Archives for posts with tag: Family

I never sang for my mother: Repost

November 22, 2014 //

This is a re-post from 9/20/13, which I wrote (and sang) as a gift for my mom’s birthday. Mom has been fretting about me a bit because I’ve been writing about worry and stress. She is asking me what she can do to help. I am reposting this 1) to remind her that I know that I am resilient even if my life is complicated at this time and 2) to remind her that she has already and continues to do so much for me, just by being herself.

Martha MacKenzie is my wonderful mom. And today is her birthday. In addition to being a mother of six and a wife for nearly 59 years, my mom is a singer. She has a glorious voice. Mom has almost no formal vocal training but comes from a family of musicians, especially singers. Her singing style can best be described as sacred classical. In other words, she is a church singer. Mom has been singing in church choir since she was six years old. Her oldest sister, Gloria, sang for KIRO radio’s Uncle Frank’s Kiddie’s Hour for a number of years, until she was about 12. Mom and her middle sister auditioned for and were accepted into the children’s choir for an opera production in Seattle, starring Metropolitan Opera’s Rise Stevens. Mom still remembers what she was asked to sing for the audition.

Mom was SMART and graduated from high school at age 16, after which she took a music performance class, along with her older sister, Barbara at Seattle University. We have recordings from those times of my mom’s clear soprano and my aunt’s animated mezzo-soprano singing songs from 1950’s musicals. Shortly after, Barbara moved to New York City to try to make it on Broadway. She was an amazing performer but like many talented performers did not make it in the Big Apple. During the Koren war, Mom was in a singing trio with Barbara and their cousin, Betty. They wore glamorous dresses and pulled off those unbelievably dark lip stick shades that were popular in the early 50’s, while performing for the USO.

Mom continued to sing in church choirs all of this time through marriage, rearing six children, and throughout my father’s post-retirement years. She is a member of the St. James’ Cathedral Choir in Seattle. It is a wonderful choir, which has toured Europe singing at noted cathedrals such as Notre Dame in France. They also sang at the Vatican and had an audience with Pope Benedict. My mom likes to tell us how she was trying to hike up the waistband of her support hose just as Pope Benedict walked by.

Wow, Elizabeth your mom sounds great. And you’ve talked about being a musician in your youth. You must have sung. You must have sung for your mother.

Well, it’s complicated. I was in band but did belong to the choir during 7th grade. Our claim to fame was performing, “The Sound of Music” during a middle school JAZZ competition. And no, it wasn’t a jazzy rendition of the song. I don’t know what that teacher was thinking. Then I stopped singing except for a few months during college when my mom convinced me to come to St. James to rehearse for a special community choir mass. (Regular choir members must audition. Soloists are professional opera singers.) I remember singing “A Mighty Fortress” and learning a piece based on Psalm 84 (“Yeah the sparrow hath found a house…”). I learned how to articulate words differently for singing than for speaking. It was a lot of work but was really fun.

So I did a little singing in groups. But NEVER alone in front of people. (Okay, one time five years ago I sang “Goody Goody” for my neighbors Jim and Deana. I’m not sure why I did it.) Not even for my mom except for a few bars of something and even then that was when I was much older, like 35 years old. People, singing in front of people is even more mortifying to me than wearing a swim suit in public! Zoe is the only one I have ever sung to and I sang to her a lot when she was little. I would sing with her now except that she only likes to sing alone. (Annoying teen.)

My mom used to sneak next to the bathroom door to try to hear me sing in the shower. (Watch the comments section, she will deny it!) If we were in church together and standing next to each other, she would sing really quietly so that she could listen to ME. I knew that it was really important to my mom to hear me sing but it was so hard for me to do this and I’m not sure why. She wanted to know if I had “a voice”. I performed frequently as a flutist, despite my nerves, and even performed in two master classes. (A master class is when some well-known musician comes to town and students are selected to get a lesson by that person in front of an audience of a bunch of students and music teachers. I did it twice as a college student.)

My singing anxiety does not just apply to my mom. Objectively, I have a pleasant, untrained alto voice with limited range. I think I could have been an excellent singer if I had trained to do so as I had with the flute. Perhaps the difficulties started as a combination of my perfectionism and the fact that my mom’s eagerness stressed me out a bit. And then as irrational anxieties do, it gathered its own steam from my continued avoidance, and took on a life of its own.

Last July, I wrote about the co-existence of grief and joy as being part of resilience in the post, How Can I Keep from Singing? The post title is the name of one of my favorite Christian hymns. I included the lyrics in the post followed by a little message to my mom asking her to record the hymn so I could post it on this blog. She offered me the deal that she would record it if I sang WITH her. I replied to her comments with a “definite maybe” type reply. I don’t think she ever saw that reply because she hasn’t mentioned the topic even once in the last almost two months. Or perhaps she has been playing it REALLY COOL.

I subsequently decided that I wanted to record the song both for my mom and for myself, to face my fear of public singing. Unlike going on loop de loop roller coasters, I actually enjoy singing quite a bit. It’s the only kind of music I still make. My original vision was for my mom, Zoe, and I to sing one verse apiece and the last verse together. However, Zoe was not at all interested in participating at the time I asked. My mom kept going camping with my dad all summer. I ended up not talking to her about it.

I decided to go solo and a cappella. Actually, a cappella is my favorite for this hymn. Plus, I don’t play piano and ukulele accompaniment by Zoe would probably not sound right.To me, the hymn sounds a little Irish. However, it is American and although there is a somewhat complicated history behind it, the authorship for the music is attributed to a Baptist minister, Robert Wadsworth Lowry. There are a number of different versions of the lyrics. I chose the one that was closest to the one I’ve sung in church many times as a member of the congregation.

I started practicing the song on and off about three weeks ago. Then I had to figure out how to audio record myself. (No way would I have a videotape made. This audio recording is a big enough step as it is.) I finally decided, as time was passing quickly, that I just needed to get it done. So I downloaded a free recording app onto my smartphone and started recording myself. I spent enough time on it to give myself a few tries but not so many as to activate my perfectionism.

Happy Birthday, Mom! Here is a song for you. I am posting it on my blog as my kind of “performance” so you can have a cyber stage mother experience.

How Can I Keep from Singing?

My life goes on in endless song
above earth’s lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear it’s music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

Oh though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
Oh though the darkness ’round me close,
songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
while to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
how can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble sick with fear
and hear their death knell ringing,
when friends rejoice both far and near
how can I keep from singing?

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
while to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
how can I keep from singing?

Tags anxiety, birthday, Family, mothers, music, Parenting, singing

Categories Best of Blog, Breast cancer, Family, Parenting

Into the rain

November 1, 2014 //

Summer is the driest season in Seattle. With the long days and rarity of extreme heat, it is absolutely glorious. I love the summers here. It is also the time of year when I take vacation and when my daughter does not have the stress of school.

This year, the summer seemed longer because I took two short vacations in October. One in Seattle where I acted as tour guide for a friend and the second, a trip to North Carolina from which I returned just a few days ago.

While I was gone, the rains returned in a very big way. It was raining before but we had a major wind and rain storm while I was gone. Our power went out and after trying to fix our land line phone, which I assumed was not working because it was off the hook, I have discovered that it has been out of order for the past week and no one noticed! (Note to friends: It is always better to call my cell, anyway. Note to telemarketers: Bwahahahaha!)

The weather in North Carolina was delightful. The company and sights were rejuvenating. I visited many more different people and places than I typically do on a trip. Part of this was because I had a lot of people to see and I needed to work around their availability. (I actually used a scheduling application to get everyone’s availability so that I could more easily determine the best times to see different people.) I was worried that I would tire myself out traveling, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. I had a wonderful time. And then I came back to Seattle to inclement weather, inside of my house.

I am consistently aware that my family life is stressful. I often forget how very stressful it can get, how much energy daily living can take. And after being welcomed with a drizzle in my house, by the next day there was a storm with ebbs and flows. And although I am still mopping up the extra water and wringing out my clothes, we may have narrowly missed a tsunami last night.

One f the lessons I have learned from walking outside year around is that most bad weather is scarier from the inside of the house. It looks threatening. The rain looks grim and relentless. And just like the summer seems likes it will never end, the shortening fall days can be so disheartening.

Yesterday, I relearned the lesson of the weather. It rained constantly for a good portion of the day. I did not want to walk in it. I looked outside and thought, “How depressing. Bleh.” But I have been off of my exercise routine with plane travel and getting caught up at work so I suited up and ventured outside with an umbrella in my rain coat pocket.

I walked outside. Yes, it was raining but I immediately felt better. There was fresh air. I was moving. There were trees, grass, and flowers. The rain actually made some things look better. The leaves were glossy. There were beautiful water droplets creating light effects and textures on the plants.

I typically feel so much less vulnerable when I put myself into the situation that I am trying to avoid because I fear it. By putting myself in the situation, I can be mindful of it because I can experience it fully. I can see, hear, feel, and taste things that I can’t from within my own home, standing still, looking at the window and feeling stuck, like I belong no where.

I have to be honest. It was hard to come back home after a trip of fun and little responsibility. It is tempting to avoid bad weather, real or threatened. Life brings change, some good, some bad. Walking in the rain is not an appealing notion to most, especially when the seasons are bringing us to cold and dark times.

But when I walk into the rain, my family is there. With them is where my life is and where I want to be.

Tags Family, mindfulness

Categories Family, Mindfulness

Mine

October 28, 2014 //

Last Wednesday, I was on a flight from Los Angeles, California to Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s pretty long for a domestic flight, from one coast to another. I boarded the plane and took my aisle seat in the coach section of the plane. Passengers kept walking past me through the aisle and I expected at some point that I would be standing up to let two people sit in the empty seats to my right. And then the announcement that we were about to take off occurred. How lucky! I was going to get an entire row of the airplane to myself.

Within about 5 minutes, a man in the row behind me asks, “Is anyone sitting there?” I replied, “I don’t know” because 1) sometimes the doors are re-opened for someone boarding the plane late and 2) I didn’t want to say, “no” because HE ALREADY HAD A SEAT! WHAT ABOUT MY ROW TO MYSELF?

He let about two seconds go by after my “I don’t know” to say, “I’m sitting there.”

I got up and let him in. He took the window seat.

Meanwhile the thoughts in my head, “WHAT THE HELL, MAN? HOW RUDE! YOU DIDN’T EVEN ASK ME IF IT WAS OKAY!”

But I kept my thoughts in my head. Even though he made me get up while I was trying to write a post on my computer, so that he could use the bathroom. HOW ANNOYING!

Then it happened. A woman walked up to the aisle, looked at the middle seat and said, “That’s my husband.” Apparently, this was her manner of communicating her claim to the seat beside him. I said, “You mean, you want to switch seats with me?” She said, “No, you don’t want my seat. It’s a middle seat.” She must not have been seated in the same row as her husband. It was a little confusing. In any event, I climbed out of my seat so that she could take the seat between her husband and me.

Meanwhile the thoughts in my head, “WHAT THE HELL, LADY? HOW RUDE! JUST LIKE YOUR HUSBAND, YOU DIDN’T ASK ME IF IT WAS OKAY TO SIT IN MY ROW!”

My row. My seats. Mine. You people are inconsiderate and have bad boundaries.

I observed my annoyance. I paid for one seat and since I used frequent flier miles, I think the total cost of this leg of the trip was about $5. I had fully expected to sit next to two other passengers when I initially sat down. But once it was announced that the plane was fully boarded, it took me all of five minutes to lay claim to an entire row on an airplane that didn’t belong to me. In fact, I was really just renting the seat that I was in.

In those few minutes, I had constructed a small web of expectation and entitlement, which gave way to irritation. The truth is, most people would think that the way this married couple spoke to me was a bit lacking in the finer shades of communication that translate as politeness. “I’m sorry, but I was wondering, would you mind my sitting in that empty seat?”

We might even think that it really would not have been so hard for either the wife or the husband to use a few extra words to acknowledge the inconvenience they were causing. What I am wondering though is why it wasn’t easier for me to initially think to myself, “It’s fair for people to move to another seat and it’s nice that this middle aged married couple wants to sit together on a long flight.”

Instead, my initial thoughts were that something that was mine was being taken from me. And this thought made me curious. I don’t think of myself as being someone who has difficulty with entitlement. I also think of myself as being helpful and generous. But like a preschool aged child who says, “mine!” when she sees someone else’s fingers grabbing for a marker, which she is not using, but is in a favorite color, I had taken ownership of seats I wasn’t using.

Children tend to say, “not fair!” when something they don’t like happens. Even if they’ve had more of their fair share of something and are asked to even things out. “Mine! Not fair!”

We don’t often notice when we have more than our fair share of something and when we do, it is usually not distressing.

I am not a little kid. I know how to take turns on the slide and share my markers. Sometimes I intentionally give myself less than my fair share of something. This has me thinking, though. It has me thinking about some of my pet peaves at home. Those tiny irritations that can accumulate into significant masses of stress. I was very excited to see my family last night after being away for five days. As soon as I walked through the door, I saw chores that needed to be done, just a few, but nonetheless things that had not gotten done while I was gone. My automatic thought was, “not fair”. But then I started commenting on the positives. My husband had gotten to the airport early because he was excited to see me. “John, thank you so much for picking me up.” “John, thank you for taking care of our daughter so I could have time away on my own.”

I started to feel calmer. I still got annoyed with some other things but I was able to get myself back on a positive plane more quickly than in the past.

Appreciation, the buffer against “mine!”, “not fair!”, and “gimme!”.

Tags appreciation, communication, entitlement, Family, manners, mindfulness, positive thinking

Categories Family, Marriage, Mindfulness

Take Off

October 22, 2014 //

This morning, I awoke at 4:15 am. As is usual for me, I typically sleep poorly the night before I have to wake up early to catch a flight. Last night was no exception. I awoke at 11:00 pm thinking that it was morning, again at Midnight, and again at 2:00 am. I don’t know if my mind doesn’t trust that my alarm will go off or if I’m just too excited about upcoming adventures, or if perhaps, I have wound myself into a tizzy getting loose ends tied up before I leave for a trip. I suppose it is likely a combination of all of these things.

Having not slept deeply, I was able to get ready quickly. I am going out to dinner with my friend, Robin when I arrive in Raleigh. Consequently, I used my friend, Cheryl’s conference travel trick of wearing comfortable traveling clothes that will also be suitable to wear at social hours and dinners out. The comfortable clothes part was fairly easy. I have a stylish professional and dress wardrobe. However, I stopped wearing clothes that need ironing or dry cleaning years ago. So all of my dresses are pretty comfortable. I also used my trick of wearing my bulkiest pair of shoes on the plane to save room in my luggage. This morning, it was a toss-up between my blue hiking boots and my black wedge sandals. The sandals are both very cute and comfortable, having been made by a savvy shoe company that caters to the middle-aged foot. Though I am not above wearing boots or sneakers with dresses in an airport, I opted for the sandals.

I typically get to the airport about 1 ½ hours before a flight. Yeah, I know that they say to get there two hours early but seriously, who does that? The cab arrived a little early and the drive to the airport was quick, and my airline was one of the first gates. So I was at the airport 1 ¾ hours early. I went through security (shoes are coming off again), found my gate, and bought a coffee at Dilettante Chocolates (they coffee is so much better than Starbucks’ plus there was no line, they are also local, and did I mention chocolate?)

By the time I sat in the gate area, I still had 1 ½ hours to kill. I sent out some silly Facebook postings, sent an “I love you” text to hubby, and watched the rain hit the tarmac with a steady strum. Time passed quickly, I boarded, and after the usual wait, the pilot’s assurance that we would be underway in a “minute or two” (airplane-speak for waits ranging between and minute or two and a several hours), we took off.

Despite the rain, the lower skies over Seattle were clear. In the early morning darkness, the city lights sparkled like fireflies. I could see the Puget Sound and islands in the distance. It was quite lovely. The effect reminded me of the beauty of my home town as well as a nostalgic reminder of the fireflies I found so enchanting when I lived in the South, which is where I am headed today, to the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. I lived there for six years as a Clinical Psychology Ph.D. student at UNC-Chapel Hill. This Saturday, my Ph.D. program is having its first ever reunion, an idea prompted by the retirement of my dissertation adviser, Joe Lowman, after 40 years with the program, not counting his own years as a graduate student there. One of the faculty figured that since Joe had taught almost every living alumnus of the program, it was only fitting to have a reunion for all graduating years.

When I started graduate school in 1990, I was 24 years-old, and a newlywed of six months. I was one of the only married students in my class of 13 students. I had never lived out of the Seattle area having grown up in Renton, WA and attended college at the University of Washington in Seattle. I was one of only two six children to move more than a one hour long drive from my parents’ house. My younger brother, James and his wife, Meagan lived in South Bend, Indiana for three years while she was in law school at Notre Dame. But everyone knew that they were moving back and in fact they moved the day after her commencement.

At that time, I was planning to become a professor and knowing how few universities there are in the Pacific Northwest, I did not think I would ever again be more than a visitor to the part of the country I love so much. I remember at our first grad student orientation meeting, asking our department chair questions to clarify when the school breaks and vacations would be. She and my classmates probably thought I was a lazy student! The truth was that I was anxious and already homesick. I wanted reassurance that I would see my family again. All of these transitions, not to mention the fact that my childhood dog has passed at age 15 on my wedding day, created an abrupt take off to independence.

There were also the cultural adjustments. I had only been to the East Coast once not counting my changing planes in New York on the way to and from my honeymoon, from which I had just returned a week or so earlier. I had never been to the South and by that I mean the southeastern part of the U.S., which for cultural reasons, does not include Florida. (Having subsequently lived in north central Florida, I beg to differ.)

The first cultural adjustment was the humidity. It was August in North Carolina. I had just been in the dessert near the Egyptian/Sudanese border. This is one of the hottest places on Earth during the hottest time of the year. You know when people say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity?” Word.

Okay, I know what you are thinking. Humidity is not culture; humidity is climate. Well, I believe that it impacts the culture there. The humidity in the South is like a character in a story. At night, walking outdoors among the outlines of live oaks and hanging Spanish moss, it feels like a seductive and exotic embrace. During the day, it is brutal, relentless, and soul-crushing. Life is lived, as much as possible, in air conditioned environments during the hot time of the year.

The second adjustment was the fact that I was only one of three students in my entire program who was from the West Coast. There was only one other student, Steve Geller, who was from Seattle but he was an advanced student who quickly left the area to complete his internship. Five years after I moved back to Seattle, I coincidentally became his office mate in our neighborhood of West Seattle, until he moved to Hawaii in the summer of 2013.

Chapel Hill is a lovely colonial college town. We don’t have colonial era architecture in Seattle. The oldest homes and buildings are from the late 1800’s and those are rare indeed. I only know of one, which is the oldest home in Seattle and the site of a small museum. In Seattle, we have totem poles that old but even Native American artifacts are not in great supply at least in western Washington due to wood being the most plentiful building material and our wet climate. Things rot. To see the old buildings in Chapel Hill, with their red brick that mirrors the color of the Georgia clay in the soil, was a lovely treat, like living in an outdoor museum.

My husband and I adjusted to living in North Carolina. In fact, we loved living there and would have considered settling there. We loved the rich history of contemporary fiction. I remember attending a short story reading in a converted 1700’s barn in Fearrington Village. These were authors who used words that painted characters with deeply saturated hues. And the music of the language was stunning. I loved it. To this day, some of my favorite authors are contemporary southern writers. Anyone who says, “Southerners are stupid” needs to pick up a damn book.

And maybe it has something to do with all of the eccentric, strong women in southern literature that allow my strong personality made waves in the South, it was not as bad as one might predict, though part of that may have been because I was in academia, an environment in which I have felt comfortable being direct and opinionated.

The last adaptation was adjusting to being in one of the most rigorous Ph.D. programs in the country. Psychology is a funny discipline. At the bachelor’s level, it is considered one of the easiest degrees to obtain. Now I took a more rigorous course of study to obtain a B.S. instead of a B.A. but even so my husband’s undergraduate program in computer science was so much harder than mine. But at the doctoral level, especially in clinical psychology, which requires both research and clinical training, psychology is a really hard course of study. Good God, the first semester kicked my ass. And it wasn’t that I performed poorly academically, it was just that I felt that I was working all of the time and running scared. For a while, I feared that I would be kicked out of the program. One of my classmates, who was an older student and therefore wiser said, “Elizabeth, you are solidly passing all of your classes (we did not get A, B, C… type grades). Why would you get kicked out?” Thank you, Craig, wherever you are. Eventually, I became a confident student. Honestly, I loved graduate school.

I have not been back North Carolina for eight years and my past trips have been brief. This is also the first time I’ve been there traveling without my husband. That makes it more of an adventure and a reminder of very exciting and important times in my early adulthood when the world opened up to a big big place.

I look forward to seeing you, my home away from home. You are the place where my husband and I built the foundation of our young marriage and shared our dreams for the future. You are the placed I learned a profession I love deeply. You taught me the importance of friendship and how friends can be like family. For awhile, you gave me a cool accent and you performed the miracle of getting me interested in spectator sports with Dean Smith and the Tarheels.

Chapel Hill, you were good to me, except for that damned humidity.

Tags Chapel Hill, Family, growing up, Marriage, North Carolina, psychology, reunions, Seattle, The South, University of North Carolina

Categories Family

Dead End

September 16, 2014 //

In 1956, my parents bought the 2 1/2 acres on which their house was built for $2,000. My dad was laid off so they had time to look at property. But they were taking a chance because $2000 was all of the money they had. They were investing in their future. In 1965, they built a house on it for $20,000. My mom told the builders that they couldn’t cut down any more trees then were necessary to build the foundation for the house. Despite the fact that she had four children and was pregnant with me, she visited the construction site and pointed to the different stands of trees, little islands of forest still standing in the front of their house. “You can’t cut that down, it’s a Douglas fir! You can’t cut this down! It’s a Western Hemlock”.

I grew up in this house in what was unincorporated King County, about 12 miles from Seattle. Even when I was in high school my friends’ parents would say, “You live out in the Boonies.” We had three close neighbors who had horses. One even had a training arena. Another family had a horse who was the national and Canadian champion (English riding style) for a couple of years running. There were also cows, goats, woodlands, and wetlands.

As Seattle has grown, more and more people have moved to the suburbs. Seattle has become a very expensive city in which to live. I actually live in the city proper. My neighborhood is not fancy. I live in a two story ranch style house from the 50’s. Nonetheless, I spotted two houses this summer valued at a million dollars each. I’m sure there are more.

The house and the surrounding woods are my parents’ home. It was my home for many years. It is also a quite valuable piece of real estate. When my dad was retiring, he and my mom visited an attorney to discuss their estate. I remember my dad coming home from that meeting, pretty happy. He and my mom had also made conservative but consistent investments in bonds and CD’s over the years. My dad was happy because he felt that he and my mom were secure financially for retirement.

My mom turns 80 on Saturday. My dad turns 82 exactly one month from Saturday. They live in the same house. For the last several months, there has been a huge “Notice of Development” sign right next to their driveway. The neighbors asked, “Did you sell your property?” They did not. However, my dad, who makes sure he attends the development meetings and looks at specifics noted that the map of the proposed development included a road that went RIGHT THROUGH THEIR PROPERTY.

Although the design was later modified, the developers still have a problem. Without a road through my parents’ property, the development would be located on a dead end street. My dad attended another meeting this week. The fire department was not happy with the idea of a housing development being located on a dead end street. That’s not very safe. What if they have to get somewhere and the street is blocked? The developers argued, pointing to my parents’ property on the map, “That property is going to be sold really soon.” And they even kept talking about my dad by name, not knowing who he was or that he was at the meeting.

I went shopping with my dad a few weeks ago to pick out an anniversary present for my mom. My parents are practical, no-nonsense people. My dad was getting ready to spend money so it was only natural that money was on his mind. He was also thinking back to the 60 years he’s been married to my mom and the family they created. He said to me, “I got a lot of money. Dead.”

I knew what he meant but I don’t really like to talk about my parents dying with my parents. So I said, “Yes, you have a lot of non-liquid assets. Your house and property are worth a lot of money.”

According to my mom’s blog, which she posted today, the developers were thinking that my parents were worth a lot dead, too. And he’d decided that they were elderly and that would either sell and move or just die. And they also assumed that in the event of their death, all six of us kids would sell to them.

These assumptions could bear out to be true; nobody knows the future. I hate that my parents are being treated like they are a foregone conclusion and that my parents’ end with be the solution to their dead end. I hate that the beautiful woods that has been there for a long long time is being planned for dissection and demolition. I would say that it feels like vultures circling but vultures can’t really help themselves. People can.

I don’t worry as much as I might about my parents. At the end of the meeting, my dad approached the lawyer for the city of Renton, who had actually argued with the developer saying, “For all we know, Joe MacKenzie is 26 years-old!”

Dad said, “”I’m 82 and may not live that much longer but I’m married to a long living Italian, whose Aunt lived to be 106!”

The woods behind my parents’ place.

My parent’s antique physician’s buggy. My dad built the building for it as well as a number of other buildings on the property.

Tags aging, conservation, disrespect to the elderly, Family, healthy aging, real estate development

Categories Family, Flora and Fauna

Something out of nothing

July 26, 2014 //

I come from an Italian American family on my mother’s side. Her great grandparents were farmers in northern Italy who immigrated to the U.S. to raise children and work the coal mines near Seattle. In other words, they were not fancy people. They were poor. But they were smart, hard working, life loving, and resourceful. They not only loved food but had a lot of mouths to fill. They knew how to “make something out of nothing”.

My mom knew how to do this, too. It wasn’t as if we were poor but money was tight and there were a lot of people to feed in a family of eight. Mom is also masterful at re-purposing leftovers into new meals so that food is not wasted.

The week has continued to exhaust me. I rallied in the writing of my last post, only to have an extremely fragmented and stressful evening, during which my irritability peaked, and I became quite irrational. My daughter had gotten rather angry with me because she told me that she had another parade the next morning and I had reminded her that I had asked her to tell me about all of her events and she had just told me, “Don’t worry about it, Mom.” I was not able to sacrifice half of a work day to get her there. She got very angry. It was kind of a last straw for me and I mostly took it out on my husband because she had treated me extremely disrespectfully and he left the room instead of backing me up. Realistically, he was probably doing what he needed to do to keep from yelling, with which I was already doing a good job.

I spent a good deal of the early part of yesterday fighting the urge to go back to bed. I have not had a day like this in a very long time. My brain and my heart were utterly exhausted despite the fact that it was a gloriously beautiful summer day in which I had much to do. I forced myself to stay out of bed. By late afternoon, I was sitting on the couch with a head both full of everything and nothing, swirling in eddies of acute pain and numbness.

My husband came home early from work and asked what I wanted to do for dinner. I said, “I am not doing well at all. I know I will be okay. Right now, I can’t think. I can’t answer questions. I need 15 minutes to finish up work.”

Then I started on my unfinished progress notes, one by one, and with the completion of each one, I gathered a tiny but noticeable bit of energy. In about 45 minutes I was done. I had accomplished something. I told John, “Sorry, that took longer than 15 minutes. I’m going to cook dinner.”

I walked into my kitchen. I had a perfectly ripe mango, a perfectly ripe avocado, and some limes. They were not planned for a particular meal. In general, that is often the way I shop. I just buy what looks good. In my freezer, I had some large shrimp. I also had a bit of simple salad left over from another meal. It was made from jicama, radish, and lime. I thought that might be a nice textural and flavor contrast with sweet mango but I wasn’t sure but I started getting excited to try. And as I sliced, zested, crushed, sauteed, and mixed, my spirit continued to lighten and I felt myself filling up again. When I tasted, I could tell that I’d made a lovely summer salad full of good things. My husband and I had a nice meal together, which led to a nice evening.

I had been depleted and feeling in utter need, just an hour before. I needed to give myself an experience of creating from start to finish, to remember that I am capable of making wholes and not just carrying an armload of loose fragments, which keep falling to the ground, and then others fall as I stoop over to pick them up.

Remember what you have and make use of it.

That is my meditation for today.

Shrimp and mango with lime, avocado, radish, and jicama.

Shrimp and mango with lime, garlic, avocado, radish, and jicama.

Here is the recipe:

About 1 pound of large shrimp, peeled and deveined with tails left on.
1 lime, zested (put zest to the side), then cut into quarters.
1 large ripe avocado, peeled, pitted, and cut into large dice. (Squeeze one of the limb slices on it so it doesn’t discolor).
1 large ripe mango, peeled, pitted, and cut into large dice. (If you have not cut up a mango, read some directions on doing it. It’s not hard but it’s different than other fruit.)
1/4 of a jicama, peeled and cut into matchsticks.
3-4 mild-flavored radishes, peel on, sliced thinly. (I used a small portion of a large watermelon radish, which was about the size of my fist and cut it into match sticks.)
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed.

1. Put all of the ingredients into a bowl except for the shrimp, garlic, half of the lime zest, and all of lime wedges into a bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste and the juice from 2-3 lime wedges. Mix gently with your hands so the avocado does not lose its shape.

2. Heat 1 teaspoon of oil and about 2 teaspoons of butter in a large saute pan, on medium to medium high, taking care not to burn the butter. Add garlic and cook for about a minute, stirring frequently. Add the shrimp and cook for a minute or two on each side until curled up and opaque, but not rubbery!

3. Put the salad into a serving bowl and top with the shrimp. Sprinkle the remaining lime zest on the top so it looks pretty!

Tags cooking, creativity, Family, Marriage, mindfulness, Parenting, stress

Categories Family, Feelings, Marriage, Mindfulness, Recipes

The Birds

July 10, 2014 //

I remember when I was starting grad school in my 20’s. One of my classmates was from the sunny city of Miami. I noticed that although she was actually younger than me, she had crow’s feet, those wrinkles people get around the corners of their eyes. I figured that since she already had them, I would get them fairly soon. But I didn’t.

The first wrinkles I noticed were above my left eyebrow. I can lift my left eyebrow above my right, just like Spock on Star Trek. I did it A LOT as a teen and a young adult. My younger brother and I laughed about it a lot. It was something I did when I was being silly and having fun.

Wrinkles are signs of aging. The first time I looked at myself and thought, “I’m not young anymore” was in my late 30’s. I was looking at the backs of my hands. They weren’t as smooth as they used to be. In other respects I still looked young. I’ve done a lot of work with my hands over the years. Writing, gardening, knitting, cooking, and caressing loved ones. My wedding and anniversary rings are on my hands.

When I was putting on make up this morning I saw them. I have crow’s feet that don’t go away when I stop smiling.

I’ve done a lot of smiling in my life. And I’ve squinted at the sun when I was in the mountains, the tropical rain forests, and kayaking on the sea. I spend a lot of time outdoors, which makes me happy. I spend a lot of time with people who make me happy.

The lines I have, by and large, are not remnants of the bumps in the road of life, the wrinkles we have to smooth out. My wrinkles are from the best bits. They show the happy and productive moments that I have enjoyed. If I am lucky, they will continue to broaden and deepen, I hope.

When I was young my face was smooth. Now the lines tell a story, one that is meaningful and full.

Life lines is what they are.

Warning: Smiling can cause life lines! (Also, I told you that my husband puts his camera close to my face.)

Tags aging, Family, Happiness, love, Mental Health, mindfulness

Categories Marriage, Mindfulness, Parenting

Mind me!!!!!!

July 9, 2014 //

One of the gifts of mindfulness has been perceiving sensations have gone unnoticed if I did not regularly force myself to slow down and notice. Those are its gentle gifts. The tiny intricate flowers. The refreshing morning breezes. The lovely and varied bird calls. The delicious and subtle flavors of carefully prepared meals.

It is easy to be mindful when life is slow. The hard part is slowing down.

Some situations demand that I be mindful. They are not gentle at all.

Almost every morning between 4 am and 6 am, both of our kittens jump on top of me in bed and demand my affection. They do this only to me as their designated fur-free mom.

About one second after they land on me, they are already purring. It is anticipatory purring. Basie touches my nose with his nose, REPEATEDLY. Then he starts licking my eyelids. I start petting him for about a half a minute, at which time he starts biting my hands and the rings on my fingers. Then I put my arms under the covers because biting turns into playful scratching and what I call “rabbit footing”, which is when cats grab you with their front claws and start scratching you furiously with their back claws. Rabbits do this when they are picked up by the scruff of their necks, at least ours did when I was a kid, and they were not pets.

Basie continues to try to bite me through the covers and if he is being really persistent, he crawls under the covers. Meanwhile, Leeloo is feeling left out. She is the gentler of the two but she is very affectionate. If my hands are under the covers, she climbs right under my neck on my clavicle. If I don’t start petting her right away, she will try to move EVEN higher. She also likes to groom me affectionately by licking the insides of my ears.

It is hard to be mindful of the gift of affection when I am busy doing something else, in this case SLEEPING. At these times, it can actually be annoying. But the kitties charm me nonetheless. They have tiny brains and I cannot ascribe negative intentions to their behavior. They are just babies and adorable ones, at that. I kick Basie off of the bed when he won’t stop being rough. I keep their little kitty nails trimmed. Their nails are less needle like and they are learning not to bite so hard.

Right after the kitties decided to leave the bed and run around the house, John turned over, put his around me, and nuzzled into the side of my neck. He will sleep like that for a long time. I was trying to go back to sleep. I typically have a hard time falling asleep with a lot of weight on me and I get overheated easily, too. Consequently, I usually say, “Get your arm off of me, please.” (I know I am very romantic. It is a miracle that the man still makes attempts at spooning after all of these years.)

Today, I thought, “It’s really nice that John is being so sweet to me. I’m going to try to enjoy this.” So I did and had a lovely snuggle for several minutes. Then I was really hot and asked him to move, which he did.

My usual response is to anticipate that there is going to be a problem and “nip it in the bud”. I realize that I miss a lot of affection that way. Why not instead be mindful and enjoy the part that is enjoyable instead of working so hard to avoid a minor discomfort?

There are times I need to slow down my thoughts. I need to be mindful of thoughts like, “Oh, how sweet” and not race right to “Oh, John’s arm is so heavy!”

I’ve been REALLY busy lately. Summers can get that way fast because I do a lot of driving to get my daughter to daily summer activities. At her age, she typically has to be somewhere in the middle of my work day. It’s a lot of shifting gears for me and cramming my work into small bursts. It also means extending my work day so that there’s a hole in the middle for transportation. She is now able to navigate public transportation but has trouble with making connections if there is a transfer. Further, the buses run only occasionally during mid-day. She can’t always take the bus and we don’t really like the idea of her wandering around for hours so I try to drive her as much as I can manage. Today there are three places that she needs to be, all in different parts of town. It’s a paperwork day for me and I am doing it at different coffee shops around town while I wait for her.

Needless to say, we’ve been spending a lot of time in the car together. My teen daughter doesn’t talk to me as much as she did when she was younger but when she does, it’s usually while I am driving her some where, often in heavy traffic.

I love talking to her but I must say that sometimes it takes a great deal of concentration I don’t have because there are subjects about which I know little that she loves to talk about. And she loves to ask questions about them, too. For example:

The Girl: “Mom, what is your favorite episode of Dr. Who with the 10th doctor?”
Me (crossing several lanes of traffic on a Friday during rush hour): “I’m sorry, honey. I’m trying to concentrate on driving. These conversations often make me feel like my head is going to explode.”

It may be that my mind is not up to the detailed nerd girl conversations while driving in Seattle traffic. I have to concentrate a lot to drive. I have a poor sense of direction and I am easily distracted. I am intimidated by aggressive drivers.

Maybe I will try a little harder today to be engaged with my daughter while we are in the car and see what happens. I don’t get a lot of opportunities to talk to her. She knows that I would like to talk more frequently and I think it is confusing to her that when she tries, I am sometimes not receptive.

It may be too hard to do but I will try it. The fact that it could get too hard is not a good enough reason to try.

Sometimes opportunity knocks softly. At other times, it licks you on the eye.

Often the kitties just love/bother each other.

Tags Family, Marriage, mindfulness, Parenting

Categories Family, Marriage, Mindfulness

Just an in-between

July 4, 2014 //

I was quite an awkward 11 and 12 year-old, as many girls are during those ages. I was and I still am very close to my mom and I remember talking to her about that stage of not being a young child but not quite being a teenager. Mom had suitable song lyrics for this and sometimes responded by singing, “Too young for boys, too old for toys, I’m just an in-between.”

“In between” is a phrase that has been popping into my mind frequently. I feel like an “in-between” as a cancer patient.

Actually, when I really think about it, I’ve felt like an “in-between” during this whole process and I see my friends going through the same thing. I remember in the early days of breast cancer I was shuttled back and forth between assessment and treatment. And even some of the treatment, that is surgery, was also used for assessment. There are blurry lines. It is a systematic process but there are many data gathering and decision points.

Other than my tamoxifen and Lupron shots, I am not in active cancer treatment. My oncology appointments are more spread out. I don’t even see my surgeon any more, I just see the nurse practitioner in the surgery office who works with “survivors”, the ultimate “in-between” status. Actually, there’s another in-between because if I am to need to have a breast cancer surgeon again, I need to see someone else. Dr. Wonderful not only “broke up” with me for being too healthy, he also retired from clinical practice, just last week. He is remaining at my cancer center doing research and in a leadership position regarding improving patient care. At least I can still send him a Christmas card later this year. He will not have moved back home yet. (He is Canadian, from Toronto, and I’ve always figured that he and his wife will move back to be with their sons and grandchildren.)

My current “in-between” balancing act is juggling my responsibilities. Okay, this is not a new balancing act as I have done it throughout my entire experience with cancer. However, as my energy is increasing, I have been able to work more. During 2013 my income, after deducting my expenses, was 50% of what it was pre-cancer. 2014 will not be a year like 2011 but it will be a much better year. I can see myself getting out of debt. My husband and I celebrate our 25th wedding anniversaries along with our 50th birthdays in 2015. We would like to take a trip to Turkey along with our daughter, to celebrate. We have a lot of saving to do if we are going to be able to take that trip. I certainly can’t contribute to that kind of expense without getting out of debt.

I am feeling the tug of responsibility to my friends, especially my friends in the breast cancer community. I know that I am not as available for communications as I once was. Some of my friends I know only through online conversations. I don’t like to distinguish them from IRL (in real life) friends because all of my friends are real life friends. Great distances as well as time differences can make communication difficult, though. And further, I confess that I am less likely to ask, “how are you” to friends who are having emotionally and physically difficult times. I don’t like to ask that question unless I am prepared to respond with the kind of time someone needs if the answer is not, “I’m fine, thank you. And you?” I am frequently pulled away to other responsibilities at home and at work. I don’t want to do a half-assed job of supporting my friends. I’ve had too many times in my life when a friend has asked “How are you?” during a hard spot in my life and my eyes tear up with the anticipation that I will be able to share my burdon with someone only to find out that the friend really does not have the time or mental energy just right then to tend to me.

I am also worried about losing my connection with the breast cancer community. I write frequently, but when I am really busy, I have fewer ideas. I don’t want my ideas to dry up and then the social connections to dry up as well.

Most of all, I am worried about losing my connection to the opportunity (not “gift”, mind you) breast cancer and my emotional recovery have given me to truly cherish life. I want to be connected to and mindful of the full richness of life.

I suspect I will work my way through this. I also suspect that I will not run out of things to communicate, even if not through blogging. And as far as blogging goes, I think I still have much to write here on this page. But I also want to respect and take note of the anxiety and fatigue I’ve been feeling lately. The anxiety is of the “lurking in the shadows” variety and not the spinning top anxiety I get when I go into overdrive.

Maybe the “new normal” that is talked about is actually a radical acceptance that life is always in-between.

Tags Breast Cancer, breast cancer survivorship, Family, Friends, life transition, Marriage, mindfulness, work/life balance

Categories Breast cancer, Marriage, Mindfulness, Parenting

Entitlement

June 30, 2014 //

Feeling “entitled” is considered a “bad” thing typically. Sometimes, I feel entitled.

I feel entitled to expecting commitments to be kept. I’m not talking about big things, people. I’m talking about when people promise to do the dishes.

And with my teen daughter, I always PREFER to be treated with respect. But I don’t always feel entitled to respect. I am a child/adolescent psychologist, after all. I know what teens can be like.

And I don’t mean that most of the time, I just let things go. Teens are still to be held accountable for their behavior, despite the fact that the disrespect can be normative. Just because it’s normal doesn’t mean that they just get to do whatever they want to do.

Feeling “entitled” is a whole different ballgame. As a parent, I rarely feel entitled. But every once in awhile I do.

My teen daughter recently returned from a camp for which I paid. She LOVED it. I was so glad that she LOVED it.

But she has been internally rolling her eyes for the last few days. She’s been rude in the way that “good kids” can be.

Today I told her, “Please speak to me more respectfully.”

She explained that her manner of speaking was the way that she addresses her peers.

Without getting into the whole, “I am not your peer, I am your mother” debate, I responded, “That may be but when you see your friends, you hug them and look happy to see them. You don’t do that with with me so it’s not the same.”

I heard a couple of rounds of, “I love you Mom, very much” until she left for her evening activities.

I try really hard not to use guilt to motivate my child. But sometimes she needs feedback. She needs to know that I have feelings.

The vast majority of the time, she is able to get her brain out of her “peer cave” and into a more complicated world, the world in which both adults and children have feelings, that can be hurt.

Tags Family, mindfulness, Parenting, teaching empathy

Categories Family, Mindfulness, Parenting