Category: Pondering Quietly

Some deep thoughts in the shallows of my mind, some shallow thoughts . . . somewhere else.

fair

On the deck, waiting for the school bus.  Julia has taken it home two days this week and it has been ok.  So, yes, I have seen at least one kid move away from her when she gets on — we are not going to change the world.  We, she and I, keep talking and she has a few allys to stand up for her.

For the first time ever, Julia has a great many feelings about school ending.  AND school closes in two weeks.  She walked around the school the other day taking pictures with her iPad and then told me about them when she got home.  She has been crabby and grumpy.  She is telling me that she is excited about middle school but also that she will miss people.  Julia is inhabiting so much more of her world than she did a few years ago, so much more than last year.  (A side note: When Julia’s special ed teacher ask her about being crabby, Julia told her that she was crabby because of her period.  Her period actually ended on her crabby day but what surprises me is that she said that.  I have not talked about hormones effecting behavior either seriously or in jest.  I wonder where she heard it.  And this, just another sign of her being in her world.)

I mulched another part of the front garden for most of the day.  Did three trips to the mulch site — city owned and managed — and loaded up my plastic containers and black leaf bags.  I can only take as much as I can hold in my trunk.  If I use the back of the car, it stinks for most of the summer.  I’ve been doing one or two trips a day and gotten tired and sore.  Evidently the gardening chops are coming back.  Whew.

Much later.  Night now. Sitting outside on the deck in the dark.  It is still delightful!  My neighborhood is as quiet as a small city neighborhood can be.  People walking dogs chatting on phones or walking themselves with partners or friends and doing the same live.  Traffic from the surrounding busier streets and sirens going to our nearby hospitals — sirens and ambulances have such powers of remembrance.  So this is not the country like I imagine my sister’s porch on her farm in Virginia.  This is not a mythical fire escape in Brooklyn, but there are a few stars above, enough to wish on, and the leaves are finally thick enough to muffle the outside world.  I am pretty happy sitting here tapping away.

So, sitting on my deck in the dark tapping away is something that I’ve often longed to do but have kept myself from doing.  All the is conventional in me knows that my mother would have disapproved, and probably David would have disapproved.  And once the mosquitoes come out in full force, I will need no one’s disapproval to send me inside.  But for tonight, for right now, I am grateful for this delicious night.  I am grateful to not care if I am seen and thought odd.  I am grateful for stars and leaves and fresh spread mulch.  I am just grateful.

I read this lovely blog piece this morning “disney das” (http://adiaryofamom.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/disney-das/) — a review on the revised program at Disney for access for people with challenges.  I thought it was pretty evenly written, no rants and few complaints.  I agree with most of it.  Like that writer, Julia and I managed the theme parks pretty well at Christmas.  We were very laid back and Julia is very able to understand that we could sign up for a ride and then come back later, but like the writer, I need to acknowledge that the current policy would have been a night mare when we were there a few years ago.  And I think about those in our position a few years ago, those who will never be in as good a position as we were a few years ago, and wonder if that “happiest-place-on-earth” will even be a possibly for them.  There are always a few comments to that type of blog entry that show a complete lack of understanding of the family that have members with challenges.  The writer was accused of wanting a “better experience” for her children than is possible for other children and of taking more than her fair share of rides when a child with autism is skipped to the front of a long line.  One commenter — parent of a child with a “real” disability which translates to a physical disability — expressed his/her disapproval that the rise of autism diagnoses is the real reason for the change of policy.  If one in  68 kids gets a diagnosis, might that translate to one in 68 disney-visiting families asking for special treatment?  And how is that “fair” to those with “real” disabilities?

I admit to the usual initial feelings of anger and frustration towards these commentors but as I read on, it was the lack of understanding, the lack of generosity and the scarcity thinking of the writers that breaks my heart.  There was unwillingness to stand in the shoes of another.  Selfishness and utter and complete self-absorption.  Most of all, it is a lack of imagination.

Visiting popular theme parks can take planning and strategy for all families, but how many families with typical members plan that same way when they go grocery shopping or holiday visiting to grandparents or to the movies or a sibling’s school play.  How many parents need to scrutinize childcare providers for their 15 year olds or teach their children about safely crossing streets every day for three years.  And all of this kind of planning is easy-peasy compared to the planning that some parents engage in.  And so, that GAC (Guest Assistance Card) at Disney was a gift to those families.  For once, a family could indulge in the pleasures of an amusement park the same way that typical families go food shopping.  I guess to that extent the situations of families with typical members and those with members with disabilities changed places.  It was the typical families who needed to engage in strategy to make their way through possible melt downs  on long lines — still the typical four year old’s melt down is unremarkable compared to a nine year old on the spectrum tantruming.  The families with kids with disabilities was free to indulge in delights the way typical families might go from store to store in a shopping mall — almost unimaginable for many of us.

How to open the hearts of those who feel the pie is too small for pieces for all?  There is enough!  How to build empathy, compassion and community?  Even at a theme park and on a school bus.  Surely, this is what we all need — those who would begrudge Julia and I skipping to the front of the line for “It’s a small world” and me who can easily conjure up a dozen uncomfortable experiences to “help” the complainers understand my world.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

all’s well . . .

All’s well . . . although I can’t be sure it will  end well.  For now, all’s well.  Small gratitudes are gratitudes all the same.

It has been a week since I heard from “downtown” — the school’s district’s office that is running the music experience in July.  I wrote an email to the woman I spoke to last week:

Dear B,

We spoke on the 13th about finding support for my daughter, J, so that she can participate in the summer music experience.  I wanted to check in with you to find out how that is coming along.  If you have difficulty finding an aide for her, I should be able to come up with a short list of people who would be interested in doing it.

Thanks for your help,

S

The response came quickly, about a half hour later:

Hi S.

Thank you for checking in on this.  I am working with our Human Resources Department to secure an SEA; they’ll use the list of applicants for summer school.  I sent an email this morning checking on the status and will let you know as soon as I can when we’ve secured an SEA for Julia.

Thanks very much, b

Later, I wrote back with the name of the person who has been her strings aide all year.  We — myself and the SEA — would love to have her spend the music experience with Julia but I don’t really expect that the PTB will take my suggestion.  Still, it is worth a try.  I am just so relieved that I didn’t have to put on battle gear.  I will send our communication notebook and ask whoever the SEA is to let me know how the class goes.  I would not be surprised if there are still some lumps along the road but the big barrier to Julia’s attendance has been removed.

Relief floods in.

Just before I picked Julia up from school, I talked to her principal.  He had called as I was headed to school and I was thankful that he initiated the calling.  On Friday, I sent him an email about the bullying and he responded during the weekend that he would explore the issues.

He talked to all the kids who were involved in some way.  Julia and her supporters told the same story, as did the fourth graders who were bully followers.  The perpetrator did not deny any of the behavior and did not come up with a good reason for it.  He is not a powerful or popular kid and Julia is not his only target.  It sounded like some of his targets are bigger than he is and the principal pointed out to this boy that it was really not in his best interest to push around bigger and stronger kids.  (One of my concerns is that Julia, for all her training to “walk away” or “report to an adult” may one day find the end of her rope and deck the bully.  She is fully capable of doing that.  We cannot forget that she used to fight for food and win.) The boy was told he did something wrong and that his parents were called.  At that point, the boy broke down and cried although I expect it was from the anticipation of parental correction and not from the realization of his wrongdoing.  The hope is that if his behavior changes the younger boys following him will back off.  I know that I wrote that I wanted to punch him out, I really don’t want to bring him down in any way.  Rather, I want  to get him to stop doing what he is doing.  He was also told that if news of continued bullying trickled down to the principal again, that being removed from the bus and suspension were apt descriptions of consequences.

I hope that this solves our bus bully problems for the semester.  I am however, stymied as to the reason this boy does what he does.  I know, I know the reasons in text-book phycology language but to see it played out is bewildering to me.  I was either raised right or raised much too timid but the urge to exert power over those with vulnerabilities never existed in me.  However, in the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I did attack one neighborhood boy when I was in fourth or fifth grade.

Tommy Sopko lived three doors down from our family and he was one of a bunch of brothers.  He was in my class at St. Thomas the Apostle elementary school and had terrorized me since my arrival there in third grade.  I don’t know if I had been told or it was instinctual but I knew that my stutter made me a prime target for what we called ‘teasing’ of any kind.  I got out of Tommy’s way, said nothing, never reported it, cried a few times at home and was told or ignore the ‘teasing.’  Tommy was a bully, to be sure.

One very rainy morning, I was walking to school with my brother who was 2 years behind me in school, when Tommy fell in behind us and started his socially acceptable banter, except this time he started making fun of my brother — over what, I don’t remember.  My brother, for any of his little brother faults, had no obvious target pinned on his back.  I distinctly remember being in a irritable mood — rain, sharing an umbrella, heavy book bag and who know what little brother complaints.  Tommy was on our heels, under the back of our umbrella, taunting, teasing, bullying, first me and then my brother.  At that moment, I had enough and I had a weapon.  I turned on him and started hitting him with the umbrella.  I remember his stunned face!  And then his running from us.  I do also remember the powerful feelings coursing through me.

One of his parents came over to our house that evening, complaining about my behavior.  I suspect that I must have left some mark with my umbrella.  I can’t imagine that he would have told his parents of being beat up by a girl otherwise.  I was asked why I beat up Tommy on the way to school and I think I stuttered out my reasons.  I have no idea what was said, but I did not apologize (timid but stubborn), I was not punished after they left and was not told to keep my umbrella to myself.

What I felt then was a self-righteous victory over an oppressor, but it was a feeling of power.  I wonder how it compares with our bully’s feeling.  Could telling Julia that she is stupid feel as good as beating up Tommy Sopko with an umbrella?

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

will and grit and persistence

I wrote this next thinking about a grieving friend at the beginning of the month.  These thoughts did not seem appropriate to send but I like them.  It is me writing to the me of three years ago.  It is the affirmation of that part of the struggle.  That part of the path.  And so —

Again, thinking of you.  Our season is finally changing — snow mounds shrinking and turning a uniform gray, people walking without huddled, squashed faces and birds singing with unbridled enthusiasm.  During the first years after David’s death, changes of season were are hard as holidays and family celebration days. I wrestled with the twin pulls of a past that I could not re-create and a future that looked awfully bleak.  The first fall I wanted to paste the leaves back onto the trees and paint them green.  I did not want David to miss the autumn.  The solace I found was in the center — putting rice into the cooker at the end of the day, running around the block holding on to the back of Julia’s bike as she learned to ride a two wheeler, reading about atypical development in children, walking the dog and shopping for food.  Searching for and then finding the quiet center.  This process of grieving is not passive.  True, some of it seems to require vast amounts of sleep that can be impossible to get.  So much requires will and grit and persistence.  It is work.

Even in the depths of despair there needs to be an ember of wanting some future that will not hurt so much.  To have any less is to lose the future to the past and not touch the present.

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fun

Julia got out of school at 10:45 and I was in a LEND workshop helping to facilitate for the day. One of our respite providers was able to stay with Julia until 2 and then dropped her off at Waisman. Julia hung out and on her iPad while I finished up my day.

It has been my habit to go home after a day like this and have a work night. Math, reading, cello, social studies and anything else that Julia needs to be working on. And a decent supper from scratch or the freezer. We do not take many days off.

And so, we took the rest of today off. We went to a 4:40 show of the Lego Movie and for the first time ever, I wished I was a 9 year old boy who was obsessed with Lego. The plot was nothing to speak of but it was fun and silly and had some really cool Lego effects — my favorite was the undulating Lego ocean. We had popcorn and stayed through the credits. When we got home, Julia dragged out her Legos and went to building — of course, what else? And I made some rice and scrambled eggs with rice. We watched another episode of Star Trek and Julia went to bed. I am looking for fun. Some undemanding, indulgent, un-useful fun.

It has been a long time since fun has been on the agenda. I don’t know if that is mainly because of the therapeutic life that we’ve led or grieving. Or some combination of the two. There is so much work to do but recently I remember weekend afternoon naps while Miazaki was on the tv, walks, just walks, toys all over the house and long conversations with a beer. I remember Julia laughing much more than she does now as a rule. And I can remember this without tears or depression or regret. I can hold the sadness and still wish I was a 9 year old boy. I realize that I’ve never had the discussion with anyone about balancing a therapeutic life with fun but perhaps I need to find someone to have that discussion with.

It is time for fun.

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miracles

I am in the midst of spring cleaning. It is a diversion. I would much rather be working on the garden but there is still some snow and where no snow, there is mud. And even if the mud dried enough to be tillable soil it is too cold to be kneeling in it.

So, I’ve decided to clean. I started on the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs because I usually start downstairs. Yesterday, I worked on the third bedroom, nominally designated Cheshire’s room, but she has never lived there. Her bedroom furniture lives there and some clothes. David took over that room when we moved in because there was not enough closet space in our room. Later he moved a desk for writing. Then a bookcase. When his medical paraphernalia out grew the bathroom medicine cabinet — by that time, I had long abandoned the medicine cabinet leaving only my tooth brush and paste behind — and the top of his dresser, the desk became mission control for pills and charts and monitoring equipment.

I had forgotten how much this was David’s room with Cheshire’s bed in it. All of David’s stuff has been long gone and the room stripped of everything but what belongs to Cheshire. I change the bedding when Cheshire or a guest comes and I lay out my clothes before travel on the bed, but the room could all but disappear and we would not miss it. There are lined and insulated shades on the windows to keep temperature stable when it is very cold or very hot. Yesterday, I spent more time in that room than I have ever spent.

As I moved furniture around to clean, I rearranged. It is a small room, so bed, dresser and vanity have a finite arrangement. When I put everything back against walls, it was probably the arrangement that I used when we first moved into the house. Something — dare I say Chi or spirit or something not of this world, perhaps something inside of me — was stirred up. It was as if there was something stored in this room, something that I could not let go of or something that was not ready to be released. I don’t usually have any emotional attachment to the act of cleaning. I only do it because something is dirty. I like a clean space but if someone else was to do it, I would feel no loss of process. As I cleaned yesterday, I gathered emotion. I was overcome with sadness. I felt an emptiness, a heaviness. I felt an anxiousness. If I could have, I would have opened windows although I don’t think that an open window would have dispelled the gloom. I did not remove myself from the sadness but it was dammed hard to be present to it.

Then, last night, I decided that the room needed to look like a guest room. It needed to be inviting, something that would not be so bad to do for Cheshire’s visits either. I wanted new bedding, the rearrangement of pictures and some retrieved from storage. It needed a rug, new shades and the vanity stool recovered. The room seemed to beg for a happy, bright green, something with stripes, flowers. Something of Mexico and the Caribbean. I began looking at rugs online and found a red rug for my living room. (My living room rug is old and worn, but I had not gotten to thinking about replacing it.) And I found some happy green rugs that would look good in the bedroom.

And then I had to stop myself and take a few very deep breaths. What was I doing? I was looking to bring color and movement and the visual joy into the house again. I don’t mean that I’ve lived with blinds drawn and grey drapes over furniture but everything, almost everything, had had a muted, soft, comforting feel. I have made it that way, left it that way until there was reason for change. There has been very little passionate Chi zipping around this house.

And now I am feeling that it should not be so. Let the shopping begin! Integration, change, healing. It happens when I least expect it. It happened cleaning. It recognized it by wanting to decorate, to shop — activities that I don’t associate with myself. It crept up on me when I I was not looking for it, when I was humming along with some tunes and windexing the mirror. All these happy, busy feelings which nicely coincide with the coming of spring — if and when that comes — may disappear tomorrow. May at the very least fade tomorrow. Still, I am grateful for yesterday and today. For the miracle effectuated by a spring cleaning.

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grieving

Grieving: the state of the journey.  I am writing short emails of support to someone whose partner has died.  I find I care deeply, wanting to ease pain, wanting to stand beside.  Not expecting anything back but enormously grateful that I have something to give.  I read his sparse words and I remember how much everything hurt for me.  I remember how deeply I was cared for Lisa and Marcia and Mary and Amy.  I remember their care as some soft, warm, weightless fabric wrapping around me and holding me tight.  I knew that it was there and I could lean into it.  They carried my weighty pain and listened and listened and listened.  Their insistence on care . . . I wonder if they were ever in contact with each other . . . was almost orchestral.  I had nothing to give back to them for such a long time.  Now I am full of gratitude that I am filled enough to give to someone, even if it is not one of them.

My friend wrote that he missed his partner, “as you do your beloved David.” I paused on an in breath for a moment when I read that.  Miss David?  No, I do not miss David.  I do not miss him in the way of those first days and weeks and months.  I remember missing when he was alive and due home after work although the visceral memory of that takes on the character of a photograph.  I remember what it may have felt like but I can’t quite feel it any more.  I remember those first awful weeks and months of such active missing that I could almost believe, irrationally but somehow not impossibly, that he would satisfy my intensity by appearing.  I remember when missing was the dominant emotion–sometimes the only emotion–I had.  I remember being broken anew each day because he did not return and I was moving further away from him.

And that is exactly what time has done.  He did not appear and the time that has passed has driven me further from the intensity of actively missing someone who will never return.  At some point, missing implies return, at least for me.  Perhaps others can hold onto it longer than I.  For me, the time and the work that I have done reclaiming my life has driven the searing pain of missing to the deepest part of me, so deep that it has become the fossil rock which serves as foundation to the present.  The missing has sunk into my soul and is the warp and woof of the fabric of my being and the weave is tight.  Perhaps this is integration and it comes with some peace.  It does not replace the joy of long-time love nor the possibility of anticipated return but it sits close by.

Being a support, I can I hope for a better friend — strange how I was his partner’s friend more than his.  We were couples friends and there were times we divided along gender lines.  Even when that was not the case, I kept in touch with his partner.  She was my friend. Now, if I am to have a friend, it must be him.  How odd. I feel like I am walking through a door into some new dawn of relationships.  I think of some of the women that I have gotten to know since David died.  Some were already widows or single after separation, two have had husbands die since I met them.  We meet in coffee shops to talk and death is never far from the conversation, sometimes not mentioned but there.

These are relationships not based on death but where death is one of the things we have in common.  Like bad mothers or children in the same grade or gardening.  We have what we have in common to talk about as common as talk about nasturtiums and hollyhocks and signing up for summer camp.  When I reflect, it seems like this is a natural progression but I didn’t know I was getting to it so quickly.  I bumped into someone at the Honda Dealership where I was getting an oil change.  We did the MBSR class together last spring.  She had just returned from a bicycling vacation in the Philippines with her husband.  We talked of meditation and group sits and vacationing.  We don’t have death in common.  The topic did not sit between us.  I do look on her with a touch of envy.  I will never be where she is again.  I know too much.

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boxes

Last night, during a 45 minute sit, the idea that I have lived all my life in boxes that were like the shell-homes of sea creatures who scavenge used shells came to mind. None of the shells fit particularly well, some were awful fits, but I have been so long with these make-do definitions of myself that I no longer remember what it is to be comfortable, to be real. I don’t really know who I am. I cannot define myself and I am baffled to explain how others see me. I could have said this, realized this years ago but I would have then blamed my parents, my mother specifically for trying to force me into roles that I was not made to play and for never supporting those roles which were intrinsic to me. Perhaps that is true for the earliest boxes but I need to claim responsibility for many, many of the ill-shaped definitions of myself. I have inhabited shells of so many sizes and shapes when I could have designed my own. I have not defined myself in my own terms for so long that I have no idea where to start.

I am both eager and scared to leave my ill-fitting boxes behind.

Julia will be fit in no existing box. We are studying for her social studies test tomorrow. The topics are the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the Amendments, Manifest Destiny, acquiring the west, wars with Mexico, treaties with Britain and the Trail of Tears. She has memorized the answers to about 40 multiple choice questions. I am not sure how much she understands. Then again, what did I understand about unreasonable search and seizure and due process in fifth grade? She is compliant about the work of memorization that we’ve been doing all weekend and again today. If she was a typical child, I would not question the importance of the learning. I would figure, I did figure with Cheshire, that she would understand in time and the fifth grade test was a training ground for when her understanding would mature and she was able to respond to questions from understanding and not memorization. So, should I be questioning this with Julia? I do.

Sitting at IDS during Julia’s therapy time. Another child, a girl at least as old as Julia, perhaps a bit older, comes out to see her mom. She is teary. She hates group. She does not want to participate with the other kids. There is one kids she particularly dislikes (she doesn’t say who). Her mother calms her down and eventually she goes to talk to the people at the front desk. She has returned to calm and she can explain her unhappiness to her therapist.

I compare this girl’s behavior to Julia’s and wonder if Julia has the awareness to do what the girl did. I don’t think so. Not now at least.

We are working on math word problems. I feel like I’ve been here before. We worked on the easiest word problems before she had all of her facts. Now she has her facts but figuring out what operation to use for a problem is still challenging. We work slowly through each one. Ex.: J has 6 bracelets. B has 4 bracelets. They put them together in a bag. How many bracelets are in the bag. We draw it out. We use little cubes. Deciding on addition is far from automatic. Still, she does know that 6 + 4 = 10. If we can get to an operation, she can do it.

I worry. That I see a limit. I worried that she would never count. Never add. I might learn from that.

I would like to rid myself of worry, of constantly casting into the future. I cannot see any use for it. Especially with Julia.

Especially with me.

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kindness

Last week, in the freezing cold, the eight other kids at the school bus stop stood back to let Julia get on the bus first in order to avoid having her sit with them.  I wanted to do something . . . no, I don’t expect to change THE world or even OUR little corner, but I’d like us to be part of the solution. And so, I put this piece in this week’s school newsletter:

What did you do that was kind today?

Imagine that every parent in our Franklin Randall community asked their child this question at the end of the school day or at the supper table or before they turned out their child’s bedroom light.

What did you do that was kind today?

Our schools do all they can to teach and encourage kindness and to discourage bullying.  My daughter’s teachers at Franklin and Randall have gone far beyond their job descriptions to instill the ideals of inclusion and open heartedness among their students.  And I have often pondered what more can parents do?  How can I reinforce the character building that she is learning at school?

What did you do that was kind today?

This morning I observed once again that the kids on the school bus went to great lengths to avoid sitting with my daughter.

My daughter is one of those kids who will always be picked on and excluded.  Someone will be mean to her perhaps every day for the rest of her life, and she is not the only one.  My heart hurts for her and it also hurts for all the others.  I can’t stop other kids from excluding, segregating and being mean.  As a parent, I’ve felt powerless in the face of mean girls and cool boys.

But I can teach my daughter about kindness.  I can teach her how to create the world that will include, nourish and cherish all people. I want to build on what she is learning at school.  I want her to help bring an inclusive, loving community into existence.

And so, I will begin asking her every day when we sit down to talk about her school day, “What did you do that was kind today?”  I will ask her if she saw anyone who needed kindness, and I will suggest how she might be kind tomorrow.  Further, I will intentionally model kind behavior and I will talk about that behavior with her.

Will you join me?

What did you do that was kind today?

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 2

Again

Written 10 January 2014

In double digits and the year is not quite as new as it was last week.  Our construct of time is a strange entity.  Even though I tell myself that dating is arbitrary and days are all the same, I cannot let go of the sparkle of a new year.  I feel the chance to begin again when everyone else is beginning again.

Today is the first day of my online course with MindfulSchools.org.  It came online at noon and I have not had time to sit down and read through orientation, let alone the first lesson.  I am such a geek!

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Pleasing

I had my engagement ring that was a moonstone in a gold band setting reset.  I loved the ring but my knuckles are bigger than they were 30 years ago and the ring no longer fit on any finger, unless pinkies count but this was not a pinky ring.  So, I found someone to redo it last month and she did a very nice job.  I picked it up on Wednesday and started wearing it.

And no one said anything.

Well, I haven’t seen that many people in the last two days and I am wearing gloves a lot of the time and I can probably come up with more reasons no one noticed but the main reason that no one noticed is that there is no one who is committed to noticing — what I do, what I wear, and how I feel.  This is a time of learning to do for myself and only myself.

It is true that on occasion Julia notices a little bit — a red sweater that she hasn’t noticed before, perfume — but generally I am unremarkable to her.  I could make the same supper for her almost every day and as long as I switched out jasmine rice and noodles once in a while, she’d never notice.  This is not much different from her typically developing peers but a typically developing kid might notice out of politeness if nothing else.  This is a social skill that Julia is very far from understanding.

I guess . . . no, it’s true.  I have been seeking approval and recognition forever!  I don’t mean that I’ve never done anything for myself, of course, I have, but never completely.  Everything was in some way in hopes of pleasing.

Where it came from is easy — mother.  I had a mother I could never please.  I knew that very early but I kept on trying.  However, the more I tried, or rather, when I tired hard, whatever I was trying at was very far from anything that she would ever approve of.  For a child yearning for approval, we were a mismatched pair.  There were very few “good jobs” or high fives in our house. I brought my well-learned lesson to friends and lovers.  I imposed it on David — I don’t think that pleasing him was his idea.  It was very hard on my when he did not like/approve/enjoy because of something I did or some idea I had.

I could go on about this but the present lesson that I am learning is to please myself.  Is this finding myself?  It is very hard.  Having no one to please has left a huge hole in the reason I wake up in the morning — why write, why clean, why cook, why accomplish.  Slowly, very slowly, I feel a turning.  The house is comfortable . . . for me.  This redone ring . . pleases me.  Travel that we do, clothes I buy, the big ginger cat that lies on my lap is for me.  I wonder if I will come to enjoy this pleasing.  If I can just enjoy what I do, how will I change?

Strange new world.

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