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ISSN: 1530-5775
July 2009, Vol.11 #7
Even thinking about the beach before late June was unusual for Frieda, but here she was with all three children in tow heading to that very location. It had been a cold winter inside and out. A heat wave in early May was just what she and the children needed: warmth and the beach. The children knew, as children always do, that things weren't, as adults say, right at home. Today they didn't care. They were behaving like cooperative angels on the long bus ride. Frieda could only think of them as angels today. They were trying so hard. They were so excited. This was exactly right, Frieda thought, tingling with her own anticipation. Frieda sat with her arm draped around Hector, the youngest and Frieda's baby. He was about to explode with excitement. Sophie and Herman sat in front of them beneath piles of towels and toys; heads popping up, peering over the top of the seat every few minutes, necks twisting to see Frieda and Hector; squirming and poking at each other as they always did on family vacations. This past year had been hardest on the older children. They had gown up fast. As the oldest, they knew more of what tensions and silences meant, and they all felt a need to protect Hector. Today none of that mattered. They were children again, children in their element. They lived for those summer excursions. Most summers the trip was accomplished by car; the whole family, including Pappa and all of their beach gear, crowded into the sedan. Frieda didn't know how they had managed to carry everything onto the bus, but there they were. Pappa wasn't with them but they would have to get used to that. Frieda felt a pang at the center of her soul. She would have to get used to that, not just being without Pappa but going forward on her own. Today, though, she was not going forward. Today she was reenacting a family ritual: Learning to be the same but different. Today they would have warmth and waves and sand in their clothes, and they would have each other. Frieda wanted to reach out and encircle all three children in her arms, pull them toward her, absorb their special warmth, but she was sweating already. Her skin prickled with the strangeness of this heat, and her clothes clung damp and tired in spite of Frieda's inner excitement. Such unusual weather for May! Hector whined, "Are we here yet?" and Sophie turned to share a tired look with her mother. "Of course, not!" Sophie answered before Frieda could return from her private thoughts. "You'll see the red hotel when we get there. Watch out the window." The red hotel was where they usually stayed on those family vacations to the beach. Today they would be catching the last bus back into the city. Not a real vacation but the best Frieda could do. Almost without warning, it seemed, the red hotel appeared on the right. Hector bounced up and down in his seat. "We're here! We're here." Yes, we're here thought Frieda, but why? She was suddenly overcome by the seriousness of her situation and the feeling that this day was just one more wrong choice in her life. There were so many things she had to do, practical things, things to take care of their future. She couldn't afford the indulgence of a day at the beach. The two older children bounded off the bus, unrestrained at last, running across the street that separated them from the taunting splash of waves. Frieda was distracted by the garish red of the hotel. It held the most cherished memories of the past dozen years of her life. Now she would walk passed it, cross the road and go on, without stopping there. Little Hector hurried after his longer legged siblings, not held back by Frieda's cautious hand for once. He rushed onto the empty road but stopped midway; his face that had been full of anticipation suddenly twisted with shock and pain. His towel dropped to the ground. His yellow sand pail followed and then the shovel, and Hector began to wail, a look of horror on his face, turned now to look half in awe at the burning asphalt that seemed to hold him there. For an instant it sounded to Frieda as if her own pain had finally escaped—That scream of shock and lost promise must be coming from her. Then she realized it was Little Hector's cry. Frieda ran into the road; scooped up Hector, the towel, the pail, the shovel, and carried them to the other side. Safely across, Frieda turned to look back at the hotel. It seemed far off now, though it was only the effect of the heat on the air that gave it that wavy unreal look. Frieda patted Hector, cooing her reassuring mother sounds until his tears were not even a memory. They were there now, at the beach. The red hotel and the past it held was on the other side, obscured by the haze of heat and soon to be eliminated by time itself. They had safely crossed the moat of burning asphalt and Frieda was ready to get sand in her shoes and feel the breeze in her hair. She might even catch a wave while they were here.
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The Ultimate Gestalt
Maria's story last month touched so many people that we asked her to continue. This will be the second of a total of three parts. A successful kidney transplant from my more-than-a-friend Sue and a return to my own life in my cabin soon brought my physical status as close to normal as it probably will ever be. At first, walking every day and eating well, reveling in the love of my community, and catching up on the hundreds of details in my life which had been neglected during my fifteen month journey into and out of kidney failure took all my time and energy. I spent hours at the Fire Hall, checking and repairing all the equipment and arranging for a new training class. With fourteen new qualified emergency medical personnel, I opted to 'retire' from my volunteer position of Emergency Medical Services Director and turn it over to the new members. I planned my return to my 'other' life in Mexico and the painting of a large mural on the side of the hot springs bath house here in Alaska. Everything was coming together for me again, and I felt myself returning to normal. I returned home to Alaska in September and by February I was ready to return to my second hometown, a small village in Mexico. My friends there were anxious to see me restored to health, and I was anticipating with delight our reunion and the flora and fauna that would greet me there. I left my village in a remote part of Alaska on a seven hour boat ride to the nearest city with an international airport which would soon take me south of the border. While in the city, I went in for a my monthly series of blood tests to make sure my new kidney was functioning correctly and none of the opportunistic fungi, bacteria, cancers, and viruses that can attack a person on anti rejection drugs which suppress the immune system were present. Excited as I was to be on my way, to completely 'change the channel' away from the medical nightmare I had managed to survive, I did not feel very well. I did not let that stop me; I packed my bag with three sundresses, a pair of sandals, and with my banjo in hand made my final preparations to be on my way. About seven o'clock the evening after my blood tests I suddenly became nauseous, vomiting, and I realized I was becoming seriously ill. Then a terrible pain started and began to get worse and worse. I could not straighten up, I could barely walk. I managed to get into the emergency room where they quickly sedated me and diagnosed my condition as gall stones. They planned a surgery for the next day, although concerns for my complicated health delayed it for another 24 hours. The pain was horrible, and intravenous dilaudid could only keep the pain just this side of intolerable. The memories of the extraordinarily terrible pain caused by a problem after a kidney biopsy and the impinged nerves in two of my vertebrae after the transplant surgery flooded back to me. These were acute pains that made the regular pain of my five surgeries or the grinding and ongoing slow death of dialysis seem minor in intensity. I thought I had recovered psychologically from the sheer physical pains I had suffered, but I was wrong. In addition to the pain I was now in from the gall stones and what turned out to be a necrotic gall bladder, I was terrified that the pain would go on and on...as it had before. A physician I did not much like despite his best efforts to be likable successfully removed my gall bladder and with my money and time gone, I gave up my plans to go south and returned instead to my village. Everything was frozen and it was an extraordinary winter for snow. Everyday there was water to be hauled up the side of the mountain to my cabin and snow to be shoveled down to the
main trail so I could go to the post office, the public hot springs to bathe, and to visit friends. My partner of thirty years was there and helped, as did other friends. One important thing I learned and have since put into successful practice is this: when a person has troubles and needs help, find a chore you can do for them and do it. Ask politely first, and do not expect gratitude. Take this opportunity to learn to pat yourself on the back. One of the least effective expressions of care is to say "If you need anything, just give me a call." This places the burden of asking on the person with troubles. It is hard to ask for help, and increases one's feelings of helplessness and dependency. Just find something to do—ask politely if it's OK—and do it. Don't wait around for a call and don't wait around afterwards for a thank you. Just as I was beginning to get my strength and even some of my courage back, nine months after my transplant, one month after the removal of my gall bladder, my partner had a seizure and died in the hot springs bath. Nobody could understand me now. I couldn't understand me now. Until the last two years, I had always had perfect health and my partner had been with me most of my adult life. Now, who am I? So in addition to the loss of my kidneys and the fifteen months it took to get a transplant, the gall bladder emergency, the cancelled trip I had counted on as therapeutic, my life partner was sitting on my bookshelf in a box in the form of about five pounds of ashes. Sometimes remembering that other people suffer grief and losses much greater than my own causes a wellspring of gratitude for what does remain to me. Other times this thought does not touch me or strengthen me in any way. There is no constant antidote to sorrow. Everything depends; everything depends on everything else in simple and intricate connection. In a like manner, sorrow must be approached, embraced, integrated, and acted upon in the here and now. Grief is growth and in this is its own cure and healing. If nothing else, grief requires us to be present in the here and now. It may be the ultimate gestalt. Struggling to find a once-and-for-all-cure for the grief and losses that overwhelm me would only be another form of denial. As I am a growing being, there is no fixed cure. I can not look forward to being who I was before all this happened to me---the clock can not be stopped or set back. Before I dreamed, was dreaming and was the dreamer. Now I am also changed, changing, and the changer. As I integrate the all this into my current self, I become the new self this Learning to change as a result of the growing process and not as the result of pain accelerates my personal growth exponentially. I found that a potential pain is pre-empted as I change with personal growth as my motivation and energetic fuel. After so many years spent changing mainly as the function of growth and growing as the function of change it comes almost as a terrible surprise that once again change is accompanied by pain, the pain of loss. I remember within two hours after my mother's death my sister was saying, "Everything is OK; Granny is in heaven now." Her belief system circumvented, at least on the surface and for the time being, the pain of the loss. For myself, static explanations do not resonate. What resonates is who I am, and who I am becoming.
Salvation from Georgia Jones
The Ultimate Gestalt
from David Donar
Fun with Alpha
The Mommy Connection
Day Care Toileting Accidents with Fiona Lohrenz
Living Spirit
Understand Emotional Eating
Georgia Jones
A new book on teen dating
Jane Roberts - Making History
New Poetry Program and a Special
What to call this one?
A Review of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
Announcements from our Friends
Guess what I heard...
Your chance to say what you think
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from Georgia Jones
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from Maria FairbanksI met Maria during this saga and talked to her for the first time when she was in the hospital waiting for her transplant. We hope she will be back with more of her writing in the future; perhaps fiction next?
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You can see more by David Donar at http://politicalgraffiti.wordpress.com/.
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Summertime, vacation time, a good time to explore. I found a delightful companion for exploring all kinds of information in Wolfram Alpha. As an example of what it could do, I went to www.wolframalpha.com and input "Kansas City weather" in the search box. It gives me a table and graphs of current and forecast weather information, not only the current temperature—too hot—as well as historical information. If I click on the drop down box on the "weather history and forecast" graph, I have lots of choices of the data I want to see, ranging from one day to ten years. Alpha is a new search engine, but with a different slant on the information it provides. It is the brainchild of Stephen Wolfram, the developer of the wonderful mathematics program Mathematica. It calls itself a computational knowledge engine. That means it not only gathers facts but also computes with them, like the graphs in the weather example above. The ultimate goal is ambitious: "Wolfram Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries." They are not there yet, but it is exciting to see what they can do. I typed in "body mass index". Type in a weight of 138 and height of 5'5", gives the result that the BMI is 23. There follow graphs and charts which can help interpret this information. It shines at comparisons. I typed in "earth mars" to find a comparison between the two, and found comparisons of the two atmospheres, distances from the sun, periods, and number of moons, as well as pictures and a star chart of the sky with their current positions as seen from Kansas City. Kansas City? How do they know that? I discovered you can type in " "where am I?" in the search box. It told me that my provider is Earthlink and I am in Kansas City, Missouri! Correct on both counts. There is a lot of serious information here…searchers can look up DNA sequences or physics computations and many other very technical and specialized things. And the information is curated… that means humans check it. Alpha does not just pull information from random websites. It is a wonderful tool if you ask it the right questions. So go ahead and ask it: "Why did the chicken cross the road?" |
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