Gardening On A Leg and A Half

I couldn't carry very much.  I had to plan ahead and bundle my errands.  I had to keep track of everything and remember not to leave anything behind because I really didn't want to have to walk any further than necessary.  But I managed to limp around with my cane and my equipment and my plants and my gloves and I spent three or four lovely hours in the sunny and breezy afternoon.  At the end,  everything I'd purchased at Rillito was in the ground and irrigated.  I even have the pictures to prove it.

One basket carried my two trowels and the delicious basil which almost ended up in the front courtyard but didn't.

See the cool walking stick?  Created by Daddooooo for our first Chanukah in Marin, I've decided that it is the perfect tool for this next stage of getting well.  It's really and truly mine:

There's my S in brass studs. 

The petunias are holding their own in the heat, though I imagine that they will be replaced by vinca before the Spring is over.  There are two in the front with the petunias and one in this sunshine pot I brought with me from Marin.   

Concert Pal gave me these before she left for the summer.  I'm not up to getting them into the ground right now; getting down onto the ground myself is still an issue.  So, for now, they sit to the side of the front hardscape, enjoying their plastic pots and mocking me.  I'll get there soon enough.

I moved around to the back yard and the raised veggie garden.

The basil and mini-yellow peppers went in after I finished working on the irrigation tubing.

The tomato plants start out with these pretty little flowers

and they turn into these little beauties

Despite my brother's protestations to the contrary, these are not Michael Pollan's $80 tomatoes.  These grape and yellow pear varieties will provide Mr. 5 and me with endless afternoons of snacking as we harvest and watch MOTG's handmade hummingbird feeder.

I might not be able to load 20 pounds of potting soil onto my garden cart, but I had a pretty successful day in spite of myself.  

The Americanization of Kimberly

I was there with her, that Girl in Translation.

I walked the streets of Brooklyn, wearing a too-thin jacket on my way to school. I rode the subway, studying as we traveled to Aunt Paula's factory. I froze in the roach-riddled apartment and lusted after Matt. I worried and I protected Ma and I was smart. I was very, very smart.

Her successes were my successes, her longings mine as well. Truly an outsider, she was clearer than I'd ever been about the inner workings of her high school's social hierarchy. Being different, having talent, surviving bad teachers and snotty classmates and jealous relatives -- my life was her life for 300 some pages.

Jean Kwok brings Kimberly and Ma into your life and embeds them in your heart. There is no whining, even when the situation warrants it. It's the two of them against the world, and their connection gives each of them the strength to move forward, upward, onward.

It's this connection that makes Girl in Translation such a special book. Thissemi-autobiographical novel renewed my faith in the power of positive thinking. Kimberly knows that she is talented, knows that she and she alone can rescue her little family, knows that there is an end to her pain. She is often beaten but she remains unbowed. She is focused and driven and because of that her travails are never maudlin. They simply are.

Until love enters the picture. This is a delicate, surprising, thoughtful love story, with an ending that is perfect and sad all at once. Stolen kisses landed on my lips at the same time they did Kimberly's. Longing and lust and passion and responsibility - all were present on each and every page.

This simple and elegant book should be read by every high school girl who is considering sacrificing a brilliant future for a popular present. There are deftly told anecdotes folded in amongst scenes familiar to anyone who has ever sat in a classroom or wondered about her place in the world.

But this is not a young adult novel. The larger social issues surrounding immigration and being the other are there as well, woven into the fabric of the story. There is no judgment; there is only understanding and reality.

This is a quick and easy read with a deep and powerful message. Like life itself, the joy is nuanced and the pain multi-faceted. Jean Kwok's debut novel truly does describe a girl in translation.

(previously posted at BlogHer.com)

Blogger Woes

Friday the 13th, indeed!

Apparently, my server went down.  It crashed during maintenance.  It may have something to do with changes they've made in the EDIT HTML button.

I have no idea what most of that means.  I didn't know it could happen to me.  Then again........

In any event, Thursday's post, Wishes, was up and had comments and then came down.  If the comments do not reload by this evening, I will re-post them tomorrow from the copies I have in my inbox.

Friday's post, Comparing Myself to Myself,  is right below this one.

I'm going to float in my pool and let cyberspace figure itself out on its own.
Have a great weekend, denizens, and try to avoid walking under any ladders.

Comparing Myself to Myself

“Don't compare yourself to who you were before. Concentrate on what you can do now”

Easy for them to say.

I heard it in the hospital, in conjunction with the instructions on how to use the dreaded inspirator. I heard it from the physical therapist who taught me how to use the walker. I heard it from the nurses when I tried to move quickly. What had been simple was now quite complex and my narcotized brain was having none of it. I wanted to accomplish what I knew I could accomplish and I wanted to do it right now. Taking it slow, being kind to myself, not setting unrealistic expectations – hardly my style, before or now.

But they weren't telling me to be nice and sympathetic and nurturing to my damaged self, though every single person I met at UMC was all of those things and more. No, they were telling me that my reality was altered, that what had been might not be. I should strive for goals which were physically unattainable.

I refused to believe it. They didn't know me, know what I could accomplish when I set my mind to it. They didn't know the inner strength in which I have always had confidence. I could do it if I set my mind to it. Always had and always would. That's just who I am.

I would will my body into submission. The rehab piece is all on me, from finding perfect therapists to following through on their suggestions. I would be the most compliant patient anyone had ever treated and I would amaze them all. I would not let three bullets destroy the body I had created through hard work and proper form. I would make this happen.

Dr. Boaz told me that running and jumping were no longer in my future. “Other than that, whatever you want to do is fine.” Okay....... what if I want to jump? Forget about asking me whether I could remember the last time I jumped or ran. That is not the point. The option was always there for me. I'm not sure I like this can't piece.

Watching Biggest Loser this week, I realized that I was no longer able to do the exercises they were demonstrating. No jumping up onto progressively higher benches. No climbing down uneven sandbags, at least not with alacrity. Slow and steady and elongate my stride and try to keep my hips even and my soaz engaged and for crying out loud all I want to do is walk into the gym and work out.

My body has never limited me before. I steadfastly refuse to allow it to do so now. But I've never been damaged before, never had nerves severed by bullets. I've never gone 3 months without using my leg. I'm afraid and I hurt and I'm healing. I'm hyperaesthetic, which means that the massage of my right quadricep is somewhat akin to stabbing my flesh with burning pokers and then twisting them around and around until even lamaze breathing is helpless to contain the pain.

Yes, pain. I thought I had left pain back with the oxycodones of my first 2 months of recovery, but apparently I was wrong. I know I'm healing and I know it could all be much worse than it is (oh, so very very very much worse) and I know that this will pass and that what I can't do is much much less than what I can do. I know all these things and I am still bitter.

Bitter with the taste of bile in my throat and a racing heartbeat and a conscious effort being exerted to keep my mind out of the Safeway parking lot on that sunny Saturday, feeling a burning hole in my leg and knowing I'd been shot. That part's the PTSD.

I'm also pissed as hell – I am shorter on one side, I hurt, I have scars, Christina-Taylor exists only in my memories, Mavy's a widow and none of this was any of our fault. I'm just not able to see it all through the rosy lens which has been plastered over my eyes for the last 17 weeks. This week, all of a sudden, I'm feeling the snarky New Yorker creeping back in.

I guess the personality transplant I'd been noticing was only a temporary aberration. That's kinda sorta sad. She was a constant surprise to me, and I enjoyed her happy solutions to life's little problems. I have been nicer to salespeople, more patient in lines, less likely to lane jump to get someplace 15 seconds earlier. I was surprisingly happy.

Big Cuter says that the irritated woman of these last few posts makes him happy – he knows me and he knows that he loves me and he knows that hearing me complain about SUV's and being short and other annoyances means that the mother he knows and loves is back. It made him smile.

He's suggesting a yardstick for my emotions which is diametrically opposed to that I'm to use for my physical achievements. He wants me to compare myself to the person I was before. The sunny woman who managed to gloss over minor irritations because she was happy to see the sun rise was the outlier, not this cranky human who wanted to throw her cane through the windshield of the SUV. The hurler sounded more like his mom.

Of course, the amplitude of my reaction does need to be examined. Big Cuter was able to agree that PTSD, the bitch, is inhabiting my control panel and that every once in a while she announces her presence with authority. The over-reactions, he suggests, might bear consideration, but my annoyance at the wrongness of her position and the rightness of mine reassured him that his mommy was still his mommy. “I mean, who wants a mom with a silly smile on her face all the time?”

The time to type about the implications of that last paragraph will come soon, I promise. For now, stay with me on the comparison track, please.

So, what have I learned? Control is an illusion. What I want is sometimes out of reach, no matter how hard I try or how dedicated I am to achieving it. I'd better get comfortable with my physical limitations because they are just that : mine. I can take advantage of that happy girl attitude to get over myself and stop whining about what I can't change and being glad that I am here to whine about it at all.

That sounds like a nice combination of the pieces both before and after.

*****

Once again, denizens, you have provided me with the very best and least expensive therapy available. Without you, this is a sniveling, self-serving diary. With you, it's talking to caring friends about what's going on and what to make of it all. I think we're doing pretty well, don't you?

Wishes

All my life I've had one wish. It is not a small, insignificant, nonentity of a wish. It is not a wish which can be granted easily. It is not logical nor realistic, but then isn't that the nature of wishes in general?

Desire and longing imply that there is a solution which is just out of reach. Wishes are bigger than that, I think. We wish for something we cannot have, for something which is not immediately available, for something that only magic can send our way.

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion spends hours reconstructing scenarios in which, if she does everything just so, her husband will miraculously reappear from the dead and rejoin her at the dining room table from which he so unceremoniously fell as he died. If wishing could make it so......

We wish upon stars and over birthday candles. For a while in elementary school, I wished fervently for a Chatty Cathy doll. Patty PlayPal, the doll that was as tall as I was, appeared in as many wishes as did Chatty Cathy with the cord in the back of her neck. Pull it and she told you that she loved you, or that she wanted to play. I had fantasies of the 3 of us, Patty and Cathy and I, would roam the backyard, arm in arm, surveying our fantasy kingdom. My wishes were strong; the results were disappointing. I managed to outgrow my doll phase without ever sharing it with either of my wished-for pals.

I used to wish that G'ma was a better cook, that Daddooooo wouldn't argue with everyone, that my body would grow curves like everyone else's seemed to be doing. Those went pretty much unanswered, too.

I wished for healthy pregnancies and babies and except for the fact that I couldn't breathe through my swollen nasal passages for the 9 months that Little Cuter was in residence those wishes were granted. Those were big, important wishes and I was very happy to rest on my laurels and put my wishes up on a shelf. Life was going along fairly nicely, according to some plan that often surprised me but never really disappointed me. The fact that the plan was I liked the little glitches and bumps in the road that the plan provided. None of them were overwhelming, though many were challenging. I didn't need to wish for anything. My needs and my longings were, for the most part, satisfied.

For the most part, that is. There was one sentence that was never far from my lips. “Mommy, I want....” could be met with a rejoinder that needed no thinking. “Yeah, and I want to be tall and blonde.....” which was followed by an imperfectly rendered but heartfelt verson of the Rolling Stones' “You can't always get what you want.”

Tall and blonde. Ashleigh Burroughs is tall and blonde. Elle MacPherson is too. So is Christie Brinkley. Suzi Hileman is not.

Definitely not.

But she wants to be. Always has and always will. And that is why this post is being written.

Aspirations are always to be encouraged, I believe. Hair dye is an option, though not one I'm likely to pursue. I can barely wait for my nail polish to dry before I feel the need to flee the salon. Spending hours having color put on and waiting for it to set would put me over the edge for sure. I'm comfortable with my salt-and-pepper natural look, though I wouldn't complain if long yellow tresses appeared on my head tomorrow morning. Not at all.

But the tall part, that was the challenge. TBG tells me it's a good thing that I'm not any taller. He worries that my snarky New York attitude would get me killed if I were 5'10” tall. At just over 5', though, what would be obnoxious in a bigger human is just cute coming from my mini-ness. At least, that's what he says.

HGH? I'll let the high school athletes experiment with that for just a little bit longer. Surgery? Hardly worth it, even if I could find a willing physician. I was left with good posture and vertical stripes to give the illusion of height. As every basketball coach knows, it's just not something you can teach.

I was feeling comfortable with my little self by the time I turned 50, though. All my parts worked and that was enough. I still lusted for long legs and the concomitant ability to see over fences, but I was used to my stature and that was enough.

Then some fool shot me and one of his bullets shattered my hip and I had 5 hours of surgery after 3 days in traction. My joint is crocheted together with screws and pins and plates and wires and glue and lord-knows-what-all-else. There are adhesions and swellings and a serious layer of fear overlying the movement of that leg.

And there's something more.

That leg is about 1/4” to 1/2” shorter than its partner.

I am pissed. Furious. Angry. Sad. Hurt. Enraged. Short.

He made me shorter. All my life I've wanted to be taller and now I am shorter.

It's just not fair.

Drivel

Little things have been getting to me lately.   For example:


Why is it cloudy today?  I was supposed to walk in the pool for ambulation exercise before PT at 5 this afternoon.  But, instead of warm, balmy, sultry weather, the afternoon was filled with lowering clouds that couldn't even manage to drop a drizzle of rain on my yard.  Cool, cloudy and dry, with just enough wind to be more than annoying - the weather was ruining my plans without even as much as a trickle of moisture to enhance the landscape and make up for my pissiness.  


I know, I know.  I could be living on the banks of the overflowing Mississippi, but then again no I couldn't because I picked a spot with as few natural disasters as I could imagine.  No earthquakes. No hurricanes.  Above the flood plain.  I still managed to get myself shot here, but no one can blame the weather for that.  


As the title indicates, denizens, this post is drivel.  


What else is absurdly ticking me off?


How about the woman in the gigantic SUV who parked right next to The Schnozz today.  She was fully enclosed in her spot, as I was in mine.  My door could open far enough to allow me to swing my leg inside.  But I couldn't see on-coming cars over the hugeness that was my new neighbor,  and there were three other spots available, none of them right next to me, and she sure looked fit enough to walk from any of them to the nail salon and she was the only person in the vehicle.  Did she really need to take a tank to get a manicure?


I was peeved.


There were odd footprints in the courtyard's newly laid gravel mulch this morning.  I would guess they belong to javelina, but the gate was closed and the peccary don't jump.  It's not bobcat nor coyote nor bird.  I'm flummoxed.


Great.  I'm being invaded by beings from outerspace.  Beings that don't even care to mask their tracks.


Am I losing my mind?  I am furious at nonsense and worried about weirdness.  I'm angry over nothing and everything (OKC shouldn't have won that game on Monday night; they had three chances and that is two too many if you ask me) and the attitude doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere.   Yet it manages to stick around, poking at me and filling my mind with drivel.


I have to consider it drivel.  I refuse to accept that this will be the state of my nerves for the rest of my life.  I must envision a future which allows me to smile at futility and wave off annoyances.  


This being pissed off at everything is not where I want to be. Not right now.  Not ever.

Returning

I stood outside the door for a long time.  I stared at the handles, two flattened C's with their openings facing inward.  I read PULL, yellow letters on a black background, a sticker daring me to grab on and go inside.


I stood outside the door for a long time.


The air was warm.  The sun was just hot enough.  I was in clothes I hadn't worn since 2010, frozen in place outside my former home-away-from-home.  My gear was in one hand, my cane in the other.  Two deep deep breaths and I pulled the doors open and went into the gym.


No one recognized me.  There was no greeting beyond the usual perfunctory smile-how-are-you-today as the kid behind the counter reached for my membership tag.  I said that I wanted to re-instate my membership, on hold since January, and he smiled, clicked some buttons, and told me to go right on through.  He didn't recognize my name nor my status nor the fact that this was the first time I'd been back since I got shot.  I was peeved.


Peeved is better motivation for working out than fear.  I wrestled the giant purple ball onto the mat, grunted myself onto the ground, lay my towel beneath my head and began to engage my core.  


My core was not happy with me.


I found my trance almost immediately.  The exercise routine I took home from physical therapy involves lots of slow movements and long holding-in-place.  There's lots of time to think while this is going on, over and over and over and over again.  


Thirty repetitions takes a long time.


I listened to other members grunting.  The mats are near the Nautilus machines so the gasping is different from that which I used to hear on the more serious, free-weight side of the gym.  A lot of it is in connection with simply getting onto and off of the machines themselves.  I didn't judge, though.  Not once.  I appreciated the fact that "at least they are trying to do something" much more now that getting down on the ground was, for me, a cause for celebration.  


I was back and I was furious.


I wanted to do flyes and bench presses but I was afraid to carry the dumbbells.  Getting up and down from the bench looked like more work than I could handle, too.  My glutes were engaged and so were my soaz and my abs and I was trying to relax my quads and my hamstrings so that they wouldn't compromise the work that the other areas were supposed to be doing.  My brain was in Schwarzenegger-mode, even if my body was still stuck in rehab.


It was exercise, solitary, necessary, right on the edge of painful exercise.  It didn't look like much, I'm sure, to the parade of people who glanced my way.  But, I stuck it out and did all the repetitions I could manage until I was "unable to keep abdominals braced" at which point my instructions read "STOP."  I wasn't too sweaty but I was definitely tired as I made my way over to the recumbent bikes.


10 minutes of real time (3 minutes of game time in the Thunder/Grizzlies series) and I was exhausted.  "Stick a fork in me, I'm done" was the name of that tune.  I was too pooped to pop.  TBG encouraged me to walk proudly past the bikes as we made our way out that front door together.  He stood there with me, surveying the scene, his hand resting on my shoulder.  He was gym-tired, too, and I was there to hold him up.


It was a lovely way to end the afternoon.

Happy Mothers Day Birthday Boy

Monday's post is coming on Sunday this week.

Reading it will tell you why it had to be posted on my usually quiet weekend.

Happy Happy Mothers Day to you all! 

This year I may just remember to call him when it happened.

It was 12:16pm when he entered the world, sunnyside up, eyes open, wondering what he'd missed while he traveled through the birth canal.  Teaching hospitals are busy busy places most days, but a Sunday morning in May is not one of those days.  Especially when it's Mothers' Day.

The delivery room was peaceful and relatively uninhabited, just the baby and TBG and Janice our obstetrician-and-friend and me. Suddenly we were parents, responsible for another human being who was only on this planet because of us.  I'd thought I was a grown-up on May 7th; I became an adult on May 8th.

Moms at Prentice Woman's Hospital got roses and prime rib lunches because it was  Mothers Day and there was a general sense of joy in the air. TBG went to Golden Nugget for a table covering breakfast and then returned to hold the most wonderful boy in the world on his lap for hours. And hours. And hours.  They stared at one another, my two guys, learning the curves of the other's face, the tilt of his head, the feel of his arms.  They bonded, connected, super-glued themselves to one another.  They are still stuck that way, 28 years later.

I was in the gym doing leg lifts at the exact anniversary moment of his birth one year later.  I happened to glance at the clock as the instructor was instructing and I felt the glow of him all through me, like a shot of adrenaline and love coursing through my veins.  I'd never had another human make me feel the way that he did.  I reveled in the wonder of it all as I crunched. 

Every 6 or 11 years his natal day and the Hallmark holiday fall on the same date.  We perused the perpetual calendar yesterday on the phone, looking for the pattern.  Mostly we laughed about search terms and the fact that the paper perpetual calendar that was posted on the basement door in my home growing up would have given us the answer in half the time the interweb was taking to figure out exactly what we had in mind. 

Big Cuter had never heard of a perpetual calendar, and TBG and I thought that peruse meant "once over lightly" as opposed to "carefully investigating" but we set one another right on all those topics and mostly we laughed.  Big, belly shaking, head wagging laughs. Laughs over nothing.  Memories sparking more giggles.  It was fun.  It was funny.  It was normal.

The next time his birthday conflates with the holiday is 2022.  I'll be 70.  He'll be 39. 

You know he is looking hard at those numbers right now.

I think I'll call him and flood him with some more love.  There's always more love where he is concerned.

Artist's Reception - Prince Elementary School

I've told the story.  The cards are for sale here.  This post is for the kids, those wonderful, profoundly sensitive artists who took single-use film cameras and captured their hopes for America.  

Local businesses underwrote the project, the school provided the budding photo-journalists, and a project was born.  Linda Solomon and her fabulous jewelry brought camera crews in her wake; the photographers were happy to wear their clip on microphones and look at the interviewer while the cameras recorded their words. 

"I'm going to be on Channel 13 at 10 o'clock, Mom!!!!!!!"

I'm telling you, denizens, it doesn't get any better than this.

The artists were stylin'

and a little bit too hot, what with wanting to wear all the cool new t-shirts

 which were being thrown their way

 There wasn't much speechifying, but what there was was listened to attentively.

 These are very well behaved students and families.

But mostly it was about the pictures.  With no training beyond the basics from Linda, the kids filled the frames with their hopes and dreams.  Take a look:

Destiny, age 9

kyle, age 10

Jose, age 9

Jazmine, age 10

Domonikke, age 10

Juan, age 9

Carolina, age 10

The cards are for sale here.

Juan, Redux

The Pictures of Hope greeting cards are here!  The artists were presented with their personal copies at a Reception yesterday afternoon.  They were quite pleased with the results.  The photos and description of the event will be here tomorrow.  For now, I'm reprinting the original post about this project.  It garnered more comments than most any other one I've written; Juan is aware of your proposals of marriage ladies, and he blushes in response.

I don't think you'll mind revisiting the scene with me.  I was struck by the fact that when this was written I was couch-bound and relatively helpless.  Juan's at the end of 4th grade now, with A's and B's and one C.... in reading.... because it's not fun and hard. Oh, kiddo, you probably shouldn't have told me that.  I'm compiling a list of books for us to enjoy this summer.

For now, as you are thinking of what I could use to tempt him, take this trip back to February.  If you want to buy the cards, go to www.PicturesOfHopeTucson.com

I've been hugged by POTUS and FLOTUS.  I've chatted about New Jersey with Brian Williams.  The Director of the FBI sent me a hand written "glad you're out of the hospital" note.  Strangers, visitors from Minnesota and Montana, shake my hand and wish me well in restaurants.  I've received crocheted comfort shawls and a Native American healing blanket and a hand-made quilt.

Each and every one of those things has been wonderful and has filled my heart with love and joy.  But yesterday afternoon I was in the presence of a superstar, and I'm still aglow.  Listen.......

Linda Solomon is an author and a photo-journalist.  She called the house ten days ago and charmed TBG with her enthusiasm and compassion.  He thought I'd be interested in her project, and passed the handset to my outstretched arm.  That was the only part of me which was out; the rest was snuggled under the aforementioned quilt, trying to avoid thinking about what had happened to me.  I was in a leave me alone kind of space, but TBG had a smile on his face and I just can't resist that.  Sure, I'll take the phone.

Linda was fast and furious and full of details and data and thoughts and love and she really really wanted me to judge a kids' photo contest.  She'd given disposable cameras to a group of 9 and 10 year olds at a local elementary school.  She'd invited a group of Tucsonans to review the pictures and choose the ones we liked the most.  Was I interested in joining them?

I'm not sure how being shot qualifies me to be a photography critic, but she was relentless and really didn't want to take no for an answer.  So I committed myself to 90 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon at a school several miles from my couch. Then, I went back to sleep.

Yesterday was that Tuesday.  I dressed for the occasion, wearing blue since Linda had said that there would be photographers and blue is the preferred color for that medium.  (Ah, denizens, the things I've learned since January 8th...) TBG spent the morning in the dentist's chair so Amster picked me up and took me to the appointment while he nursed his swollen jaw.  (If it's not one thing, it's another....)  The sun was out and her mom-mobile-mini-van feels safe and secure and she's a good driver so the world felt like an okay place to be.  We had pizza outside (it's in the 70's here in Tucson.... why do you all live in such cccccold places?)  and bought and delivered fancy cupcakes to a knee-replaced friend and for a while it felt like a normal day.  The knot in my heart loosened just a touch.  I was in the world and of the world and I wasn't scared at all.  There's something to be said for the healing power of friends.

We found the school and Amster held the doors as I hopped in with my walker.  All those bar dips are coming in handy as distances seem to magnify themselves before my very eyes.  Twenty feet are twenty dips; my triceps are looking quite healthy these days.

The school's grounds were immaculate. There was not a scrap of litter on the ground nor a bit of graffiti on the walls. The signage was bright and cheery, welcoming and encouraging.  It looked like a good place to learn.  The lobby was filled with students and grown ups and there was Ben Tracey, the CBS West Coast reporter who'd been in my living room last month  Of all the reporters who'd traipsed through our lives, he was the kindest and gentlest.  Seeing him made me smile and then stop to think : this was obviously more than judging a kids' art project.  Linda had created an event.  I was glad I had taken the time to mousse my hair.

Jeannette Mare, Executive Director of Ben's Bells, shook my hand.  Ben's Bells defines Tucson's spirit for me - born out of sorrow, it extols kindness and community and has truly made lemonade out of lemons.  Beautiful Anne brought me a bell in the hospital and it hangs by the fireplace in front of me as I'm typing to you now.  It warms my heart and fills my soul.  I was honored to be a judge along side her.  Kristi Tedesco, our local NBC news anchor and a Tucsonan through and through was there, too.  She'd touched me with her thoughtful interview in my living room soon after I was discharged; she understood my connection to Christina-Taylor and shared my sorrow.  I felt better after talking to her then, and I was happy to see her in the plastic chair next to me yesterday.  I'm always surprised by the fact that the people on tv are just regular folks; in her jeans and sweater she was just another mom doing something fun in the afternoon.  I took a deep breath and relaxed into my chair.

The small conference room was filled with microphones and lights and cameras and all the humans who are attached to creating a televised news report.  By now, I'm aware of the drill - drop the cord of the mic down the front of my sweater, clip the little box to the edge of the chair or my waistband, look at the interlocutor and not the camera - and I even recognized some of the players.  Ashleigh's gone big time, folks!

Linda had culled the pictures and selected two or three from each child for us to judge.  Our mission was to find the photos which best represented that child's Hope for America.  The pictures we selected would be made into greeting cards, with the child's hope inscribed.  (I'll be sure to let you all know about them once they are created..... no worries there, denizens!)  The videographers focused in on the snapshots as Linda read us the hopes - no more war, help sick people, help homeless people and jobless people, end animal cruelty, feed the hungry, send everyone to college..... so much to do.... and they are only 9 and 10.

There were shots of the schoolyard and of hands gripped in friendship and tributes to Gabby Giffords and trees and blue skies and puppies.  Flash reflections off glass cases covering hallway artwork didn't mar the impact of their visions.  These children were making statements.  They were working with film, not digital images, and so they had to be judicious in what they chose to shoot.  Some were perfectly framed and some were out of focus but all of them had meaning.  There were quite a few teary eyes around the judges' table.

This is not a magnet school.  There is no admissions test or interview required to attend Prince Elementary School.  Native Arizonans and resettled refugees and immigrants from all over the world learn together at this No Excuses University where the halls are decorated with banners from colleges and universities and where every student is college bound.  High expectations and lots of love combined with the pride inherent in doing a good job - I'd stumbled upon an oasis of excellence in the middle of my school district.  My public school district, to which TBG and I dutifully pay our taxes every year.  I was feeling pretty good.  The assistant principal was one of the judges; she knew each and every photographer's story, and shared them with discretion and a smile.  It was easy to see that she liked her work.  No wonder.  The results were evident on the friendly faces in the hallway and the pride of place in the building itself.  This school is a gem.

Just when we thought it couldn't get any better, Linda shared Juan's photographs.  Instead of just 2 or 3 pictures, Linda gave us all the photos that Juan had taken.  We grown-ups grew silent as we passed the shots around.  Perfectly framed.  Elegantly composed.  Thoughtfully constructed.  We were awestruck.  Jeannette wants the one of his graffiti damaged mailbox for her office wall.  I couldn't stop looking at the blue sky, the palm tree, and the defaced 25mph sign.  Without formal instruction, Juan had mastered the photographer's rule of 3's; the composition told the story as much as the objects themselves.  We just couldn't decide which one to choose.  We spent almost 15 minutes looking and wiping tears and shaking our heads.  Who was this kid?

When the door opened towards the end of our session a little boy entered shyly.  This was Juan.  THIS is Juan? we said in one voice.  Our smiles and dancing eyes were overwhelming him; who were these grown-ups, after all?  I asked if I could shake his hand, and told him about the 15 minutes we had spent admiring his work.  "You looked at my pictures for 15 minutes?"  Yes, we did.  He stood there and shook his head.  He was stunned.

He watched the final minutes of the judging, saw the other judges leave the room, all of us exchanging cards and hugs and smiles and promises to keep in touch, and then it was Kristi and Ben and Juan and me (and, of course, the camera and sound people and the producers), ready for our interview.

"Have you ever been on tv before?" I asked Juan?  He smiled a little smile and shook his head.  "Well, here's the drill.... do all your scratching and rubbing and sniffling before they turn on the cameras. Keep your hands in your lap and away from your mouth; your mom will want to see all of that handsome face so don't cover it up.  Can we have a drink of water for Juan, please?  He doesn't want to cough on camera."   The look on Juan's face when the adults all raced for a drink for him was priceless - he was important enough to make grown ups jump.  It was amazing and surprising and pleasing; it made me happy to be a part of it all 

Kristi Tedesco is a wonder - she knelt on the other side of the table, looked Juan straight in the eye, and asked him serious questions in a kid-friendly voice.  "Respell your name for me, please" became a request between peers rather than an order from an older.  I was in awe.  But that was nothing to what came after.  "Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?"...... that question that everyone asks and no one can really answer.  No one but Juan, that is.  This 9 year old, this child, this wonderful human being looked straight back at Kristi and said "No, I don't think that far ahead.  If I do, I might get scared because it's far away and I might not reach my goals.  So I concentrate on today and doing well right now because then I will be ready for my future."  I may not have gotten it exactly right, but I'm sure I'm pretty close.  No one spoke after he finished his answer.  The air was filled with awe.

Who is this child?

He is everyone's child.  He's the kid you want to nurture and support and cherish.  He knows that role models are few and far between, and often aren't those you love the most.  He told that to the camera and we all knew that he was speaking from his heart.  He exists in the moment, and his moment is filled with anxiety and uncertainty and a sense of unease; graffiti on his mailbox makes him feel that people have tampered "with my personal private place and I don't like it at all.... it makes me frightened and feel unsafe."  I'd like to find the tagger and read him that sentence over and over and over again... for days....weeks....months...years...... until he recognized that his one random act had impacted the life of this beautiful, talented, special little boy.

Juan is only 9 years old.  His future includes college and family and lots of love.  For now, though, he shares his perspective with his peers and his teachers and with a few of us lucky enough to have been in the room with him yesterday.  He impressed us, one and all.

But the story isn't over, yet.  Juan took a seat in the corner of the room while Ben and I chatted (the interview is supposed to be on Katie Couric's Nightly News tonight) about the photographs and Christina's hopes for the world and then the professionals began to clean up their mess and it occurred to me that I'd never introduced myself to Juan.

"Do you know why I was interviewed just now?  Do you know who I am?"  

"No, I don't"


"Do you remember that there was a shooting last month at a Safeway?  (he nodded yes) I am the lady who took Christina to meet her Congresswoman and....."

and before I could say anything more he was up from his chair, staring at my face, and saying "YOU are a special person... you are a very special person."


And then he walked through the wires with the most purposeful look on his face and he hugged me.

He patted my back as I bawled like a baby and he hugged me tighter.

There wasn't a dry eye in the room.

Who is this kid?  He is all of us and all of ours and everything Christina-Taylor saw in America exists in his little self.

It was a wonderful wonderful wonderful day.
 ******

Once again, if you want to buy the cards (29 for $20, 100% of the donations benefit the Christina-Taylor Green Memorial Fund) go to www.PicturesOfHopeTucson.com  and know that we all thank you very very very much.

Thoughts on bin Laden

A 911 first responder, a man who also lost a son at Ground Zero, was the featured speaker on one of the television shows to which TBG and I have been glued since Sunday night.  He was well-spoken and inoffensive and presented a valid viewpoint.  But why was he there at all?  Why were his words on the political situation in Pakistan considered valuable?  Did his closeness to disaster confer intelligence or insight upon him? 

I've asked myself this question quite often since January 8th.  Why did the AP want to sit on my couch and watch the State of the Union with me?  Why would I care to comment on the launch of Endeavor?  Who would be interested in what I had to say?  And if someone were to be interested in my opinions I want to know why.  My brush with bullets didn't make me any more learned or worthy.  I'm just a name with which to entice viewers/readers.
*****

 thanks to flickr.com for this image

This picture in the Situation Room fascinates me.  We're watching people watching a screen and it's frustrating.  I want to see what they are seeing.  They are so intense. 

The talking heads seem to need to comment about Hilary's hand over her mouth.  I'm not sure why, but they do.  It doesn't seem so odd to me.  There are young men in danger and she's a mom.  She knows they don't want her yelling at them to be careful, but she can barely stop herself so she covers her mouth.

Been there.  Done that.  Love this.
*****

Gotta wonder how long it will be until the Geronimo EKIA bumper stickers appear.
*****
My favorite part of the whole she-bang is that the President asked for air-time on all 3 networks and then kept them waiting for nearly an hour. The talking heads began to blather, there were several false starts, and time was passing.  No one was really harmed..... except Donald Trump, whose Celebrity Apprentice was pre-empted by the gutsiest move by a President in recent memory.

Barack Obama was capturing terrorists while our favorite carnival barker was sidelined, a graphic being rescheduled on the banner rolling underneath the grown-ups talking about grown-up things.

It was a lovely sight to see.
*****

She's On Her Way Back

Once she stopped being miserable, she was the happiest baby alive.

Zanner gave her a pizza crust to stop the whimpering and fussing and suddenly her entire demeanor changed.  She relaxed in my arms, gnawed on the second serving of real food she'd ever had in her life, and joined the party.  

The kid went from rice cereal to Giordano's deep dish in one afternoon.  She went from infancy to full participant in the span of a few hours.  She left cranky behind and became a  bundle of smiles.

Everyone agreed.  A teammate of Big Cuter, two years her senior and clued in to everything, spent the car-pool-trip-I-drove between school and the field lost in thought.  The gossip in the back seat had turned to someone "even Little Cuter doesn't like" and he was flummoxed.  He couldn't think of anyone she didn't like.  

There were only four words on her yearbook's Senior Page : Don't Worry.  Be Happy.

It was her mantra and she lived by it, spreading joy in her wake.  Who wouldn't want to spend time around her?  She was so happy herself it made everyone else smile, too.

Don't imagine that there weren't bumps, pot-holes, rabbit holes along the way, for there certainly were.  But her default mode was sunshine and kindness.  The world would be a better place for her having passed through it - she was conscious of that as her mission in life.  Not giddy or frivolous or unaware, but thoughtfully delighted in the world around her, she was genuinely kind and friendly.

And then I got shot.

She, who had always cautioned me to be nicer to the person on the other end of the phone found herself shrieking at a Customer Service Representative from a major airline.  "Don't you have a freakin' mother?????" was among the milder of the epithets she hurled at the poor Pakistani who was unable or unwilling to book her on a flight to my bedside.  

Rage was starting to rear its ugly head.  It would be her constant companion for the next 4 months.  

This delightfully cheerful person started steaming and screaming at the most minor of inconveniences; a door not held for her entry would put her over the edge.  How rude.  How inconsiderate.  How indicative of the sorry state of mankind in general and you, sir, in particular.  Don't you know what happened in my life?  Don't you care?

She wondered who she'd become.  Embracing the bitch helped a little, but there was always the disconnect between who she had been and who she was now.  She didn't really like this furious person, although she totally understood her and was able to give her permission to inhabit her own personal space.  But it was odd.  She didn't like it but it was real and what could she do but ride the wave?

Then bin Laden got shot.

Big Cuter's text message alerted her as SIR was climbing a metal giraffe (please, don't ask) and the hooting and hollering began.  Proud to be Americans!  Proud to have rid the world of evil! Proud to have mounted a successful covert mission!  Proud that Osama bin Laden is dead....

And that stopped her in her tracks.  It felt weird to be celebrating the end of a human life.  On the other hand, she had someone else those commandos could take out and if she only had an address...... And that felt ugly, too.

Sympathy for the devil?  There was no doubt in her mind that these two had damaged the world that she loved in ways that could not be repaired.  Ever.  By anyone.  They had forfeited their right to live in that world, and she could rejoice in the fact that one of them was gone. But she had so recently bumped up against the death of a little girl she knew and had felt her own personal mother brush up against death and she  found that she just couldn't be blase about the experience.

A human being was dead.  Her heart ached for that fact.  

Americans killed bin Laden.  Her heart soared with pride.

I'm looking at it from a mother's point of view.  My little girl is healing.  Her PTSD-fueled rage at the world is receding just a bit.  There, around the edges of the fiery red ball which has been living in her gut since January 8th, there is a small space peeking through.  A little bit of kindness is seeping around the edges.

Kindness toward bin Laden?  Kinda sorta, I think.  He was a bad seed and evil incarnate and we all get that.  American military might and intelligence ended his involvement in the world, and that is a good thing.  3000 souls have a sense of closure.

But it still feels weird to celebrate a death.  Her heart is touched and she's troubled.  

And that's my little girl. 

She arrived at work and the headlines seemed to mock her.   The Financial Times had the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge kissing.  The Wall Street Journal had bin Laden's demise.  This was her life, tumbling between weddings and gunshots.  Happy and confused and relieved and bemused. 

Ain't adulthood grand?

*******

From JES, writer, wit, raconteur and spot on political pundit:

I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. -- Mark Twain (via @AlgonquinBooks)

My Desert is Yellow

Gardeners often disparage yellow.  It's too easy.  It's too safe.  Everything blooms in yellow, even if it also blooms in blue or red or white.  There's no challenge.

I fell victim to that kind of snobbery for exactly one full year of growing seasons.  I learned quickly but not painlessly that you take what you can get here in Zone 12. (For all you gardening nerds: that's Sunset Western Gardens zone system, not the USDA's zone system.  A quick explanation of the difference is here.)  If you want results, you can't afford to be picky.

The hardiest plants in my landscape are the volunteers.  Dropped from the pelts or the poop of coyotes or bobcats or javelina, remnants of bird excrement or discarded cuttings which have blown out of the recycle pile, these random arrivals find just the place to make themselves comfortable, and they do.  This teddy bear cholla landed next to the hesperaloe and its irrigation and is doing just fine, as you can see:

But right now, the desert is putting on its own show.  Without benefit of rain or warm temperatures, our trees and our cacti are doing their best to remind us of why we live here. 

They start small and tight

and they are very teeny at the ends of the branches

and don't last very long and end up on the ground, spreading yellow flecks of loveliness as they wait to shrivel and die

And they are yellow.  The palo verdes, which get their name from their very green trunks

come first, and their yellow is paler than that of the mesquite and acacia which will follow them in the next few weeks.  Recovering from record breaking cold spells and an unusually dry winter rainy season, the flora are magnificent in their resilience and their tenacity.  These have all survived the winter with no care at all.  No water.  No protective covering.  No fertilizer.  And here they are:

Bring it on.  We can take it.  They inspire me.