Leisa A. Hammett

Life as a Journey

Isabella

They knew something I didn't. They being these hip new mothers with whom I'd formed an attachment parenting-breastfeeding mamas playgroup.  And it was always more about us mothers getting together than our offspring playing with one another.  These were bright, articulate well-educated women and they loved to read. They shared their secret find with me: a tattered, fat, newsprint magazine about mostly children's books, with some adult reads folded in. They spoke of the catalog's editor as if she were a friend. Taking the tome home I quickly understood the allure of the Chinaberry books catalog, subtitled, "Books and treasures for the Whole Family."

The mission statement of the catalog was/is: "to offer items to support families in raising their children with love, honesty and joy to be reverent, loving caretakers of each other and the earth." Founder Ann Ruethling, and eventually a staff, wrote the reviews with passion and as if sitting down and talking to one's best friend over a cup of chamomile. So, five years back, it was to my delight that a friend gave me a gift certificate at my "No Anniversary Party" (in celebration of my divorce) to Isabella. Upon opening the Isabella catalog's oversized newsprint cover, I found Chinaberry's founding California mom, still selling books but also "Gifts for Reawakening the Spirit." I ordered my Angel of Time from the catalog as well as a few other gifts to myself and others in the years since. There's Ann's smiling picture and the faceless voices of her staff who describe each product with equal passion and friendspeak. It's the only catalog I receive in my snail mail. I look forward to it like I do a favorite  magazine. I save it for rare down moments when I want to become lost within it's pages and savor its  lush, engaging descriptions and interesting finds. I fold down the pages and note the books yet to be read. 

I received my summer Isabella yesterday. As always, it never fails to disappoint. Again, it offered up treasure. I love seashells. And I so loved what was written about this above pendant and the treasure of nature it imitates, that I'm sharing its' truths, as I see it, here and below:

"With its peaks and valleys, smooth sailings and stumbles, it's no wonder that life is called a journey. (What journey ever goes smoothly, start to finish?) And each and every one of us is a pilgrim on that journey.

"The scallop shell became the symbol of pilgrims traveling through northwestern Spain on El Camino de Santiago hundreds of years ago. They would pick up a scallop shell from Galicia as a keepsake of their journey over ''The Way of St. James.'' More than simply souvenirs, these shells showed local authorities and bandits that the pilgrims were passing in peace and had only good intentions."

And the ad copy continues that the pendant is a reminder that one is "a pilgrim on this journey of life, stepping carefully, meaning no harm, faltering occasionally, but with the goal always ahead of you to be the best you can possibly be."

Amen.

Always. Always. Always.

Photo: D Sharon Pruitt

The dark of the summer night was closing in on us.  Our children's therapeutic horseback riding session had ended and we were headed home. But first, as the motor of J.'s PT Cruiser was running, I stood on the other side of his driver's side door. We talked about my current book project, about a featured family, and how J. had mentored them gently onto the pathway of this question-chocked journey of having a child with autism. 

J. is a systemic advocate extraordinaire and is featured, with his family, in the book. We have watched one another's children grow up. Our children with autism are very different, yet they are the same in some of the more troubling-ly enigmatic ways. Unlike the children of many of our dear mutual autism-parent friends, our children have not shot their stars into the universe to create their own special galaxy. At least not like our friends' children, in terms of "successful outcomes" by "neurotypical" society's standards.  Our children have stayed on the ground in their development -- maybe only to levitate a few feet above it -- in many ways...never shooting into a galaxy of unpredictable and almost typical development.

And that's when J. said it.  "Always. Always. Always." He said he had told the father he mentored "it" would NEVER go away. Though I've struggled over the years with these feelings, I had never heard someone say this. I've learned that when my eyes suddenly water upon hearing something it means it hits at a core of truth at me and this did.

I held that problematic affirmation about "it" close to my heart, several times removing my hands long enough to take a peek at it's truth and then cover it back up tightly again. And then, two weeks after that conversation in the parking lot, I sat at lunch with another special needs mother.  An attorney. Her son had another disorder.  And that's when I shared J's statement about "it."  And in doing so, fierce, juicy, burning tears really sprung to my eyes, this time threatening to spill.  No simply misting this time. My friend at lunch knew it was true. She nodded.  "Oh, yeah," she added with conviction. And at that moment, I, too, really knew it, and claimed how true "it" is for me.

"Always. Always. Always," J. had said.  "'It' NEVER goes away.  You will ALWAYS question if you made the right choices for your child.  Could you have done more? Did you do the Right Thing [in regards to the crucial choices of interventions, programming, schools]?

Yeah, I'm all Zen about such things normally. About not looking back to a Dead Past. About Living in The Now.  About Choosing No Regrets.  About knowing I did the best I knew to do at the time and to move on forward. Those are all true. I do practice them in my life religiously. But deep, deep down, buried within the psyche of most every special needs parent is the question(s).

Always. Always. Always.

Tribal Blogging

Sssshhh! Listen. Can you hear it? Off in the far, far distance. Around a fire they are gathered. The mommas have sarong-wrapped their babes onto their backs or nuzzled them at their breasts. The stories have begun. They are telling. And they are listening. Fast forward hundreds of years and our grannies and great grannies are rocking on the porches of their white clapboard houses. Their hands are fast at work. Snapping beans into a bowl, stitching colorful remnants into quilts. Swatting flies and wiping brows. Listen as they they reverently tell their secret stories. And then, come...Time travel into the now. Into the land of caffeine and laptops. They're hunched down, the glare of glowing screens coloring their faces neon. They are bloggers. And they are telling their stories on line.

About 1,400 of these new millenium storytellers gathered in The Windy City this weekend for the largest annual blogging conference: BlogHer. Across the country, women who could not attend for various reasons had pangs of blog envy. In the privacy of their desktop cubbies, while tykes tugged at their capris, they bemoaned into cyberspace the pluses and the minuses of not being there. But, Saturday night in Music City no crying was going on in a certain group of mostly Mom Blogger's beers. And that's because a couple of mom bloggers hosted their own meet up, so cleverly named: Margarit-Her. 

A friendly bunch of women, we (such as I) were/are not all "mommy bloggers." We blog about spirituality, today's church, Catholic homeschooling, going granola, Guatemalan adoption, fashion finds, living frugally yet beautifully and more. It is 2009. Someone else snaps our beans and makes our quilts. Although there's a return to simplicity and crafts and yet another subset of blogging baby wearers. And what we do have all in common is that we tell stories. Much like our primitive ancestors and our grannies. Only, we are typing them into electronic keyboards and clicking "send" and dispersing them into the blogosphere. Who'd of thunk? Criticize all this technology if you will. But in the end, it's still telling one's story. One mother. One human. To another. Connecting. Through story.

Blog on, baby. Blog on.

The Joy of Simplicity

*Photo: rayced

We've had a reprieve from the scorching summer heat the last three days.  I lured The Fiance out and over for a walk by "the marsh." That's what I call the little man-made lake that feeds into the Harpeth River where our city has created one of several Greenways. The path snakes around a marshy-like pond where in places you dodge bits of duck doo. Leggy Blue Herons, turtles sunning, a leaping fish or two and a bull frog chorus provide the ambiance. The air was so lush it caressed my bare arms. And, like walking in many of my favorite parks here, the season changes wardrobes and provides a glorious fashion show. Parts of the path were nearly shrouded in tall, green weeds that provided a mixture of coziness and slight claustrophobia. And then, the sunset. Drop biscuit clouds of baby girl pink and baby boy blue were scattered onto a the satin smooth canvas of sky, which was, in turn, brilliantly reflected back on the pond. Our stroll brought such joy to my spirit.

Photo: Dean Ayres (Cambridge)

This morning, I claimed a spot in the dining room to plop, journal and meditate. The sun was too warm and invitingly irresistible there. 

Later, I felt the slight tug of resistance and then the clean sweep of my knife through a fresh lemon that I then squeezed into my glass of cool water.

I thought about the Joy in the Simple. About the Zen of feeling the knife as it cut through the fruit. Watching the juice spurt and ooze. Hearing the knife hit the counter. Slow. Intention. Conscious. Savoring.

Photo: Pink Sherbert Photography

Joy in the Simple. So necessary to savor in a world complicated, wrapped and ensnared by details.

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*Pssst: wouldn't mind complicating my life with the details of getting here, pictured above:  Anguillara Sabbazia - Bracciano - Rome - Italy

Resilience

*Photo: skeggy

Two major traffic incidents blocked three portions of Nashville interstate. The crowd gathered that night was small and intimate as a result. Thirteen of us, about half parents, half school personnel, had gathered at an Autism Society of Middle Tennessee workshop on building relationships with an IEP (Individual Education Planning)team. During the question and answer period at the end, a beloved school employee pointed to myself and another parent. She said she'd known us each many years and knew that we'd been through some rough times in the system.  How, she questioned, did we remain so positive.

I confess. I don't remember what the other parent said. When she finished, I responded with an "I don't know." But, quickly, I added that the first word that came to mind was Resilience. And, I don't remember now exactly what else I said, but I'm sure it was some version similar to this, only more specific to the disAbility journey.

I am a poster child for adversity. I lost a job once (and not a weaselly one, either. A major career position.) I experienced divorce. And, I have a child with a disAbility. And a few bangs and bruises in between and since then. What I've learned is that this is Life. It's about Choice. Our lives with disAbility will be riddled, unfortunately, with negativity and challenge. But, I've found it was necessary to cherry pick the positive and savor it. By beginning each morning with a Gratitude List that may be as simple as giving thanks for heat (in winter!), a glass of water with fresh-squeezed lemon, the sunshine outside my window and my mid-morning latte....Life is Good. Scientific research is bearing out that we can help increase our healthy body chemicals when we focus on the positive, just as we can help generate an internal toxic waste dump when we concentrate on the negative.

I relayed to the group about my year -- my daughter's second grade -- when she had the teacher from hell and how I drove up into the pick up line each afternoon with a fake smiled plastered on my face. What am I doing, I challenged myself knowing that behind that smile was sheer, searing pain. (This teacher had "neglected" my child --the system's evaluation -- and been verbally abusive to me.)The answer, I later learned was that I was trying to survive within this situation. I wuz fakin' it til' I made it.  I also had had a year, the second year of my daughter's kindergarten, (she repeated) when I didn't survive well and created anxiety by allowing my Fears to stage a reoccurring drama every few hours within the theater of my mind.  I decided not to run that play in my head again during the teacher from hell year. And, then again this calendar year, the drama troupe came back to town and tried to stage itself about some personal circumstances in my life. I nearly let the show begin. But, I organized a  protest. I put myself on Inositol, (vitamin B 8,) to help with Anxiety, got back with my morning practices, (yoga, journaling, meditating,) which I'd let lapse for a couple of months, and watched my thoughts guardedly. I will not let you have a field day, I told my imagined Fears. And then I addressed the issue, as much as I could, in reality with the people involved.

So, I come back to this word. Resilience. I have chosen to be resilient within external circumstances that I cannot always change. But I can monitor my thoughts. I Can. Take care of me.

*Photo: Barbados Sunrise

10 Great Things About Growing Older

Still pondering the meaning of growing older here, with 50 now looming nearly 11 months away on the horizon. Still think Growing Older is not a bad thing. In fact, here's a list of 10 great things about Growing Older:

 1. If you messed up* on marriage the first or second ... time, you get to do it all over again.

 2. You've gained the amount of confidence you always wished you had.

 3. You can write "veteran" as a description on your resume and know it can't be questioned.

 4. You can claim "veteran" for more than a few things other than the work experiences because now    you have truly been around the block a few times.

 5. You've come into your own.

 6. You've figured out a few things in your life about:

    Spirituality   

    Yourself

    Other People

 7. You've learned not to sweat the small stuff. (Well, still on the curve a little here.)

 8. You've figured out what is the small stuff. (I'm pretty good at deciphering it after a little bit.)

 9. You've learned what's really important in Life.

10. You've been through enough Life crises to know: IGBOK**.

*Actually, I don't believe there are mess ups. Just lessons learned. Had I of not married Grace's father, there would be no Grace. Not a mess up at all. But can I do it a little better next time by learning from my stumble-bumbles? Absolutely.

**IBOK: It's going to be okay.

Summer Rain, A Drive and A Sandwich

Photo: Darren Hester

Late Sunday afternoon brought a blacktop steamin', gutters overflowin', creek gushin' summer rain. Then, a quiet settled when the heavens closed shop. A cool air circulated, replacing the choking heat. Last email sent, lap top closed, I moved to the kitchen and made sandwiches.

Minutes later, rag top down, we greeted our blessed (geographical) neighbor. You see, we live at the northern end of the Natchez Trace.  Rau Malo seductively serenaded us as I drove up the ramp and crossed the bridge o'er Highway 100, leaving the lights of The Loveless behind. The wind brushed our arms, mimicking the feel of silk. Our hair tossed wildly. Well, at least mine did. Grace's hair is straight and while mine gets knarly, hers' just gets greasy from our topless (sic) rides.

A couple miles down The Trace, I turned left and drove the end of the jut. I parked. Turned off Rau,  preferring the cadence of tree frogs, katydids, crickets and other creatures. Our view graced us with six layers of hills, fading from glorious green to a gray-ish sea foam. Mounds upon seemingly mounds of trees enshrouded with thick post-rain fog.

And then, I celebrated a Summer Rite of Passage. Earlier during the day, we'd jaunted over to Howell's produce. The real Howell's. Not some city stand. No, the country cousin one out by rows and rows of vegetables. And now, with an evening view, a natural chorus...I bit into my first 'Mater Sandwich of the season and then wiped the juice of it as it made it's way toward the chin beneath my emerging smile of welcoming pleasure. May there be many, many more of these to come while summer's heat is on.

The Care and Feeding of a Parent

Photo: EssjayNZ is back in NZ

Per boyfriend legend, Glenn was a nutty one. Meeting up with him 10 years post breakup was chance. I was then married, he, still single. Our destination: Ohio, where neither of us lived. I was on a story assignment, he, on a business trip. And, he was still nutty. I never forgot from that brief meeting how he described his "aging" father. Glenn and I were just barely 30. His father, 60. Mine was nearly 70. Sixty, I knew, was spring chick material. I remembered Glenn's father handsome and robust. Like father, like son. But, Glenn insisted how infantile-like his father was and shared the things he had to help his father with -- like assisting a little child.

Nutty Glenn came to mind during the recent Father's Day weekend. Not because I was back in one of the locations of our brief college courtship.  Instead, I recalled Glenn because of how he described his father during our last meeting.  However inaccurate I judged Glenn's assessment of his father -- it had become my view of my father. And how ironic and surreal it all felt.

Father's Day weekend, my father's Parkinson's shuffle made his commute from our dinner table to sofa painstakingly long, with at least two siblings on either side of him, insuring his safety so he would not fall -- like a toddler learning to walk. However, unlike a toddler, there would be no running to follow. This was life being lived in reverse. Later, my sister and I took him "home," to his assisted living facility. I turned my head and stared at the wall as my sister helped him toilet and dressed him in his pajamas. This was not a toddler learning essential independent self-help skills. This was a grown man, losing his essential skills.

And, like a child, we pulled the covers up to his chin. A child that sprouted beard stubble. We kissed him goodnight, not knowing what he'd be like in mind and body the next time we would see him. Reverse was a direction we'd come to expect in him since my mother's death a mere six months ago.  Before we finished saying our last goodnight and I love you's, his eyes had already closed. Briefly, they fluttered opened long enough for his weak, tremble-ly voice to pathetically echo our goodbyes.

My head is trying to wrap itself around this cycle of life....A cycle that begins in infancy and, in this and many other cases, returns to an infantile state. And, of course, there's the irony that this is the same parent who once performed all of these tasks with my own self and my siblings. The roles. Have reversed.

Four-Word Love Stories

 

Me and Beloved, 2007, WildSpring, Port Orford, Ore.

The book, Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak asked people to sum up their romantic lives in a mere six words. (This is another inspiring find from my social media site client, which I help moderate.) Only, I read it as four words (Doh!) and quickly composed these: 

Learning to REALLY Love.

Listening + Compassion = Love (That would be five if I used words instead of symbols. Getting closer!)

*"Work" done 4 U (*Work, as in I've done my "work" so that I can be my best for you. Work as in personal growth.)

Oh, and about heartbreaks....This one's the correct six-word quota! Ding!Ding!Ding!:

If I Choose, heartbreaks can Strengthen.

You? What are your four, or five OR six word love stories?

A Buddhist Forecast

Photo: Wrote

It. Is. H-O-T...hot. Here. Whew!Drrrip! Wipe.

About 15 years ago, I used to have a neighbor I'd meet out on walks. If it was hot she'd complain. If it was cold she'd complain. Thanks to my neighbor, I've decided to be Buddhist at least when it comes to weather. A Buddhist would say feel it. If it's hot, just feel it. Observe it. And that's what I try to do. 

Ever stop and think about the many ways we feel summer heat? Steamy humidity that wafts in visible clouds before it engulfs. Heat trapped in an airtight car that seems to momentarily suck the air from one's lungs. The penetrating suns rays that within minutes of stepping beneath it feels as if it's searing our skin.

I figure there's enough negativity in this life. I Choose not to add to it by complaining about something I cannot change. So, when it comes to the forecast, I have a Buddhist kinda attitude about the weather. It makes accepting the conditions a lot easier. I no longer "suffer" from the persecution of my thoughts over how bad it feels. I just feel it. It works. For me.