For my sister on her birthday.

Forty-five years ago today, my mom did one of the best things she would ever do in this world.  She gave birth to her oldest daughter Kim.  And in the way it is with child birth, my mom knew that her baby was the best she had to offer God.

My sister radiates kindness. She possesses all the gifts I desire: sincerity, goodness, faith, love, joy.  No mater her situation she always tries to choose the most right thing.  She forgives.  Her heart guides her and she checks it against the facts.  She's smart, but she doesn't care if anyone knows it.  She works hard, and she succeeds. She makes no judgments, so she doesn't notice if she is being judged.  I trust her. She knows the worst of me and still loves me. She's a big fan of the underdog.

Her advice is always get over it or keep it simple.  She says yes. She sometimes mixes metaphors, and she can make me laugh.  She listens.  And she builds people up.  And with everyone she meets, she identifies a need and tries to fill it.  She's generous beyond compare.  

If ever I thought about having another child, it was only that I would want Abbey to have a sister like mine; Jake already does.  If ever there is goodness in me, it is because I'm trying to be like her.

I hope everyone has a Kim to share life with.  I thank God for her everyday.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful sister.

Building Blocks

2013 has been a summer of building.

Abbey volunteered at Salkahatchie.  She worked as part of a team that replaced the roof and the floor of a home.  She was covered in fiberglass one day and slept on a gymnasium floor for a week.  She carried a little tool box with her and in it was her father's hammer.  When she came home, she told me not about the hard work, but about the mother and her sons that lived in the house.  She said it was the best experience of her life.

 

This was Jake's project.   

Ian at the Mike's Bikes was about to throw this away, so we brought it home.

 Jake took it apart.

Sanded and primed all the pieces.

 

 

  Tested the paint color.

 Painted the pieces.

 Started on the wheels.

 Sanded out the imperfections.

Prepared the spokes for the blue rims;

 yes that is a wheel being worked on in my living room.

Before & After

  

My favorite part is the blue rims,

or maybe my baby boy feeling success.

or that he named it Rusty.

As for me, I learned how to bake real old fashioned homemade bread.

There is only one child in the world.

I used to read  Eric Carle's picture and poetry book, Animals Animals to Baby Jake.  Carl Sandburg's poem, "Names" is in this book:

There is only one horse of the earth

and his name is All Horses.

There is only one bird in the air

and his name is All Wings.

There is only one fish in the sea

and his name is All Fins.

There is only one man in the world

and his name is All Men.

There is only one woman in the world

and her name is All Women.

There is only one child in the world

and the child's name is All Children.

There is only one Maker in the world

and His children cover the earth

and they are named All God's Children.

Baby Jake turns ten today.  I can't even count how many spectators at sporting events have scolded me for calling him Baby Jake.  I don't know what else to call him. 

Born during a very tumultuous period in my life, just two months earlier we moved to New Jersey and back, baby Jake entered the world chaotically. 

The pregnancy was filled with the stress of joblessness, moving, the death of George's mother Emma, and even homelessness.  I was so big I asked the doctor in my seventh month to take the baby out of me and let him live in an incubator.  They wouldn't do it.

At 38 and 39 weeks, even at 40 weeks, I said, I think we should induce; he's big.  The doctor thought we should wait.  Finally on the night of March 10th, I imagined contractions and decided to head to the hospital.  By Monday morning labor really did begin.  I had no desire to achieve this birth without drugs, but the epidural dislodged in my back, so I felt every surge of this 10lb 9oz boy's struggle into this world.

I knew the situation was dire when the doctor slapped me and said, "you have to do this."  My baby wasn't coming out, he was stuck.  His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, and he was in the birth canal, too late for a caesarian section.  Seven or eight nurses crowded into the room.  They were physically pressing all of their body weight on my stomach pushing with their hands.  I was in shock, not breathing.  The doctor had panic in his voice.  He shouted, "Melissa, you need to do this now."  The pain was so unbearable I felt numb, weak, scared.

Finally, I felt the release, but not relief; the panic in the room intensified.  I saw the blue infant across the room and as the doctor slipped handing him to the nurse, his umbilical cord ripped from his stomach, bleeding profusely.  All the while the doctor was calling orders, words like emergency, revive, sutures.  The doctor and nurses whisked my baby from the room and George followed.  Someone sedated me.  To this day when I take him to the pediatrician, I flip to the first page of his chart, "resuscitated after 2 minutes and 36 seconds."

Jake was born early in the morning, around 5 am.  I remember George calling from the infant intensive care, telling me everything was fine, but I knew he was lying.  I had not yet held my baby Jake. George never left him. I waited, dazed, alone.

When they brought him to me it was after noon.  Bruised and swollen, this toddler I gave birth to was the most beautiful child ever born.  His baby pictures still make me cry.

He's ten now, smart and fast and happy and sweet and strong and maybe even a little crazy.  He likes to dress up in a shirt and khaki's, sometimes a tie, or a costume, a wizard, a superhero, a clown.

 

He puts his hands in his pants pockets, and he looks just like his dad.  He plays outside, wall ball, football, basketball, soccer, skateboarding, surfing, biking.  He enjoys reading, poetry; he memorized T.S. Eliot's "Jellicle Cats" as a gift for a teacher.

We go for early morning walks together on weekends, holidays, in the summer.  He holds my hand and gives me kisses.  When we hug we have a 10 second rule, making sure we transfer all our good energy.  His eyes, when they look at me, pull me deep inside his tender little heart, and he owns me.

 

 

There is only one child in the world.

Adamantly Declined Loss and Damage Waiver

Almost a month ago I wrecked the Escape.  I rented a car from Hertz, and the agent tried his hardest to sell me the LDW (Loss and Damage Waiver).  He insisted if anything went wrong I wouldn't have to worry about it.  He also tried to sell me a tank of gas at a discounted rate.  Nonsense! I told him.  I don't need any of that.  I'm not leaving the beach.

My insurance company called me earlier this week and told me that my rental limit for the car I was driving expired on Friday.  So today I called Hertz and this is what I said:

Today I'm supposed to bring my rental car back, and here's the thing:  I was backing into the garage and I scraped and buckled the back quarter panel & bumper into the concrete wall which also cracked the taillight, and the surfboard that was hanging out the window hit the same wall and bent the window frame.  So I was wondering what I'm going to need to have with me when I bring it back.  And one more thing:  Some voles, they're like rats in the marsh, climbed into the ceiling of my garage and ate a hole in the water pipes creating a water leak that flowed down onto the car.  The wet sheet rock is a little embedded in the windshield wipers.  I didn't take it through a car wash because I can't get the back window up.   I was kind of hoping you could give me the estimate before you turn it into my insurance company; I might be inclined to just pay for it.

Ireland @ Easter

Sheep, castles, churches, pubs, rain, water, magic and green, green everywhere.

 

 

The sheep were spray painted, red or green, probably markers, maybe vaccinations.

 Not eating a lot of meat has never had much to do with a boycott against animals for me. It's always been about just not liking meat. But lamb on the other hand has always tempted my palette, lamb and veal actually, baby sheep and baby cows. I might cringe if someone reminded me the innocents were being slaughtered, but in Ireland, organic living, farm to table, means eating lamb, ideal population control. I ate the best little lamb of my life in the Castle in Cong and the second best in The Quay's Pub Irish stew.

The churches were old and full, especially on Easter Sunday, the Galway Cathedral.

When I arrived on Good Friday, the pubs were shut down, closed, the highest holiday of the year, but the pubs were full on Easter Sunday; the Irish know how to celebrate a resurrection. 
When I tweeted that we were headed from Cong to Galway, a local replied to my tweet with "haven't you heard, Galway is closed." I respected that tweet in the same way I like to post that the Isle of Palms is offering free beer on summer weekends.

We roamed around the Ashville-esque little town of Galway at the Easter street festival complete with organic food vendors, bicycles and artwork.

 

The rainy mist created a magical haze convincing me that I'd find a pot of gold down every narrow dirt road, at the top of every croagh, and at the end of the rainbow over the mountain range where we stumbled upon the only fjord in all of Ireland, Killary.

 

The water surrounds the rural little green island. And the water falls from the clouded sky, once an hour, once a day, once in a while, all the time. Ireland is environmentally green, organic, local first, unprocessed. A truck with a sign that read, "fueled by vegetable oil" was leaving a farm in Cong. Green, every shade from lush green pastures to deep green woods, the green of the surface color of water from a holy mountain view.

Despite all these aesthetic delights, ordinariness reverberated through my synapses. I expect from travel that somewhere there is something that I haven't seen yet, or done yet, but when I look around what I notice is everything is the same. They all sing to the same American songs sung by middle aged men in cover bands who also all sing "Galway Girl."

They all try to dance and only a few actually can. They all have an Occupy Movement. They all drink pints to forget that life is full of quizzical little quirks, the common castle company, the doorways, the dark side, the exploitation of women.

 

 

Poor Ireland...