BAND OF BABIES
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January 22, 2008
January 20, 2008
ODE TO THE METAL PLATE IN MY HEAD
originally written 1/22/03
I am an absolute sucker for dishes. When the catalogues arrive in the mail, I positively swoon with anticipation.
I scour the flea markets, garage sales and going-out-of-business announcements to seek the long lost sugar bowl in a white, milk glass, grape pattern. I experience ecstasy when I read about an estate sale in the neighborhood. My head pounds when ever the goddess of dishes, Martha Stewart, shows off her collections on her television show. The fact that she has a “dish room” fills me with envy and fuels my desire to achieve my final goal. A Dish Floor. When I am rich, I’m going to have a “dish floor.” Each room will contain a season, wherein the specific dish pattern will match the proper mood, activity and function. Need a tureen for soup at Thanksgiving? Just head to the Fall room with the Fall patterns. Its opposite the Spring room that has the Spring patterns, where you will find a glass fluted bowl for the Easter Egg Bread display. Need a Christmas platter? Kindly turn left, go to the room to the left of the linen closet, you’ll find any pattern you need to set the perfect table.
That’s another thing. Setting the table. I delight in this activity almost as much as seeking out the perfect pattern and adding it to my collection. When I was 9 years old, I was given the task of setting the table for Christmas. Being the oldest of six, I guess my mother finally decided I was old enough to help her, and she delegated what she thought was a bothersome chore to me. For this special holiday, we only used the “fancy dishes”, brought out once a year. I learned to put the silver forks in the proper place, in the proper order, and where to place the dessert and coffee spoons, on top of the holiday tablecloth. The water goblets and wine glasses came next, a special treat for the kids because we got to drink our sodas out of the wine glasses. Only on Christmas. What a demonstration of love this was for me, she allowing me this delicate task, knowing I was so clumsy and so excitable. But I never broke a dish on Christmas.
This dish addiction is insidious because it also comes in many different strains. Linen Dependency, Candle Consumption, and Aroma Therapy Baths are also my demons, and I am losing control fast. Withdrawal must be swift and direct. I know I'm not strong enough yet, so I guess I’ll just go buy another set of dessert dishes in the Jazzberry pattern and put them in my china cabinet, along next to the Grape Vine pattern for everyday use. You’d think with this great love of dishes, I would learn how to cook.
Hey, I didn’t say I like to eat off ‘em. I just liked looking at them.
January 14, 2008
SMILING AGENTS OF TRUST
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Like any tomboy of the 60’s, I played “War” with the neighborhood kids. The only thing was, they wouldn’t let me shoot any of the guns or lay in the foxholes. They said I had a more important job to do.
To be the nurse.
The street where I lived was called Spinner Lane, a housing tract hosting the grand exodus to Long Island. The families who had recently migrated along with the rest of us from Brooklyn filled the 3 bedroom ranch homes to capacity. Everyone’s mother was pregnant, and everyone had at least one brother or a sister.
Most front lawns displayed bicycles on their side, strewn hastily next to bushes under the big bay windows, in an effort to be able to pick them right back up again after lunch. Skate boards and scooters also dotted the landscape, completely oblivious to the fact they could be stolen. We rode our bikes for several miles, all the way to the elementary school and back, without even thinking of someone abducting us. It was unthinkable, back then.
The noon whistle at the fire station was the signal to go home for lunch.
Most War games were played in the summertime, sometimes early Fall on the weekends, if we were lucky. Begun after dinner, we played until the darkness brought the street lamps on, creating shadows of the heroes’ footsteps, illuminating the path to sick bay which was housed under the oak tree.
I was the nurse, and my job meant patching the wounded back together. While most other little girls were home playing with Barbie dolls, I would travel back and forth from the kitchen. Grabbing wads of toilet paper, I would run them under the tap water. Wetting them to bring out to the injured, they became magic bandages which miraculously healed my fallen comrades.
It never occurred to me to challenge them as to my role. If they wanted me to be the nurse, I would go along with the designation. It seemed to fulfill the nurturing side of my personality, a need of which had continued many years into adult hood.
Graduation day from high school brought the realization I would have to work full time as well as go to school, if I wanted to become a real nurse. Television news shows back then only had three stations, and it seemed they were chock full of weekly pleas for the youth of America to go into medicine, especially nursing, because there was a shortage of qualified nursing care.
Time passed and slowly the determination and stamina to work and both educate myself became less and a less a necessity. I was more interested in getting married and starting a family, so the idea was put to the back of my mind. I learned that I was a better mother than a nurse and I accepted that designation. I’ve ridden in an ambulance many times before – but never as a patient.
So imagine my surprise, driving home early from work at 6:00 pm, as opposed to the 8:30 – 9:00 quitting time, when suddenly I couldn’t catch my breath. I was having my first asthma attack brought on by the bronchial infection. I came face to face with my own mortality.
I had been feeling lightheaded all afternoon, but attributed it to not eating – I didn’t have an appetite all week and was kind of looking forward to getting on the scale to see just how much weight I had lost.
When I started getting dizzy on Route 104, a busy corridor of traffic that links one county to another, I didn’t really panic. I figured as soon as I got home I would have some dinner my husband had simmering on the stove. I had called him twenty minutes earlier to let him know I was leaving and would be coming straight home.
I didn’t make it.
My breathing became labored and I heard the wheezing of my chest get louder and louder. The world began to spin and I suddenly became aware that my hands were getting tingly and I was having trouble holding on to the steering wheel. I was going to pass out.
All while I was driving. I thought I was having a heart attack.
My prayer became, God please don’t let me get into an accident, to Oh God Oh God OH God I CAN’T BREATHE…….
Pulling into the NY State Troopers barracks, I called 911 on my cell phone, with barely a whisper to tell them where I was, to please to call an ambulance and then my husband.
The few minutes before the man with the big hat flashed the lights in my eyes were some of the most terrifying moments of my life. I laid across the drivers seat, trying to get some air and wondering what would happen to my kids, even though they were adults. I couldn’t believe that God had given me Stephen and then was going to take it all away, only after 4 shorts years with him. There is nothing so terrifying as not being able to breathe.
Every gasp of breath was torture, and the rumbling in my chest became tighter and tighter. Please God I prayed. Not like this. Please don’t take me like this, in the dark parking lot of the NY State troopers, alone, afraid and with no one around who loved me.
The banging on the window shook me and I opened the door, oxygen at the ready. Three angels in the form of Sodus Volunteer Ambulance volunteers arrived. Joe, Vicki and Nicole all tended to me in their own way.
My first thought was how could these kids possibly know what to do for me? We were off to the hospital, and this time I wasn’t driving.
I was quick to learn how efficiently and professionally they could do for me. They moved swiftly and quickly to get me the treatment I needed to be able to breathe, and comforting me while they tended. With calm directness, they asked me questions as I nodded my head, dizzy and scared and still gasping for blessed bits of air. Wires and blood pressure cuffs secured to my person, I looked into the smiling eyes of the young woman sitting beside me. I remembered thinking This could be the last face I see…….
There is something to be said for having the right people in the right job. I would have been an okay nurse, but not the best – and that is what people deserve. Receiving the best there is in Emergency Care, I believe they saved me. I was helpless, unable to do a thing for myself. They left their warm homes on a cold and rainy evening because somebody needed them, and they wanted to be there.
When all is said and done, I know that millions of people live a full and active life with asthma, and this was not really that big of a deal. But they tended to me like it was, and that is what I came away with as I was wheeled into the ER. I had to trust them, and they didn’t let me down.
Kudos and a big thank you to Nicole, Vicki and Joe to the Sodus Volunteer Ambulance, our smiling agents of trust. I hope I got your names right. If I didn’t, you know who you are. Just check your head for a halo.
January 06, 2008
HELLO AGAIN - STORIES FROM THE LAKE
January 6, 2008. My first column of the new year is not the one I wanted to write, but I really didn’t have a choice. A bad cold had me down for the count on New Years Eve, and I had to work New Years Day. I sloshed my way through workdays for the rest of the week fortified by liquid cold medicine, cough drops and the ever present box of tissues. A hacking cough and a glowing red nose were my constant companion, and the rumbling in my chest told me this was no ordinary head cold.
Though not sick enough to require prescription drugs and no fever presented, I realized the best medicine was rest. Friday night consisted of a quick stop at the local restaurant to fill myself with beautiful soup and hot tea with lemon. Under the tender care of my husband and the ever watchful eyes of my canine children, I slept, napped, drank tea and watched t.v. til my hearts content and, until now, have not moved from my comforted oasis amongst the comforters.
It is Sunday and it is the first I’ve been at the computer, something virtually unheard of since I began writing five years ago. Daily phone calls from my adult children were the only contact with the outside world, and the concern in their voices was enough to alert me to the fact they realized that this was indeed an unusual occurrence.
Lying in bed was a treat afforded me by my beloved, the one who has promised to take care of me and to be by my side for anything, himself not feeling all that great. This time around, I believe it, for it wasn’t always so in the past. In the past I was the caretaker of all and the one who made it work. Such are the responsibilities of a mom, but one should not be the sole caretaker of a marriage.
It also got me thinking of what our lives will be like when we are elderly. I am strong and healthy, and have no doubt that unless the Lord wants to take me earlier for his own reasons, I will live to be 100+. It is the stubbornness and determination that was once thought as a character flaw that will determine my longevity, and has helped me get through this wonderful life to this point.
I have no intention of slowing down or redirecting my path. Am I taking an arrogant stance? Perhaps. But these are the things I think of while sitting at my computer on the morning of a January thaw in Western New York. I know that if I am faced with a challenge, I will not be facing it alone.
Life is a gift and it is beautiful, and even more spectacular if shared. I have no intention of missing another day of it.
Happy New Year and welcome 2008.
Bring it on.
I’m back.
January 01, 2008
THE BEST IS YET TO COME- HAPPY NEW YEAR
It is New Year’s Eve and I am listening for the phone with one ear while I make the bed and start the laundry. Not to see if I have a date or not – that’s a given now, although my date of the evening is down for the count with a sinus infection. One of my favorite parts of telling the story of how we got together is that “….I had to marry him, to be able to date him….” since our work schedules were so chaotic back then.
We had planned to go to an upscale restaurant down the road to celebrate with the rest of the grateful, but it looks like that might be on the back burner. Instead, I’ll most likely be watching the remnants of my youth on the t.v. as I once again view an aging Dick Clark. America’s Youngest Teenager is looking a little rough around the edges the last few years, but he still feels it’s his responsibility to count down the old and bring in the new. My beloved will snore beside me, sleeping the dreams of drug induced slumber, while the germs beat a hasty retreat, dissipating into the fog of the vaporizer laced with vicks vapo rub.
It’s nice to feel needed, which I think is what drives the Teenager as well.
I’m waiting for the phone to ring, telling me if I have to come into work. If it doesn’t ring for today it most likely be for tomorrow – and that’s ok. It’s the unknown which is a little disconcerting. But for the most part, I am happy to be home, writing some thank you notes, organizing my office for the new year, and tending to my sweet, ailing hubby.
There are no longer the daily list of check-ins to see where my children might be. I already know.
They are where they are supposed to be.
No more are the calls to find out who is sleeping over whomever’s house, or who is the designated driver, or who is buying the beer. It’s no longer any of my business, although they have all connected in one way or the other to wish us a Happy New Year. Time has passed to allow such mundane checklists to float away like the vaporizer mist in my bed room.
The phone hangs on the wall in the kitchen, and I once again spy the most beautiful apron in the world. Given to me by my son and his beloved, it is truly a gift made from the heart. I received it on our Saturday Christmas and immediately tied it around my waist, christening it with tomato sauce and ham juice. It will pain me to have to wash it, to remove the newness of it. For now, it will hang on the door jam of my kitchen, a constant reminder of their appreciation of becoming a family. I would frame it, if I could.
All of them worked on it; my oldest grandson and even the baby, christening it with their perspiration, late night fatigue and love. All of them ailing with the bug now visiting my beloved, they worked until their eyes were heavy with sleep and fevers too high to ignore.
From the tiniest sewing of gingerbread men appliqué on the front to mending the raw edges of the tie backs, it is probably one of the most touching gifts I have ever received. It will be come the touchstone to my performance as a Mother-in-law. A reminder to bite my tongue when I don’t agree with something, or to praise when I am happy. I know how it feels to be disliked by your husband’s family, as is the case of my ex's. I will never do that to any of my children.
The sun is falling behind the clouds as it will soon begin to snow again, something the weathermen had forecasted and which is not a surprise. It is December 31st and I am once again reminded of how blessed I have been and how much I am looking forward to the New Year.
I will continue to write and to share with the readers who frequent my columns my thoughts of the day or share a story or two. It is what I was always meant to do, and becoming a writer is one of my proudest accomplishments. There are several books being released this coming year.
So I will continue to look forward and not back. I won’t wallow is self-pity or remorse. Most of all, I will remember the message from my dad, the off-the-cuff remark left on a recorded tape message of goodbye to my mother and my siblings and most pointedly to me. He must have recorded it on one of his good days, and hid it so as not to be found until many years later.
Ephesians 4:31-32 31Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
