Bio-feedback (kinda)

So, I'm decently active on Twitter (as in constantly on), and a Twitter friend graced me with a wonderful compliment:

I haven't tweeted you in a while, but I've found NAMI and disability caretaker wisdom from you to be in invaluable...

She shared with me that her life is taking on a new path, as a caretaker for a loved one (a very loved loved one) with psychosis. I wish you well on your journey sis, and I'm really touched (seriously, I am) that you're on this path, and what I've said will in any way help.

I think (not to sound cliche) that if we all (each and every single one of us) realized our fragility, and the overwhelming community we could gain by saying: hey, I hear you, I am there. I am there too. A space would open up, just large enough for us to fit, not be judged, and be at home.

I look for that space every day. Most days I find it. Some days, its an awkward lonely run.

Recently, at a friends party, I mentioned (if its the kind of thing one mentions) as part of a preface to something that my mom has mental health issues. We both cringed, albeit for different reasons. I hate that its an issue, they were weirded (and likely saddened, and later alert) to a strange and startling acknowledgement: crazy.

I mean, it is what it is. I can't necessarily fake a former life, I was a kid, we ate hotdogs and went to the vineyard. We also scoured the bowels of the south end at night, dug in trash pails, gorged and purged, searching for things my mom never could communicate to me, things I somehow kinda always got. And that reality is (at least now) mine, acceptable, a part of my place of origin. Largely because it must be now. Largely because it no longer makes me cower, and in part, because I'm proud/humbled by it.

But ultimately, it makes for interesting conversation.

(or palpable silences).

Sometimes you need both.

I been blogging (in my head) for months.

So, like others I kinda like blogs. You know, I like the idea of my own, I love certain others, specifically my friend Claire's gluten free blog (kind of delish) and a woman I don't know personally has an awesome blog about relationships and being a single mama (she's decently fierce). But I like mine too. And I'm pretty close to mine, perhaps too close.

Everyday is an opportunity to share (blah, blah, blah) and I have, its likely we all have, in a variety of forums. Like, just yesterday I was blogging to my homegirl about how just this weekend: I was pulled over for the first time and could feel my legs quivering as the officer wrote me a warning. I think it best I didn't tell him I was in a hurry to purchase Easter clothes on sale. I was blogging when I got my finger stuck in a ring still attached to a box in said Easter clothes store, and while my pulsing index finger is sadly not a 7, it is now mobile and flexing proudly as I type this blog... for the first time, outside of my head.

So, where am I going with this: I've not blogged, as in printing it out, as in on my site for a while, and I'm on some level reaching out to the blog gods as if to say, quite biwinningly: FU and I'm back.

More soon. Oh, and yes, Mummi still makes hats.

Caregiving 2.0, or just plain nosey? Is web based monitoring just what the doctor ordered?

This is a decently curious article. Ultimately, yes, I'm thinking of Mummi, and others who, even if from afar, move day by day wondering how to care for, and support our loved ones who have mental or physical impairments keeping them from full self-sufficiency in an environment, that is less mindful than it should be, to physical and mental differences among people.

Check it out. ireminder sounds, well, expensive, but two, like a step in some direction for caregivers to our loved ones with mental illnesses. Perhaps.


Though I'm nearly certain Mummi wouldn't be thrilled to know that her weight was being calculated by sensors under the rug. Though (this time) when she would mention it, no one would wonder if she was experiencing... an "episode"...

Click on the link to follow: Monitoring Elderly Parents - NYTimes.com

Unlisted: A Story of Schizophrenia - A film by Delaney Ruston, MD - MyDOC Productions

My gut says this is going to be great: Unlisted: A Story of Schizophrenia - A film by Delaney Ruston, MD - MyDOC Productions

I haven't been THIS excited since SITC...

though that would be the likely end of any comparison.

Click. View. Share.

D

A lesson on (un)forgiveness.

So, lets say there was a girl. She was a nice girl. Tall.
She had bushy hair and a soft voice. She wasn’t pushy, perhaps silently headstrong.
She was loyal, and considered herself righteous, whatever that means.

Said girl loves green-tea ice-cream, pays attention to poetry, loves the local news (however exciting or boring that day) and lacks an ability to forget faces, low-laying points of stories, stated facts, and nutritional information.

I guess you could call her detail oriented, but that misses the point. And she’s not about missing points.

So, this detail oriented logician had her feelings hurt. Perhaps they were hurt on a regular basis. Perhaps it wasn’t intentional, but occurred none-the-less.

It’s very factual. They were hurt.

So, she processes the hurt. Acknowledges the ebb and flow of a hurtful comment on a Monday. Starts to heal on Tuesday. Regresses (a little) on Wednesday. Calls in sick on Thursday. And so on, until the hurt has become a freckle, a slightly noticed mar of skin. A beauty mark, perhaps. A near-distant ache.

She does this for years. It’s a process she’s very aware of. Sometimes she schedules time to cry. Sometimes the tears are impromptu.

I know this girl well. She’s 30, I’m 30. We both like green-tea ice-cream. Tofu and beef fried rice. We co-reside at the edge of blemished reason and plausible absurdity. We are, by all accounts: ridiculously flawed in our logic, and not, at the same time.

So, the concreteness of it is this:

I don’t believe there is a finite reservoir of strength/resilience or whatever internal gunk that you pull from when you are hurt and need to heal. I don’t believe that all can, or should, be forgiven when you have been injured. I don’t believe that it shouldn’t happen either. I don’t believe in blanket layered statements, though sometimes, the rhetoric does soothe and calm and nourish the soul that doesn’t want true answers. I don’t believe that saying what I just said about souls and true answers is a judgment call. I believe all of our souls want to be calmed.

But I know my soul. And I can forgive what I want to forgive. And I probably could forget, if I wanted to, or was made for it: but I don’t. And personally, which is all I feel like speaking from at this point in the day: that’s ok.

I don’t blame my mom for our reality, though I wish, if I one-day get married, she could speak about times we’ve never been gifted. She can’t. We won’t. We didn’t.

I don’t carry an anger, now, for the disappointments. For the worse-than-thats. And there was worse-than-thats.

I don’t have the same openness for everyone. I don’t have a full unforgiving heart. I want to say sorry, but I can’t. It wouldn’t be true. I am a bias machine sometimes.

I don’t believe it will align me with a life of sadness. I could be wrong. I tend to be at least a quarter of the time.

It’s very human. I forgive me for that. But I needn’t forgive everybody.
True story.

Rise. Remember. Rinse. Repeat.

So, this weekend, I was able to spend time curled up on the couch with my toddler. Don’t get me wrong, she’s no baby, so I use the T word cautiously with this 19 month old. She’s starting to string words together forming short sentences (poetic ones, if I’m allowed a proud Mummi moment) that densely pack meaning and hilarity.

This particular morning, we have no where to rush off to. I’ve again lost my phone in the crevices of a crumb-catching couch. Sesame Street is our only known destination, and she’s happily (if steathily) biting on her bubble wand between semi-private conversations between herself, Ernie and Emmo-wo (i.e. Elmo).

I figure I have a moment or two to snooze and do. I wake up every few moments to find her waving to Bert’s pidgeon pet, a corn-rowed little boy on television, or one of the Elmos with the squeaky-ish voice. Goodnight for a second or two longer. Goodnight for perhaps 5 minutes...

I wake up again and the house is quiet. Zora’s not in sight and I freeze. I look to all the household places most warned in parenting magazines: the Venetian cords are wound, the outlets still covered, I hear no angry cats, and the screens are all intact. I sit up with my heart no where near my center and find my daughter nestled quietly with her Big Bird doll near my ankles. She’s become an adept couch-climber.

So I realize I have another thing in common with my mom, though, this feeling doesn’t haunt me, as I can imagine it haunted her. I share some of the same experiences: watching Sesame Street, being close to Zora. But as the days pass and parenthood becomes less an act of changing diapers, and more a mechanism for instructing and guiding life; I realize how difficult it is and can be when we’re less able, less apt to control or better yet, understand what is happening internally.

I wasn’t, even though it was momentary, and I couldn’t breathe. How many moments did my mother, when I was a mirror image of my own daughter 28 years ago, how many moments left my mother breathless?

How many still do.

Having a child is tough, being a parent ain’t easy. Loving, at least, is a natural current and I’m so blessed to have these moments to process both, each, inchly.

Autonomy as a Teachable Moment.

I’m trying to remember what year it was when Hammer pants and those wide ribboned steel toe patent leather shoes were in style? Perhaps Google will know.

Right now, I’m just remembering the styles I needed to have to survive.

Being broke was an assault on the reality, so I easily and aptly forgot it every time Mummi and I walked downtown Boston past Baker’s shoe store. I needed, and that’s all I knew.

This was also in the height of Mummi’s illness. Reality seemed to have us both beat, though mine was elective and my mother’s not so much. She ignored my requests when she could, other times, well, were other times.

She did do something I didn’t expect, perhaps a month or two into my biweekly requests. She offered me an allowance.

I leapt at the offer.

At home, I’d do what chores could fit into our studio apartment. I cleaned with the materials we had, and became an expert at fixing all the broken things we seemed to accumulate over the years. I prided myself at getting to a job before a job even existed. I conspired on what I would buy with my cash.

I worried in the back of my mind that Mummi wouldn’t be able to keep to her word. I knew better than to ask her, than to remind her. I just waited until our biweekly shopping day.

When the day came, it started out as usual. A long walk downtown (Mummi had a fear of underground trains that lasted for a few years), so we walked nearly everywhere. A stop at Faneuil Hall to purchase fresh fruit and veggies for the week.

Finally, laden with cabbage and strawberries, hot and tired from walking under the sun, we walked past the shoe store. I’m gulping now thinking about it.

Mummi gave no indication that we were going to go in, or continue walking past. I simply followed her, and was happy to walk inside when the door opened and a gust of air from the AC burst out.

We got the best MC-Hammer look-alike shoes there. Perhaps they weren’t, but they were. And it’s funny, those things looked ridiculous, but for a week, perhaps two, I was stylish from the ankle down.

So, when Mummi and I (on some levels) switched places, I’ve honored her need for pocket money. After all, we all need (or I think at the very least) benefit, from making our own decisions, and the instant gratification of the give-get that money can bring.

So, she saved the funds. I wondered what she was saving for. Out loud, and on numerous occasions, but, still, autonomy as my mom’s interpreted it, was keeping her own damn business, her own damn business. She knows what she’s doing, she’s told me.

Who am I to question that?

A few days ago, I called. Mummi was happy to the point where I was getting concerned. Was this pre-episodic? Was she OK?

Double yes. She’d simply purchased herself a sewing machine. Carried it home on public transportation (yes, I’m imagining it) and was happily making who-knows-what gorgeousness on her new Brother™.

Perhaps she’ll make me some pants for my Hammer shoes.

Go, Mummi. Go.