Call

Especially as someone who desperately misses my cherished children, J.K. Simmons made me cry last night in his Academy Award acceptance speech when he implored people to call their parents. 

I would take that step farther - if you can, reach out to anyone who has made a difference in your life and let them know how they matter to you.   My mother died three years ago.  We had a challenging relationship, but I miss her terribly and would give anything to be able to talk to her again for even one minute.  

I have been so blessed to have many, many people, friends and relatives, show me support and love over the years.  Life is so short.  At the end of the day, staying connected to people we love is truly what makes living worthwhile. 

A call can be a simple connection or it can be an opportunity to begin to heal a deep wound.  Either way, it is a winning proposition.  Call someone you love, for you and for them. 

From 1 Corinthians 13:

Love is patient, love is kind.  It keeps no records of wrongdoings.  Love does not delight in evil.  Love never fails.

 







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Do Not Fear, For I Am With You

I have been struggling with much grief and fear this holiday season.  My beloved family is fractured, some of my children estranged, it seems, beyond restoration.  Being a mother has been the bliss of my life.  Without them, meaning, pleasure, any sense of satisfaction, has paled, despite the outstanding nourishment of my many friends, my remarkable daughter, who is endlessly supportive and helpful, and my delightful grandchildren.  They are all wonderful and I am truly, truly grateful for their love and infinite encouragement.  But we always want what we don’t have, don’t we?   One of our great human flaws is a recurrent inability to be satisfied by the good that we do have right under our noses.  We long for what we miss.  And I miss my children with a gnawing pain that literally howls through my every waking moment.  I try to move on, I try to be accepting, but their absence is a bottomless pit of loss and pain.

Then there is the fact of the unknown.  With the spread of the cancer, it is literally a waiting game.  Waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Waiting for the inevitable day when my oncologist calls and the result of my biannual scan is no longer good news.  Fearing that the facts would be simply too hard to face, I have never asked or researched what exactly my prognosis is.  Last month I finally screwed up the courage and looked it up.  Breast cancer which has spread to the liver has a projection of three to five years from diagnosis.  I know it could be worse.  But I am greedy, another very human flaw.  I want so much more time.  I am already a year down.  I am sad and I am scared.

My faith has been shaken.  Yet another flaw.  I am the first one to admit, I am all too human and all too flawed.  But it has been awfully hard to remain reassured by the spiritual when the corporal is so spectacularly challenging.   Loss upon loss upon loss has worn me down.  The basest, most immature part of me cries out, haven’t I had enough already?!?  I know intellectually that life is just like that.  It doesn’t matter if you have tried to be a good person, tried to do the right things.  Good intentions + going to church + doing the best you can = health, happiness and success, right?  But there is no formula, no equation.  Stuff just happens.  

I have never believed God causes bad things to happen to us, I do not believe He visits disasters upon us.  I could not believe in a vindictive, punishing deity.  But lately I have found it is difficult to believe in any deity at all. 

I have received many Christmas cards this year from the delightful people I am surrounded by.  One card was from someone who is particularly special to me.  The day it arrived was an especially busy one.  Before I could open it, I was interrupted and set it aside.  Four days later, when I went to open it and reply, it was nowhere to be found.  I felt sick.  I turned every room upside down.  Because my mobility is so limited, there are not too many places I could have lost it in.  I went through every box and basket, every surface.  Nothing.  I chastised myself over and over for being so careless, so disorganized, so stupid, so thoughtless, on and on.  I automatically invoked Saint Anthony, every Catholic’s resource for lost things.  But I didn’t really believe a word of it.                                                                                                                                  

After another fruitless round of searching I collapsed in my recliner, utterly exhausted and discouraged.  I’ll just rest for five minutes, I thought, and then I will look again.  It must be stuck in something else.  I’ll turn out every catalog, every book I have laid my hands on in the past year, every container.  As I leaned my head back in the chair I noticed a small white envelope lying face down on the corner of my chairside table.  This is a tiny table, with barely enough room for my laptop.  I had searched for card on the table easily ten times.  I had picked the laptop up each time.  There had been no card.  It wasn’t there.  But it was now.  Perched on the edge, bright white, unmissable.  

I burst into tears.  I don’t ask for signs, I never have, even when my faith was at its strongest, I never felt comfortable testing God, demanding things.  It felt disrespectful and disloyal.  But I believed at that moment, with the inexplicable appearance of a card I had been searching for over hours, God had sent me a sign.  He had sent me a message: do not fear, I am with you.

After I had children, I struggled deeply with the concept of putting God before else, as demanded in the Bible.  How could I put anything before my beloved children?  How could I?  It was impossible, nothing meant more to me than my children, not even God.  I always felt guilty about that and even slightly fearful.  How much of a sin was it?  Was I dooming myself to eternal damnation because I was putting mortal beings before the Lord?  I decided it didn’t matter.  I loved my children more than life itself and if God didn’t understand that, oh well.

But here I was, facing Christmas Eve alone, the night we traditionally had come together as a family and celebrated the holiday.  The night I cherished as a representation of everything I loved most in the world, the night I had the opportunity, shallow though it was, to tangibly demonstrate my love for them by giving them things I thought would make them happy.  The sadness of being by myself, of knowing that they were deliberately choosing to exclude me from their lives when I needed them the most, was overwhelming.  I had laughed in God’s face and told Him He meant less to me than these people who were wounding me so deeply.  And He was saying, I am here anyway.

Some may scoff at what appears to be my fanciful superstition.  Some may say say that the card had been there all along and I just missed it.  Some may argue there is a perfectly logic explanation for missing that glaring white envelope all those hours.  And I might agree with all of them on some level.  But I am making a choice.  I am choosing to not be miserable.  I am choosing to be reminded that I am not alone.  I am choosing to not be afraid.  I am gratefully, humbly choosing to accept the gift of God’s love and comfort.

Isaiah 41:10

10 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

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Giving Thanks

I offer thanks today for all the good I have in my life.  

I am so grateful to God for putting in my path so many wonderful people who are so good to me.  My caretakers who provide me with help so that I can stay home as long as possible.   My doctors who work so hard to keep my complicated health issues organized and who do it with warmth and compassion.  Professionals who have helped me with business issues, without judgment or criticism.

 

But most of all I am thankful for those of you who are so good to me on an everyday basis.   Those of you who offer me empathy and encouragement and unconditional love, you are what keep me going.  You all keep me from folding under the weight of everything I have lost and make me appreciate everything I still have. 

 

That is my Thanks Giving.

 

Words my loved ones live by:

1 Corinthians 13

Love

13 1 What if I could speak all languages of humans
 and of angels?
If I did not love others, I would be nothing more
than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
² What if I could prophesy and understand all secrets
 and all knowledge?
And what if I had faith that moved mountains?
I would be nothing, unless I loved others.
³ What if I gave away all that I owned
and let myself be burned alive?
I would gain nothing, unless I loved others.
⁴ Love is kind and patient, never jealous, boastful,
 proud, or ⁵ rude.
Love isn’t selfish or quick tempered.
It doesn’t keep a record of wrongs that others do.
⁶ Love rejoices in the truth, but not in evil.
⁷ Love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful,
 and trusting.
⁸ Love never fails!  Everyone who prophesies will stop,
and unknown languages will no longer  be spoken.
All that we know will be forgotten.
⁹ We don’t know everything, and our prophecies
are not complete. ¹⁰ But what is perfect will someday appear,

and what isn’t perfect will then disappear.

¹¹ When we were children, we thought and reasoned

 as children do. But when we grew up, we quit our childish ways.
¹² Now all we can see of God is like a cloudy picture
in a mirror. Later we will see him face to face.
We don’t know everything, but then we will,
just as God completely understands us.
¹³ For now there are faith, hope, and love.
But of these three, the greatest is love.

  







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One Smart Cookie

My daughter, her little girls and I got together on Monday for Mother’s Day.  It was one day late, but as I have been under the weather, and her husband was working late, it worked out fine.  She is so easy going, her company is just a pleasure.

The only thing is, she wanted Chinese food for dinner and I am simply not a fan.  I used to be, but I worked in a Chinese restaurant when I was in high school and I just developed Chinese Food Overload. To dispel any horrible misconceptions or fallacies, I will tell you from the get-go, the restaurant, family-run and based in a store front, was immaculate.  The food was what it said it was and the owners were kind, modest, extraordinarily hard working people.  Although the Grandma viewed me with perpetual suspicion.  Always peering at me out of the corner of her eye, she apparently never quite believed I was not going to sabotage their good name in some careless, disrespectful, American teenage way.  Remember, also, this was the early 1970’s.  Despite being a clueless, harmless dork, I was viewed as a treacherous hippie by some of the more conservative older generation. 

But back to the restaurant.   Dealing with all the food just got to be too much.  Each shift the work was relentless.   I rolled wontons, made mustard from mustard powder, prepared rice and fried shrimp toast.  It was always broiling hot, with dozens of pots and pans continuously spewing grease and steam.  Sometimes I was the only one working who spoke English.  I answered the non-stop phone and took non-stop orders.  I got yelled at constantly by Grandma, who would never accept a Westerner could prepare the food as well as someone who was Chinese (she probably was right).   I answered zillions of questions from the customers.  What’s in this, what’s in that, what does this taste like?  As if I could explain to someone what something tasted like.  I was such a brat I used to say “It tastes like chicken” and then would try not to laugh.  My Number One personal favorite question, however, was when customers, apparently surprised to find an American kid working there, would ask me if I was Chinese.

Now I would be honored to be Chinese.  We are talking about an incredible culture of art, music, literature and philosophy.  Who would not be proud to be of Chinese descent?  However, I look about as Irish as you can get.  I look as though I just emerged from the valleys of western Ireland, which is exactly where my ancestors did immigrate from.   So, again, being a clown/brat (take your choice), I started replying “Yes.  Yes, I am indeed Chinese.”  I always wanted to add “…you knucklehead.” Because I figured anyone dumb enough to ask that question deserved a snarky answer.  Although I realize now the chances of them getting the joke was pretty much nil.   So I just got my own private little giggle.  Add all these things together, plus an unfortunate return on an investment of too much Egg Foo Young one night, along the way I just lost my taste for Chinese food.  But Mary Kate loves it and she is so good to me, I couldn’t give her a hard time.  So Chinese food for Mother’s Day it was.

After she and the girls left, I saw the ubiquitous fortune cookies had been left behind on the kitchen counter.  So I made a cup of tea and opened the first one, expecting to have a good laugh at the preposterous syntax and ‘message’ I was about to be presented with.

I know they are random.  I know they have no base in reality what so ever and are spit out by a machine in a factory somewhere in Queens.  But here is what I read:

                          “Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.”

Anyone who has been reading this blog knows I am dealing with a very poor cancer prognosis.  But even worse, I have faced some devastating issues involving family members I love deeply.  These concerns, these losses, are on my mind almost constantly.  Life is too short.  And hating is a total waste of time and energy, even if you are not sick.  

         

At a time when there is so much rancor in my family, I just pray that this otherwise worthless piece of paper might suggest a message of peace and forgiveness.  I wish more than anything that people I love can find compassion and tolerance in their hearts.  Nothing on the face the earth could feel better.  

Of course, because the universe loves a good giggle, the next fortune cookie read:

             “Statistics are no substitute for judgment.”

?!?!?

I’ll stick with the message I actually understand, thank you very much.          

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Pray and Laugh

I didn't exactly forget to put up a Pray & Laugh post last Friday, as I said I was going to do each week.  It is more a matter of still contemplating how I am going to apply it.  Some issues it has occurred to me I need to pray about are deadly serious and certainly do not lend themselves to a subsequent laugh.  But I still agree with my comrade in cancer from last week that it is essential to do both in order to heal.  It is still a work in progress.  However, I'm not going to worry about it.  I know we will work something out together, with quiet inspiration from God, and it will fall into place. 

There have been several things on my mind the past two weeks.  But the situation that seemed to loom the largest (and most expensive) was the fact our boiler was broken.

When I bought my 80 year old house 14 years ago, there was much that needed repairing or replacing.  The non-handyman who had owned the house before me left an awful mess of inept 'repairs'.  Although I had paid a professional house inspector a significant amount of money and he had certified the house as in adequate condition, he was, let's see...how can I put this?  COMPLETELY INCORRECT.  The washer was illegally hooked into the sump pump.  The roof needed immediate replacing.  The attic conversion to two bedrooms and a bathroom had been done with no township permits and was not up to code, therefore two days before closing we found we could not get a Certificate of Occupancy.  And that is just the tip of the list.  I was naive and trusting.  You might also say I was a smug, smarty pants know-it-all.  Or an ominous combination of all, blinded by French doors, the sun room, the fireplace, the Craftsman built-ins, original hardware...you get the picture.

Follow the picture to the full basement, three quarters finished, with a built in bar, pool table and separate laundry room.  On the far wall of the finished space was a door.  And behind that door was No Woman's Land.  It was dark, dank, held dozens of shelves loaded with tons of man-stuff like metal and wood.  There was a work table to do the kind of work that I, myself, certainly would never do.  And there was...The Boiler.

In an eighty year old house that had only had three owners in it's lifetime, you can expect radiators and an old boiler and that is exactly what I had.  But it kept us warm and had been certified OK by the House Certifier, so I didn't give it a second thought.

Nine years ago when my carbon dioxide detector went off one afternoon, with brilliant logic I said to myself "Gosh, the carbon monoxide detector is going off.  The new toaster oven that I just bought must be defective.  I hate it anyway, I will just get rid of it and get a new one."

I know I am hearing some groaning out there.  Before we go any further, let me remind you from kindergarten to high school to college, childbirth ed training, nursing school and graduate school, I have about 22 years of education.  But back to our story...

I pitch the harmless and helpless toaster oven out and buy a new one.  Boy, those were the days.  Sigh.  Dumb AND well off.  At any rate, lo and behold, the carbon monoxide detector goes off again one afternoon.  "Gosh" I think, "There must be something wrong with the carbon monoxide detector.  I better get a new one."  So I get myself a new, ceiling-type CM detector.  And what do you think happens?  Why, THAT detector was broken too!!!  What are the odds?!?!

My sister was heading over to visit, so I asked her to run into Target on her way by and pick me up a new detector.  She got a plug in one this time and I didn't look at it until after she left.  I plugged it in to the kitchen outlet and the reading shot up to 50 ppm (parts per million).   Safe is ZERO.  Finally showing a modicum of the intelligence I supposedly had, I went down to the basement, back to the scary boiler room.  Before I could even plug it in, I was already woozy and nauseous.  But out of morbid curiosity, I had to know.  The number zoomed up to 375.  Even I knew this was bad.  I opened all the basement windows on my way out, hit the Emergency Off switch for the furnace, got the dog and high tailed it out of there.  Next call was to the boiler guy.

The boiler guy was the same one who had installed the boiler fifty years earlier.  Our children went to school together and I was friends with his wife because of that.  He had a good reputation and offered a turn around time of one day.  Best of all, I would have a new boiler and that issue would not be a problem for decades.

For decades.  Right?  So why did I have no heat less than ten years later?

Because that is the story of my life, that's why.

The first repair person that I called two weeks ago came in dressed like someone exploring a spill at a nuclear power plant.  He gave his dire-you're-lucky-you're-not-dead speech and estimate of $13,000.  I was still sobbing when he left.

The next repair person was arranged for me by a high school classmate.  His technician was funny and kind and thought he had found the problem, but it wouldn't stay lit.  After a few more tries like that and a week of very cold nights, it was determined we did indeed need a new boiler.  No one could figure out why the old one gave up and the guy who had installed it for me was now in his 90's and the business was closed.  The question was moot anyway.  I had just gotten out of the hospital and we were freezing.  I didn't know how I was going to pay for it but the owner of this second company, along with his tech and my classmate, worked out an incredible deal for me.  They worked for hours on Thanksgiving eve, until almost 9 p.m., to make sure I would have heat again. Despite my snarky comments, once again I was blown away by the amazing kindness and generosity of truly good people.

The Prayer

I am so incredibly lucky to have the support of friends and the support of their friends.  This care has seen me through many crises, not just the boiler debacle.  But I know while we are warm this Thanksgiving and have much to be thankful for, there are far many more who are suffering right now.  This prayer is for those who do not have access to warmth, the where-with-all to get help or do not have help available at all.

For Those Who Are Cold This Night

Lord, I thank you for the warmth and safety of my home and for putting in my path people who could and did help me.  Please comfort those tonight who are struggling to survive without this consolation, those who are cold or homeless.  Allow your love to spark in their hearts, to give them hope and the resources to seek help.  For those who cannot reach out, for those who are too beaten down or too unwell, please give them some sense of relief or healing.   Let them feel the blanket of your love and peace surround them.  Open the eyes and hearts of those of us passing them by, that we might be aware and provide whatever help we can or, at the very least, to pray for them.  I humbly ask this.  Amen.

The Laugh

Because I love to laugh, I admire and envy all the comic geniuses who have treated us to their many and varied gifts.  As far as I am concerned, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are two who are at the top of the list.  These brilliant men ironically led tortured, unhappy lives.  But, luckily for us, they have left a legacy of hilarious performances.  This is one of my favorites, "The One-Legged Tarzan".  













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