Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Stunning, stunning article

[Birth Mother,] First Mother Forum: Conceived in rape, but joined by a daughter's love...: Jane Katherine (Kathy) Stockton was born in 1960, blind, severely retarded, and physically disabled because her mother, Linda, contract...


As an adopted daughter -as a woman whose mother that raised her is now passed away - as a woman estranged from her own daughter, and feeling very distant (and not just geographically) from her grandsons - as a woman who is a rape survivor - as a mother who was frequently told in various forms that I wasn't a real mother, that I wasn't allowed to feel like a mother - finding this woman's website and reading this particular story has resonated so deeply within me, that I cannot even cry.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Because she was making me Thanksgiving for Christmas ...

Because I knew that Kevin's mother Dorothy was going to be including me @ Christmas dinner (and feeding CoCo too :) ), I wanted to get her a hostess gift ...

After mulling over several options, I saw, in the Kroger's circular, a complete meal for at least six people - meat, two sides, rolls - for around $30!  This is IT! I smiled and said to myself:  she feeds me dinner, I provide the next one :)

So I went to the deli counter .... and there encountered my first surly woman, a rarity in the South!  She snarled that I was to come back in 15 minutes ...and when I did, I saw this poor fellow deli employee - a woman maybe 70 lbs - struggling to carry this HUGE box.  So I moved out of the way.  And she followed me.  And so I moved.  And she followed me.

AND THEN I REALIZED SHE HAD MY ORDER ;-

The poor lady was bent half backwards, so I quickly grabbed it.  It wasn't so much heavy, as it was awkward.  I struggled w/ it to the register (I didn't have a cart) and by then I was out of breath and frankly, overwhelmed!

There is a male cashier named Lee who has cerebal palsy and who is the most gentle soul you'd ever want to meet - I remember him from when I last lived here.  He immediately walked over, took the box, got me a carriage, and rang me up with a portable device on his belt.  God bless Lee!

Realizing it swallowed up the hatchback area in my truck, I decided to ship it -but got to the UPS store and the line was literally out the door!

Got it home and -oh dear:  it wouldn't fit in my refrigerator ;-

At that point I opened the box.  AND REALIZED IT ONLY TOOK UP HALF THE BOX - the other half of the box was empty!

Individually, it fit in my fridge ... and in the $7 stryofoam ice chest I bought to haul it up there ...very easily!

Saturday, March 24, 2012

I take refuge

Responsorial Psalm, Ps 7:2-3, 9bc-10, 11-12
R. (2a) O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.

O LORD, my God, in you I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and rescue me,
Lest I become like the lion's prey,
to be torn to pieces, with no one to rescue me.

R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.

Do me justice, O LORD, because I am just,
and because of the innocence that is mine.
Let the malice of the wicked come to an end,
but sustain the just,
O searcher of heart and soul, O just God.

R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.

A shield before me is God,
who saves the upright of heart;
A just judge is God,
a God who punishes day by day.

R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Endings and beginnings

My dear online friend "cupcakeonawire" (Youtube, blogger, extraordinare!) gave me permission to quote her:  " sometimes endings are best and are precursors to wonderful beginnings :)"

I've had those, indeed - and not just w/ relationships, but w/ places (i.e. my most recent move) ... however, I did indeed think of relationships w/ this, because I was grateful my online friend is having one of those - I haven't, it happened in the time I was offline, and it's not even a complete break - it's more like boundaries and walls and - let me start @ the beginning :

When I went home to NJ for Christmas, my friend Kevin and I had one of these talk to 4 a.m. conversations - and the loose, but close to the head and the heart, coils, that had stretched from Kentucky to NJ over the past 3.5 years, were re-examined ... and ya know?  Here is someone I've known since 1980 and dammit I am going to write our story! and this time

This time it looks like we're actually going to pull it off:  it being a successful, live together in the future, adult relationship !!!

It was so sweet and so loving ... and everyone around us -his mother, his sister-in-law - everyone picked up on it and ran with what they were seeing "oh ...finally!"  "those two!"  "ahhh, love!"

My returning to my new apt. wasn't an ending - it was a for now ...I'm six hours away, a one day drive, and there is the phone, and all of this would be only temporary, of course - because we were definitely in no shaded terms working on living together within the year

And to that end ... well, let's look at Feb - Val Day plus his birthday "when do you want me?"  I was planning my next trip -me, disabled me, six hours, driving, an elderly dog - but - you know - its temporary!

The first thing that went wrong was when I looked into public housing here - not thrilled about it, but I know it's decent and convenient - and when I looked to get on the waiting list - I was stunned to realize they had jacked up the price beyond what I could afford.  I called my boyfriend crying screaming and what did I hear? "I don't know what to tell you, dear."

Excuse me?!

But then it got really, really hurtful.  One part of it I won't talk about in a public venue.  And the other part was - that new little sweetheart name he was calling me -not just on Christmas - but on the phone, and on texts - he revealed ummm gee Jean I really didn't mean it.

All of this was over the phone, so at least I saved gas and hotel fees, yes?!

I was shattered.  I screamed at him as often as I needed to on the phone.  I cried, here in my apt, and as I didn't have my computer up again, I wrote.  I prayed.

And I'm still talking to him.

It's a long time connection.  I'm actually the closest person to him.  When I travel back to my hometown, its his too.  His mother and I actually like each other, and his sister, and his brother, and his sister-in-law.  There are subjects we've always discussed, that we still talk about.  And neither of us have good health - in fact, his is in the variety of "you're gonna die before 50, and you're 48" and yeahhh a doctor has told him that, more than once, because of what he's not taking care of (his is far more fixable than mine) - so I feel like - if I block his number - something is going to happen and someone like his mother is going to need to call me and I wouldn't want the shock of not being told -been through that way too many times !

But, I'm done.  This is not fixable - not after what he said.  Not after what made me realizing I could never trust another endearment out of his mouth - I'd always question it, I'd never believe it.

So yeahhh being here is really very much a new beginning - even more and more, than I realized

FINALLY !

Wow!  It's been way too long since I've posted!  Things came up w/ moving that I just didn't foresee - another story, another time... for right now, I want to write a Dad post :

"When an abdominal aortic aneurysm ruptures, doctors say, the chance of survival is about 10 to 20 %"  Healthquest magazine

I was reading this article in a magazine - saw this statement -and it brought me right back ....

Dad had one of these.  The docs said they couldn't treat it under 5 cm (or whatever the size was) and his was a 4.  With everything else he had going on, it wasn't too much in my thoughts, honestly ...

On this particular morning, I had a $30 check to cash.  And then I was going out to breakfast.  Now, of all the restaurant meals Dad loved, he never liked going out for breakfast.  Therefore, I set his breakfast up on the table, wrote him a note, checked him again (still sleeping like the white-haired angel he was!), and headed out ...

... and I get to the bank and - I can't believe it. I'm cursing myself.  Literally.  I don't have the dammed check!  Now how did that happen?!!!

I drive all the way back to the house.  The dammed check is sitting on the table!  Oh!  He's sitting up in bed.  Ok ...I'll just go in to tell him where I'm going and

"Faucet" he says

I'm thinking bathroom faucet and as I turn to go into the bathroom to check, he waves and points to his nose.  And coughs and explains his nose has been running like a bloody faucet and um always very modest the other end too.  WHAT?!!

And then he says, "St. Peter's."  He was bleeding and feeling so poorly, all he wanted was a Catholic hospital - he figured he was dying!  So that meant no 911.  I would have to drive him --

-- which was harrowing.  I literally thought he was going to die in the car!  I tried to pull into another hospital, but he grabbed my arm and said "No!" 

He had blown the stomach aneurysm.  It was so severe that I had to sign consent papers leaning up against someone's back or a wall, and a doctor had to rush in, dressed for an event in a tuxedo, and the surgery had to be done in the emergency room - they couldn't even wait for an operating room.  And all the blood he lost!  Do I recall correctly hearing something like 400 cc?!  It was a 12 hour day in which I thought I was going to lose him, and thank God, I did not (not then) ...

And here's the thing that has always, always stuck w/ me:  when I told the doctor the sequence of events in the morning ... he said that if I hadn't forgotten the check - if I had cashed it and gone to breakfast as planned - I would have come home and found him passed away.

I like to think my late mother, or someone, took that check out of my purse, because it wasn't his time.