Up Up and Away

Children growing up and out is the oldest story in the world.
So why does it catch me off guard?

What would you rather do: Send your 10-year-old daughter alone on an airplane to JFK International Airport in Queens, New York? Or send your 17-year-old daughter alone in a car to another state in the winter?

Yesterday, when my daughter drove herself 200 miles it was the first day sunshine broke through the wintery sky in weeks, so it seemed anyway. When you drive in the winter, you want the weather to be either obviously good or obviously bad so you can make travel decisions with certainty. It’s the in-between kind of weather that gets you, when you don’t realize how bad road conditions really are until you are miles down the interstate driving into the whiteout hoping your tires are actually gripping the slickety surface, too late to turn around, or no way to turn around. It’s the in-between kind of weather, when the midwestern machismo raises its head with accusations of weakness for those who change their plans for the weather.

Those are the days when I truly miss living on the East Coast, where they shut things down at one inch of snow, sometimes even with just simple rain. It was a cold, harsh reality when we moved back to Minnesota and I got in trouble for canceling on a meeting because I needed to drive 100 miles in 50 degrees below zero temperatures, counting the wind-chill. (Though my East Coast CEO supported my decision.)

Yesterday the sky was perfectly blue and sunny, so there was no question that the travel conditions would be good for my daughter. She’s an excellent driver and had saved up her money to visit friends. I’m so proud and impressed with the way she’s growing into a strong, confident young woman but still, I couldn’t help but to feel a lump in my stomach the entire afternoon. I tracked her on my smart phone GPS and it reminded me of the old days when she slept in a crib with an the electric baby monitor set up in her room, approximately 20 feet away from our kitchen. We’d listen to the receptor and worry about every little baby burp and grunt, wondering if we should intervene, aka interrupt her sleep. In hindsight I’m not sure those baby monitors are a good idea – too much information. But still, I followed the GPS all afternoon, getting frustrated when it didn’t work as fast as I wanted it too, almost falling for the gimmick to purchase the upgraded app.

The lump in my stomach reminded me of the time she was ten years old and got it into her head she wanted to fly alone to New York City for Christmas vacation. Her aunts and uncles would pay for the ticket, meet her at the airport, and treat her like a celebrity, so the decision was pretty much made my nerves notwithstanding. We researched the unaccompanied minor airline procedures (which I think they’ve cut out of the offerings by now) and got her ready to go. I remember at the time one of our mentors was the daughter of my former boss, who had spent a year after high school working in Beirut and then after college went on to live and work in the Gaza strip, the harshest little piece of land in the whole world (not the people, the living conditions, just to be clear). "Don't call her, she'll call you," our mentor advised. "Just let her experience the trip." You get an idea of our influences.

My favorite Christmas vacations are the ones where we are all holed up at home for a week, sleeping in, building ridiculously complicated Lego structures, watching insane amounts of TV. Maybe that style of winter break will come again but not this year. This year, I am working straight through the holidays. I am considering the change that is about to come upon us, that we are already in, that parents are always in starting the first moment children breathe without your help. My children are growing older and their lives are taking on new and interesting shapes, independent of me and Bob. It’s kind of scary, to be honest, but I’m working to move into it instead of against it. These days I don’t assume that my daughter will always be with me, but I’m always amazingly grateful when I ask her to be with me and she says yes.

Soon, when she actually moves to a different state, when she makes her own more complicated travel plans, when she makes her own decisions about choices I can’t imagine, we will need to be more deliberate to be together. She won’t just be driving a few days here, flying a few days there, or sleeping in the other room making sounds through the baby monitor. 
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Thank you for coming over to my blog. Wishing you and yours all the best for 2014.
With love from yours truly,
Natural Born Bleeding Heart

Christmas Past and Present

Ghosts of Christmas Past, Brooklyn, New York, circa 1994

If there’s one thing that stands out in this picture it’s the French braid, and the fact that I used to wear my hair that way to my midtown Manhattan office. I realize it was lower Midtown, not Park Avenue but Park Avenue South, but still -- a French braid!

Maybe that’s why the people in Brooklyn called me farm girl even though I had never lived on a farm (though I wished I had, still do). It didn’t take me long to realize that New Yorkers glob everyone east of the Hudson River (basically the border between New York City and New Jersey) into one group. I don’t diss on New Yorkers, because I love them, married into a whole family system of them, just as I don’t diss on Midwesterners, because I am one and I “get” them/us. This post isn't about disrespecting anyone.

But it is about stereotypes, which became evident in our gift giving this year. Who are we? You can tell who we are by what we got for Christmas:

Bob: donuts, cookies, mixed nuts, candy bars

Aidan: a variety of Axe products, skateboard stuff

Amanda: cash, check, gift card, and another check

Me: faux fur gloves with touch screen receptacles (part of my Audrey Hepburn collection), wine and coffee products (though I'm trying to cut down on both, with mixed success)

There’s our current family in a nutshell. We’re pretty simple. Just happy to have a family.

The picture above is circa 1995, when Santa would come to Trinity Lutheran Church in Sunset Park Brooklyn to give toys to all the boys and girls (I think that’s what he was doing, anyway, if I remember right.) BTW, all those boys and girls are now teachers, doctors, designers, social workers, entrepreneurs, comedians, and have grown into adults that make any former youth worker's heart sing. I myself am portrayed in my most recognized state of being, even now, having just returned home from work, thus the hair band and matching pantyhose. For record, these days all my hair bands are black and I tend to opt for pants.

This is what the Christmas present looks like,
and it doesn't even come close to capturing the
magnificence of the music, the lights, the people,
the children, the stars, the story.
St. John's Lutheran Church,
Des Moines, Iowa.

To me that picture is totally dorky and I’d like to put it away, as I tend to not be in relationship with the past, but my 17-year-old Amanda likes it and wanted me to keep it. Speaking of that girl, I don’t know what I would do without her. She has basically turned into the Santa of the house in recent years. This year, even with her own hard earned money. She’s the one who keeps the gift giving alive, even as I am pretty ambivalent about it. In an all time low display of Christmas spirit, as she was wrapping her gifts to others, I wrote out a couple of checks, one to her (my gift giving style, of late) and asked her to wrap them and put them under the tree. She said it was exactly what she wanted.

My 14-year-old son, however, brought a white elephant gift to the youth group last week that was wrapped with a pile of our family junk mail (his idea of a joke) that included my recruitment letter from the Association for the Advancement of Retired People (AARP). So now all the kids at church know my advancing age and they all thought it was quite funny. And I thought I was tricking them all into believing I am forever 49-something. I am certainly not tricking myself. AARP seems pretty intent on signing me up and it doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Soon, in celebration of being home together, my very favorite activity, we will be playing our VHS tape of “The Sound of Music” starring Julie Andrews and eating a mega-sized bag of pizza roles. The theory is that some of us will like the movie, others the food. It’s not easy finding a movie that we can all dig with our four personalities, but if you include an appetizer bribery it usually works. For me, I can’t get enough of this togetherness, and more and more, it’s a rare occurrence.

Tomorrow its back to the office for me. For some reason, even when I’m the only one who must get up and out, when others in the household have time off it still feels like a holiday. My colleagues have been great about making the office feel like togetherness, even in the midst of writing four massive applications to fund domestic violence services, etc. (Last night, Christmas Eve, a 34-year-old woman was shot and killed in her home in Des Moines, the 13th homicide of the year in Des Moines, at an address where police had been dispatched five times previously for domestic disputes. There was no information if children witnessed it, but they often do. I don't see how assault, battery, and predatory gun violence can be called a "dispute" but that's just me, hung up on words.)

But if there’s one thing I can assure you about my work day tomorrow it is this: I will not be wearing a French braid. (These days I go for the French clasp. Easier.) But I remain an excellent French braid stylist, so let me know if you'd like one or two in your hair.  

This is just a quick post to check in and wish you and yours a wonderful holiday, whatever you celebrate, however long or short you have to do what you love the most. 

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

Margaret, Queen of Healing

Margaret with her royal aura dares you
not to pity her, nor her slums, 
nor her continent.
Here's a link to related post
and awesome photo.

I was saddened to hear about the train crash in Nairobi's Kibera slum and found it ironic that I heard this news report as I concluded my early morning writing session that had taken me to another Nairobi slum, Kangemi. I'm kind of a believer in signs, so I took this coincidence as a signal to post about the lovely and incredible Kenyan, The Rev. Margaret Obaga, one who will be well recognized by seminary friends. Below is a short excerpt from a chapter I'm working on about how Margaret helped us deal with the awful retching that afflicted Bob when his liver failed. There was a horrible physicality to Bob's illness, that was beautifully met by one who survived her own horrific physical procedure, inflicted upon her at the age of 12. 

An excerpt:

“Get me a brown paper bag,” she said to me in her quiet yet forceful voice. Margaret stood about five feet tall, but when she talked, people listened. Even my kids listened. Her angelic baby face belied her power, which was firm like hard earned wisdom. While I was deferential to authority, Margaret commanded it. I got her a brown paper bag.

Margaret was from Nairobi, Kenya but during Bob’s illness, she and her family lived down the hall. “If I were home, I would put dirt on the bottom but we’ll just use flour. Get me some flour.” I retrieved a half-used bag of flour from the kitchen cupboard.

“Dust the flour on the bottom of the bag,” she instructed me, as if she knew exactly what to do in times of coughing, retching, and vomiting. While I had to play mind games with myself to separate the ugly illness from the human being, Margaret seemed perfectly at ease in the presence of affliction. If she was revolted by Bob’s skeletal appearance and egg-yolk eyes, she didn’t let on. Instead, she leaned close into Bob and held the bag for him as he twisted his tonsils to gag up bile, and more bile, and more.

When I first noticed Margaret on campus the previous year, I’d been in awe because I recognized her from the headshot that went with an article she’d published in TheLutheran magazine on the topic of banning female genital mutilation, based on her own true story (September 2005, You need a paid subscription to access full article. Get it!). I considered this writing courageous but even though we had turned into sister friends, I had not mentioned I read her article. Her writing seemed too private. It was before I considered myself a writer but I still had the sense that writers didn’t always wish to discuss their published work.

The piece was entitled, “It is not for someone to take this away” which was printed with quotes around it, her exact wording as if she was talking out loud. I can hear her voice. Her writing is chilling yet direct, describing the ritual she had participated in when she was 12 years old: “The next day you go to the river and dive in, for the cold has a numbing effect. Then you face the knife. In my day it was the same knife for all of us. You aren’t allowed to cry. When they cut your clitoris off, there’s singing.” She goes on to write that a her younger sister refused to be circumcised a few years later, that her mother had come to learn it was wrong, that her daughter is not circumcised, and that “Today women in Kenya are rising up against female circumcision and calling it FGM (female genital mutilation) because it mutilates the system God gave us to enjoy.”

I wonder if her wisdom and power comes from that experience. At 12 years old she obediently complied with tradition. A few years later, she started asking questions. Today she is an activist.

I also did not confess to Margaret that I searched her name on the internet and learned that she had organized street girls in Nairobi’s immense slums for health and education. Long before I met Margaret I’d learned how vulnerable girls were in Nairobi’s slums, because the study tour itineraries I planned in my day job included meetings with Kenyan human service groups. I had once visited Kangemi, just one of the city’s six sprawling slums with a population of 100,000 people or so, circa 2000. I had met teenagers who were orphaned by HIV/AIDS, or their parents were drug addicts, or prostitutes, or for whatever reason, they were alone. I remember marveling at how well pressed their clothes were, right there in the heart of the slum. They had all wanted my email address.

While other people may have seen Margaret as just another student, I saw her as special, even one with extraordinary abilities. A prophetess. A healer. I had an idea of the immensity of her accomplishments, even though her home church and possibly even the immediate community around us, did not. While Margaret had earned her Masters of Divinity degree, her denomination in Kenya would not ordain her because she was a woman.

 And yet, Margaret with her royal aura dared you not to pity her, nor her slums, nor her continent.

*

Touche'! I feel that last sentence is one of the best I've ever written, if I do say so myself. Thanks much for coming over. Your best thoughts and prayers for the development of rest of this chapter is much appreciated. 

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

Sk8r boy in bell choir

Hello friends, here's an excerpt from a post I was grateful to write for the Living Lutheran:

I also like to watch one particular bell choir member, my son, the 14-year-old skater boy with long curly hair and dude attitude. On a Sunday morning when they ring, as soon as I find my place on a red cushioned pew, usually packed with people, I look up to see him. We make eye contact. He’s always watching to see if I’m watching. We give our secret little wave. I burst with maternal joy, yet resist the urge to record him and the choir of choirs on my iPhone because the experience is too tremendous to capture.

We call him “skater boy” because that’s what he is. This ninth-grade kid could spend hours and hours on downtown streets with his be-hooded, long-haired friends and respective skateboards. They skate in empty parking ramps and in front of the Y that’s soon to be demolished. I’d much rather see him involved in some kind of structured activity like, say, swimming or drama or cross country or band. He’s interested in none of these things, no matter how many times I inquire, no matter what incentives he’s offered.

With thanks to the fabulous people at Living Lutheran, I invite you to read this full post at: http://www.elca.org/en/Living-Lutheran/Blogs/2013/11/131121

That Monday Feeling

Today after church Bob had two meetings, one with a family planning a baptism and one with a family planning a funeral. I admit that sometimes I envy the way his vocation allows these kinds of intimacies with strangers, joining with people for the most important events of their lives. It seems to keep them bonded forever in some way as in years later identifying each other according to the event, "he baptized our baby" or "I buried their mother."

My biggest decision today is whether to bake biscuits or blog. Our old house is drafty and the fireplace ignition has worn down, so there's not much to keep us warm except layers of sweaters, the electric pad on our bed, and the kitchen candles lit for at least the illusion of warmth. (An old trick from one of my college roommates when we lived in a small tailor house insulated like a tin can on a South Dakota prairie. "There are universities in South Dakota?" I was asked once when I lived in New York City, but that's another story.)

Baking is another way to keep warm. My apron fits over my sweatered layers and I occasionally stick my hands in the oven for a burst of heat. A fresh pot of coffee helps too. Afternoon coffee is my Sunday indulgence, to give you an idea of how easily pleased I am these days. Or maybe I'm difficult to please, depending on how you look at it. Bob would probably say I'm hard to please because I always like the bedroom window open six inches while we sleep, he prefers it open four inches. I slide it to six inches before I slip into the heated bed. He comes in later, shuts it to four inches. I get up in the middle of the night, slide it back to six inches. And so on. Our window dilemma may be one way to understand the bottom side of marriage, or the underside of human relationships in general -- we're much more alike than different yet we dither back and forth about two inches instead of keeping eyes on the prize: fresh air.

Or possibly the window is an indicator of my poverty of spirit -- I'm not thinking about the things of birth and death, I'm trying to warm my house while also feeling the precise amount of frigid air that my lungs and pores crave. I'm thinking about Monday morning and back to work that, I suppose, is also about the big things in life, somewhere down the line. Last week at church my friend Ed and I talked about "that Sunday feeling" of dread about Monday morning. It's the opposite of "that Thursday feeling" of hope for the weekend. Monday morning is icy fingers plucking you from the warmth of imagination and and into the cold of routine. Maybe the trick is to hard wire your brain to link Monday with the things of meaning. It is, of course, but the hard part is to feel it.

For now, I'm focused on baking biscuits, ala my Betty Crocker cookbook. That's it.

Thank you, friends, for coming over to my blog. Stay safe and warm.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart