The Power of a Grandfather's Love (continuation of Secondary Infertility)

In October of that year, because I was 37 years old, I had an amniocentesis performed to see if the baby was developing correctly.  The "amnio" revealed a perfectly healthy baby boy.  While I was undergoing the "amnio," my father-in-law was undergoing operations and treatments for his pancreatic cancer.  In the beginning, I hoped he would be cured.  I hoped that he wouldn't be taken away from my daughter who loved him so very much.  I hoped that he would be there to take his grandson to a baseball game someday.  But that Christmas, among all the multitude of presents that were there for my daughter, there was one for my unborn son.  My father-in-law handed me this gift, wrapped in brightly colored Christmas wrapping paper and said, "This is for the baby.  I bought it, myself."  He was very proud of this fact.

When I took off the wrapping paper, I saw that it was the "1995 Hess Truck."  I had bought many Hess Trucks for my nephews in the past and I was very excited to receive this first one for my own son.  But as I looked into my father-in-law's eyes . . . I knew.  I knew he didn't think he would be here to give one to my son next year.  I knew that he knew that the cancer was spreading, that it had not been cured as we were all hoping.  In that room full of toys and presents, Christmas lights and family, I knew this was his last Christmas.  I kissed him on the cheek and thanked him.

In January, my doctor asked me to decide if I wanted to have a "v-back."  To try to have a vaginal delivery after my daughter's delivery had ended in a c-section.  I wanted to try for the v-back, but then he told me that he was going on vacation with his family in February during the Presidents' Week school vacation.  Since this was the week before my son was due, I was afraid that my doctor wouldn't be there in the delivery room for his birth.  (This is not the doctor I was going to punch in the eye during my miscarriage.  Our insurance had changed again and I was now able to go back to the obstetrician who had delivered my daughter.)  So I decided to have a scheduled c-section.

My daughter kept asking me when this baby was going to be born.  I told her that he was going to be her birthday present, since he was scheduled to be born ten days after her fifth birthday.  She was a little disappointed with his news, since if it was indeed her birthday present, she would have preferred a sister.  The day of the c-section finally arrived and although we got to the hospital early, later that day a terrible snowstorm blew in.  Our son was born in late morning.  As he was being born I could tell that the doctor was worried.  He was working fast at something.  When all was okay and he handed the baby to the nurse he said to me, "It's a good thing you chose the c-section.  He was breech and the cord was wrapped around his neck."

My father-in-law wasn't feeling strong enough to come to the hospital.  I remember at some point during the next few days, my mother-in-law saying that he was at home watching our daughter.  I wasn't very comfortable about that idea.  During the previous months, when I had left my daughter with him, I would often come home to find him asleep and my daughter watching him.  Somehow, my mother-in-law didn't know how sick her husband was.

I only have one picture of my father-in-law holding my son in his arms.

A few weeks after he was born, my father-in-law went into the hospital.  The same hospital that my children had been born in.  He never regained his strength.  He passed away in early April, six weeks after my son's birth.  

The next Christmas there were plenty of gifts for my son.  Even the 1996 Hess Truck that my mother-in-law had bought him.  But there was no gift that meant more to me than the 1995 Hess Truck that also sat beneath the Christmas tree.  

That February, my daughter turned six.  She made a silent wish as she blew out her candles.  When I put her to bed that night, I asked her what she had wished for.  She said she had wished that grandpa could come back.  I traced my child's face with my fingertips and told her that her grandpa couldn't come back.  That he was in heaven watching over her.  But that answer wasn't enough for her to give up on her wish.  I know there were many other birthday wishes and wishes made over blowing fuzzy dandelions into the wind, when her wish remained the same.  One day, she said to me, "I'm not going to wish for grandpa to come back anymore.  I know that he can't."  

Years later, when my daughter was seventeen years old, she and I went to a benefit at the local volunteer fire house.  A woman named, Josephine Ghiringhelli was going to be there to help people connect with their loved ones who had passed over.  That night, my daughter's wish finally came true.  (To be continued.)

Secondary Infertility, A Silent Pain

Our daughter was now four years old and a lively preschooler, but there was still something missing.  After we dropped our children off at school, it seemed that all of the other moms had babies in their arms to take home with them.  At first, people would say to me, "It's time for another one."  Eventually they started to say, "Well, at least you have one."  Then, they stopped saying anything at all, and so did I.  Perhaps this was the first time in my life when I questioned if pain can be quantitative.  If one person's pain can be measured against another person's pain.  Is it less painful to lose a child or not conceive a child after you have become a mother, then it would be if you had not yet had a successful pregnancy?  Perhaps.  But, in secondary infertility you also carry the burden without the empathy of others.  So you bear the pain in silence.  This is the next part of my story . . .

When we decided that it was time to have another child, we were shocked when I became pregnant right away.  We felt relief that we would be spared having to try for months or years to once again conceive a child.  But three months later, I miscarried.  There were no dreams this time to tell me that "everything will be okay."  There was no reassuring heartbeat on the screen when we had this sonogram.  When we came back to our house to tell my father-in-law, (he had been watching our daughter for us) he just looked down at the ground and said, "Aw, geez." I think one of the worst parts was disappointing him.  When we had our daughter, he was recently retired and the hospital we were in had liberal visiting hours for grandparents.  I loved my father-in-law, but had never had a lot of one-on-one time with him.  He wasn't a really talkative guy and there were usually other family members around.  But in the days after the birth of my daughter, he spent every moment he could in the room with me, holding his new granddaughter.  He had other grandchildren, but they lived in other states.  This was the first time he had a grandchild he could see grow-up on a daily basis.  The two of them became like "two peas in a pod."  He had a special name for her, "little lady," and she just adored him.  As she grew older, they would take long walks together, just the two of them.  Since my own father had died years before, I was so thankful that she had this grandfather to bond with.  So seeing his pain at the loss of our second child, hurt me almost as much as my own pain.  When I was being wheeled into the operating room later that day, the doctor said to me, "Just think of it as a flower that didn't grow."  If I could have gotten up from the gurney and punched him in the eye, I would have.

Over the years that followed, we spent a mini-fortune on home pregnancy tests and ovulation kits.  I had charts of my morning temperatures and became well versed in the science behind conception. Yet, there had been no more pregnancies.  I became depressed and was having a hard time enjoying my daughter's childhood because I was so focused on the disappointment of not having another child. We finally went through fertility tests and found out that there were procedures that could enhance our chances of conception.  But these procedures were not guaranteed, they were expensive and intrusive and I was getting older.  I was now in my late 30's and the chances of me conceiving again were diminishing daily.  In the end, we decided not to have any procedures done.  I couldn't put myself through that.  After all, I did have a child (as everyone had been telling me) and I had already "missed" too much of her childhood.  So I decided to focus on her and on getting myself back to a healthier state.  I started to exercise and finally lost the baby weight from my previous pregnancies. That June, I noticed that I didn't get my cycle.  But I thought that it was because I was exercising.  I wasn't going to be fooled into buying another pregnancy test only to have to deal with the disappointment and the depression, once again.  But the weeks passed, until finally one day I said to myself, "maybe?" That night, my husband slept in our third bedroom because he had a bad cold and didn't want to get me or our daughter sick.  Early in the morning, I awoke and took the pregnancy test.  I was surprised when I saw the tell-tale plus sign appear . . . I was pregnant again.  I left the pregnancy test on the night stand next to my sleeping husband.  In the morning when he awoke, he assumed the pregnancy test was negative because I hadn't woken him.  But then he noticed the test lying on his nightstand.  When he saw the plus sign, he came out into the hallway all excited.  I was happy, but I was also very cautious.

In July I started to bleed again.  This time I left my daughter at a neighbor's house and went directly to the doctor's office.  He performed a sonogram and I could see that there was still, indeed, a heartbeat.  I was reassured for a minute or two.  When I arrived at the doorstep of my neighbor to retrieve my daughter, I broke down in sobs.  She didn't understand.  She said, "but the sonogram showed that the baby was okay."  I said, "That was a half-hour ago."

If I could have lived through the next months continuously attached to a sonogram, maybe I would have been able to enjoy that pregnancy, but I couldn't.  I didn't want to attach myself to this child who was growing inside me, when I was so sure it too would end in loss.  In September we found out that my father-in-law had pancreatic cancer.  (To be continued.)

A Visit From Beyond

I stood on the sidewalk.  Behind me was the house of my childhood.  In front of me, there was a bridge that reached across the street to the other side.  I couldn't see the other end of the bridge, it was lost in a fog.  But standing at the center of the bridge, facing me, was my father.  A feeling of longing washed over me.  I hadn't seen my father since his death ten years before.  So I walked onto the bridge.

After my husband and I were married for three years, we decided to start a family.  But we found that it wasn't as simple as that for us.  The months of disappointment piled up and the echo of emptiness in our house began to echo in my heart.  After two years of trying to conceive, my doctor told me that it was time to take some tests.  But that before he would put me through the multitude of possible examinations, they wanted to check out my husband first.  We scheduled an appointment for him in the month of June.  But just days before his visit to the doctor, I found out I was pregnant.  In what I can only call a state of euphoria, I walked through the next few weeks.  Then in July, I started to bleed.  It wasn't a lot of blood, but it was enough to strike terror into my heart.  The euphoria disappeared and fear took its place.

Ordinarily, at a time like this, I would have called my sister.  After all, she was a nurse and she knew more about these things then I did.  But she and her children were in Switzerland with her husband, who was on sabbatical.  I called the doctor and he scheduled an appointment for the next day. That night I had a dream . . .

I walked until I met my father at the highest point in the center of the bridge.  Even though I was now just inches from him, I still couldn't see much of the bridge beyond him.  He smiled at me and said, "It's going to be okay.  The baby is fine, don't worry."  Then I woke up and I knew that everything would be alright.

The next day, the bleeding stopped.  I went to my appointment anyway and the doctor performed a sonogram.  It was the first time that I saw my daughter's little heart beating on the screen.  A few months later, while in a movie theater, I felt the first flutter in my stomach.  I came to rely on that fluttering, and later, her kicks, to reassure me that she was indeed, still alright.  Then finally, on a morning in early February, our daughter was born.  In an instant, she filled our hearts, and then later, our home.  And the echo in both disappeared.  Thank you, Daddy.

The Tin Box Secret - Chapter 1 (Re-posted again for your convenience.)

Chapter 1                          The Tin Box Secret

 

                                1968

 The March winds blew and searched for a way to invade the room. I huddled under the covers as the windows shuttered beneath the continuous assault from outside. Within the house, I could hear muffled sounds as my mother prepared my father’s lunch in the kitchen.  The clank of his metal lunchbox resounded on the counter, blending with the music that drifted upstairs from the kitchen radio.  My father turned off the bathroom faucet and the steps creaked beneath him on his way down to the kitchen.  My parents hushed voices floated through the hallway and penetrated my bedroom door.  The warm tones of my father’s voice mixed with the lighter, higher pitch of my mother’s.  I have heard it said that my father had the voice of a “crooner;” and it is true that when he sang, his voice could be warm and comforting.  But when he was angry, that same voice could paralyze us with fear.

 

My parents were discussing the arrival of our new television set.  The excitement in our house had been building over the past few days since my father had gone to the local appliance store and purchased our family’s first color TV.  The first time I had ever seen one, was at Marcie’s house.  Marcie’s parents owned a profitable dairy business, so they were able to afford all of the latest gadgets. They even had a side-by-side refrigerator with a built-in ice-maker!  Although Marcie and her family had moved to California two years ago, her color TV would forever remain an object of wonder in my mind.  While the picture itself was full of color, it was the edges of the screen that captivated me.  There seemed to be a rainbow of colors compressed into a halo, framing the moving images within.  I was so fascinated by those colors that I had to quell my urge to touch the screen to see if I could feel the rainbow with my fingertips.  

 

          “Girls,” my mother’s voice called from the kitchen, “it’s time for breakfast.”

 

I pulled myself out of bed and looked over at Angie’s side of the room.  It was as if an imaginary line had been drawn down the middle of the floor.  Her side was perfect, everything in its place.  My side looked like a small explosion had thrown clothes, paper, pencils, crayons, and stuffed animals in every direction.  I stepped away from the bed and pushed everything aside, making a path among the chaos.   I opened my dresser drawers and tried to find something to wear among the disheveled clothing while Angie jumped out of bed, grabbed her neatly folded clothes, and ran into the bathroom.  I was still trying to get my things together ten minutes later when Angie reappeared at the bedroom door and said, “Juliana, you’d better hurry or you’re gonna be late again.”  Angie’s smile revealed that her motive wasn’t completely sympathetic.  At the ripe old age of nine, she learned always to be the “good” child.  She skipped downstairs to the breakfast table and I rushed toward the bathroom, nearly colliding with my older sister, Mary, as she came down the stairs from her attic bedroom.

 

“Queen Mary,” as I called her, had her own room because she was two years older than me.  Just two years, think about it!  If I had been born first, she would be sharing the room with Angie!  Mary was a junior in high school and one of the smartest people I knew.  I peeked out of the door and saw her pause for a moment in front of Joe’s empty room before continuing down to the kitchen.  I swallowed to keep the tears from seeping past my eyelids and walked into the bathroom.  Fifteen minutes later, I joined my sisters at the breakfast table.

 

          My father was just reaching for his coat and lunchbox as I sat down to breakfast.  He kissed each of us goodbye, his clean shaven face soft and smelling like Old Spice.  When he came home from work he would kiss each of us again, but his five o’clock shadow would then scrape against our cheeks like sandpaper against silk.   Now, as he walked down the stairs toward the garage he called back up to us, “See you later alligator!”  My sisters and I replied with a giggle, “In a while crocodile.”  This was our routine every morning. 

 

         The breakfast table had been set with three bowls, a gallon of milk, a small bowl of sugar, one box of Rice Krispies and one box of Cornflakes.  I poured the Rice Krispies into my bowl and sprinkled some sugar over it.  Next I poured the milk over the cereal and bent low to listen for the “snap, crackle, pop!” that the commercials promised.  On the radio a woman was singing, “Winston tastes good like a – bump, bump – cigarette should.”   My mother danced around the kitchen and tried her best to sing along.  She wasn’t very good at it, but I still liked to hear her sing.  I sat back in my chair and smiled, it was so nice to see her happy.  For a brief moment my family seemed almost . . . normal.  Above the radio on the wall was a sign that read, “Don’t cry over spilt milk.”  I don’t know why it was in our house, because if you had spilt the milk, you were bound to be crying.  My father didn't like messes.   By its side was another sign, “A man’s home is his castle,” a reminder to keep the peace.  My muscles automatically tensed and I scooped up a spoonful of cereal and gulped it down.

 

          The news announcer came on next and everyone stopped eating for a minute.  “Tuesday, March 19, 1968.  In the news today, Robert F. Kennedy, who announced this past weekend that he intends to join the race for President of the United States, made it clear that he has concerns about President Johnson’s decision to send 35,000 to 50,000 more troops to Vietnam . . .”

 

We waited to hear the latest tally of dead in the war.  It always seemed to indicate huge losses for the North Vietnamese while the U.S. casualties remained minimal.   It made me think about old western movies.  Once I had been upset when the Indians in an old movie were slaughtered by the cowboys.  My father told me that the actors who played the Indians would just keep getting up, run behind the cameras, and when they came back in front of the cameras, they would fall again.  It was just a trick.  Things weren't always how they seemed.  I kind of felt like the Vietnam War was like that.  According to the news reports, the North Vietnamese seemed to be losing and the United States soldiers were winning.  But I didn't quite believe them.

 

Even though Vietnam was so far away, it was real to me.  My brother, Joe, was in the army and he had been in Vietnam for over a year already.  That’s why it got so quiet at the kitchen table.  I wondered now why President Johnson wanted to send over more soldiers if it was true that we were winning the war.  I was glad when the news ended and The Fifth Dimension started singing their new hit.

 

For a moment, I stared at my cereal.  The milk slowly dissolved the Rice Krispies until they became soft and bloated.  I touched my head as the pain returned once again.  “Another headache, honey?” my mother asked.  Thinking back to the night before, images from the dream came and went.  An overwhelming feeling of loss crept up into my throat and almost suffocated me.  The headaches had a habit of following those dreams.  Dreams that seemed more like warnings, or perhaps memories, than actual dreams.  My mother handed me some Aspergum and I popped the chewy medicine in my mouth as I cleared my cereal from the table, no longer feeling hungry.

 

We put on our coats and hats.  My mother always insisted that we wear our hats, but I knew that as soon as Mary was out of sight, she would take hers off.   Mary thought she was too cool to wear a hat.  She turned right to walk north toward the high school bus stop and Angie and I turned left.  Once we were around the corner, Angie and I also separated, she walked east toward the elementary school and I continued south toward the junior high.  As I approached the school, I looked out over the bay and watched the seagulls.  The school sat on filled-in swampland.  The bay stretched out south and as far west and east as I could see.  I glanced nervously in all three directions and scanned the skies.  Then I surveyed the new park that was in the process of being constructed across the street from the school.  The park was still a long way from being finished.  Tractors had moved around piles of sand and dirt, and the once beautiful marshlands, now had a scarred look about them.   When I was younger, I had liked to walk along the shore of the bay, behind the sand dunes, hidden from the world.  Occasionally, when the tractors were silent, I still found peace there.  I had a place along the beach.  It was my secret place, where I would sit and just think about things.  I worried about how long it would be kept secret once the park was finished.  But then again, I worried about a lot of things.

 

Harbor Junior High had a bomb shelter built into the basement.  Once a year, the teachers would take us down into the shelter, to see where we would hide if the Russians launched missiles against New York.  Of course, they didn't actually say that, but we all knew what they were thinking.  Sweet lemon drop candies were stored there in case we had to survive for some time without food.  However, we were given lemon drops whenever they brought us down.  I know this was supposed to make the shelter seem less scary, but this made me worry that there wouldn't be any candy left if we really needed it.  Another thing that worried me was that if the Russians dropped a bomb on Long Island, how safe would I be in a bomb shelter that was constructed on filled-in swampland with the bay just a few feet away?  Well, I guess I’d be safer than Angie at the elementary school.   There, if they had an air-raid drill, all they did was walk into the hall, face the wall, and put their hands over their heads and hope that the bomb didn't drop through the ceiling.  The fear I shared with every child of the Cold War was very real to me.  I had this image in my head of a control room behind a red iron curtain where a man stood poised over an electronic panel.  Beneath his fingers, lay a red button and at any moment he could push that button and missiles would be launched against the United States.  I took another long glance at the sky over the bay.  I was reassured to find that the sky was still empty of Russian missiles.

 

My friend, Heather, was waiting for me by the bicycle rack.  She had a spirit that defied her lot in life.  Heather and I had one thing in common that had made us best friends since kindergarten.  As the smallest girls in our grade, we watched as the other girls grew taller.  Our petite stature fortified our friendship and protected us from feeling left behind.  Our height was, however, where the physical similarities ended.  Her hair was as blonde as mine was dark, her eyes were round and blue while mine were almond shaped and brown.  And today, her blue eyes were rimmed with red.

 

          The bell rang and we made our way through the crowd to our lockers. Grabbing her arm and pulling her close, I jumped right in, “What’s going on with you?”  Heather looked like she was afraid that if she opened her mouth she might start crying right there in the middle of the hallway.  She clenched her jaw shut and just shook her head, miserably.

 

“You want to wait and talk at lunch?”

 

She nodded her head yes and I squeezed her hand before we parted to head toward our separate homerooms.  As I walked away, I kept turning around to check on her.  I was almost afraid to find out what her latest crisis was.  Heather’s dad had left when she was little.  She and her mom had lived with her grandmother for a while; but when that got to be “too much” (those were the words that her grandmother had used) they spent the following years moving from one rented house in the neighborhood, to another.  Her grandmother had died last year and now all she had was her mom.  Her mom must have inherited a little money from Heather’s grandmother, but if she did, it hadn’t seemed to make any difference in Heather’s life.  Except that maybe her mother had more money to buy booze.

 

My homeroom was at the end of the hall and it was for the kids with names at the end of the alphabet.  I hated being last because I was always put in the back where I was made to feel like a leftover.  This was especially a problem because of my height.  I would inevitably end up sitting at the back of a classroom with towering classmates sitting in front of me, totally blocking my view of the blackboard!  I promised myself that when I got married, I would marry someone whose name began with a letter at the beginning of the alphabet.  The teacher called my name for attendance, “Juliana Ventura?”  “Here.” I replied from somewhere in the depths of the classroom, beyond the sea of heads.  My teacher had to take a few steps to the right so that she could see my raised hand, then she checked off my name in her little book.

 

I had a hard time concentrating in my morning classes because I kept thinking about Heather.  When it was time for lunch I raced down to the cafeteria to meet her.  She looked a little better than she had in the morning, but she still seemed pale.

 

I gently coaxed her, “Do you feel like talking?”

 

In a barely audible voice, Heather mumbled, “My mom didn’t come home last night.”  This was not the first time that this had happened, so I didn’t understand why she continued to get so upset every time that it did.

 

“Okay, but she’s probably there now.  Maybe she just had to work late or something,” I reasoned.

 

Heather just stared at her lunch while I took a bite of my apple butter sandwich. “I’m sure she’ll be back by the time you get home,” I said with more conviction.  Heather’s eyes still didn’t leave her sandwich.

 

“Hey,” I tried to change the subject.  “Did I tell you we’re getting a colored television set today?”

 

“That’s cool,” she said rather flatly.

 

“Maybe you can come over this weekend and watch it with me?”

 

“Yeah, I guess.” 

 

My heart went out to her and I wanted so much to make everything better, but I just didn’t know how.   I thought about how horrible it would be to have an alcoholic parent.  At my house, the alcohol was in one of our living room end tables.  The bottles had been in there for at least ten years.  The only time they were taken out was on New Year’s Eve when my parents made whiskey sours, highballs, or screwdrivers.

 

“Wait for me after school and I’ll walk home with you,”

 

“Thanks, Julie.  You’re the best friend, ever!”

 

But I didn’t feel like I was the best friend ever.  I mean, really, what could I possibly do to help her?  After all, her life was a mess, and mine wasn’t much better.

 

As I went through the rest of the day, I tried to think happier thoughts. I kept wondering if the new television set had been delivered yet.  It was going to replace our old television that was built into a wood cabinet in the downstairs recreation room.  You had to open the doors to see the TV screen.  We also had a small black and white television set, with rabbit ear antennas, in our upstairs living room.  The downstairs TV didn’t need rabbit ears because it was hooked up to an antenna on our roof.  The small black and white would be brought up to our bedrooms when we were really sick.  Like the time all three of us girls got the chicken pox.  First Mary got sick and the doctor came to give the rest of us shots.  I remember running away from the doctor, but I finally got caught and he put me over his knee.  But the shot didn’t help.  I got the chicken pox anyway.

 

My last class was social studies and Donny DeLaney sat in the back of the room.  He rarely took off his black leather jacket.  Although he was the star of the wrestling team, he was a loner and didn’t seem to have any real friends.  The guys were afraid of him, but behind his back they made fun of him.   His great grandfather, Old Man Finster, was infamous in our town.  There were stories that he had murdered people with axes and kept their bodies buried in his yard.  The old man’s son, Sam, had had a reputation for being a tough angry young man and he had left his own legacy of terror before dying in a bar fight.  Sam’s daughter, Margaret, Donny's mother, found out she was pregnant while still in high school.  Margaret’s grandfather forced her to marry the baby’s father, Trevor DeLaney, and, as the story goes, in doing so, she had traded one prison for another.

 

 

Trevor had been the high school wrestling champion and his old wrestling trophies and photos still lined the showcases in the gym’s hallway.   It was obvious from the photos that he had been a handsome young man, but his eyes were as cold as stone.  It gave me the creeps just to look at those pictures.  These days, people just assumed that Donny was exactly like his father, so they steered clear of him.  But it seemed to me that he had never actually done anything to earn that reputation, except to be born into the Finster/DeLaney family.

 

Sometimes, Donny would look across the room at me and catch me staring at him.  His brooding eyes were a deep warm blue, so unlike his father’s, but still, they seemed haunted.  For an unguarded moment they would reveal a puzzled expression.  Then his eyelids would close like shades and when they opened the expression would be gone.  It was as if the real Donny was hiding behind this persona that everyone else had given him.  Those eyes held a million questions, and sometimes I felt as though he thought I had the answers.  This always made me feel uneasy, and today was no different.  When Social Studies class was over and the bell rang, I ran for my locker.

 

Heather was just coming out of the girls’ bathroom so I waited for her to get her jacket.  She was so quiet on the walk home that we may as well have been in a funeral procession.   When we finally reached her house, I was glad to see her mom’s car parked in the driveway.  Heather’s face lit up with relief but she hesitated at the front door.  “Julie, would you come in with me?”

 

I looked down at my watch, hesitantly, “Uh, sure.”  I held her hand as we walked through the front door.  She had only lived in this house for a couple of months and I had never been inside it before.  One of my father’s rules was that I had to come straight home from school.  I really wasn’t allowed to socialize during the school year and this was a hard rule for me to follow.  Sometimes, his rules made it difficult for me to have friends.  Heather seemed to be the only one who understood.  In the summer months, I had a bit more freedom, but the summer seemed a long way away as our breaths crystallized in the cold afternoon air. 

 

In addition to rules, my father had a lot of prejudices, so he didn’t like my being friends with anyone who was different.  Once, when I was eight, I asked if I could join the Pioneer Girls.  My father had exploded, “That’s run by Lutherans!”  The way he went on about Lutherans after that made it clear that he thought they were a mind-controlling cult bent on stealing me away from the Catholic Church.  I never asked again.

 

As I entered Heather’s house I reminded myself to make this quick.  The house was dark and musty and if it hadn't been for the light that poured in through the open front door, I might have fallen right into the gaping hole in her living room floor.   Heather let go of my hand and walked around it and up the stairs to her mom’s bedroom.  I wasn't sure if I should follow or not, so I just stood there staring at the hole.  I inched closer and peered into the darkness over the edge and down into the basement below.  I shivered, stepped back and closed the front door.  But the inside of the house wasn't much warmer than outside.  I wrapped my arms around my body to slow down the shaking.  I could still see my breath form in the air.  I carefully walked around the hole, sat down on her couch and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.  The room was gloomy and sparsely furnished.  Dust had gathered in every corner and the floor had long ago lost its varnish.  Scratches evidenced where furniture had been scraped along the surface.  I was wondering if any had fallen to the basement below through the hole, when I heard a sound and looked up.

 

Heather slowly came back down the stairs.  Her small body shaking so hard I was afraid she’d fall.  When she reached the bottom step her anger flashed, “She’s so drunk I can’t even wake her!  She’s just snoring away in her bed and her room reeks of gin!”  Heather’s anger and frustration were bordering on hysteria.  I looked at my watch, it was already after four.  I knew that I needed to get going but I couldn't just leave Heather like this.

 

I took charge and led her to the kitchen, “Let’s get something to eat.”   In Italian families, you learn that food is comfort.  We opened the cupboard but there wasn't a whole lot there.  We did, however, find a box of chocolate cake mix.  Next I checked the refrigerator; there were eggs and milk so I placed all of the items on the kitchen table.  “Let’s make chocolate cake!  It always makes me feel better!” I tried to ignore the little voice in my head that was saying, “Go home, Julie,” as we mixed the cake.  I tried to think of an excuse I could give my mom.  Maybe I could say that I had stayed at school for extra help.  As long as it didn’t take too long, I’d be okay.

 

 

When we put the mixer on high speed, cake mix flew everywhere in the kitchen.  By the time we had the cake in the oven, we were laughing so hard that our sides ached.  We turned on her kitchen radio and sang along.  We danced around the kitchen and checked the cake every few minutes, opening the door to the oven to see if the cake was done.  About an hour later we were finally sitting at her kitchen table each with a giant (although a bit flat) piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk.  To me, there was nothing like warm, just-out-of-the-oven, chocolate cake.  I always ate the bottom and saved the top for last, because the top was my favorite part.  It was hard not to stuff it all in my mouth at once because it just smelled and tasted so good.  But I had learned that if you take your time and eat it slowly, it’s so much more satisfying.

 

“So is Donny DeLaney still staring at you in class?”  Heather asked with a giggle.  I was glad to see that Heather was thinking about something other than her mom, but I wasn’t too sure I liked this subject either.

 

I took a deep breath, “Yeah.”

 

“So, are you going to do anything about it?”

         

 “Like what?’

 

 “I don’t know.  Do you want me to ask him if he likes you?”

 

“No!”

 

“Oh, okay, I won’t.  But one of you has just got to do something or I’m going to get involved.”

 

“Don’t you dare!”   I grabbed a piece of cake and threw it at her!

 

“Hey!” She grabbed a piece and threw it at me and it landed in my hair.

 

When we were finally finished with our food fight, we both felt a lot better.  That is until I noticed the time, it was almost six o’clock!

         

“Sorry Heather, but I've got to get going.”

 

         

          “Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up.”  Suddenly the concern in the room shifted from her to me.

 

At my house, we ate dinner every night at five o’clock sharp.  My father got home at a quarter to five and we all sat together to eat dinner as a family.  My father sat in his seat with his belt slung over his lap.  We never ate out or ordered in.  My mother cooked all of our meals and she cooked them the way my father liked them.  Not too much garlic, no rice, and no broccoli.  As I walked past the hole in Heather’s living room again, I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. 

 

Like a condemned man walking to the electric chair I walked home as slowly as I could.  After all, I was already late.  Maybe if I delayed my arrival long enough I could come up with an excuse that he would accept.  About a block from my house, I saw him walking toward me.  He didn't say a word.  His face was set in stone when he grabbed my arm and just about dragged me home.  All my excuses died on my tongue before even getting a chance to escape through my clenched teeth.  The house was silent, although I could see that everyone was still in the kitchen.  The dinner sat cold on the table between them.  My mother and sisters sat there quietly, as I was pushed up the stairs.  In my room my dad took off his belt. I knew what was coming next.  His eyes were glazed with anger.  Usually, when he punished me, he’d hit me with the belt a few times.  But this time he just couldn't get the anger out of him.  So he just kept hitting.  When he finally stopped, I could hear crying. Then I realized, through my own tears, that he was crying too.  His voice cracked as he said, “Don’t you ever do that again!”  He turned away from me and went downstairs, back to his dinner.

 

Later that night, after my mother had spread Mercurochrome on the fresh cuts across my back, I lay on my stomach in bed on top of the cool sheets.  I listened as my family gathered downstairs in the recreation room around the new color TV.  And in the darkness of my room, I tried to imagine the colors that were surely outlining the screen.  I reached my hand out, and in my mind, I felt the rainbow against my fingertips.

Magic, Princes, and Fairy Tales

If we are beautiful and good like Cinderella, then with a little help from our fairy godmother, Prince Charming will come and rescue us on his white horse and we will live happily ever after.  That is the fairy tale that we learn as children and it is the fairy tale that we strive for throughout our lives.  But sooner or later we realize that fairy tales are just fairy dust, they just aren't real life.  The problem is that Cinderella is looking for magic, princes, and fairy tales to make her happy.  She thinks she needs them to tell her she is beautiful and good.  But no matter how many times or how many people tell her she is beautiful and good, if she does not believe it herself, then they might as well be saying nothing at all.

Through the pain and disappointment in our lives, we hear that we are not worthy.  We come to expect the pain and disappointment.  We may even bring it on ourselves because we have decided before we even start that it will end that way.  We build an impenetrable fortress around our hearts and souls to protect ourselves from others.  We promise ourselves that we will never be vulnerable again.  We can't listen to other people, those "happy" people, tell us that we will find that "fairy tale love" someday.  Yet who among us have lived our entire lives without pain and disappointment?  Is anyone really immune to it?  Does this fairy tale exist in anyone's life?

We are born alone.  Yes, there are others there, our mother at the very least.  But she is not experiencing the same thing that we are at birth. We will live our lives alone. Yes, there will be others there.  But they will not be experiencing the same thing that we are in life.  We will die alone even if there are others present.  Life is, in essence, solitary, but we are social beings and we need others to share it with.  This controversy is the core of our unhappiness.  Because the experiences we live are not the same as the experiences of those whom we live with.  The connection that we can have with another human being is limited.  The closest connection there can be is between a mother and a child.  But even that has its limitations.

The lesson we need to learn most through the journey of our life, is that we are beautiful and good. But it is only you who can teach yourself this.  No one else can give you this gift.  Only you can do it. You don't need me to tell you, but I will say it anyway, "You are beautiful and good."  Now, I want you to say it to yourself . . . "I am beautiful and good."  Doesn't that feel good?

I have so many friends who are going through difficult times in their relationships and there are no words that I can give them that will make it all alright.  I have been through difficult times myself. And there are may times when I feel I am not worthy.  No matter how many people tell me I am, it is not until I tell it to myself and believe it, that it becomes real.  Life is not a storybook.  Life is a journey full of lessons.  Love yourself and you will be loved.  Value yourself and you will be worthy.

Poison

There's a poison that seeps into your soul,
It sneaks through your mind and takes control,
The energy it demands costs a physical toll.
The end of the story, already foretold.

Let it go.

Nurture it, and it will take its hold,
Soon it will leave seeds to be sowed,
They will fester and invade as they grow,
Corrupting your marrow till it turns to mold.

Let it go.

The ice in your veins makes you cold,
Your future is what it steals so bold,
It leaves in it's place, a deep dark hole,
Vengeance, anger, and hatred are revealed as the foe.

Let it go.

Look In My Eyes (Do you see me?)

Sitting in the passenger seat of our car, we sped along on a three lane highway.  A car, to our right, traveled just a little ahead of us.  I looked at the back of the driver's head.  He was looking in front of him, at the road that lay before him.  He didn't see me.  He didn't hear me.  His windows were closed, as were ours . . . and yet . . . he turned around and looked into my eyes.  How did he know I was looking at him?  What sixth sense allows us to know that someone is connecting with us, either on purpose or by accident?

The man in that car had an entire life that is unknown to me.  As far as I know, I have never met him and probably never will.  Yet for one moment, our lives connected.  

What of the friends I had in childhood?  Those who were so close to me when I was a school girl.  Those whom I shared so much with.  They have gone on to have lives without me.  They have not ceased to exist simply because I cannot see them, hear them, touch them.  They live lives of joys and sorrows and perhaps our lives, through the magic of Facebook, even touch every now and then.  Yet my world is really limited to what I can see, hear, feel, touch, and taste.  So when they leave my presence, for me, they do cease to exist, except perhaps in my memory or thought.  

What of my children?  They live because of me.  I nurtured them until they could stand on their own and live apart from me.  They now have experiences that I am not able to see or hear.  Do I still exist for them when they are away from me?  Surely, they know I am here.  That my life will go on, as will theirs.  That is the way it should be.  

What of those who once loved me?  Those who have now left this life to move on to what comes next.  Do they still exist?  Do they know that I still exist?  Are they closer to me now then they were in life?  They live in my thoughts and in my memories.  I see them in my dreams.  Do they see me?  

What of those who will exist in the generations to come?  Will they know me?  Will they wonder who I was and if I am watching over them?  Will they know that I once lived?

What of you, my reader?  You who have found me through my writing?  There are seven billion people on this Earth and most will live out their days without knowing that I existed.  But, somehow, you have found me.  Through my writing you have looked into my eyes.  Without being in my presence you have existed and lived full lives.  Some of you have lived in distant countries with cultures so very different from mine and yet, we have connected.  How amazing is that?  Do you feel it?  Whomever you are, my reader, for this brief moment we connect.  For this moment you see me, even if I cannot see you.  

Excerpts from Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (c. 1900):

It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not;	20
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd; . . . Closer yet I approach you; What thought you have of me, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance;   90 I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.    Who was to know what should come home to me? Who knows but I am enjoying this? Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?

Comas Come With Gifts: A Case of Misdiagnosis Continued

"Six Feet Under" was on and before the coma it had been one of my favorite shows, but now I was having a hard time looking at the screen.  There was a body on the gurney and tubes were draining the blood from it while others replaced the blood with, I assume, formaldehyde.  Our children were asleep in their bedrooms, probably dreaming about their birthdays that were just a few days away.  Our daughter would be turning eleven and our son would be turning six.  The show ended and my husband kissed me goodnight and went to bed, he had work in the morning.

I was filled with an eerie feeling and couldn't bring myself to close my eyes just yet.  The house was quiet and dark now, except for the one light in the room.  For a moment, I wondered if I was really alive.  Maybe I was a ghost, sitting in the living room of my house, watching over my family as they slept.  A chill ran through me.  I sat there for a long time, thinking about the past week.

A week ago, I awoke from a coma.  The first thing that I saw, was my husband's face.  He was unshaven with several days of beard growth and he looked worried.  My first thought was that he must be worried about work.  I thought he must be missing work because I'm in the hospital and maybe the office is giving him a hard time about it.  For me, this was a natural thought because at this stage of our lives, with two growing children, our marriage had taken a turn.  He spent most of his time at work, working up the corporate ladder, trying to provide for his family in a difficult economy.  He had a mortgage to pay and family expenses, while I had chosen to be a stay-at-home mom.  On the other hand, I was consumed by my children and their lives.  I was their PTA president, I was my daughter's Girl Scout leader, but most of all, I was their mom.  I didn't even consider that the worried look on his face was for me.  I think that speaks volumes.

There were tubes coming our of my nose and there were tubes stuck into the side of my neck.  I felt confused and frightened.  I remembered that I went into the hospital and that the doctor said they were going to do laproscopic surgery to find out if my appendix was infected.  They also had said that if they couldn't determine what was wrong through laproscopic surgery, then they would open me up and do exploratory surgery.  So I assumed I was now waking up after surgery . . . but I wasn't.

My husband was saying something so I tried to focus on his words.  "You're a bull!  You are so strong!"  I didn't feel strong, I felt very weak.  "This is the best birthday present you could ever give me!"  He was smiling now, he was very excited and his face was very animated.  I was trying to figure it out but it didn't make sense.  "You've been in a coma and on a respirator.  They tried to take you off of the respirator yesterday, but they couldn't.  They said you might be on it for another week, but today your numbers were better and they were able to take you off!  Yesterday was my 40th birthday . . .you're breathing!"

That night, I spent my first night in the I.C.U. awake.  The I.C.U. is not a place you want to be awake in, it's better to be in a coma in the I.C.U. at night.  There was a storm and the staff was short on nurses.  My nurse, John, told me he had three patients including me.  I was in isolation because they didn't want me to be exposed to any other infections and, I suppose, they didn't want anyone else exposed to mine.  When they had finished the surgery, they had found infection throughout my body cavity.  They washed out my organs and left the incision open in case they had to "go back in."  So now, between the open incision and all the tubes, I couldn't really move.  John came in to change the fluids that were being pumped into my neck.  He wasn't wearing gloves, so I asked him, "Aren't you supposed to be wearing gloves?"  He was annoyed by my question and replied, "I don't have time for gloves."  That scared me, but what could I say?  I certainly didn't want to get him mad at me, since without out him, I was probably going to die.  So I didn't say anything else.

I tried to fall asleep, and I suppose that I did.  I remember floating in a hallway or a tunnel.  There was a ceiling of some sort above me and I was flying.  There were children under me all along the "hall" and they were laughing and playing and pointing up at me.  There were colors swirling around me, purple and gold.  I remembered somewhere in my brain that purple and gold were the colors of my children's elementary school.  There was a light at the end of the "hall" and I was flying toward it.  But then I woke up.

In the I.C.U., patients are hooked up to machines that send out automated voice warnings to indicate that something is wrong.  I later found this out and that they say something about "reset."  But that night, I didn't know that.  I heard this voice and I thought it was saying, "Theresa is dying.  Theresa is dying. Theresa is dead."  (Reset sort of sounds like Theresa, so maybe that was what I was actually hearing.)  Morning was coming when I saw a red button on the wall opposite me.  In my mind I thought I had to press that button to get help or else I was going to die.  I thought about my children and I knew that I would do anything to live for them.  But I couldn't get to that button without pulling out the tubes.   So I yanked at the tubes that were going into my nose and down my throat to my lungs.  They had been there to administer oxygen to my lungs to help them work.  When I pulled those tubes out, my machines went haywire!  Nurses came running through the door.  After that, they just gave me an oxygen mask.

There was a nice nurse during the day and she let me talk to her.  Everyone kept telling me that I was lucky to be alive but that I "wasn't out of the woods yet."  I had a devastating bacterial infection that had an 80% mortality rate.   It was early 2002 and no matter how much I wanted to get well and go home to my children, I didn't feel worthy of it.  Only a few months before, I had put my Kindergarten son on a bus to go to school on a beautiful clear September morning.  I had then walked into my house to see an image on the television of a tower burning.  As I watched, a second plane hit the second tower.  In the days that followed, I found out that three fathers from our neighborhood had died in that attack.  Thousands of parents died in that attack.  Parents who deserved to go home to their children who needed them.  Why should I get to go home?  A nun came in to talk to me since it was a Catholic hospital and I was catholic.  (There's another funny story in there that I will tell, quickly.  When they were getting ready to take me into the operating room, a nun came up to me to pray over me.  I thought she was giving me last rights, so I yelled at her and threw her out of the room.  I have a sister-in-law who thought that was really funny and when I did finally get flowers from her -- no flowers allowed  in the I.C.U. -- the card said, "Don't throw any more nuns out of your room.")  Well, anyway, this nun (who may have been the same one????) was really nice too and she and I prayed to St. Therese, the little flower, to help me.

I spent lots of time crying and just not feeling worthy.  I spent the next few days in the I.C.U., the nights were still scary, but the days weren't too bad.  It was hard that I couldn't talk to my daughter because there wasn't a  phone in the room.  (No phones in the I.C.U. either.)  I knew she would be worried.  She was old enough to know that something was really wrong.  I had been with her every day of her life and now I was just gone.  They told her I had my appendix out and that was why I was in the hospital.  I knew she had to know better than that, and she did.  She knew they were lying to her and she was worried.  The nurses agreed to let her come up to see me for just a few minutes.  This was against the regulations since she was under twelve.  But they let her come up anyway.  I was sitting in a chair now and I no longer had the oxygen mask but there were still tubes sticking out of my neck.  As scary as I must have looked to her, she smiled when she saw me.  She finally had proof that I wasn't dead.  Those were precious minutes.

When I left the I.C.U. after a few days, I went to the cardiac floor.  The nurses on the cardiac floor have many patients, so it was time for me to do things on my own.  This meant getting out of bed and using the bathroom without help.  Not an easy thing when I still had a vertical open incision across my stomach.  But I was as determined as ever to get home to my kids and unless the doctors had proof that my kidneys were working again, I wasn't going to get to go home.  The first morning that I woke up on the cardiac floor, I opened my eyes to see a familiar woman standing in front of me.  It was my grandmother.  But my grandmother had died over thirty years ago and when she had died, she didn't have her legs.  She had had diabetes and had stubbed her toe.  That had turned to gangrene and her foot and then her leg was amputated.   Then the gangrene spread to the other leg and they had cut that one off too.  So to see her "standing" in front of me was a bit shocking.  She didn't say anything, she just stood there.  I closed my eyes and said (maybe out loud?) "Don't take me now!"  I opened my eyes and she was gone.  I knew then why I was alive.  There were things I had to do.  My grandmother had divided her nine children through her actions, and I was going to try to unite those who were left, and the grandchildren who never had a chance to get to know each other.  That summer, I held a reunion, and there were many stories and tears shared.

But back to the hospital.  On the cardiac floor, you can get flowers.  While my nun was there talking to me, the first bouquet of flowers arrived.  It was from my children's school.  In the middle of the flowers, was one red rose.  The nun told me, "Look at this!  St. Therese answered your prayers.  She always answers with roses and here there is one single rose to make sure you know she heard you."  Later that day, I received a call from the principal's secretary.  She was crying on the phone.  She said, "We were so worried about you! Get well and come back!  We love you."  Now that alone is very nice, but you see I had just spent a year and a half as President of the PTA.  During that year (please read the post, "Sticks and Stones (Reposted)" for the details), my life had been a living hell as PTA President.  So for those flowers to be the first ones I received, and to hear the secretary tell me that I was loved, was a true gift.

When I did finally get to go home a few days later, I still had an open incision that was left to close on it's own, I was still feeling weak, and still feeling like I didn't deserve to live.  There was a knock on the door and there was a delivery man with flowers.  Then there was another knock on the door and there was a delivery man with a basket.  This happened all day.  Then the mail came and there were cards from everyone.  Friends started stopping by and telling me that they were happy I was alive.  Finally, a neighbor stopped by.  She held a schedule in her hands.  The PTA moms had volunteered to cook dinner for my family every night for months to come.  I was overwhelmed.

That night, when we were alone, my husband cried.  He told me how scared he was.  He told me that he didn't know how he could tell our children that I wasn't coming home.  He told me how much he loved me and I realized how much I loved him.  Not just because we are the parents of our children, but because we love each other, for each other.

So now I sit in my living room, a week after awaking from a coma, while my family sleeps.  I am a ghost in my own house.  I have been present at my own funeral.  I have found out that I am loved and appreciated and yet I still don't feel worthy.  So I make a promise to God.  I tell him, "I know you saved me for some reason and I don't know what that is."  I think about St. Therese who was known for the little things she did, she never did anything grand in her life, they were just little things."  So I say to God, "I will just try to keep my eyes open so that I can see those little things that you put in front of me and I will do my best."

(That night was twelve and a half years ago.   I'm still here, still keeping my promise, and still looking for those things, God.  So keep them coming and thank you for giving me these cherished years to see my children grow-up.)

Sticks and Stones (Reposted)

The thing about learning a life lesson is that when you are learning the lesson, learning it is the farthest thing from your mind.  You are too caught up in the drama, the pain, the fear, and the anxiety to say to yourself, "Someday this experience is going to be a valuable lesson that I can share with others."  But that is what ends up happening.

It could be a little thing like when I was worrying if my son would ever take his first steps.  He was already fourteen months old and getting way to big for me to carry around everywhere.  Even though someone told me, "When he gets married, you're not going to have to carry him down the aisle."  I still worried about it.  But low and behold, within that month, my son was walking around and getting into trouble taking apart anything that was within his reach.  So the lesson was, everything will come in its own time.

But sometimes the lesson is bigger.  When I was PTA Co-President for the elementary school that my children attended, I learned that the rhyme we learned as children, "Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt you," simply isn't true.  Sticks and stones may hurt you on the outside, but names and words can hurt you even worse on the inside.  This is something that bullies learn early and by the time they are adults, they are very good at it.  Names and words have the power to destroy a person's reputation, regardless of if they are true or not.  And just like children, other adults are afraid that the bully's attention will turn from the victim and onto them, so they hide behind their fear.

As a young mother who had a college education and who had worked for years before having children, it was a difficult transition when I decided to become a stay-at-home mom.  I missed having the feeling of accomplishment and respect that I had enjoyed in the workforce.  I loved my children, but I also needed something for me.  So I turned to volunteering to be able to use my creative and organizational skills to help within my community.  I thought that as a volunteer I would be able to "make my own hours."  But what I found was that those hours were 24 hours a day.  All the time that I invested was rewarded with parents calling me at all hours to complain about everything from their children buying erasers at a book fair to the policies and procedures of the Board of Education.  I never heard a word of thanks for my efforts from anyone.  I didn't know that when I decided to take a position on the other side of the table at those PTA meetings, that I would become the object of every one's anger and frustration.

A month into being co-president, a child fell from a piece of old playground equipment and broke his wrist.  Our PTA had a committee that was in the process of asking for better ground cover under all playground equipment.  The mother of the child was understandably upset and wanted to hire an inspector to come in and evaluate the playground equipment to see if it was up to standards.  She went to the Board of Ed and they told her that they had the playground equipment inspected every year and that they would not give her permission to hire her own inspector.  At the mother's request, I went to the Board of Ed and asked them to allow the PTA to hire an inspector.  They told me that if I hired an inspector and that inspector trespassed on school property without their permission, that they would arrest the inspector and anyone who had signed the check hiring him.  Then I called several superior members of the PTA within my town, county, and state.  I was told that if I signed a check to hire this inspector without the permission of the Board of Ed, my school would lose its PTA charter and that all the money in our account would be taken away and spread out to other PTAs.

So I told the mother of the child that I couldn't sign a check to hire an inspector.  I also told her at a PTA meeting that if she still wanted to hire an inspector, we could ask other parents to voluntarily donate cash to her to help her pay for the inspector.  She refused, she wanted me to sign that check and nothing else would make her happy.  But I couldn't do that.

Over the next two years that I was co-president, she spread around to the community of parents that I didn't care about the safety of our children.  Every PTA meeting was hijacked by her bullying and people stopped coming to meetings.  People on the PTA board started to resign.  The Board of Ed and the principal of the school told me to get this woman under control.  The principal even accused me of "letting the tail wag the dog."  So the parents turned against me and the administration of the school turned against me, but there was nothing that I could do.  I wanted to quit too, like the rest of the board was doing.  But the PTA told me that if our school didn't have a board consisting of at a minimum, a president, and treasurer, and a secretary, they would take the charter away from our school and, again, all the money in our account away from our children.  So I stayed.

I cried every night and I lost a lot of friends and felt very alone.

But I knew who I was.  I knew that I cared about every child in that school and every child in this world.  I knew that I had done everything that I could to help this woman in spite of her bullying, name calling, and accusations.  So I kept on going.  I did what had to be done and worked very hard to make sure that the PTA programs still went on as they were needed.  It was always difficult to get enough volunteers to help at these programs and now it was even more difficult.  But I kept them going.

Time passed.  The twin towers were attacked and life changed for all of us.  I became very ill, but somehow survived.  Thank goodness I didn't die, because all of a sudden the PTA parents surrounded and supported me.  They made dinners for my family, they sent flowers, gifts and cards with words of encouragement.  They took over all the programs and kept things going for the kids.  Even the principal and administrators sent me flowers and cards with words of thanks.  Okay, so maybe I had to almost die to get those feelings of accomplishment and respect that I had missed from my days in the workforce.  But it did feel good to finally hear that people had seen what I was doing and how hard I was working and that they appreciated all that I was trying to do for their children.

Eventually people saw for themselves who I was and who she was.  They made their own determinations based on their own experiences over the years.  In the end, I learned that in time the truth comes out in the wash if you keep putting one foot in front of the other.  It is very easy to quit and hide when your reputation is attacked and lies are spread about you. But the only way people will know the truth is if you show it to them every day with your head held high.   It was one of the most difficult life lessons that I have ever had to learn.  The experience changed who I am and how I live my life.  That is what a life experience does.

Time and experiences change people.  From the outside you may still look the same, but on the inside, where those "names" injured you, you change. So here I am sharing this with you and hoping that my life lesson helps you realize two things.  First, that words do cause injuries and, second, that if you are a victim of bullying, even if everyone else deserts you, stand up for yourself and don't give away your power to the bully.  Because if you do, the bully wins.

If you are depressed, don't read this.

If I was depressed, I wouldn't listen to it.  So if you find yourself in a pretty good place right now, I have something to tell you.  "Live Life on Purpose."

I just found this sign hanging in my daughter's bedroom.  She was just home from graduate school and she must have put this sign up while she was here because I don't remember it being there before.  As I was changing her bed, the sign hit me like a ton of bricks.  Not literally, but figuratively.  If you haven't seen the movie, "About Time," you should see it.  Between the sign and the movie, I have had a new "a-ha" moment.

We all have had times in our lives when maybe we didn't make the best decision or we didn't appreciate something or someone like we should have.  We'd like to go back and do those times over and, hopefully, do them right this time.  But the truth is that if we are aware of it . . . if we can live our lives with the understanding that we can never get this moment back again . . . if we are careful about what we say and what we do so that we can be our best selves, then maybe we won't ever think, "Gee, I wish I had done that better."

Instead, "Live Life on Purpose."  A simple thought, but one that encompasses so many thoughts.