sound pie,” I tell the towel rack.

“Fart,” she says, once, the R well-rounded and clear. She giggles. So do I. Fortunately the word does not become a mantra the way it does with most children when they discover minor vulgarity.

She merely laughs, her blue eyes flashing simple delight. After she is dried and dressed she runs holding the boat out in front of her, leading it from one room to the other. She has places to go and is eager to travel—wherever her path leads.

When her older cousins, Kate and Rebe, arrive several days later the first thing they want to know is when they can see Ella next. Since I don’t have a date yet I share the bathtub story. Ella’s sense of humor can be present anyway.

Kate and Rebe repeat the tale as if they are putting it into a mini-drama and need to memorize every detail. It will grow stale, in time, replaced by another incident. But I hope the three girls are always eager to see one another, to celebrate the freshness of who-they-are. May their naivety remain intact for many years. And may they continue sharing it with Grandma.

After all, Ella’s first full sentence was, “I love you.”

 

bath toys

 

 

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Sound, Hearing, Listening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 20, 2014| 5 Comments »

You are imperfect, permanently, and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful. (Amy Bloom)

After nine years my hearing aids gave out. The parts are no longer made, something like finding a replacement carburetor for a 1948 Chevy at the corner auto repair shop.  New hearing aids cost as much as a private jet and I have put off the purchase a tad too long. Of course I have joked that what I hear can be a lot more interesting than what someone actually said. Sometimes what I catch makes no sense at all. At other times it is best-not-repeated in a PG-oriented setting.

My new set is nothing like my old pair. Unfortunately, the left side of my mouth just happens to be bleeding from an archeological dig made to fit a replacement crown and my neighboring audio canal is responding with intense sympathy. The ear doesn’t want to be bothered with a microphone and wire. The right side decides to play ally and balk against foreign materials as well.

Fortunately my audiologist knows some tricks. She suggests a gel as well as a wiggling motion to get the gosh-darned-thing into place. She says that everyone has different ear canal shapes. I’m amazed. I know mine are slender, unlike the rest of me. (I don’t need two airplane seats, but I’m not a model’s size either.) While I’m not comfortable I hold onto the hope that tension and repeated in-and-out-of-foreign-objects-into-my-ears is making this situation difficult.

Now, days later, I stand in my living room at six in the morning and listen to the birds, singing in stereo outside the front and side windows. I revel in the fact that I hear, and that I can adjust the level of that sound—although I’m a bit clumsy with the buttons. The house grows silent and I suddenly wonder if my sound-wonder tools have fallen out. No. I hear a slight rustling as my finger touches the surface. This is a good sign.

I’m a bit clumsy with anything new. I claim both imperfection and permanent flaws. The journey would be downright boring if I already knew everything.

In this picture my hearing aids suggest the beginning of a fantasy song—in the key of C, adjustable, flowing, imperfect maybe, but full of possibilities.

hearing06192014_0000

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Wrapped in Blessings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 28, 2014| 2 Comments »

The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

I am enjoying time with friends and listening to what they have to say, to who they are. But I am distracted by a tickling in the back of my throat and ask Marie to reread an inspirational passage she has just read. I’d been coughing and all I heard was the cadence of her voice.

As I open a cough drop and lay the wrapper in my lap I notice something I’ve never seen before. Sure I’ve soothed my throat with Hall’s Drops for years, but I never paid a second’s notice to the paper. All I cared about was easing the irritation. Messages appear on the wrapper: Push on. Don’t give up on yourself. You can do it. I laugh and then read them aloud.

All four of us have never noticed the words tucked around that promise of relief. Pat gets up to ask her husband if he has ever seen the tiny printed words. He has. I gather the rest of us have been too busy, focused only on a task—or worse on the end product, not the blessings inherent in the moment. Since the purpose of our gathering is spiritual, I get the clue: life is in the now, every minute aspect of it.

Two days later, after I’ve taken a picture of the wrappers that didn’t get blown away by an unexpected wind that reached into my pocket, something else unexpected happens. I haven’t had breakfast but feel as if my stomach is full, or as if something very heavy is weighing it down. Nevertheless, I manage to sample two free cookies and my usual coffee with another group of friends. Within an hour I’m desperately sorry. Everything comes up much faster than it went down.

Since my husband continues to recover from fractured ribs this is not a good time to be relegated to the couch—inches from a plastic bucket. However, like the unexpected blessings printed into the wrapper, surprises appear.

“What can I get for you?” my husband asks. True, my gut hasn’t yet recovered from my last upchuck, but it doesn’t matter. Jay doesn’t want me to get dehydrated. “I need to try to do a little more anyway.” The graciousness in his voice is transparent. This is good. It’s what real-life love is all about.

cough drop wrapper

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Up, Down, and Perspective

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2014| 3 Comments »

The possibility for rich relationships exists all around you—you simply have to open your eyes, open your mouth and most importantly, open your heart. ( Cheryl Richardson)

If I had been given a crystal ball before I was married, I’m not sure I would have been grinning like a school girl as I took my vows. Oh, I’m not regretting that choice; I’m considering everything that happened just because life doesn’t play favorites. It rains both fortune and misfortune without deciding where either should land.

Not everything I saw as a treasure contained lasting gold and not every catastrophe was fatal. In fact the most difficult situations often brought me to a new level of understanding. Actually, I’m not too comfortable with the folk who are completely satisfied with themselves; I have nothing in common with them. They don’t have anything more to learn.

On July 3, 1971, in an elegant, impractical white gown I wore once, I didn’t foresee two sons and three granddaughters. If I had known one of those beautiful girls would have Down syndrome I would have been terrified. Of course at that time not much help was available for folk who had special needs. Moreover, Ella would require two surgeries before she could leave the hospital after birth, one for duodenal atresia and the other for an AV canal defect. Heart surgery is a relatively new medical advancement. Perhaps, the lack of a future view has been fortunate.

In those long-ago years my heart hadn’t been prepared for the spectacular gift I was going to receive either. My spirit wasn’t large enough yet. However, our youngest granddaughter enlarges it just a little bit more every time she grins and her eyes sparkle with honest love. Most people, and I’m included here, have an innate desire to succeed. In order to do that they compete for first place, for honors, for look-at-me in some form. They often don’t hear what someone else says because they are too busy planning what they are going to add. Most folk with Down syndrome are who-they-are. They don’t try to dominate. They are real. They give without strings attached.

When a pregnant woman learned she was carrying a boy who had Trisomy-21, better known as Down syndrome, some young people who live that life gave her an answer. Warning: the beauty in their responses can lead to leaky tear ducts.

http://www.upworthy.com/a-pregnant-woman-learns-her-baby-has-down-syndrome-people-who-have-it-answer-her-one-big-question-2

March 21 was World Down Syndrome Day. That date was chosen because Down syndrome is caused by the tripling of the twenty-first chromosome. Somehow, I suspect the people affected tripled their ability to grasp patience and joy, too. My Ella teaches the importance of simplicity, the glory of living in the moment, and the wonder of learning something new.

May the gift of the so-called handicapped become contagious. Peace to all!

they call in down syndrome but

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Iced-In—Blessed Out

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 10, 2014| 4 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, aviator and author, 1902-1974) 

Another inch of snow falls on top of the ice we already have. I can walk across it in boots without making more than a crunchy dent in the surface. Winter has moved in to stay—at least it feels that way. I remember grass as a distant memory. My ’97 Toyota is iced to the curb with almost a car length of solidified snow behind it. I have a medical appointment this week. Mother Nature does not care whether I make it out of my petrified spot or not. At least, I am grateful to be retired. When I worked in a hospital pharmacy, business didn’t close. If this were a few years ago I would need to take a bus in sub-zero temperatures at six o’clock in the morning. Okay, imagining that landscape possibility is one heck of a lot worse.

Yesterday I tried to slam the snow shovel into the offending space behind my car. I could have been attempting to break a prison wall with a marshmallow stick. Nothing. When I went back inside the house to get a spade, the look on my husband’s face irritated me, mostly because I knew he was right. My back already had a few twinges in it, and I sometimes walk with the stiffness of an old metal toy soldier left in the rain too long. So far I have been managing a back problem with heat and exercise. Pushing it may not be a good idea.

So, Terry, consider what you have been able to do: take care of your husband as he recovers from minor surgery; cook some wonderful meals for him; thoroughly clean-out the refrigerator; re-vamp three stories published in 1998 in a local magazine known as “Dream Weaver,” and then have them accepted by http://www.pikerpress.com/. The pending dates are listed on the web page. At least one of those stories you were able to illustrate. So far this has been a good year for poetry and short-story publishing. You remain free of the burden of wealth, but being internationally unknown has its benefits.

How the whole looks in the future is beyond my reckoning. I look at the bird feeder in our blue spruce tree and watch as a red-bellied woodpecker intimidates his fellow feeders. They fly away from his pointed beak. But they come back. Again and again. For as long as the birdseed remains available.

Okay, sun, I know you are out there! Patience? Sure, I’ve heard of the virtue. That doesn’t mean I’m crazy enough to ask for it.

Then, thirty minutes before my younger son, Steve, is due to arrive at our house I rush outside to shovel enough space for him to get his car into our driveway. I can handle the softer additional inch in that time without breaking my back. My eyes widen when I reach the street. Some unseen elf has removed the igloo material from behind my car. I figure out who he could be within seconds and call our neighbor, Brian, to ask if he performed this minor miracle. With what I hear as a heaven-accent soft voice he says that he did. My thanks are honest; I feel warmed by his kindness.

Steve widens the driveway path and finds the road under my car. A peninsula-shaped remnant of the ice remains in the street, but every car battles that one.

My thanksgiving should be complete. I’ve just received a get-out-of-jail-free card. However, a neighbor arrives. Our older son, Greg, and a passing stranger helped her out of her driveway last week with the help of our snow shovel, spade, and a rug that should have been discarded years ago.  She gives us a loaf of homemade banana bread.

I guess I owe Greg a loaf of banana bread…Then maybe I should provide another kindness to the next person I see, to keep the blessings flowing.

(pic not taken from our area; the snow just feels this high)

high snow

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