Running Over
March 4, 2010 by NaysWay · Leave a Comment
At some point, we hit a lull with the amount of children populating our family. I use family in the singular sense because mine doesn’t count. It’s my family – all four of us – then that’s it. I’m an only child (which is starting to be a recurring mention in my posts – I’m sensing some hostility within myself). I don’t have nieces or nephews. What cousins I do have are second and third generation, and I rarely see them unless someone dies.
I don’t know what I was thinking marrying BFam. Not only is he the oldest of his clan (which, as I’ve read in various online articles, is not the greatest match with an only child), but he has a buttload of siblings, nieces, nephews, and cousins. I feel like I need a tally sheet talking to them. Because whose kid are you? And how are you related again? And I’m your what?
BFam’s siblings range in age. The youngest sibling is sixteen (and I’m probably getting that wrong but see my previous statement: I can’t keep up). There are a good mix of girls and boys. Save for the sixteen-year-old, almost all of his siblings have procreated.
And this wouldn’t be such a big deal, but I’ve officially gone from having hardly any family to HOLY CATS WHERE DID ALL THESE PEOPLE COME FROM?
And the birthdays?! Don’t even get me started on the birthdays. Sweet Georgia Brown, all these little people! As if I wasn’t having enough trouble already!
I’m going to need everyone to go on procreation lock down. What’s trickier than asking everyone to keep their legs closed than getting that word out to 1.5 million relatives.
FEAR No. 056 – Shadows & Forewarnings
March 1, 2010 by NaysWay · 3 Comments
When word broke that Andrew Koenig – known to most of the world as “Boner” from the television show Growing Pains – took his own life after weeks of being reported missing by family and friends, it took me a long while of sitting and thinking before I could talk about it. Like everyone else, it’s troubling me. I’m sure, if you’ve read enough of my drivel here, you can imagine why.
Most want to know how this happened. How could he have been depressed for so long and no one know, or have done anything about it. How was he so far gone and totally unreachable that no one could save him. Was there an event that triggered it.
And then, Marie Osmond’s 18-year-old son.
The words escape me again because… 18.
Looking at the two cases – one aged 41; the other much, much too young – you begin to wonder what’s in the Hollywood Kool-Aid. But you can’t. Because it’s not the Kool-Aid. In both instances, this man and man-child dealt with one key factor and it wasn’t Hollywood. Depression is real. There’s ad campaigns, and therapy, and rich pharmaceutical companies harboring on this as truth.
I’ve touched on depression and suicide before by rehashing my own experiences with both. I was lucky. I lived to tell the tale after two attempts. I wasn’t looking for attention. I wasn’t looking for solutions. I was looking for an end. No matter how I achieved it, ending the pain and weird thoughts and insomnia and panic attacks was the ultimate goal.
For the families of both victims, my heart goes out to those left wondering what more they could have done. How, maybe, their loved one would still be around had they reached out a little harder. I don’t want to say those suffering with depression can’t be helped, and I can’t relieve the guilt by telling those left behind that depression and suicidal thoughts are worse than shoving cotton wads in someone’s ears and eyes; that, despite your best efforts, sometimes nothing you do is enough. Because you want to hope beyond everything that you saw this coming. That there were forewarnings. That you weren’t oblivious. And, to all those things, I say… Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes there aren’t. And you weren’t.
Out of my experience, whenever I can get BFam to talk about it with me (which isn’t often), he says it’s the one thing he blames on himself – not seeing it. He could have stopped it. He should have stopped it. He would have stopped it. And, even if he could have, I was so far gone, I would have found another opportunity. That’s how it works. You get pulled from the ledge. Loved ones offer comforting words. Therapists offer billable hours and scripts. And there you are. Nodding your head. Agreeing with it all.
Numb.
I wish this was a FEAR of encouragement. But, like I said, I’ve been sitting with this for days trying to find an upside. Trying to articulate a positive. How to understand the turning point that brought me out of darkness long enough to survive. And I know what that point was for me, but everyone’s turning point is different. I don’t want families of those suffering with depression to think I’m telling you to give up. Never give up. But, if you can help it, know that if it fails… you didn’t.
A Moment Of Compassion
January 15, 2010 by NaysWay · Leave a Comment
I can’t, in good conscience, pretend I don’t see what I’m sure the entire world is witnessing right now. I can’t, in good conscience, pretend the video footage, the live satellite feeds, the interviews, the pleas for help, the suffering, the bleeding, THE BABIES lying dead in the street… aren’t affecting me.
Babies. Just… the babies.
Catastrophic things happen all the time. It is the nature of the world and the casualties of life. But when catastrophic things happen to already devastated places, and you realize you’re much more fortunate and blessed than you may have first assumed… perspective is the word I’m looking for. And, along with compassion, I think we’ve all received a dose of perspective in large amounts these past few days.
This blog/website/what-have-you does not generate a lot of readers. At least not to my knowledge. If the few of you who drop by would like to extend a moment of compassion to those suffering in Haiti, let me direct you to a few places I’ve seen willing to help in the blog community:
There are also the usual suspects: American Red Cross, and hosts of others. A quick Google search will get you someplace in no time. A quick warning: While there isn’t a shortage of people willing to help, there are unimaginable swarms of pig snot creating fake organizations to steal your money. DO YOUR RESEARCH before you give.
The outreach pouring from these places is astonishing, and it makes me love the fact that I became involved in blogging just a little bit more. Even if I’m only a speck in the millions, I hope this speck helps the helpless right about now.
Tartar Sauce
December 8, 2009 by NaysWay · Leave a Comment
So… yeah.
Having kids has afforded me the luxury of watching children’s television shows without having to explain myself. I love SpongeBob SquarePants. Because I have kids, I try not to curse. SpongeBob has the greatest words to use instead of cursing, so I always try to grab a few out of his dictionary. Words like “Fish paste!” and “Barnacles!” and “Tartar sauce!”
I had me a Tartar sauce moment, y’all.
When I was younger, my grandfather used to drive me to and from school, grades 6-12. Maybe younger (I’m a little foggy). My grandfather was the type of man who didn’t bite his tongue – he said what he meant, meant what he said. He was also a man who hadn’t learned how to drive until his 60’s. If you asked him, he’d tell you he didn’t need to because the 32-window job could take him everywhere he needed to go.
(The 32-window job, for those who don’t know, is a bus. Yeah, I didn’t know that one either.)
Every ounce of frustration he should have released the years he’d neglected getting a licence had over 40-plus years to simmer and burn. Oh, boy, did it burn. When it was my turn to learn to drive, my grouchy, fiesty grandfather let me have it. Who cared that I was a girl growing to be a woman. No soft passes lobbed here. Only hard balls. Sink or swim. Countless times I’d ask him to give me a break. “You get your break on Broadway,” was his reply.
And he meant it, too.
My grandfather was a man of many sayings. Not really proverbs, but quotes that hit your ribs like meatloaf. Some thirty years later and I’m still quoting them.
During his hay day of driving (what was that, 70?), he made it known that women drivers ranked right up there with getting a root canal in his book. They couldn’t drive. They couldn’t see. They couldn’t make a left. They couldn’t merge lanes. They drove too slow on the highways. They couldn’t do anything right. “This is a man’s world,” he’d quote James Brown. When I’d finish his quote with the rest of the song, “…but it wouldn’t be nuthin’ without a woman or a girl,” well, I’d may as well have dropped acid down his pants. “If women can drive,” he’d say, “I can make a watch with a hammer.” Needless to say, my grandfather spent the better part of my formative pre-driving years shellacking this into my brain, all the time making sure I wouldn’t turn into one of those women drivers he was always ranting about. He wanted his then 16-year-old granddaughter to drive like a man.
And I do.
Well… I DID.
This was my fault. A bus, a trolly, and two minivan cabs parked in front of the parking lot entrance of my job, and it looked like I had enough room to squeeze my SUV right through the slit of space I was provided.
I’m not even joking when I tell you I heard my grandfather scream from heaven and throw his hands up in the air when I did this.
Do Not Try This At Home
November 23, 2009 by NaysWay · Leave a Comment
A friend of mine, and former colleague, visited our offices here in Cleveland recently. She’d left over two years ago for love, an Arts degree, and New York City. She came back with a baby. Sweet Georgia Brown, that baby. PUDGUM CITY, I wanted to squeeze every roll of that baby, she was so stinkin’ cute.
She stopped by my office and we chatted a while. She’s in the early stages of her 40’s, so she started the role of motherhood later than most (a.k.a. later than me, 24, *cough*). One of the questions that came up in our conversation was how different it was to just begin mothering at 40 compared to the 20’s or even the 30’s. Being that I have a few years experience under my belt, I honestly don’t see one kid as work and I told her as much. Now before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, let me just say I’m not belittling mothers of singular babies at all. I was a singular baby and I know raising a child, no matter how many you have, is work. But…
She continued by asking if she should ever consider having another; that having one seemed like enough especially at her age. I totally understood where she was coming from. I’m not her age yet, but I remembered looking at Mooter for a long time after she was born and thinking alright, that was nice. I can go to sleep now. I also told her that, while that feeling lingers for a while, you wake up one morning and while going through your shopping list, you all of a sudden write down “have another baby” like it belongs there because you’re not thinking and your hormones up and snatched your pen out of your hand and did the writing for you because that’s what they do. And you’re all, how did THAT get there, but then you go to the grocery store and a baby is all you can think about because that first one is getting older and losing that new baby smell, and you think, hey, that wasn’t so bad and I can probably do that again and, before you know it, you’re in the aisle for home pregnancy tests “just in case” and you don’t know how you got there.
Yes. It happens just like that.
So I think about all these things. And I weigh them in my brain, letting them marinate, swooshing them around until I let them fall out of my mouth. Because giving a friend advice about things that could ultimately change their lives forever is not something you want to play around with, and it’s not something you talk about casually. And, after a few moments, this is what I told her:
Don’t do it.
I don’t know why I told her that. That’s not what it sounded like swooshing around in the old medulla oblongata. And I went home with that answer, trying to understand why I said it. Then I thought of this:
Because that started off as this:
And this:
And this:
And they were fine. But, like I said, this:
Turned into this:
And I don’t quite remember how it happened. Did you see it? Because in the time it took you to scroll from the picture of calm before they were rolling around on the floor ready to kill each other, was how long it took.
And you can say that they’re kids, and all kids fight. And they’re siblings, and all siblings fight. And I would tell you that I totally get all these things you’re saying, but you’re leaving out one crucial element: they’re girls. Wait. I don’t think I said that right… THEY’RE. GIRLS. Do you understand now? No? OK, let me try it another way. They are girls. That will grow up. Into women. WOMEN! WITH HORMONES! AND MENSTRUAL CYCLES. AND HORMONES. And did I mention THE HORMONES.
And, wouldn’t you know it, my friend and her one kid? That one kid is a girl.
Oh. Sorry.
A GIRL!!!!!!
No, I have no idea why I told her that.
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