The Small Things

May 20, 2015 //

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been having a particularly hard time with parenting challenges. I am also working a lot, back to full time hours for the next few months. I am taking off for a number of trips this summer as well as time to entertain out-of-town guests. When I don’t work, I don’t get paid. So on the weeks that I am working, I am putting in extra hours. I am also working extra because for reasons I cannot yet determine, after 12 years of private practice, I am having a particularly hard time collecting balances from the families with whom I work. If I don’t get paid, I don’t get paid.

I may have mentioned about a thousand times that I am not currently popular with my teenaged daughter. I can tell myself over and over and even from a point of authority as a child/adolescent psychologist, that to a certain extent, this is normative of mother/teen daughter relationships. But I can also tell you, normative or not, it is a source of great pain in my life. A mama is built to be happy when her girl is happy. Mine is not only frequently unhappy, but often unhappy with me. I have forged a way in my life to be happy, nonetheless, but I have to tell you, it requires a LOT of effort.

This morning, I was feeling overwhelmed with my workload. This is an extremely busy week. Part of that business is related to our going away for the long weekend to a house on the beach. I am very much looking forward to it. I thought to myself, “I’m too busy to walk today.” Then I thought, “I’ll just take a 30 minute long walk. That was my original walking goal, anyway.”

I put on my walking clothes and ventured out into a foggy Seattle morning. I included the local coffee shop, Bird on a Wire, in my walk, I do this when I need an extra boost. The people that work there are always so nice to me and the coffee is a special treat. Angel was the barista today. He is in his mid-twenties and he lives up to his name. Angel customarily introduces people to each other in the coffee shop. He has brought John and me a glass of water when he thought the coffee line was really long and we might need a little refreshment. Angel is also really funny and he actually took his nephew, whom he frequently babysits, to see my daughter’s choir performance!

This morning, I saw that Angel was taking extra care with my latte. He added extra art.

As he handed the coffee to me, he explained, “You are the butterfly and your husband and daughter are the hearts. You are apart from them but looking on to make sure they are well.” Then he laughed. He had made up a little story.

I said, “Angel, I think you know my family better than you realize. My daughter prefers her dad. I know this may change.”

Angel looked sincerely sad for me. I know he likes John and me a lot. We like him, too.

Little moments can mean a lot. Little kindnesses can go a long way when I stop to notice them.

I’m glad that I noticed today because I really needed it.

Thank you, Angel.

P.S. I ended up walking 4 1/2 miles.

Tags gratitude, kindness, mindfulness, Parenting

Categories Family, Parenting

A rat’s ass

May 18, 2015 //

A rat’s ass is tiny, miniscule. And yet so many of us are disgusted and alarmed by the presence of one, along with the rest of the rodent body, in our homes. My Great Aunt Blanche, about whom several non-fiction works could be written and read, though regarded as fiction due to the unbelievable content, was a widow for nearly sixty years.

In her nineties, she had a not so secret admirer, an 80-something recent widower, who left flowers on her front porch. Aunt Blanche had been through a great deal in her life, poverty, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, caring for her dear husband who was bedridden for the last eleven years of their marriage, and being a widow by age 48, just a bit younger than I am today.

Aunt Blanche was tough, made excellent baked goods, and carried all of her precious and semi-precious gemstone jewelry in her purse “so they won’t get stolen”. She was incredibly funny and had a way with words. Sometimes her words meandered to the hateful, unfortunately when she spoke of “The JEWS” and “The BLACKS”. My mother would break the tension of these moments with her seditious humor. “Blanchie, where is Turner from?” (“Turner” was Blanche’s husband’s last name.) “Jiminy! I don’t know”, Auntie would reply. Without missing a beat, Mom replied, out of hearing range of Auntie, “Is it from Ike and Tina?”

Auntie lived to be 105. She lived in her own home until age 103. She looooved gardening and she loved animals, including her little dog, Popcorn. However, one day, she walked into the bathroom of her home and saw not the ass, but the head of a rat peeping out of the toilet bowl! She quickly closed the lid and called the police!

A young police officer knocked on the door. He appeared competent and the kind of manly man an elderly woman who avidly reads bodice-ripping romance novels, expects when she encounters a sewer rat. He worked swiftly and purposely by coaxing the rat into a cage using his most authoritarian baby voice!

If I’d seen that rat’s head coming out of my toilet, I will not lie, I would have given a rat’s head and a rat’s ass about it even though, really, what could one little rat do in all likelihood?

These day I find myself caring less and less about the “rat’s asses” of life, the things that produce real and palpable alarm but are really not that much of a threat. I have marks on my body that show, and I’m not talking about my cancer scars. I have a burst of spider and varicose veins on my right shin. It started out as a result of an injury I had at age 18 and grew over time, especially during pregnancy. Being a woman in a long line of generations of women with extensive, bulgy, and painful varicose veins, I told myself that I would have them “lasered” when I was done having children.

I am 49 years old. I am done bearing children. That network of spider and varicose veins is still abloom on my leg. I stopped caring enough a few years back to wear tights or long pants to cover it. I would be oblivious until some kid would point to it and say, “What is that???” I run warm with all of this middle aged hot flash stuff and I’d rather be vein-y than overheated. I saw a photo of myself with my mom on Mother’s Day. I could see the veins on my leg and I thought, “I don’t give a rat’s ass. Mom and I look happy together.”

I have another non-cancer related scar. Remember when you picked at your pimples when you were a teen and your mom told you that you would cause scars? I thought I had sailed through that time with clear skin, despite the picking. Then at age 37, it happened. I gave myself an acne scar, a small red dot, right above my right eyebrow. I have put concealer on it for years. Remember when I had my make up done professionally for prom? The make up artist put nothing extra over that blemish. She treated it like the rest of my face. As if it belonged there. I no longer cover it up. I no longer give a rat’s ass.

There are so many things that we apologize for. For having a voice that is not the same as everyone else’s, for existing, for “making” people uncomfortable with our cancer, for our perceived lack of perfection.

I am getting more and more comfortable with myself as I get older. I like this very much. Do I berate myself for not giving a rat’s ass sooner? No, because wherever I was in the past is the place I was at the time. And who knows where I will be in the future?

Tags Body image, fear, mindfulness, perfection

Categories Uncategorized

Healing Happens

May 13, 2015 //

“Shit happens.” Most of us have if not heard that expression, have experienced it. Even when bad things take a long time to happen, they can hit us like a train wreck. Cancer was like that for me.

Healing can take an awfully long time.

But it can happen.

Categories Uncategorized

Single Parent

May 7, 2015 //

We all know people who are hard to contact. They don’t return phone calls, emails, or texts on a consistent basis. My husband is one of those people. It’s kind of a joke in our extended network of family and friends. He’s not mean or thoughtless. He just gets wrapped up in what he is doing at the time and has trouble shifting gears. To be fair, he has gotten much more reliable about returning text messages, though it is not unusual for him to text me a question, my immediately answer it, and then my not hear from him again for quite some time.

Consequently, I don’t communicate with him as much as I’d like to when he’s not home. It’s not particularly effective or satisfying. But I do know that if I REALLY need to contact him at work, if the situation is urgent, I can do it. We have a system. I text him, call his cell phone, and call his office desk phone, one right after the other. Then he knows that he needs to drop what he is doing and to contact me. I don’t do this often, in fact, it’s been years and I don’t even remember the reason I last engaged the Bat phone/text/land line sequence.

John is in southern Utah with his step-dad, camping and backpacking. They’ve been planning the trip for a long time. It is a 10 day long trip, which is slightly longer than our family vacations. They on Saturday of last week. They will return on Tuesday of next week. They are seeing incredible country. John is texting photos to me every day as well as “I miss you” and “I love you” texts. I’ve spoken to him twice by phone. It’s not as if we are not communicating and in fact, this is much more frequent technology-supported communication than we typically exchange. But I can’t rely on being able to contact him at any time. Phone reception is spotty.

I don’t know exactly why but since the day he has left, our daughter has been having a very hard time, and shall we say, she is not suffering in silence. I feel like I am alone in some kind of parenting Hell. We did have a brief texting conversation this morning. He’d spoken to her yesterday and was worried about her, based on the conversation they’d had. I’ve been in a tricky position of wanting him to enjoy his trip but at the same time, I need support and he is my husband. I tried to need less than I did and as usually is the case, this strategy does not work well and I end up getting needier than I was in the first place. This morning, in a texting conversation I told him that I would not agree to him being way and unreachable for so long again. It was not my plan to tell him this. That’s just going to make him worry and detract from his trip. People, I am a work in progress. I will keep trying.

Sometimes being alone is a beautiful and peaceful place. Sometimes it’s just lonely.

Photo of John by Don Girvin, 5/2/15

Tags communication, loneliness, Marriage, Parenting

Categories Family, Marriage, Mindfulness, Parenting

The May Basket

May 1, 2015 //

When I was a little girl, we made May baskets at school, which were usually a cone made out of construction paper with a paper strip looped on the back as a hanger. Each year, I took them home, filled them with flowers from the yard, and carefully walked to the neighbor’s house. As I recall, I mostly walked to the same neighbor’s house, Myrtle Anderson’s, hung the basket on her door knob, knocked, and then ran away. They were not so random acts of kindness.

I have long enjoyed giving gifts to people. I notice the things that people like over the course of the year and file it away in my mind for future gift reference. Sometimes I give people gifts “just because”. When I was in college, I had a boyfriend who was often awkward about accepting gifts from me. They were small things, really. I knew that he liked to play cards so when I took a ceramics class and made him a mug decorated with a heart, a club, a spade, and a diamond. It was just one of the things that I made. The rest I kept for myself. When I asked him when his birthday was, he wouldn’t tell me. It was one of many arguments that he and I had over seemingly really silly things. He actually told me that I didn’t argue enough. Anyone who knew me when I was in my early adulthood would appreciate the uniqueness of this characterization. He was not comfortable with affection or gifts. When he told me that he thought we should break up, I didn’t argue. I agreed.

The following fall, I met the man who would become my husband. As I’ve written in the past, John was dating someone else at the time and in the process of a somewhat messy break up due to the fact that his girlfriend was out of the country for two years, on a religious mission. They communicated by letter. Their relationship had been in poor shape when she left.

John and I started dating the following spring. Our first kiss was on April 25th, 1988. I decided to make a May Day basket for him. I went to the University Bookstore and bought two colors of paper. (Hubby tells me now that he thought I used blue and green. I don’t remember.) I carefully measured and drew lines on the paper as a guide for cutting. I wove the strips into a basket; I remember it being surprisingly large. I made a handle for it and filled it with tulips.

I was excited when I made the gift as I often am when I am making something for someone I love. There is an enthusiasm full of hope and energy. But I was also nervous that he wouldn’t like the gift or would feel that it was “too much”, that I was “too much”.

I walked into his apartment with it. I greeted him with, “Happy May Day!” He smiled, “Thank you, those are beautiful.” Then he gave me a kiss. In short, he acted as if I had given him a somewhat random act of kindness that he very much appreciated. He acted like giving a gift to your boyfriend was a normal and healthy thing to do. This is when I learned that he could accept my love. I hoped that it would last for a long long time.

John is leaving tomorrow for an eagerly awaited ten day trip to the canyon lands of Utah. He is traveling with his stepfather, Don. They will have a marvelous time and I am very happy for him. They have not taken a trip, just the two of them, since 1993 when they went to Tanzania together.

I woke up this morning, missing him even though he hasn’t yet left. When I noticed that it is May 1st, I thought back to the basket and the flowers. So as part of my walk, I stopped at the Thriftway and picked up six bunches of locally grown tulips. When I gave them to him, he thanked me and remembered our first May Day together.

May 1st means a lot of things. To some it is just the first day of May. To others, it marks the day of a birth or a death. To others, it is a time to advocate for workers. All of these things are true. To me, it marks the newness of spring and the joyful discovery of love given freely and freely returned.

Tags love, Marriage, May Basket, May Day, relationships

Categories Flora and Fauna, Marriage

Sometimes a flower is just a flower

April 29, 2015 //

I love flowers. I love smelling them. I love looking at them. I love taking photos of them.

People occasionally make comments about my flower photos that are sexual in nature, though using big vocabulary words. Sometimes a flower is just a flower, People! As I mentioned previously, April is “Poetry Month” at Bloedel Reserve. There are poems written on signs throughout the reserve.Here is the last poem I want to share with you from my visit there.

And the day came when
the risk to remain tight
in a bud was more
painful than the risk
it took to blossom.
-Anais Nin

Well, I’m sure that to Anais Nin, a flower is just a flower. Let’s think about Anais Nin and what she liked to write about. Hmm. Maybe not. Now I’m not saying that this poem is NOT about flowers or ONLY about sex. Let’s just say that I think that sex is a part of it.

Sex is a part of flowers. Their sex parts are on full display. Stop snickering. Be adults. This is basic birds and bees stuff. Creation is beautiful. For flowers, it is okay for them to be out in the open about it, too. Flowers are simple beings who despite depending on a whole different kingdom of creation to reproduce, do not have baggage or require privacy.The other day, I came upon a pink dogwood tree. It was in magnificent bloom on the left side and had just a smattering of blooms on the right side. It was a beautiful tree but it definitely looked more alive on one side than on the other. I immediately thought, “My body is like that tree.”

Due to my right-side mastectomy and TRAM reconstruction, I have very little sensation on the right side of my torso. I would say that my right breast has no sensation but I did start feeling itch a year or so ago. Today, as I write this, I notice that I can feel pain if I pinch myself. This is new. My abdomen has been healing over the last two years since it was harvested for tissue to make a new breast and it is waking back up, gradually, from the outside in.

Although we may not always be cognizant of this fact, a flower is a sexual creature, as are all living things. A woman’s body is not just a body. Sensation matters. While I am happy with the choices that I made in the treatment of my breast cancer as well as the choices I made with reconstruction, the loss of sensation from a sexual health standpoint is not something that was raised by my surgeons. I raised it myself based on reading that I had done and my husband’s question to my breast surgeon about whether a bilateral mastectomy was indicated.

Women are not just women. We are sexual beings, even when we are done having children. We don’t want to shorten our lives we have but we also want to enjoy our loved ones as much as we can.

Tags Breast Cancer, loss of sensation following mastectomy, sexuality

Categories Breast cancer, Flora and Fauna

Today’s reflection

April 29, 2015 //

This is another poem I read in the woods while visiting Bloedel Reserve earlier this month. It is a good reflection for me today.

The Art of Being

The fern in the rain breathes the silver message.
Stay, lie low. Play your dark reeds
and relearn the beauty of absorption.
There is nothing beyond the rotten log
covered with leaves and needles.
Forget the light emerging with its golden wick.
Raise your face to the water-laden frond.
A thousand blossoms will fall into your arms.
-Ann Coray (2011)

Tags Ann Coray, Bloedel Reserve, gratitude, mindfulness, nature photography, poetry

Categories Flora and Fauna, Mindfulness

This. Is. Seattle.

April 28, 2015 //

Yesterday was a gloriously sunny spring day. Actually, it was like a summer day. It was 77 degrees (25 degrees C). I was taking my daily walk in a different neighborhood than usual. A light breeze carried the scent of lilac, bearded iris, and wisteria. At times, I could see the mountains and the sea. At one point, I passed a man working in his yard. I greeted him, “Beautiful day.” He looked at me, smiled broadly, raised his palms toward the Heavens and exclaimed, “This. Is. Seattle.” I replied, “Yes, the city at its very best.”

It is gray today and considerably cooler. I am wearing long sleeves and walked from my car wearing my waterproof and hooded trench coat.

This. Is. Seattle.

The statement is as true today as it was yesterday. And yes, I am using the weather as a metaphor.

And yes, you are no doubt familiar with this metaphor.

My daughter is a very bright and sensitive teen. She is as cynical as Hell with liberal doses of wit. Just yesterday, she responded to friend of mine’s sincere compliment, “Aren’t teenagers GREAT!?!, ” with “No. All we do is complain about you guys ruining the economy and being close-minded.”

To her, the negative aspects of life are more real, at least from an intellectual standpoint. I was the same way at her age; it is part of growing up, realizing that the world is complex and largely uncontrollable. That part of reality sucks.

But it is part, not the whole. I come back to this metaphor time and time again as well as to just the thought that almost no situation is all good or all bad. A lot of my blog posts are about this very topic, staying positive, but realistic. Staying in balance.

I almost didn’t write this post because I thought that the theme was too much of a cliche. Then I realized that there are things that never get old like saying, “I love you” or giving someone appreciation, or even TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER. Those are actions that tie us to our loved ones and to our communities as a whole.

I repeat these thoughts, the importance of seeing both the positive and negative, the good and the bad, the painful and the joyful, because they tie me to my own mental health. My life is not going to be about pink ribbons. But it’s also not going to be a black out of light. If there’s a flower to to look at, I am going to do my best to see it. If there a need for compassion, I will do my best to give it. If there’s a loss, I will do my best to grieve it.

This.

Is.

Life.

Geum.

Nemophila.

The roses will be at their peak in about a month.

The bees have been back for awhile and the lavender has just begun to blossom.

Tags Breast Cancer, cynicism, grief, mindfulness, nature photography, Seattle

Categories Breast cancer, Flora and Fauna, Mindfulness

The Options

April 18, 2015 //

In my psychology practice, I am often asked by parents, “What is the best school for my child?”

The children with whom I work, by and large, are not well suited to your typical school. I could tell the parents what qualities that I think would be best for their children, but the truth is, for most families, the ideal doesn’t exist. Consequently, I respond by asking about constraints.

“What is your neighborhood school?”
(Schools should be comparable across the area, but unfortunately, that is far from the case. And I’m not just talking about limited availability of good public schools in low income areas. I’m talking about limited availability of good public schools in ANY area of my city. But there are some.)

“Is private school an option?”

“How do you feel about religious schools?”
(There are a number of religious schools in the area that do a good job of providing a nurturing but structured environment. Also, of private schools, the religious one charge less money than the secular schools.)

“How far are you willing to drive your child to school?”

In other words, before I say, “Your child’s ideal school environment would include x, y, and z”, I narrow things down to the most attainable options.

I do this for two reasons. First, it is a very practical approach. Secondly, it is far less discouraging. We could go on endlessly about the characteristics of a “perfect” school only to discover that it simply does not exist.

No one likes a “dead end”. We like the idea of endless possibility. However, knowing the dead ends, the improbabilities, and the impracticalities, can stop us from spinning in a life of too many options, many of which are false ones.

There are dead ends in my own life. There is no longer the option of “I will live my life as if there is an unlikely chance that something REALLY bad might happen.”

REALLY bad things have already happened. Scary, awful things.

Knowing that this way of thinking is a dead end in my life is sad but it is also liberating. Knowing what I can’t do makes some of the choices simpler, in a way.

Today, I choose to live the best life that I can within the constraints that define me as an imperfect human being.

Today, my life is pretty darned good.

Tags Decision-making, Happiness, mindfulness

Categories Mindfulness

Almost Wordless Thursday

April 16, 2015 //

I am not pithy. You may have noticed. I used to write poetry. It was pithy. But the truth was and still is that I have to think A LOT to write a little. Not to mention the rewriting process.

Okay, I’ve already written more than I intended. This is supposed to be an introduction to a poem I saw in the woods at the Bloedel Reserve. April is poetry month.

I like this more than a pithy amount. Maybe you will, too.

Song of the Thunders

Sometimes
I go about pitying myself
while I am carried by the wind
across the sky.

-Songs of the Chippewa
-Translated by Francis Densmore