He fought for us and still is fighting just to survive.

I am doing my practicum with veterans in supportive housing. The term “supportive housing” basically means social services are housed right in the apartment community so intervention and support are more integrated and easily accessed. Additionally, coordination of multi-level care is provided. The idea is that by working with the client in their own environment the success rate increases and issues are more readily identified and resolved. When a client comes to a professional office there is an artificial or guarded response from the client. More importantly, a collaborative and team-like approach is better generated in the client’s natural environment. If a social worker is sitting behind a desk, automatically a hierarchy is unintentionally formed — with the social worker of viewed as “above looking down” and hence, emotional intimacy and trust is not established. Even the terms used in a supportive environment are to promote the team approach. Instead of referencing the veteran as a “client”, we are asked to view them and reference them just a “persons” because that does not infer any hierarchy.

One of the veterans was sharing with me that after getting out of the service he used poor coping skills and drank excessively which caused him to lose everything, including his job and then his wife. He quickly found himself homeless and lived for two years in a hole — literally. He found a building in which the foundation was not ever properly finished, and hence there was a hole underground that was big enough for him to stand up in and lay a mattress on the ground. He said there were pipes on the ceiling and he would hang his clothes there. He is a very nice man– quiet, soft-spoken and articulate. He was very embarrassed as he told me his story. But the truth of the matter is most of America is only two paychecks away from homelessness. I find myself wondering, how many of us would survive if we found ourselves homeless? It requires a great amount of resourcefulness, creativity, resilience and fortitude to just survive. Your days would be spent walking — and some of your nights too in order to keep warm. Securing food would be a daily and time-consuming task. Needing new tennis shoes would be a crisis. You would have to live without love for the most part, because America does not extend much warmth to the homeless population and wrinkles its nose in disdain in response to body odor. Which brings me to showers … certainly those would be treasured events — even though you probably would be taking them with several other strangers at a shelter. God help you if you become ill. I couldn’t imagine having a stomach virus when my house was a cardboard box. And I wonder also, how does one sleep when you have to keep one eye open for your own safety when your bed is a park bench? No matter who you are, no matter caused you to become homeless, you deserve a better life than described here. You deserve to have an address to put on your job application and the ability to shower before the interview. You deserve to live like a human. The homeless are people too. Some of them even served in the armed services and fought for my freedom.

Unbelievable

So what was it that made him think it was even an option — even a remote possibility? I was so frustrated and irritated, and of course, all the good lines came to me after the moment had passed. However, isn’t that always the case? Next time I will be more prepared and say something witty like, “You have got to be kidding … right?!?!” Or perhaps I’ll just burst into hysterical laughter and walk away, choking on my chuckles. Or maybe I will coolly respond, “I don’t do charity work on Thursdays.” Ouch, that would work.

Why in the hell would he think I would go out with him? I would never date a married man!

Today and Tomorrow — Life is good!

I started my social work practicum today working with veterans. I will be working with them in both the individual and group setting. My enthusiasm increased significantly after getting to know some of the clients and other social workers at the facility. We are one of the sites targeted in the nation to pilot a new program so needless to say, this is a very good opportunity. I will be working at the micro and macro level, while gaining experience with organic mental illness, substance abuse and war-related issues, of course. Since I will be interning 20 hours a week, taking 13 credit hours and raising my three children, my blogging will be decreasing significantly. I also want to continue my volunteer hospice work, but won’t be taking on any new clients. There’s no way I could stop seeing my surrogate grandmother … seeing her is a gift that I give myself.

This is the most content I have ever been in my life. My little family and I are all healthy, I am in a good place financially, I love school and my future looks very promising. The only thing lacking is the love of a significant other … someone with which to share all the blessings and occasional heartaches. I’m in no hurry however, and have no intentions of “settling”.

I’m wiped out, time to read a story to my younger two and fall into bed — alone again, yet all is well and life is good.

One Life and Three Centuries

Upon entering the “Activities Room” I began scanning and looking for the familiar Colts baseball cap with the signature scrawled across the bill in black Sharpie. The “Activities Room” is where all eating, bingo, reading aloud and conglomeration of group sleep occurs for the residents of the long term care facility. The lighting is poor, which I don’t think is fair since many of the residents had begun to lose a good deal of their vision some time ago. The mean age looks to be about eighty-something.

I squint my own almost-but-not-yet-40-year-old-eyes to see if that will suddenly make my adopted grandma appear from out of the institutional gray walls. It was difficult to distinguish one fuzzy head of white hair from another at times. The staff has them arranged in such a way I am reminded of the pussy willow buds which grow away from the mid-line of the tree. A nurses aide moves and I finally locate my surrogate grandma in her buggy, as I call her wheeled legs, with the infamous hat and hot cocoa in front of her. As I cross the room and close the distance between her and I, snippets of conversations layer themselves over each other — all spoken at an elevated volume to bridge the hearing loss which is inevitable with age.

“Can you eat some more Jello?” shouts one aide as she deftly scoops up a wobbly green cube

“No, you can have it,” says a shaky yet high pitched voice.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, darling,” another voice calls out which is roughened by a few too many Marlboro Lights.

“Take me to my room, I’m tired,” grumbles a man with several days stubble shadowing his jawline. His lower jaw protrudes forward giving him a vague resemblance to a bull dog.

I think to myself briefly how similar the residents sound to my own children. Is it not irony we exit this lifetime almost as helpless as we came into the world? As I approach my hospice client, she looks up and deduces someone is coming to see her for I see her mouth turn up at the sides and the lines deepen and crinkle around her watery blue eyes. I smile back with both joy and relief. In being a hospice volunteer, one learns quickly each day is a gift and without notice playful eyes can suddenly become dull and lifeless and entire dimensions of a person can be erased with a stroke, dementia or impending death. Her eyes thankfully still radiate with life and her feathery voice has a happy lilt as she reaches out for a hug. She never remembers my name, but knows she knows me and that is all that matters. If I were 110 years old, names would slip from my mind like wet noodles off a wet plate. As I press my cheek against her soft, wrinkly cheek I try to memorize how it feels — almost like a kitten’s ear. I pull away and place a hand fondly against her cheek.

“You look good Grandma. How are you?”

“The good Lord willing, I’m doing well again today.”

” I haven’t found you a husband yet, a good man is hard to find Grandma … I can’t even find one for myself.”

She chuckles with amusement and reaches out to touch my arm, her fingers swollen at the joints, the skin looking like parchment. Her touch is cool and soft, surprisingly pleasant.

“Well, I don’t want no lazy man now. I don’t want to have to care for another one. Get me one about 65 so he can still work and take care of a home.”

And so begins our weekly visit. She shares about her childhood and laughs when she tells how her brothers would carry her to the top of the barn and leave her there scared out of her wits. I ask her how did she get down? She tells me with a twinkle in her eyes that shines despite the cloud of her cataracts, “Oh, I just hollered for mother — and boy, did they get in trouble.” An hour passes too quickly as our resident grandma explains to me the handiness of slop jars back in the early 1900s. She tells me about being premature and being kept warm by a cook stove after she was born. I listen intently as she explains how to button shoes with a shoe hook; and I laugh when she tells me about her two aunts lived together because “they both were a bit snooty and deserved each other.”

I hear a lot of the same stories now. Yet each time I hear them I bubble with enthusiasm and love for this stooped over, tiny woman who sits with her Colts hat jauntily cocked upon her thin white hair. I bubble over because she bubbles with joy as she tells them — reliving the beautiful moments with glee. Her memory is an endless well of life’s precious moments she ladles out to those who listen. The painful moments she puts a fence around by saying, “Things don’t always make sense when they happen, but there is always a good reason and you just have to be okay with that.” There’s gotta be something to that … after all, she is 110.

On the precipice of tomorrow

I have been restless all day — well, the seven hours I have been awake for this day anyway. My beloved children are with their father and I slept in today until 8:00. I woke up slowly, lingering in the area between wake and sleep, enjoying the fuzzy feeling that comes with it. I am pleased that I can experience such simple pieces of heaven. There was a time in life that I was too stressed or too “something” to notice the little wonders like that in my day. The cat (note I don’t say “my cat”, because I really basically ignore her and leave the lavishing love part to my children), she was not too happy when I stretched and accidentally displaced her from her perch on the end of the bed. For some reason I still do not understand, she always sleeps with me. She reminds me of myself earlier in life, still hanging onto relationships when the other party really is not all that interested in interacting. Hmmmm, and I thought dogs were supposed to be the devoted ones.

Now that my summer has been officially brought to a close by the magic, blue rag I am no longer able to “just lounge” and now find myself in continual motion. This morning I busied myself with mindless activities, as my mind was busy organizing the various tasks I need to accomplish prior to Tuesday’s close and thinking about the clients I will be working with in my internship. I walk into my Senior practicum at 9:00 on that day and am quite optimistic about the opportunity that has been afforded to me. Most of my classmates are really nervous, yet I’m not, which I suppose is a benefit of being an older, “non-traditional student” (I just love that little label). I feel more excitement and a growing desire to learn and serve — not nervous, worried or fearful. My placement is to work with veterans in supportive housing, which will be good experience since we are dumping thousands of war -torn individuals back into society on a monthly basis.

In 2004, according to the US Census, the United States had 24.9 million veterans. (For edification purposes, a veteran is an individual who has served 24 months in the military.) I hope to gain an understanding of what it is like to go from the institutional environment in which one is told when to eat, when to sleep, when to awaken and then upon completion of the time (which is up when “they” tell you) to be dumped back into society and told, “get a job, mow your lawns and play nice”. I wonder what it is like to live in hyper-vigilance, not knowing if the man by the apple stand will have a bomb and then to return and begin living in the States where we don’t even like to share our apples. I wonder how skewed our visions of the war are by our media. I wonder what it’s like to live in fear and not be with the ones you love. I wonder what it’s like to not know if you will be alive tomorrow and you are only 20 today. I wonder what it is like to see your buddy turn into what they call “pink vapor”. I wonder what it’s like to be told you have to serve an additional three months when you don’t know if you will be alive tomorrow. But mostly I wonder, probably the same thing they do … just simply, I wonder, ” Why?”.

Blogging about Blogging

Quite by accident I stumbled upon the blog of a someone who is a real lover of literature. I was mindlessly perusing blogs, reading this and that, and I stopped at his blog because the title was very cool — plus it fit the way I was feeling at the moment. So with a double-click I entered into the heart and mind of this stranger. And as I read, his person and who he is unfolded before my very eyes.

I have deduced from variables included in his blog that he is a professor that teaches literature or philosophy, I’m not really clear which is his forte’, yet I am clear he is a professor. I share this so you understand he is not only passionate about his love, but knowledgeable as well. I learned a long time ago, before you emulate or appreciate what another is saying or doing, make sure they know what they are talking about and are not certifiably insane. So assuming the university he works has some sort of protocol with integrity for hiring, I can safely assume he knows what he is talking about. Regarding his sanity, well his blogging seems what we social workers label as “appropriate” — so until proven otherwise, he should be considered “sane”.

Now I had never had any extensive exposure to the literary population and have only taken the introductory philosophy and literature courses in college. However, some fundamental similarities quickly became apparent as I read his very heartfelt blogs. I saw that he too is searching for the same truths and trying to satisfy the same hungers. He feels deeply as I, yet the pronounced difference lies in his ability to express them in a profound and eloquent manner. Literature professors don’t just write blogs, they give birth to them using beautiful pieces of literature to expand the meaning and feeling behind the moment. Like a photographer or artist, the world was captured and placed upon a canvas for all to see and his medium is his words. It is really very intense. As I read his blogs and played detective, piecing together who this man is, I began to feel very differently about words and the world in which I live. I began to see things around me in the same manner as he … and life took on a whole different meaning. I saw the beauty in the ordinary. I began to see the world as my playland given by God and not a complex series of problems to be solved. I think for the first time I understood what it means to be fully present in the moment, to live instead of languish. I saw it is in the ordinary that the sacred lies and in the daily mundane that the divine dwells.

As I continued to read his blog, I also became cognizant of the rich resource residing in literature to explore insights, feelings and life experiences — virtually untapped by me in this lifetime. I think perhaps this spring I shall take another literature class to close out my Senior year. For in being trained to appreciate and understand literature, I will have a whole arena of life experts to consult such as Chaucer and Whitman, and their take on things is surely at least as profound as the blog I randomly read.

Metamorphosis

Well, it has occurred. I was a good 45 minutes into it before I became aware the process was in effect. In retrospect, I realize it began with the blue dust rag. My mother gave it to me a week or so ago, and said it was “magic”. I really thought at 39 I was a little old to be motivated to clean with the word “magic”. I mean really folks, motivational verbiage didn’t work when I was four or fourteen, so by almost 40 years you would think the woman would have given up. However, now that I am a mother, I realize we never give up on our children. So upon bestowing me with this glorious gift she explained you could dust with it dry and some sort of static process would would cause dust to “magically” cling to this beautiful, blue terry-cloth- looking-thing. This magical, scientifically enhanced rag would be the demise of my summer, I just didn’t know it at the time or I wouldn’t have tossed it so casually on my desk. Had I known the change that was to occur with this simple act, I would have marked it in my calendar as an event; and thus, I could have squeezed a few more hours of carefree summer laziness into my schedule. Is there such a thing as “planned randomness?” I think so, and I would have tried to create some as a rite of passage from summer to fall, from junior to senior, from unencumbered to overextended …

I was really just going to dust off the area around my lap top. I was beginning to get dust bunnies, and even though I am the only person over the age of 18 that enters the bedroom, it’s still just not a good look. So I quickly ran the magic rag around my immediate work area only … which typically is good enough. But hey, I didn’t have to use the Pledge because my rag was “magic” — that’s one whole step gloriously eliminated! The increased simplicity is the only reason I can think I was drawn to dust the whole area. The next thing I know I’m moving things, rearranging things, tossing things, filing things — I even made new file folders for things,, sorted through a summer’s worth of paper things and rearranged everything on the shelves. I was just doing all kinds of “things”. After 45 minutes of dust flying and paper shuffling I became conscious of the complete and total shift in my persona. Summer was over now. I had gone through metamorphosis and was now in academic mode. No going back now. And here I will remain until May 2008.

My kids are going to hate it. Now they will have to get organized too.

eharmony won’t go away

Just for those of you who are doing the internet dating thing:

I have not been an eharmony subscriber for a month and they evidently still have my profile open and circulating amongst their subscribers. I am still getting what they call “communication requests” — what you initially send to the person to express your interest in them and a desire to communicate. I, of course, have no way of communicating to these poor individuals sending me these initial requests. Only subscribers are able to respond. I realize it’s a marketing ploy … but it’s still annoying. Sooooo, if you wonder why “that girl never responded” , maybe she’s no longer a member and it’s not that she thinks your dog meat. Oh, and just for the record, I did NOT meet the love of my life on there … guess you won’t see me giggling on one of their commercials with my fiance. I haven’t met my fiance’ YET.

Oh my Gawd, I’m one of those now

When I first became single, I wanted to think it was possible to love openly and freely — love without question, concern or fears. I wanted to think I could love as a child loves. Yet, the reason a child loves so openly and freely is because they have not experienced the hurt and games which come with dating, love and divorce (and life, for that matter). A child changes once they have been in situations where everything is not as it appears and people leave their mark upon their heart. I don’t like having to be so cautious. I don’t like ending up in bad relationships even worse. A little caution on the front end can save helluva lot of pain, time and (unfortunately) money on the back end.

Bad doesn’t have to mean the extreme — violent or abusive. Bad relationships can be empty, stagnant or just where your partner is not interested in you, the children or being a good provider. There are so many variables which must come together for a relationship to not just survive, but blossom with love and meaning. You have to like each other and be compatible, have similar interests, agree on the big things such as God and lifestyle; and it’s important that you be in the same zip code of other issues such as ambition and intelligence. All these things, and many more, are important to not only reduce friction and maintain a level of harmony and happiness, but to increase the foundation of a relationship. Thus, when the storms in life occur, your relationship can withstand the hits. It is like a delicate web that must be woven and if one of the main supports is missing, the rest of the web lacks strength and integrity. But if the important supports are there, the web will remain after a storm — maybe with a rung or two knocked helter skelter, or even broken — but the larger picture is the web (relationship) is for the most part intact. Repairs may be necessary, but the web is not destroyed. So, I take what I have learned in my life experiences and social work classes and move forward … cautious, yet emotionally available and realistically hopeful about the future … bringing my rungs for the web with me.

FYI — A spider’s web is five times stronger, on a weight-to-strength basis, than steel. That’s the type of relationship I’m going to have … lmt

I fired my doctor.

The man has been seeing me for about nine months … treating symptoms, not conditions. But the real reason I fired him is because Dr. X of Mooresville is an ass. His bedside manner is pathetic. He does not listen. How can the man treat me if he doesn’t know what is wrong with me. I also pay out of pocket because my student insurance covers only catastrophic care. So my money was going to a man who would listen to me for about 90 seconds (literally) during which he would interrupt me once or twice. Last time I was there I thought to myself, “I am not paying a man to ignore me … I’ve been married to that before and divorced him”. More importantly I am not trusting the only body I have to a man who doesn’t take the time to get all the information before he hurriedly scribbles out a script and tells me to come back in two weeks if it’s not better. I do not want a prescription to cover up the symptoms. The pain is telling me there is something wrong with my body and I want that cause of pain addressed.  He apparently does not know English well, because when I share that with him he talks in a circle and hands me a script, “This should help … come back in two weeks if it’s not better.” And guess what … it’s still there two weeks later. Duh!

I am a consumer and I am not going to tolerate substandard service and care… and I think more individuals are beginning to operate with that same value base. I wonder if he would tolerate his mechanic not listening to him? I think not. The M.D. after some names evidently stands for “More Disrespectful”.