Amma's blog: "I Am"

Matt and Trey had their way with my funny bone last night - yes, another stellar episode of Southpark; Dancing With Smurfs.

Now in Act Four of Peer Gynt I read - "Playing the fool is a sign of youth!"

Or is it...

I suppose it depends on what foolish act it is you engage in. Fourteen years ago it was November of 1995, time for celebrations, time for a complete and utter lack of city sponsored Thanksgiving decorations and right on to the main event of consumer driven expenditures in businesses both large and small (always good for a city) - CHRISTMAS TIME!!

So there I was, 20 weeks pregnant with a very precious life inside me and a very precious six year old beside me; my not yet born youngest daughter, and my amazing youngest son. The older children were working, though I had urged them not to add to the burden of their teenage years and schooling with working too. I worked more than enough hours to give them the material goods they may have wanted - but all my children have always been determined to do things the way it felt right to them.

Silver Bells in the City was the catchy phrase for the annual lighting of the towering Christmas tree that stands in front of the Capitol. It was a bitterly cold night. My unborn daughter's father was working, as he always does, and I missed his warm arms around me. My arms were there, however, and my young son was so cold - though properly dressed - and I could give him some of my warmth. So I picked him up, just as I have always done with my children - to this day I know I could pick up the biggest of them and carry them if it had to be done. His little feet dangled to my knees, but the warmth of my body, filled with the growing child held him tightly. I held him, and carried him until the glorious tree was lit. 

What I did not realize in the cold of the celebration was that my intestines were falling through a hole in my abdomen. Then they were twisting. It was not until later that night, as the pain became intense that I told my love, now home from work, that we must go to the hospital - something was amiss.

I was kept laughing by my love, it is a talent he has, while I lay in the emergency room of the now defunct Lansing General Hospital (it has been combined into a larger entity of cutting edge health care facilities). The only time I have ever begged for somebody to stop hurting me was when the nurse from the obstetrics department came into the emergency room and tried to fathom where my uterus was by pushing on my stomach. The pain was so extreme I did literally beg, which is beyond unusual. She would not stop. She said she HAD to find where the top of my uterus was, finally the emergency room Doctor intervened. He told her that if I had a strangulated hernia that she was probably adding to the trauma. She stopped.

Up to the maternity ward we went - my unborn daughter, myself (we were indivisible) and her father - my love. I started vomiting stomach acid because it was backing up due to the blockage. I cried every time I threw up. Finally a nurse came in and told me I had to swallow a tube, all the way down to my stomach. Never a quitter, always a doer - I swallowed and swallowed and swallowed the long thick line of plastic tubing. My eyes were wide open, my pain coloring everything a very Christmas like red. I could not finish the process. I grabbed the tube and yanked out the long length I had managed to swallow. The nurse scowled and told me that if she heard me throw up even one more time she would come back with others and I would be forced to take the tube all the way down. It was for my own good. I understood that, but it hurt so badly, and I was already so stressed. 

For the rest of the night I vomited in as much silence as I could manage. My love held the bedpan and stroked my hair and I cried. Talk of surgery filtered through my mind from a Doctor that came to observe my pain. All I wanted was to be rid of it. Please, please, make it go away - I begged. Finally I asked if perhaps they could give me some pain medication. Surely there was something that would not harm my growing daughter, but would allow me to sleep. In sleep perhaps I could relax and maybe the twisted mass of intestines would fall back in to place. I used my logic even in the midst of the torment and offered the suggestion with a pain filled voice. Surprisingly it turned out that that WAS an option, now that I had mentioned it. I had an hour or two of sleep, and then I would wake up to vomit up more stomach acid.

The head surgeon arrived with the eight o'clock hour. He explained that if he performed surgery I could lose my daughter. I surely did not want that. He told me he would do anything in order to prevent a surgery from taking place during the course of my pregnancy. I was willing to do anything too. To save my baby. He came to my bedside and manipulated the bulge of innards that lay over the bulge of the new life I was nurturing. Suddenly he pushed with great force. 

Everything came untwisted. The pain disappeared. I smiled. Everybody smiled. I joked. Everybody laughed.

The nurse that rode down in the elevator with me to escort me to the car my love had warmed for me, she looked at me and said "It must have been the pain. You are so different now." That struck me as funny in an odd sort of way. Are not most people different in pain? Especially extreme pain? Surely this was not something she had witnessed for the first time with me.

My daughter was born in time. For the last five months of my pregnancy I had to bring in a restrictions form to work, a new one every month - saying that until I was no longer pregnant I could not lift more than a certain amount of weight. I tried not to be confounded by the paperwork jungle. Surely it was obvious that I was pregnant and surely it would be obvious when my pregnancy was complete. The baby in my arms would be the last clue, I figured - if nothing else. But I complied because I had no choice - I was not a woman who had the ability to stay home and relax during my pregnancy. 

Now I have a really huge abdominal hernia - my intestines just flop through the hole and when I sit up I can do a spot on impression of a scene from the movie Alien. Sometimes I worry about the lifting at working creating another moment of terrible physical pain. It hurts more when I walk for long periods of time - the simple law of gravity says that something unsupported will catch the drag, and so it is. But I could still carry my children and warm them so they could watch a tree of celebration turn brilliant.

Am I a fool? No, I am just a mother.

blah

MEW! MEW! MEW! MEW! MEW! - no it is not a block of townhouse-like abodes in Great Britain (loved the movie The Madness of King George). NO - it is not what a semi-domesticated feline of small stature says. NO - it is not the vocalizations of Gary the Snail, Spongebob Squarepant's cherished pet.

Its a POKEMON! My favorite one, just plain MEW - because MewTwo seems a little uptight. Mew just floats around happily mewing and doing whatever it is that a Mew does. I am unfamiliar with Pokemon lore, though I did watch the cartoons and the movies and of course I bought my children Pikachu toys and Pokemon games.

Neuromarketing, a scientific approach to selling people goods they certainly do not NEED but definately want, sounds interesting. The last neuro thing I studied was psychoneuroimmunology - where I discovered - through reading BOOKS BY RESEARCHERS (what prompts the original hypothesis???!!) that if you make a tiny wound on a mouse and then apply a bandaid enough times, eventually you only have to apply a bandaid and its immune system will kick out healing properties as if it were actually wounded. Why this is helpful information, I do not know. But it was interesting. Laughter is a good bandaid, by the way.

Skidz are a back in the day brand name phenomenon - a cheap pair of cotton pants with elastic in the waist and ankles - lots of money, total lack of craftsmanship. WHY OH WHY were they so desired by their teenage demographic? I think it was MC Hammer and his genie pants that did it. 

My Great Grandpa V used to take me by the hand when I was just a very little girl and walk me towards the lake he lived on, right next to my Grandpa. He would tell me a story about a big whopper of a fish - it was almost as big as the whole lake! And I believed him!

Now I take my little granddaughter by the hand and lead her through the Enchanted Woods that I forged from the forest behind my home, and I tell her amazing things about a wood elf, and fairies that dance around the toadstool ring, and the colorful swirling colored bench where rainbows come from, and the Dragon Lair where a very friendly dragon lives and always calls out - HEY LADY!!! (at least that is what I hear when I walk passed it.) There is a rest stop where the grass is as soft as a bed, then a little further on there is a bouncy tree bent to the ground that she can play on.

My grandpa used to tell me that I must have found another soft centered nail when the hammer I was using to pound nails into a piece of wood would bend the nail - and I thought there really were soft centered nails until sometime last week, I think. I could have figured it out sooner, but time flies when you are remembering the sweetness of love stories.

Are these things lies, these little tales that my Grandpa, my Great Grandpa V, and I told and tell. No - they are gifts. The gift of imagination. 

My grandma gave me a big metal spoon and a few metal pots and let me sit outside and bang and clang and make as much noise as a little girl could with such basic tools - and it was quite a lot.

Some things never change, and I will never forget the gifts I have been given.

Lyrics by Korn - SHOOTS AND LADDERS; added cognitions by me:

Ring around the rosies (my Rosy was an 80+ woman who took a shine to my 12 year old self and gave me the gift of her treasured songs.)

Pocket full of poesies Ashes, ashes, we all fall down Ring around the rosies Pocket full of poesies Ashes, ashes, we all fall down (the red rose of memory needs to be given to all by those who have experienced war, poverty, torture, racism, ageism, sexism - all the schism isms - so we do not all fall down in ashes by reinventing the wheel of times gone by.)

Nursery rhymes are said, verses in my head Into my childhood they're spoon fed Hidden violence revealed, darkness that seems real Look at the pages that cause all this evil One, two, buckle my shoe Three, four, shut the door Five, six, pick up sticks Seven, eight, lay them straight London bridge's falling down, falling down, falling down London bridge's falling down, my fair lady Nursery rhymes are said, verses in my head Into my childhood they're spoon fed Hidden violence revealed, darkness that seems real Look at the pages that cause all this evil (Little Red Riding Hood was not about a beautiful natural creature who howls to the pack for comfort and wants to eat little girls, it was about the need for order and proper paths and perhaps to instill a little fear into those who chose the one less traveled - the better to keep things as they are known. The unknown is reviled by some, feared by many, embraced by few - yet leads to miracles at times.)

Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a bone, This old man came rollin' home. Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a bone, This old man came rollin' home. Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a bone, This old man came rollin' home. Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a bone, This old man came rollin' home. Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a bone, This old man came rollin' home. Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a bone, This old man came-

Mary had a little lamb who's fleece was white as snow! (Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?) Mary had a little lamb who's fleece was white as snow! (Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full) Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow! Mary had a little lamb who's fleece was white as snow! (Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?) Mary had a little lamb who's fleece was white as snow! (Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full) Mary had a little lamb! (Three bags full!). (((((WE NEED EACH OTHER.)))))

Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a bone Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a bone Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a bone Nick nack paddy wack, give a dog a -

Rage Against The Machine: Rally Round The Family With A Pocket Full Of Shells (I heard this lyric and immediately thought of cockle shells and the sweet nursery rhyme that contains it - really its about the daughter of King Henry VIII, who broke with the Roman church because they would not allow his divorce and formed the Protestant church - his daughter became a staunch Catholic Queen - Mary Tudor - and the heads did roll in an ongoing slaughter fest between C.O.G.s - Children Of God, yet with different rituals. I doubt this pleases God at all - but it surely does appeal to the monkey brains of some.)

Mary, Mary quite contrary

How does your garden grow

With silver bells, and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

...Imagine with the mind of John Lennon - a brotherhood of man, imagine all the people sharing all the world, you might say I am a dreamer, but I am NOT the only one, I hope some day you will join us, and the world can live as one. (The only thing is - I think that there can be tolerance for the rituals of and cultures of others - and great riches to be gained in learning the meanings and history of it all. One world, which is all we have, but filled with a beautiful tapestry of different tastes, sounds, textures, sights, smells, and things as yet unknown, but there. Do not worry, be happy...

A great American song of our national ideals. Do not tread on me, etc... etc... etc...  A love song. A song of commitment. It totally makes up for the later sung gasolineO in the garageO Metallica. (snickers). My husband is very good for me.

So close no matter how far

Couldn't be much more from the heart

Forever trusting who we are

And nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way

Life is ours, we live it our way

All these words I don't just say

And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you (my lover) 

Every day for us something new

Open mind for a different view

And nothing else matters

Never cared for what they do

Never cared for what they know, whoa

But I know

So close no matter how far

Couldn't be much more from the heart

Forever trusting who we are

And nothing else matters

Never cared for what they do

Never cared for what they know,

whoa but I know

I never opened myself this way

Life is ours, we live it our way(with love and respect, imagination, and integrity, and some naughty fun)

All these words I don't just say

And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you

Every day for us something new

Open mind for a different view

And nothing else matters

Never cared for things they say

Never cared for games they play

I'd never cared for what they do

I'd never cared for what they know

And I know

Yeah!

So close no matter how far

Couldn't be much more from the heart

Forever trusting who we are

And nothing else matters

I wish Kurt Cobain could have had a happy marriage, never given up finding his odd little treasures, and of course I do not think that vandalism is beautiful, nor is a rock in any face - unless its a piercing of your own choice.

MAKE TIME FOR quiet momets

as God

WHISPERS

and the world is loud

Yes, the world is loud, and so am I - at times. It makes me happy to sing and chortle and pfffft and rhyme in all sorts of various ranges and pitches. But I can be quiet, very quiet indeed - especially if I am aware that the people around me are acting in ways to guide me to a quiet place. I am always aware of unusual behaviors, and I try to reward those efforts, so long as no harm is done to me or others - but I do what I think is best as I give the gift to them.

Recently it seemed to me that others wished for me to sleep, at least for 15 minutes. But while I was in that quiet moment of their desire, I did what I desired. I prayed for the pain that was evident in the sounds of an old woman who was next to me, being manipulated towards health. I prayed for another woman who had the unfortunate job of being an Angel of Death in the eyes of those whose jobs she came to take away due to the poor economy. How difficult it must be for those people. I prayed that the entire room of healers be blessed, though why they would act oddly is not for me to know.

I act oddly myself, at times. Oddly in the eyes of a cold and politically correct world. Political correctness does not just mean not engaging in behaviors that would offend somebody for the most trivial of utterances. It also means not acting in a way that is apparently overly good. I surely do not understand the world, but I do not need to understand it, in order to try to help, one person at a time.

Once upon a time I was put in a new job, with new duties, and new demands. New rules, new ideologies. My least favorite was the denial of resources to others. I fully understand that they, in part, were responsible for my job bound reaction. But some people just do not have the mental capacity, the sense of linear thinking, to recreate the plodding steps that will guide them to their resource. In this case the resource was money. A check. In fact I was not the one to withhold the money from the poor woman, but I witnessed it being done by one who was not as fresh and soft as I. I could not stand by and not help somebody who had a situation that I could relate to, so very much.

I recall the panic in my heart when, as a lone mother of two toddlers, with the wolves of business knocking on my door for payment - my workplace forgot to put postage on my paycheck. Five hungry days later a representative arrived from the temporary service I worked for. She was all apologies. I was grateful to finally have received what I had earned. My children and the wolves at the door were fed.

So as I witnessed this woman being denied the resource of a check, all my remembered helplessness and panic returned. This time, though, I could help somebody. With my own hat of humanity on - not that of the job I did - I gifted her with one hundred dollars of my money, the money of my husband, the resources of my children. I freely gave it with absolutely no expectation, nor demand, nor desire that it be returned to me. That is what a gift is - something freely given. Perhaps it seemed odd to her, maybe it was twisted into some dark ideal from those with labyrinths for minds. I got my wings and I flew high from the darkness of those dank passages. Now I try to give back to those who are still trapped.

Yesterday I took my dog for a walk. I put him off his leash in a place and space designed for his freedom, and I let him lead me. I am his only pack member, and he tries to keep me safe, and so every once in awhile I will reward him by giving the feeling of being the alpha. He seems to enjoy it, most times it appears to be more stress than worth the reward. Somebody has to do it, however. During this walk I was visited by my angel, or whatever it may be, some being who walks in a spectrum of light I cannot see.

The first time my angel came to me my aching feet were comforted into a blissful, pain free moment. The second time, amusingly enough, I was left with two small marks on my shoulder, just a reminder to be careful, be sensible, be aware - it was done with droplets of hot wax that landed everywhere, but only left the barest of reminders that I should mind which large wooden pillar I was shoving - especially when it was topped with a small bowl of hot scented wax. This third time, my angel was playing with me. Urging me to return to my usual place of childish glee. I had been following my dog, crying, crying in the rain because of a world I cannot understand. Usually I would pick up odd bits of what others would probably consider worthless, because it is not in a standardized currency. How much can you buy with a common, though colorful pebble. How much can you get with a pretty colored string. But yesterday I walked passed all obviously ME LIKE items in the woods. But when I got to a piece of wood that covered three rocks and walked right passed it, on my way out - I was strongly tugged on my left shoulder - by absolutely nothing visible. My angel. My friend. My whatever it wants to be, it is not for me to deny interaction with a being just because I cannot place it in some nice mundane mind file. I went back and walked over the wood, crying still. Asking Is this what you want! Silly though it may have seemed.

Right now a pleasant chill is surrounding me, to me it means my friend is here. I am happy to share my warmth. Three times the tugging on my left shoulder came. And so I walked over that wood hiding three stones. Then outside of the dog sanctuary I cried on, rain mixing with my boo hooing. I felt the tugging again, again I turned back and said WHAT NOW!, to my friend. I walked until I felt it was right, and took a silly piece of red and white tape from under a picnic table. I turned and walked on. I felt the tugging again. I turned and walked back. I could see nothing to pick up, just a hill to climb. I turned and walked towards my car - the insistent tugging on my left shoulder - just where my hot wax reminders were left, came again. I turned and walked back. This time I found a bit of blue plastic. I picked it up and walked on. Back to my car, with my wet - but happy - leader for a moment dog on my lap. Then I went to my child to take her out of the rain. Of course she preferred to walk in it. I suppose it is part of her heritage.

All these things are true. I feel no trepidation from my behaviors - whether it be from being oddly generous, or having invisible friends. I do what feels right. I am quite normal - for me. 

Blessings to all.