Archive for the ‘families’ Category

No Electricity?

Is there something wrong with me?  Our electricity went out this morning and my ONLY thought was that I would not be able to use the computer. No heat…fine. No cooking…fine.  Food melts in refrigerator…fine.  But no computer and I’m freaking out!

 

PS. As you can tell, the electricity came back on, I’m a happy camper now…

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adoption, Children, disabled, families, happy, kids, life, parenting

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Yes, I DO have a husband!

I write so often about my adventures with my children that I rarely mention that I have a husband. I love him to pieces, and he is a hard worker and great with the kiddos.  The reason why I don’t write about him…well…he’s kind of boring and not very interesting to write about.

It is very important that we, as the couple that hold the family together, spend quality time with each other.  If we do not put each other first, raising children, especially children with disabilities, would be difficult.  We need bonding, relaxing time together, and we manage to get away for at least a night or two every month,

We went away last weekend to a little cabin we have in the woods of New Hampshire last weekend.  My dad actually purchased this cabin for us when Steven was only a year old.  We knew from his autistic-like behaviors that we were not going to be able to vacation as a family very well at any hotel unless it had padded walls, (which I think I’ve only seen in those motels advertised for sexual adventures!) This cabin is where we have vacationed as a family, swimming in the nearby lake, boating, tubing and water skiing, hiking in the woods, fishing, snowmobiling, making camp fires, and just relaxing as a family.  It has served us well through out the years, and my husband and I  now use it sometime when we get away.  I personally prefer a 5 star hotel, room service and a massage, but that is rarely in our budget…okay the truth is it is NEVER in our budget, so the cabin suffices.

My husband, bless his soul, loves to putter around the place fixing all the little things.  Last weekend he cleaned out the crawl space under the house and found lots of dead mice, who ate our mouse poison and didn’t make it out of the basement in time; we need longer acting mouse poison so they can make it home and die in front of their families.  My husband also found TERMITES.  The house is surrounded by woods with lots of dead trees littering the landscape. WHY would the termites choose our house to eat?  It’s not like it is warm in there because there is no heat.  Why are they drawn to eat the only thing they shouldn’t eat?  I’ve come to the conclusion termites are like children. They won’t eat the huge pile of spaghetti offered to them, but instead want to one by one eat the limited supply of meatballs in the pot. (However,unlike the termites, we won’t kill our children to save the meatballs.)

Without the kiddos with us at the cabin, I was slightly bored!   Of course, my husband and I make a lot of time for loving and such, but that still leaves several hours of the day where he is puttering around and I am bored. I am not a good “relaxer”.  I usually need to be doing something, (thus the reason I have 5 kids in the first place!)  Without cable television, I am forced to…do nothing.  I have no hobbies, and I don’t generally like to read books.  I have been adverse to reading ever since I started reading a Danielle Steel novel in 1982 and never got to finish it because the kids always needed something and I would have to stop mid-chapter.  So, there I was, sitting on the couch, actually feeling a little sorry for myself because I had nothing to do.  Then, VOILA!  I remember that my youngest daughter had downloaded games on my cell phone!  So, there I sat all weekend, playing Scrabble on my phone.  It was great!  I beat myself 53 times!  I was a happy camper!

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Aspergers, author, autism, autistic, cheap, Children, disabilities, disabled, families, family, foster care, funny, happines, happy, humor, kids, life, news, optimism, parenting, snowmobile, stress, stress relief, swimming, thankful, Uncategorized

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Angels Among Us

First blogged January, 2010

My mother passed away several months ago and it has taken me this long to write about it.  She was the most wonderful mother in the whole world, (and I am not just saying that because that is what one is expected to say about their deceased mother.)  In addition to being kind and loving, she was also very spiritual.

I remember when I was four years old and we lived in Opalaka, Florida, right behind the Hialeah Race Track.  We had a cement swimming pool in the backyard which my father built, and next to it was a palm tree my mother had planted crooked so it was growing sideways.  I had a green parakeet whose name I certainly don’t remember, and I loved watching Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo on our little black and white tv with the rabbit ears antenna.  My brother was born one day in March, and life suddenly changed for our family.  My brother was born with serious disabilities due to Rubella Syndrome, (supposedly my mother had been exposed to someone with German Measles.)  With a cleft palate, he could not nurse or drink from a bottle, so he was fed by a large eye dropper. He could not such on a pacifier and he cried constantly.  He was blind and deaf and was obviously going to be severely developmentally delayed. My joyful childhood was suddenly overshadowed by a sadness of which I had never seen from my mother.  I would witness her throw herself across her bed and sob. A deep sadness enveloped our family. I looked at my little brother, who looked so innocent and little to cause such a fuss.

One day, when the sun was shining brightly and Curtis was asleep, my mother called to me to come sit in the rocking chair with her.  She squeezed me and held onto me tightly, rocking  and crying.  It was a different kind of crying, though.  A happy cry, if I could describe it as such.  From that day on, the gloom lifted from our house and I went back to living my happy childhood with my new baby brother.

Many years later, when I was a young teenager, my mother shared her experience of what happened to her that very day.  The doctors had been encouraging her to put my brother “away”, institutionalize him as was the custom in those days. “Forget about him,” they said, “You can have another child.”  She could not bear to make the thought of doing this.  Then, on that sunny day while rocking in her chair, she told me she was visited by an Angel, a beautiful, bright white Angel.  She told me she could feel the weight of the Angel’s hand on her shoulder, reassuring her that everything was going to be okay.  Although the Angel did not speak, she knew what the message was.  She did not have to worry anymore, her son would be fine, and he was.  He wasn’t fine in that he suddenly became perfectly healthy, but he was fine in that he has led a happy, fulfilling life. Clearly, she had been touched by something spiritual on that day to turn her torrents of tears into smiles of joy over her new baby.

Several years later, while camping high in the mountains, my mother woke up from her sleep and sat up in her sleeping bag.  She was joyous!  She told me she had been to see God, whom she described as a bright and beautiful. She said it felt real, not like a dream at all.  She was confused as to the experience because it seemed as though she was there to help a friend pass over into heaven.  She did not understand because of course her friend was healthy.  It was not until we returned home from vacation that she learned that this friend had died from a brain aneurysm on that very night at that very time.

My mother lived a life of  great happiness and contentment, always seeing the good in people.  Near the end, right before she died, I stayed with her 24 hours a day.  When we knew death was near, the nurses let me lie in bed with her and she passed away in my arms.  I don’t know what I expected when she died.  No…that’s not true…I expected to see some of what she had experienced!  I expected to see her pass into heaven!  I expected there to be some reaction from her body, some knowledge that her lifetime of spirituality would somehow, through osmosis, pass through to me.  But there was nothing.  She just stopped breathing. And there was nothing.

It took me a while to accept her death, and I became angry that there was no sign from God that she was with him.  Realistically I knew this was silly, but I was hugely disappointed.

Christmas time came soon afterwards.  As the parent of 5 children, I had this habit when the children were younger of taking a picture of their sleeping faces on Christmas eve.  As they aged, they hated the existence of these pictures!  (They were usually sucking on a “binky” at the time and girlfriends and boyfriends who saw the pictures in old photo albums would always go “Awwwwwwwwwwww, how CUTE,” the most mortifying thing that could happen to a teenage macho boy!)  This Christmas eve, filled with nostalgia, emptiness and sadness,  I again went into each of their bedrooms and gazed at their sleeping faces.  I was suddenly filled with a great sense of purpose and contentment, much like the type of contentment my mother might have felt when she felt the Angel’s hand upon her shoulder.  These were MY Angels.  These were my children who had endured so much when younger, either with their disabilities or with indescribable child abuse. They have not only survived, but they have THRIVED.  They are happy and loving and successful and they have bright futures as adults.  This is miraculous to me!

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adopted children, adoption, angel, angels, caring for parent and children, child, child abuse, Children, children with disabilities, dead, death, die, disability, disabled, Disabled children, disabled sibling, dying parent, elderly parent, families, family, foster care, foster care and adoption, God, happines, happiness through adversity, happy, hope, humor, inspirational, kids, loss, miracle, mom, mother, news, optimism, optimistic, optimistic parenting, overcoming, parent dying, parenting, positive thinking, saying good bye, sibling with disability, spiritual, thankful, trauma

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How Do the Blind See a Tree?

Most people can look up and see a tree.  To a child who is blind or visually impaired, their concept of a tree is the bark they can feel. Their concept of a tree is that it is” rough”.  If they have some vision, they can tell that a tree is brown at its trunk, but “a blob of green” above the trunk.  They could grow up and their whole lives not know what a tree “looks” like.  Expanding such basic knowledge of their world is called expanding the core curriculum. It consists of concepts that are not taught in school, but are still important lessons for that child to learn in order to grow up as an educated adult who is blind.

One topic covered by the nine students, ages six through thirteen, at an April vacation program, was the concept of trees and their differences.  During a nature walk, students found that some trees were so small they could fit their hand around the trunk.  Some trees were so large that it took all nine students holding hands to encircle the trunk. Some trunks were very rough, with deep groves, and some were smooth, with little lines barely traceable by their little fingers.

They learned that evergreen trees stay green all year, and they giggled as they carefully touched the sharp needles. They never knew that trees could be so prickly!  Under the tree, they found the pinecones from which a new tree may grow.

They learned that oak trees, in the spring, have no leaves.  They closely examined the branches of an oak with a few dead leaves still attached, carefully feeling them and making the connection with the leaves they see on the ground in the autumn. Acorns which were still attached to the tree branch were felt with much enthusiasm.  They had collected acorns from the ground underneath the tree, but to actually see it attached seemed to be a surprise. They felt the new buds on the ends of the small branches, buds which would soon bloom into leaves.

Students learned about flowering trees, in full bloom during their springtime visit.  Most students were amazed that a tree could have flowers.  In their minds, trees and flowers were two entirely different things.  But there they were; pink blossoms on the end of a cherry blossom tree branch, gentle, sweet smelling little flowers.

As they were feeling and looking at the trees up close, students were in awe.  So many different types of trees!  And they would not describe a single one of them as “rough” because they were finally able to look beyond the bark.

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blind, child, childhood, Children, children with disabilities, deaf/blind, disabilities, disability, disabled, Disabled children, families, family, funny, happy, happy childhood, happy parenting, humorous, inspiration, inspirational, inspiring, kids, life, news, play, special education, sweet

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If the Washing Machine Eats the Socks, What Eats the Silverware?

 

 

 

We all know the adage that the washing machine eats socks, which is why they never come out in pairs.  I long ago gave up trying to match them, just buying plain black socks for the boys and hoping they kind of match.  Marie gets to feel in fashion because all of her socks are multi-colored with frogs, kisses, stripes and cats.  If she can get one stripe from one sock to match the color on the cat, then she has found a match!

My concern is our silverware.  When we first had kids, we started out with a full Faber ware set.  As we saw pieces disappear one by one, we had to replace the set several times.  (We now have 72 knives and six spoons left.)  We do not know where the silverware goes.  As far as we are concerned, we eat with it, put it  in the sink, in the dishwasher to be washed and then back in the silverware drawer.  It is not rocket science.  It IS, however, way too complicated of a system to work in our house.  For some reason, our silverware disappears!  One would assume that the washing machine/sock theory would work for the dishwasher and disappearing silverware, but, alas, that is not the answer.

Theory #1 is that ours is the “HOUSE OF THE DISAPPEARING SILVERWARE”, oooooooooh!  We sometimes stay awake at night imagining the silverware whisking away into thin air with a whoooosh here and a whooosh there, kind of like witchcraft.  In the morning, half of the spoons are gone!

Of course, another explanation is that, somehow, the children are involved.  Maybe they take a paper plate of left over supper to their bedrooms and the silverware gets thrown away with the disposable dish. I shudder to think of this dirty, tragic end to our fine and selfless silverware. They die in the line of duty.

Whatever the reason, and whatever the consequences we have put upon our children for not taking care of the silverware, it continues to vanish for no reason.  (Thus the plausibility of theory #1.)  We have given up our concept that the ideal home has good silverware and we have replaced it with spoons and forks from WalMart.  Ours is still an ideal home in my eyes, we just use cheap silverware.  You wouldn’t imagine the amount of stress it relieves!

 

PS.  I have this fantasy that one day when I die, all of the lost forks and spoons will find their way into my casket, making up for their lifetime of disappearances.  Unfortunately, they will also drag with them the bits and pieces of food, which have now petrified onto them.  Of course, no one else in my family will ever know, because by then my casket will have been closed and sealed…

 

 

 

 

 

 

***********

I would love to come and speak for your group or at your conference.  I would do it for free, but would need the price of travel. For functions in the North East, that would be only gas money.

Link to my book

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-apple-tree/id538572206?mt=11

The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane

Link to the Readers Digest review of my book:  http://www.rd.com/recommends/what-to-read-after-a-hurricane/

 

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ADHD, adopted children, Aspergers, autism, autistic, child, children with disabilities, cleaning, coincidence, Disabled children, families, family, foster care and adoption, humorous, joy of parenting, mom, news, parenting and remaining sane, stress

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An Active Life with Limited Vision

Francis, who is severely visually impaired enough to be considered legally blind, was skilled enough that he was able to attend a mainstream kindergarten.  He needed some modifications, including large print materials.  He adjusted well to the class, but one week came home and told me that they had a guest speaker come to their classroom.  An exterminator came to the classroom to tell them about termites and such.  He was clearly shaken by the presentation, and for the next several nights he had nightmares, couldn’t sleep, and kept the light on in his room.

He was petrified of termites!  Trying to calm him down, I said “Why are you afraid of teeny tiny termites?”  “TINY???” he cried, ‘They’re HUGE!”  Only people who have driven through Providence, Rhode Island and have seen the 30 foot long, 10 foot tall “Big Blue Bug” as an advertisement for an exterminator which sits proudly right next to Route 95 would understand why he thought termites were huge.  After all, he was too visually impaired to see a real termite, and thought that all termites were that big! No wonder he was so frightened!  We’ve had a good laugh over that story for years!

Another interesting story was how he chose his friends.  With limited vision, he could only make out vague details of the other children.   Yet, he had one good friend named Eddie.  He and Eddie always hung out together.  One day I brought him to school late, and as I looked over the sea of Caucasian, blonde haired little five year olds, I heard Francis say “There’s Eddie” as he happily jumped through the crowd to sit next to the only African American boy in the class.  Real easy to spot!

As Francis got older, he wanted to participate in sports.  He took up wrestling through the Police Athletic League where his vision would not impair his performance.  I, however, had never been to a wrestling match before.  At his first match, he was wrestling with another boy his size and he reached over while the other boy supposedly made an “illegal move”.  Francis’ arm cracked the boy in the nose, and soon there was blood everywhere.  I’m screaming.  The kid with an obviously broken nose is screaming.  And Francis was screaming because he had won the match!  That was his one and only wrestling match. Okay, so blame me for being an overprotective mom, but the sight of blood tends to sour me on a sport.

After that, Francis took up swimming, a sport he excelled at, and one in which he could not get hurt or hurt anyone else.  He remained in this sport for many years, and won several honors for his fast swimming.  It gave him a chance to be a member of team and compete with other people where vision was not an issue.

Francis also became an excellent skier, skiing by following closely in the tracks of a lead skier. He went to winter camps in Colorado run by the Christian Braille Foundation from the age of 14 years old, flying alone across the country to join other skiers with vision impairments.  By the time he was a young adult, he was easily skiing black diamond slopes in Maine and New Hampshire. much to my chagrin.  I was petrified he was going to ski into a tree!  (This was around the time one of the Kennedy’s died by running into a tree.) In his early twenties, while Francis was attending college in Cambridge, England, he made several forays skiing in the Alps.  He sent me a gorgeous picture of him at the top of the mountain, the sunshine on his back, his dark glasses gleaming in the sun with a big smile on his face.  He signed the picture “Look, Ma!  No trees!”  because skiing in the Alps is done above the tree line.  I felt much relieved.  What a great place to ski!  Until I learned from someone that there are not TREES on the Alps, but there are plenty of AVALANCHES!

While in Cambridge, Francis joined a punting team. His team was very successful because he was the lead “punter”.  (I don’t know what it is called…) He would stand at the front of the long, flat boat with a long pole.  Because of the fact he was 6 foot 4 inches, his pole would go deeply into the water and propel the boat forward.  He was also very agile and could do this very fast. His team members would direct him on which way to steer, and they became a champion team!

Despite all of my fears and worries as a parent, Francis has successfully made it to adulthood and continues to try new sports, surfing in Hawaii, wind surfing in California,  and, , jogging in marathons.  He even obtained a license to captain his own sailboat crew.  It just demonstrates that being legally blind does not have to hamper your activities, they just are done in different ways!


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A Whole New Meaning to Swimming With the Fishes

I have been fortunate in that my mother loved to travel and she often took me and one of my kiddos “along for the ride.”  One of my favorite spots was Discovery Cove, part of Sea World in Orlando.  Discovery Cove offered a make believe coral reef with lots of beautiful fish swimming around and huge stingrays that would swim close and touch you. It was so amazing, and was as close to real snorkeling that I had ever been. With a life jacket, snorkel and mask on, Marie, (my 13 year old daughter who is profoundly deaf and has PTSD) and I spent the day swimming around, amazed at the many varieties of tropical fish. It was like being in another world.  In one spot, there was a glass wall and you could swim next to sharks.  Up until this point in my life, this was as close to real snorkeling, and SHARKS, that I would get! It was awesome!

Near the end of the day, Marie’s medication began to wear off as we had stayed later than I anticipated.  She began to get anxious, but she didn’t want to leave.   I told her one more swim around the coral reef and then we’d head back to the hotel.  As had been happening all day, a stingray came up and touched Marie on her leg.  In fact, she had been petting them for most of the day, calling them her “friends”.  For some reason, this touch was different than the rest.  She became frightened and had a full blown panic attack.  She started SCREAMING her high pitched scream and she was signing (in American sign language,) “The fish is going to eat me!” (Why the fish would think she were any tastier later in the day than earlier, I don’t understand.) To get away from the stingray, she climbed onto my back.  I tried to calm her down, but it was difficult to do sign language while trying to swim with a child on your back, and she was screaming so loud her eyes were shut and she couldn’t see what I was saying anyway!  By this time, we were halfway around the coral reef and as far from the shore as you could possibly get.  Marie decided she was not safe enough on my back because her toes were still in the water,  so she climbed up on my shoulders to get completely out of the water!  Unfortunately, that meant I’d have to sink UNDER the water for her to stay OUT of it.  I started screaming along with her.  (Albeit alternating choking with water and screaming.) She was truly frightened the fish was going to eat her and I was truly frightened I was going to drowned.

They have several life guards there and our dilemma was not hard to miss, with Marie standing upright and me bobbing in and out of the water choking. Because we were so far out, it took the lifeguards what seemed like an eternity to reach us.  When they got to us, Marie refused to let the lifeguards touch her, screaming and kicking at them.  (Good old Post Traumatic Stress Disorder shows up when you least expect it!)  What three of the lifeguards ended up doing was supporting me in the water while she continued to stand on my shoulders and scream. Of course there was a huge crowd of onlookers on the beach, some taking photos.  (We really were quite a sight!) Once on the beach both Marie and I collapsed into the sand.  The life guards asked if we needed to go to the hospital, but I was still breathing and Marie had stopped screaming and was crying quietly, so that meant we had both survived unscathed.  Well, maybe not totally unscathed, I’ve lost my wanderlust  for snorkeling!

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ADHD, adopted children, adoption, anxiety disorder, child, Children, children who are deaf, children with disabilities, deaf, deaf children, disability, disabled, Disabled children, families, family, foster care and adoption, fun, happines, happiness through adversity, happy, happy parenting, hearing impaired, hope, humor, inspirational, inspiring, joy, kids, mental health, news, optimism, optimistic, optimistic parenting, overcoming, positive thinking, PTSD, thankful, trauma, vacation

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Twenty Ways to Get Your Child to Leave a Waterpark…

I took my daughter, Marie, to a water park today.  Water parks are wonderful inventions!!!  All kinds of neat stuff to do in the water.  There is a big wave pool, which is kind of like swimming in the ocean waves except for the sand and the salt.  This is my favorite part of the water park, where she and I float in tubes holding onto the handles of each other’s tube and bobbing up and down in the water.  (I do have to say that lately I have gained so much weight I could probably bob without the tube…)  We went on water slides, in the lazy river, and I even spent some time in the hot tub.  I lay in the hot tub straight out, with the water jet aimed right at the back of my neck.  I lay there floating, eyes closed, enjoying the hot, pulsating water, feeling some of the tension release in that part of my body.  The tension release was short lived, however, as I was soon frightened out of my mind by a lifeguard who jumped into the hot tub to “save” me.  Because I was lying there floating with my eyes clothes, he thought I had passed out or something.   I was very embarrassed because by now a crowd had formed around me.  I do have to say that it might have been worth it to pretend I did need saving as the lifeguard was a very handsome young man.  But I digress…

The title of this is Twenty Ways to Leave a Waterpark which I write after my sympathy in seeing numerous young children dragged crying and screaming out of the park.  One couple near me just announced it was time to go to their young child.  They child said no.  They yelled it was time to go.  He said no.  They said they were going to leave him at the water park and go home without him.  He turned to go back in the pool. They dragged him out kicking and screaming.  After seeing this happen time and time again with all ages of children, I thought I would share my “leaving the water park”  parent wisdom…

First, close your eyes and picture doing something you really like to do  (OOHH!!!!  Wait, don’t close your eyes or you won’t be able to read this…)  Okay, just think about something you really like to do…watch a baseball game, go to a concert, eat chocolate pudding and so forth.  Then imagine that mid game, mid concert, mid bite of chocolate pudding someone in authority comes and takes it away from you and tells you it is time to go. No advance warning.  No waiting until the end of the 9th inning.  Just “it’s time to go!”  Would you go quietly or would you rebel?  Children have the same feelings.  If they are quickly taken away from something they enjoy doing, they most likely will rebel, and rebel loudly!  So, here are my ways to successfully leave a water park with a happy child.

#1  You could plan to leave the water park at closing time, which would be a natural transition for the child.  The slides and pools are closed.  It is time to go home.  This was good at the water park we were at because it closed at 6:00 pm.  It would be trickier for those parks that close at a later time.

#2  Another way to get a child to leave the water park would be: about an hour before it is time to leave, tell the child that you will be leaving in an hour.  Tell him/her again at 1/2 hour, then when only 15 minutes are left, then 10, then 5, then calmly usher the child off to the exit, as expected.  It takes time to do this, but the payoff with a hassle free exit will be worth it.

#3  Another method: if your child is the type who likes to ride on the slides, set a number of slides he/she can do before it is time to leave.  This works better with older children and does not need to be done an hour before departure, (unless the lines are VERY long….)  With my daughter today, I told her she had 5 more slides.  Then, after a few more slides I told her she had 2 more slides.  After those 2 slides, she came and got dressed to leave without complaint.

#4 For those children who need a more visual cue, there is a timer sold at Maxi-Aids called the Time Timer.  You set it at an hour, and the background is red.  The red slowly gets smaller and smaller until the time is up.  My daughter has no problem adhering to this as a reminder of when it is time to leave.  She can visually see how much time is left, and plans accordingly.  No arguments.  When the red is gone, her time is up.

#5  I was being overzealous…I only have the above 4 ways to graciously leave a waterpark.  Plus the fourth, most difficult way.  If any of the above methods do not work, one parent (or 2, depending on how large your child is,) scoops the child up in your arms and carries him/her out to the car.  The ensuing wailing and screaming will of course attract attention.Believe me when I say that other parents WILL understand.  Besides, you are at a water park far from where you live and you’ll never see them again, so what do you care what they think?  You WILL feel badly for your child, but, as a parent, you have to be brave and carry through with this.    You have to think of your child and his/her future, and what they will learn from this experience.  I guarantee, you will only have to do it once…

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The Dance of the Snake Goddesses

A very conservative lawyer friend had a very conservative lawyer wife who had taken up belly dancing.  She and 2 friends were so skilled in this talent that they were chosen to be performers for a large audience for First Night, the annual New Year’s Eve celebration in the city.  For an added “twist” to their act, my lawyer friend asked if his wife could borrow one of my son’s 5 foot long boa constrictors for their dance.  I had plenty of reservations, but I said okay. (It is always good to keep a lawyer friend happy because you never know when you will need a lawyer’s help.)  The ladies came to our house, and practiced with the snake while my son, Steven, who is very familiar with snakes, supervised.  The practice went very well, and the ladies excitedly decided to bill their act as the “The Dance of the Snake Goddesses.”

Well, New Year’s Eve came and I reminded Steven that we had to take the snake to the performance hall for the act.  Steven, who has Asperger’s and an anxiety disorder, was mortified!  There was no way HE was going to go to a large hall where there were a lot of people!  He handed me a pillowcase to put the snake in, and a bottle of alcohol “in case it bit someone”. He promptly took off on his bike peddling away to destinations unknown to me, (but far away from  First Night appearance.)  I started to panic!  These excited dancers were billed as the “The Dance of the Snake Goddesses” and they would have no snake!  Feeling extremely obligated to provide them with a snake, I decided to bring the it myself.  I had not minded the snakes when they were locked in the glass tanks, but somehow I was going to have to get up the nerve to actually take the snake out and put it in the pillowcase.  My hands were shaking as I undid the lock and took the cover off of the tank.   It looked docile enough, just lying there.  I reached in and managed to push it into the pillowcase using a long sleeved pot holder, proud of myself for not having to touch it.  Maybe I’d be okay! I tentatively carried the pillowcase to the living room, but I had miscalculated by not securing the top of it.  The snake’s head popped out, I pushed it back down.  It popped out again, and I pushed it down again.  This time it was stronger and its head came our farther.  When I tried to push it back in, it wiggle away from me and the whole snake came slithering out of the bag, which I promptly dropped.  There, on the floor of our living room, was a slithering 5 foot long snake!  I screamed.  My husband came to see what was going on, and he jumped up on the couch and screamed.  Even though I was shaking and my first instinct was to smash the thing over the head with a broom, I remembered  my commitment to our lawyer friends.  I gathered up my courage and, using the broom gently, I nudged it back into the pillowcase, this time immediately tying the top into a knot.

I was still shaking from this experience as I drove to the city with the wriggling pillowcase on the seat next to me.  I was feeling tremendous relief that I had at least caught it and was on my way to the performance. I even felt a little sorry for it, and turned the heat all the way up in my car so it could be warm.  (It had started to snow outside, which would mean there would be a larger than usual audience for an inside performance as the outside First Night performances would involved standing around in wet snow.  Great!  A bigger audience for what was sure to be a Snake Goddess fiasco!)

When we got near the theater, I put the pillowcase inside my coat to keep it warm. (MY I was brave!)  There was a line around the building waiting to see the performance.  I went to the head of the line, and quietly said to the guard at the door, “I have the snake for the performance.”  In his loudest voice, he parted the crowd by saying “Make way for the snake handler.  Make way for the snake handler!”  I wanted to hide!  As a 55 year old shaking, nervous, dowdy woman, I no more resembled a snake handler than a chipmunk would resemble Santa Clause.

I managed to get back stage with the snake and the belly dancers were very excited.  They carefully took him (her?  I couldn’t tell the difference,) out of the bag and began to practice.  By now I was shaking so badly that my stomach was in knots.  I was holding the bottle of alcohol (“in case it bit someone”.)  I was on the verge of tears, both from relief that I’d delivered the snake in one piece, but also fear that it would bite and there would be blood and screams and lawsuits.

The audience in the large theater was packed, standing room only.  The music for the dancers began.  They dramatically began the act hidden behind veils, with the snake on one woman with the head at one hand, draped across her back, and the tail on the other hand.  They did a dramatic dance, dropping the veils at different intervals for the audience to get a glimpse of the snake.  I could hear  “ooooh”  and “aaaaaah” from the audience.  I was hoping the snake wasn’t going to slither down and into the audience causing mass panic,  emptying the audience out into the street, or, worse yet, go around biting audience members with me following along with my bottle of alcohol. (Then I’d really need a lawyer for the lawsuits!)

Then something strange happened. The dancers dropped their veils, and the snake actually seemed to join in the dance.  Soon its head was wriggling in time to the music, its tail was swaying around, and it seemed to be having a grand old time!  It began to slither in time to the music (a pure coincidence I’m sure,) from one dancer to the next.  It was an amazing sight, the graceful gyrating dancers and the graceful gyrating snake, all moving in time to the music.  Mesmerizing. Amazing.  The act finished to a standing ovation, and darn it if it didn’t seem as though the snake bowed his head in response to the clapping from the audience.

After the show, the dancers gave the snake a few affectionate pats and back into the pillowcase it went.  I tied it in a knot, put it under my coat, and carried it back to the car.  I felt as though I was going to cry, but this time it was tears of relief.  I don’t know how I get myself into these situations, but, again, I’d come through it unscathed, with a little more respect for the reptile in the pillowcase next to me!

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Good Luck or Bad Luck Can Be in the Perception

My father was an artist/architect/carver.  He designed beautiful buildings that to this day are still city centerpieces, painted flattering portraits that still hang proudly in people’s homes, and carved a large variety of creative items.  His favorite, and my mom’s least favorite, was a statue of a Tiki god.  A squat, dark man with wild pointy hair, red eyes and a huge, pure white, toothy grin that was almost as big as the body itself.  My mother said it looked evil and it gave her the creeps.  My dad proudly sat it on the fireplace mantel “for good luck”, he said.

Shortly after he placed the statue there, he fell down the basement stairs and broke his leg badly in three places.  He recuperated slowly, but managed to get back to work.  Because he had just returned to work, he ignored stomach pains because he was trying to get caught up on a project.  He finally had to be rushed to the hospital and almost died because his appendix had burst and he had become septic. Whether he was going to live was up in the air for days.

He finally recuperated and returned home from the hospital, although he was still not entirely healed.  He had to get up every few hours to take pain pills.  Late one night when he got up to take medication, he found the kitchen of the house engulfed in flames!  He woke everyone up and managed to scoop my brother out of his bedroom next to the kitchen before the flames reached him.

The fire trucks arrived quickly and more than 1/2 of the house was damaged.  The house was burnt from the back bathroom, the laundry room, the kitchen, my brother’s bedroom, and all the way down the hallway up to the mantle of the fireplace in the living room where the fire damage had stopped.  After the firemen put the fire out and surveyed the severe smoke damage, they were struck by one oddity…the smile of the Tiki god was glowing bright white.  Everything around it was burnt or blackened by smoke, but the statue appeared to be untouched!

Our local newspaper did an article on this phenomenon and we were local celebrities for our 15 minutes of fame.   My mother insisted the Tiki statue was bad luck.  My father fell down the stairs and broke his leg.  His appendix had burst and he’d almost died.  And 1/2 the house burned down!  My father had another take on the situation.  The Tiki god was GOOD luck.  When he’d fallen down the stairs, he could have broken his neck instead of his leg.  When his appendix had burst, he could have gotten to the hospital too late and died.  And if his appendix had not burst, he would not have gotten up in the middle of the night to get medication and the whole house, including his family, could have burned!

The statue remained a fixture in my parent’s house as long as my father lived.  When he passed away ten years ago, my mom got rid of the statue, or so I thought…

Some of you may know that I have been dealing with the recent death of my mother. Cleaning out her house these past few weeks have been the saddest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.  How does one begin to decide what to keep, what to give away and what to throw away?  Cleaning the kitchen I found the grinder she used to make bologna salad with.  Cleaning the bedrooms I  tenderly sorted through pictures, mementos, costume jewelry and I not so tenderly threw away her clothes that had become threadbare and worn.

I had managed to finish cleaning most of the house except for the basement.  I put that off until last.  In a family like ours without any wealth in “things”, I could only expect to find in the basement “memories” not worth keeping, but too sad to throw away.  All of the old Christmas decorations, the threadbare sheets, blankets, chenille bedspreads and curtains that my mother thought might “come in handy one day”, old televisions with rabbit ear antennas,  8 track tape recorders, posters from the 60s that had faded and crumbled with the moisture,  and a whole lot of other worthless “junk” that would cause me further sadness.  I was dreading cleaning it out!  As a working mother with kiddos who I have to drive back and forth to doctor appointments, soccer practice, friend’s houses and such, I did not really have the extra time I needed to devote to this depressing task.  Plus, I hated cleaning my OWN house and I resented the fact that this task lay ahead of me.

At work my husband called me frantic!  The water heater had burst in my mother’s basement and there was 2 inches of water everyplace!!!  I had no time to be bothered with yet another unpleasant task, I thought as I left work early to take care of the situation.  As I opened my mother’s basement door, I could hear the water gushing, and see items floating freely in the water.  “UGH!!!!”  I thought, as I started to cry, overwhelmed by the task ahead of me.  Now I not only had to clean, but I had to mop up the mess! When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I surveyed the damage…everything was dank, dripping wet and depressing.  Then, a familiar face smiled out at me through the dampness…the Tiki statue!  It was up on a shelf on a wall way across the room, but even through the darkness I could still see its smile!  I stopped crying in amazement.  It made me think.  I finally realized that this was NOT bad luck, as my mother would have said, but GOOD luck, as my father would have said.  With my mom’s basement flooded, her homeowner’s insurance company would pay to have it cleaned up!  I called them and they sent over a cleaning crew right away. With everything ruined, it would have to be thrown away, not by ME, but by the company which would haul it all away.  Suddenly the dismal vision of me standing in a foot of water and bagging after bag after bag of old, wet memories disappeared, replaced with a sense of giddiness! I don’t know why, but just the fact that this huge daunting task of cleaning her basement had been taken care of by this flood lightened my mood. Isn’t life strange?

Although some of our old stuff MAY have been salvageable, I knew it would just sit in my basement and become more junk for me, so I asked the clean up crew to clean it entirely because everything was “moldy from the water. They went in and scooped everything away and cleaned the basement spotlessly!  The thing I saved from the basement was the Tiki god.  Not that I “believe” in him, but I believe that sometimes luck is all in how incidents are perceived, and life is a whole lot less stressful if you can look at the lucky side of things!  I know my spirits were lifted that day…


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