Aunt Nini and Uncle Will

When I was a child, my mother's aunt and uncle came to live with us.  I don't remember a time before they lived with us, I think they moved into my Mom and Dad's house in the summer of 1962.

At that time, Mom and Dad had four kids under the age of five, in a four room house with an expansion attic.  Mom and Dad used Time-Life Home Improvement books to finish most of the work in the attic to make three bedrooms and a half bath.

Uncle Will died shortly before my third birthday, but Aunt Nini (pronounced Nee-Nee) lived with us until I was nineteen, when she broke her hip and had to move to a nursing home.  She lived there until she died in 1983.

When I was growing up, I often thought about what a great guy my dad was to allow my mother to move her aunt and uncle into their house when it was already crowded with four children and two adults.  It wasn't until after my father died that I learned the real story.

Uncle Will was thirteen years older than Aunt Nini, and he was in failing health.  Uncle Will and Aunt Nini had no pensions, just Social Security, and Uncle Will's health care expenses had depleted most of their savings.  They were facing homelessness.

Uncle Will approached my father, and offered him the rest of their life savings to put the addition on the house, and to contribute to the household expenses through most of their Social Security, my father generously moved Aunt Nini and Uncle Will into our house.

I learned from my mother after Daddy died that Uncle Will and Aunt Nini's life savings was less than three hundred dollars.  Now three hundred dollars was a lot more money in 1962 than it is in 2017, but not enough to put an addition on a house.  My dad knew the deal he was getting.  He just couldn't bear the thought of Aunt Nini and Uncle Will having no where to go.

Our lives were so greatly enriched by having Aunt Nini and Uncle Will, and then Aunt Nini share our home.  When my daughter was a child, I often wished I had an Aunt Nini to live with me.

You see, Aunt Nini taught me how to brush hair without pulling, and along with her sister, my grandmother, taught me to sew, and embroider, and crochet, and darn, and iron, and cook.  Aunt Nini had the time to be patient with us.  She had the time to tell stories, and to listen to stories.  We were the only children on my Mom's side of the family (among her siblings), but my Mom's cousins were also Aunt Nini's nieces and nephews, so we saw them more than we would have otherwise when they came to visit her.

All of my cousin's on my Dad's side grew up calling Aunt Nini their aunt.  Every girl cousin, and every bride of a boy cousin received a hand crocheted afghan as a shower gift before their marriage.  I hear from my cousin's and their wives that many of those afghans are still in use.

Back to having an Aunt Nini.  Going on a trip? No worries about a pet sitter, Aunt Nini is here.  Sick child?  No worries about who will stay home from work, Aunt Nini is here.  Summer vacation?  No need for camp or child care, Aunt Nini is here.  The only normal I knew involved three generational living.  There was always another adult in a pinch.

That doesn't mean that we didn't have baby sitters.  When we were all small, Mom and Dad always got support in for Aunt Nini, but she was the constant presence in the house.  When you believed that Mom and Dad were mean, she had a gentle way of pointing out that they were just trying to help you grow up right.  When you felt lonely, she was there with stories, and with listening, and with the distraction of a new craft to learn.

It wasn't all perfect having three generations in the house, and after my daughter was born, four generations, but it was an amazing blessing.

My Dad's act of generosity to Uncle Will and Aunt Nini became a gift to all of us.  There is so much I know that I wouldn't know, there were so many comforts I wouldn't have enjoyed, there was so much security that would have not existed if we hadn't experienced having Aunt Nini and Uncle Will in our home.

Often we reach a crossroads where we have to make the choice to reach out a hand of kindness, and sacrifice some comfort.  Because of growing up the way I did, I was blessed to see that the reach of kindness bestows blessings you can't even imagine.   And it is always worth it.

The face you show the world

I had the worst cold sore/fever blister outbreak I can ever remember having last week, and it is still ongoing.  Cold sores are caused by the herpes simplex 1 virus, and most humans have the virus present in their bodies, although not all humans get cold sores.

In my experience, stress is the most common trigger for an outbreak for me, followed by sun exposure without protection.

Cold sores are ugly.  They start as a tingling or itching sensation, and then small fluid filled blisters form.  The blisters almost inevitably break, and then the open sores crust over and bleed.  I always feel like my face looks gross when I have a cold sore outbreak.

This one was so bad that my entire lower lip was like an open wound.  It hurt like hell, and looked worse.

I hate to leave my house when I have a cold sore outbreak.  When I was working, I had to.  And my regular co-workers knew that I was subject to cold sore outbreaks, and were sympathetic.  This past week I noticed my younger friends just asked what was wrong with my lip, and my older friends just tried to not look at me.  My teacher friends were the ones who acted most normally.  And I appreciated the hell out of them for that.

I feel like the general public is not sympathetic, or understanding, and wants to stay away from you because you look gross and contagious.

And cold sores are contagious.  I have been scrupulous my adult life when I have an outbreak, washing my hands constantly, and being very aware of not contaminating anyone.  I throw away my toothbrush when there are no more open sores, and throw away all lip balms and lipsticks that may have been contaminated.  But I still feel like people recoil when they see me in public.

And that got me to thinking about how difficult it must be to live with a disfiguring condition.  I also suffer from psoriasis outbreaks, but they have always been on my scalp or my arms, and I was always able to cover the scaly patches.  There is a commercial on television in the United States right now where people talk about the embarrassment of psoriasis, and this past week I truly appreciate their pain.

There are so many people who have to present a different than usual appearance to the world.  Some because of missing limbs, some because of malformed limbs, some with facial deformities from birth, some with scars from accidents or surgery or war.

It is really important to see the person inside the body.  Bodies can be damaged or altered in any number of ways that do not take away the beautiful soul within.  When we focus on the external shell, and when we recoil or back away because that external presentation does not meet some cultural definition of beauty or health, we can do great damage to the soul within.

I tried to go about my business with this grossness on my lips as if it weren't there.  But it is.  And people react.  And I react to their reaction.  And my heart hurts a little bit.  And I want to hide.

But I go back out, because this is temporary, and I'm tough enough to handle the recoil and the disgusted faces.  (And maybe all of this reaction is in my mind and not the world.)  Because there are so many people who have to be brave enough to face the world every day from a body that doesn't look or perform like what we have termed normal.

And if I'm not brave enough to face up and out through this little temporary challenge of mine, how can I support them with the long-term challenges they face?

I keep learning.  And the important lesson I learned this week is to never forget to really see people.  Not their bodies, their clothes, their hair, their car, their house; but them.

See their love and compassion.  See their fear and their pain.  See their humanity.  The vessel is not important.  The sacred soul within is what is important.

And when we try to see each other as beautiful souls just trying to get by, things can't help but get better for all of us.

Exit Strategy

I'm a planner.  I don't think I was born this way, but finding myself in situations that I didn't want to be in made me more and more of a planner.  Being a control freak, planning is one of my instruments of comfort.  Before I go to a party or an event, I've usually planned my exit.  To many people, that may sound strange, but for me, knowing that I am going to leave by a certain time, and take a certain route home allows me to relax and experience the now.

Exit strategies are more and less complex depending where I am and what I am doing.  One of the first things I do upon checking into a hotel room is to check the fire escape route.  How many doors between me and the stairs?  Do I turn right or left when leaving my room to reach the stairs?  This kind of planning can be life saving in an emergency situation.

Because I approach life this way, I am amazed at how many people never think about the next step, or the next natural decision.  I am amazed that people take a new job, or buy a new house, or a new car, without asking themselves, "What am I going to do if this doesn't work out?"  or put a different way, "What is my Plan B?"

Some people may think that it is a depressing way to approach life, always thinking about what you will do in a failure situation.  I think it is pragmatic.  There will be failures.  There will be unanticipated consequences.  There will be situations that you find yourself in that you need to get yourself out of.  Thinking through what could happen and making a plan for it is just practical in my book.

Fortunately for me, my husband is cut from the same cloth.  One memorable incident happened a number of years ago, when traveling home from West Virginia.  We realized before we got on the road that morning that we would be passing through Tuscaloosa, Alabama on the day that the Louisiana State University Tigers college football team would be playing the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team.  There is an intense rivalry between these two teams, and as the distance between the two main campuses is less than 350 miles, there is always a huge traveling fan base for the game.

Our travel plans were going to have us going through Tuscaloosa on game day.  Not game time, but game day, so we knew there would be extraordinary traffic, and that many of the drivers would be more focused on the upcoming game than on their driving.

I can hear someone out there saying in their head right now if I was such a good planner I would have traveled on another day, or taken another route.

We had gone to West Virginia for my mother-in-laws birthday, had to get back to Louisiana for work, and the only alternate route added hundreds of miles, so the best we could do in this circumstance was heighten our awareness of what hazards may await us on our trip.

Back to the point.  As we were coming to the point on our trip where Interstate 459, the Birmingham, AL bypass, was rejoining Interstate 59, my husband slowed down and got into the far right, or slow lane.  And it was a very good thing that he did that.  As we came to the merge point, two pickup trucks tried to occupy the same space in the merge lane.  They hit, and one of the trucks ricocheted across the highway.  My husband was able to go onto the shoulder and into the grass on the side of the road to avoid being hit by the ricocheting truck.  We could hear the crashes behind us.  At the final count, it was an eighteen car pile-up on the Interstate, that kept the road closed for hours.

We could have been behind it, but we left so that we would be on the other side of Tuscaloosa by five hours before game time.  We could have been in it, but for luck, and planning to be hyper vigilant.  I believe we avoided that accident by planning, and thinking through what could go wrong, and being ready when it did.

As hard as I try, I can't avoid or have a plan for everything that may go wrong.  But by thinking about and planning for different possibilities, I can also practice my coping strategy for when things do go wrong.

In a large way, it is all about preserving my illusion of control.  But by thinking about the what if, even when things do go wrong, when unforeseen events occur, I am more confident of my ability to change course.

That is the best thing trying to always have a Plan B does for you.  Once you have found a Plan B hundreds to thousands of times, you realize there is always a Plan B.  Even if you can't figure it out right at the moment.

But knowing there is one, and you can find it, is sometimes all you have to hang on to in a bad situation.

So friends, as much as you can, please try practicing analyzing what can go wrong, and making a plan for what you will do when it does.  It can be as small as what if they don't have the ice cream I want at the grocery store, to as big as what will I do if I lose my job.  But thinking about it, and knowing you have a plan can be incredibly powerful.  And can give you something to hang on to when it feels like everything is falling apart.

Things I don't understand

I am not, and never have been rich.  My husband and I are very comfortable now, we don't have to pinch pennies or worry about where the money will come from to pay the bills.  We have a nice house, cars that run well, and can afford to take vacations, and go to visit family.

We can't just spend money like crazy, or buy anything that catches our eye, but we are far better off than I ever could have imagined when I was much less comfortable.

There were times in my life when there was very little money.  Times when I had to move back into my parent's house because I couldn't afford to live independently with my daughter.  But I had parents to move in with.  There were times when I had to cycle through which bills to pay which month and which bills had to go past due.  I purchased toothpaste and tampons with credit cards because I didn't have any money left, and paid the minimum balances month after month.  The phone got turned off a number of times, but never the water, the electricity, or the gas for heat.

There were times when the entire food budget for me and my daughter for a week was ten dollars or less.  But we were never hungry.  We were never homeless.  And in the level of awareness I have in 2017, that makes me believe we were hard pressed, but never truly poor.

The strange thing is that although I was never truly poor, and I was never rich, I have a much easier time imagining what it is like to be poor, and have real empathy for those living in poverty.

I struggle to find a way to find a way inside the mind of the rich.

I don't understand having all you could ever need and still wanting more.

I don't understand buying power and influence instead of earning the right to be heard because your ideas merit an audience.

I don't understand begrudging the poor, or wanting people to stay in, or return to poverty, because it means that you have more.

I know intellectually there are rich people who help the poor.  Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Walton Family top the Forbes list of the 50 Biggest Givers.  The startling thing about those people is not how much they give, which is considerable, but how tiny a portion of their net worth their annual giving represents.   The percentage of net worth for the people listed ranges from 0.3% to 3.2%.  It is the person at number nine on the list that caught my attention though.

Chuck Feeney gave 15,650% of his net worth to charity in 2012.  He made his fortune founding Duty Free Shops.  Those places in airports where you can buy liquor and perfume and not pay taxes.

In 2012 he gave all but two million of the rest of his fortune away.  Estimates of his lifetime giving range from six billion to eight billion dollars.  He called it giving while living.  He saved enough to be comfortable, and used the rest to make the world a better place.

I contrast Chuck Feeney with people who use their money to buy politicians or lobbyists to get laws enacted so they can get richer, without regard to how those laws impact those who are struggling.

I understand a Chuck Feeney.  I understand keeping enough to live comfortably.  I understand wanting to leave something to your children.

And so in doing the research to write this post, something very important got reinforced.  You don't know anything about anyone just by what you can see.  I don't know the minds and hearts of either rich or poor people I don't know.

There are generous rich people, and there are generous poor people.  There are selfish and mean rich people, and there are selfish and mean poor people.

The news stories I read this morning tricked me into believing that I could 'know' something about someone because I can observe their financial or economic position in society.

The story of Chuck Feeney reminded me I 'know' very few people well enough to 'know' anything about them.

I still can't imagine what it is like to really be rich.  I hope that if I ever found myself rich, I would be a Chuck Feeney and give the excess money away to make the world a better place.   In the meantime, I'm glad I was reminded that there is much more that I don't know and understand then I think there is.

Why?

Oh, what a heavy heart I have today.

I just found out that a dear friend's great-grandson's family has decided to stop treatment and provide only palliative (comfort) care for the remainder of his life.  He has been in treatment trying to eradicate neuroblastoma for more than two years.  Today, ironically, is also his third birthday.

There have been multiple rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy since he was diagnosed at eleven months old.  He has gone into remission a couple of times, but the cancer has always come back.  This time it has come back so aggressively, there is no longer a viable treatment option.

His family have been amazing, and he has been a happy little guy, in spite of what he has endured in his short life.  There was a Facebook page set up to keep family and friends advised of his treatments and progress, and there were often videos posted showing him playing as he dragged his IV pole throughout Children's Hospital.

It is also the anniversary of the birth, and death of my cousin's baby.  He was born with a rare congenital disorder, and he only lived for a few hours after he was born.  But they got to hold him and love him while he was here.

This day has been sad since he was born and died in 2013.  Today's news layers on the sadness.

My regular readers know that I have a strong faith in God, and that I trust that there is a higher power in the universe.  When my heart is heavy, as it is today, I try to find comfort in turning to my God.

That doesn't mean I'm not questioning Him right now.  I don't understand why we have to have childhood cancers, and horrible congenital non-survivable birth defects.

I've come to accept that the horrific chemical warfare in Syria, and the bombing of hospitals, the rejection of refugees, the terrible toll of gun violence; those are all created by humans in spite of a loving God.

But when it comes to famine, or disease; I just don't understand why those things have to exist.  I don't understand why God made or allows those things.

And I draw comfort from what Sister Eustace told me in the first grade.  God is infinite.  You are finite.  Your finite mind can never understand the infinite, so you have to believe.  That is what faith is.

So today, I am trying to have faith that my cousin's baby is in a better place.  A place of love, surrounded by those family members who have also died.  I am trying to believe that my friend's great-grandson is going to that same better place, where he too will spend eternity surrounded by love, never to experience an IV or a chemotherapy treatment again.

There are those who will find my faith amusing, or misguided.  Believing in an afterlife where everything is beautiful is viewed by many as an opiate for the masses that allows the powerful to mistreat us and manipulate us.

I believe in a Higher Power.  I believe there is a great architect of the universe.  I believe that there are forces for good, and forces for evil that exist in spite of a Higher Power.  I believe prayer is as healing for the person offering prayer as it is for the person for whom prayer is offered.

Just the act of writing what I believe has strengthened my belief, and brought me comfort.

I will cry many times today.  My tears are not for me, but for the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles and all those who have lost a child to disease or accident.

But I will also pray.  And I will believe that there is something more than that which I see.  I will believe that all those I love and all those you love who left this plane of existence will be reunited with us someday.

I have to believe that.  It is the only way to keep on going.

Always Obsessing

I have no idea why it is, but I always have to be obsessing about something.  Today, I am obsessing about free will, and compromise, and being part of a unit that is bigger than yourself.

I know many single people.  They are single for different reasons.  Some by active choice, some because they never found the right person, some because of divorce or death.  I've never really been a single person.  I was sixteen when I married the first time, and then I had my daughter, so that is not really single, and I married my now husband at twenty-seven, so really never single in my adult life.

I did have more decision making latitude when it was just me and my daughter, because I was the adult, but she had to factor into all my decision making and planning.  The summers she was with her dad I had more autonomy, but that was still limited by the fact that she and I were a family unit.

After my daughter was grown, there was a window where my husband had a work assignment in Canada for nearly seven months.  I had more autonomy then too, but still, the marriage was intact, and all big decisions were still made as a partnership.

Where am I going with all of this?

I make a lot of decisions differently than I would make them if I were single.  In the early years of my marriage, I made quite a few mistakes that made my husband feel disregarded, as I made decisions as if I were the only adult.  Learning to be an equal partner was hard for me, as I had been used to trying to find the best solution for the family on my own.

That made me realize that as much as I had tried to be considerate of my daughter and her needs in my decision making prior to being married, my daughter probably often felt disregarded.

I approach the world differently than my husband, so there are many things that I would do differently if i didn't have to consider his feelings and opinions and seek compromise.  Most of the time, it is really small stuff, and I don't give it much thought, sometimes though, it is bigger and weighs on me.

I guess in a perfect world, compromise is natural and comfortable.  It is often very uncomfortable in my world.  I sometimes feel like all the uncomfortable compromise is on my side.  And that thought is quickly followed by the idea that maybe my husband is better at accepting the times the compromise is uncomfortable for him.

The bottom line is that even with the people you love the most, compromise can be difficult.   Sometimes compromise is uncomfortable, because it is not what you want.  Often, to keep a member of your immediate family happy, someone in your extended family will not be happy with you.  To be perfectly honest, at times like that I hate that I have to compromise.

But I get over it, and I make the compromises necessary to preserve the relationships that I treasure.  I accept that sometimes the compromise I make causes hurt feelings, and I hope the relationships are strong enough to withstand the hurt.  I accept that part of the burden of compromise is keeping a unified front, and never putting the onus on someone else.  I have to own the decision, even if it is not one I would have made on my own.

But throughout the process, I will obsess.  I will question the decision made.  I will question whether or not all possible decisions were evaluated.  I will continue to vocalize that the decision is a compromise, and my decision would have been different if I had been allowed to make a different decision.

I suppose some people possess the capability to make a compromise on a decision, and then just move forward.  I wish I could be one of those people.  Until then, I'll keep obsessing until I make internal peace.

If you are struggling in your life with a compromise, or a decision, or just because life is hard; I want you to know that I am with you in spirit.  You have a companion in struggle today.  I will lift you up in my heart that you find peace, and I hope you will do the same for me.

Senior Olympics

On April 2, I participated in the New Orleans Senior Olympic Games Track and Field events.  The volunteers put on a really nice event.  This was my first time, so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect.

I won the gold medal in the 800 meter and 1500 meter racewalk events.  I did well for my abilities and training, with a 5:01 800, and a 9:31 1500, so I was pleased with my performance.

What was disappointing was that I was the only woman in the events.

I know racewalking is kind of a strange sport, but only one participant for an area with over a million people was sad.  And I only saw two other women participants in all the events.

When I go to road races in New Orleans, there is always a good number of women, and even a good number of women who would qualify for the senior games.  I wonder why they don't?

And maybe just Track and Field events are lightly attended, and the other sports get better turn out.

I always thought that the Senior Olympics drew big crowds, and I was kind of embarrassed to go, thinking I would be so far behind the other participants that everyone would know I didn't belong.

And there goes that perception versus reality thing again.  Until you go and actually experience something, you have no idea what you will find.

The more times I try something new that intimidates me, the more I realize that the world is less scary in reality than it often is in my mind.

Those lingering doubts about my physical abilities have stayed with me from my youth.  I was the kid that stunk at physical education.  I did good at the calisthenics, but short races and coordination sports were not good for me.  I usually got picked last.  After all the years of running and racewalking competitively, and doing well in my age groups, you would think the intimidation factor would have gone down.

It hasn't.  And even when I do well, like I did yesterday, I have a hard time feeling good about my performance, because there is no comparative analysis.  My inside snarky voice says things like, "First Place because none of the good walkers showed up," and "You only won by default".  And no matter how hard I try to shut that voice up, I never quite succeed.

I can write for all of you to stop comparing yourself to others.  I can go on and on about how being the best you is all that is important.  I can get very passionate about how we are all given a unique set of gifts, and that your gifts are every bit as important as anyone else's.

On the inside though, I still struggle with self-acceptance, and with self-praise, as I imagine many of you do.  It is always easier to be someone else's cheering section than it is to be our own.

If there were self-doubt Olympics, I'll bet the competition for the Gold Medal would be ferocious.  There would be intense competition, as we bared our insecurities and weaknesses to show who found themselves most unworthy.

And isn't that just crazy?  I am going to try to use my experience at the Senior Olympics to remind myself to not ever be afraid to try.

I may fail, but there is no shame in failing when you try.

There was a 92 year old man at the Senior Olympics yesterday.  He will be 93 this month.  He won his age group in all his events.  I said to someone, "At 92, just being here and competing is winning," and I meant it.

My next goal in life is to really accept and embrace that whatever your age, just being out there and competing is winning.  No matter what stage you are in, or what stage you are on.

Life is a participation sport, not a competition sport.  Grab life with both hands, live it wide open, and experience all the joy you can.

Because very few of us will live on in record books, so the more memories we create with others, the more we share ourselves and our joy, the closer we get to living forever.

And the greater the chance will be that when we are remembered, it will be a memory accompanied by a smile.