What I Wish People Understood

Most of my posts on this blog have a taste of tongue-in-cheek humor or insight or perspective or...something useful or entertaining. I don't think I have a positive spin for this one.

I'm going to be 42 years old this week. I look much younger; most people take me to be in my early thirties, and people are often shocked that I have a twelve-year-old daughter (and more shocked to discover that I was nearly thirty when she was born). That may or may not be relevant, but I think it is--I think the fact that I don't "look sick" works against me every day.

I have a malformed renal artery that may or may not be the cause of chronic high blood pressure. I am dependent on a medication that causes fatigue and depression. I have a minor heart valve problem, not serious or life threatening, but which means that when I get a jolt of adrenalin or I'm sick or I don't get enough sleep or any of a dozen other triggers, my heart rate shoots up and stays there...I feel my heart beating in my whole body, and I can't sleep because it gets worse when I lie down. When my blood pressure is unstable, I have migraines sometimes 10 or 12 days a month, so severe that I throw up and the blood vessels in my eyes break. I have dizzy spells and see little silver spots floating in front of my eyes.

Sounds like a long whine, I know, and I'm really not whining. I know that a lot of people have it a lot worse than I do, and I'm very grateful (especially since I'm a single mother) for the fact that I've been able to keep working. But here's my problem...because I AM able to keep working despite the cost, because I do make it a point to get out and do as much with my kid as I can, even though it more often means just sitting outside and watching her play these days than playing with her, people tend to dismiss my limitations. I don't think it's that they don't believe me, quite. Well, not most of them. I did have one boss, recently, who opted not to believe that I was sick and to solidify his position by refusing to look at medical documentation because he "didn't want to be that kind of boss." But it's rare. For the most part, I think it's more that it's just not concrete for people.

I get diagnoses, treatments are suggested, sometimes tried, and my friends are sincerely concerned. But life goes on. Nothing changes. And I don't LOOK sick. I don't sound sick. The person sitting across from me can't see the little lights floating in front of my eyes and when I say I can't walk any farther, the person walking next to me can't feel the way my heart is quivering.

Sometimes, I have long periods when I feel reasonably well and, if I'm not stretched too thin by necessities, I can go about my life like a normal person, socialize, walk, play with my daughter. There are other periods, sometimes equally long, when it is literally all I can do to show up to work every day, feed my kid, and get enough sleep to stay alive.

And that "stay alive" thing isn't drama. Before I was out of my thirties I was hospitalized for my blood pressure twice, and both times it was terrifying. The medication that is supposed to instantly drop your blood pressure didn't work on me. My blood pressure was so high that one doctor said that if it stayed that high it could cause brain damage even if I DIDN'T have a stroke. I know what it feels like when I'm in trouble, and I know what's going to happen if I don't take firm hold of it.

And yet my friends...people I know are sincerely concerned about me...simply can't accept it when that happens. They email and call in guilt trips about how long it's been since they've seen me and how I'm neglecting them and how they miss ME even if I have better things to do. They bombard me with invitations and counter-proposals and talk about me having "excuses" not to do this or that.

I have an excuse. It's that the number one goal in my life is to live to see my child into adulthood and to be able to work long enough to support her until she's self-supporting. That's it. That's what I'm living for. And anything that threatens that doesn't happen.

If that sounds like melodrama to you, then you're a very fortunate person, and I envy the fact that you've never had to choose between living your life and preserving it. Sometimes, that's my reality.

My daughter recognizes it to some degree and I hate that. I can't bear when she says, "Mommy, why don't you go take a nap?" even though it's a summer day and she's dying to get out somewhere, because she just watched me fall asleep with my head in a pile of laundry I was folding. I hate when she comes out at night when I'm working and asks if there isn't anything at all that she can help me with. It makes me ill that her childhood is limited by my health.

But it also makes me angry. It makes me angry that my 12-year-old is willing to set aside her own wants to make sure that I get the rest I need and don't push myself, and most of the adults in my life can't do anything but take it personally. Sometimes, in my worst moments, I envy the people who are just a little bit worse off than I am. If I were in the hospital, after all, no one would be mad that I couldn't go out to dinner or make a quick trip into the city or go swimming at someone's house or any of the hundred other things that seem as far off and unreal to me, in the bad phases, as flying to the moon.

Big Blessings Come in Small Packages

Here's our latest little blessing with his mommy (my stepdaughter) and my daughter. And he wasn't the only one we had around this weekend.
















This is his second-cousin with her great-grandmother (my mother-in-law).
















And this is my baby showing me that she's not such a baby anymore--she just suddenly looks so grown up when someone truly tiny comes into the picture.

But really, despite all those tiny fingers and big eyes and sweet-smelling scalps and such, it wasn't the babies that I set out to talk about. No, the sense of gratitude and good fortune really came over me while I was weeding my mother-in-law's garden with my sister-in-law.
















My mother-in-law was sitting on the porch and my daughter and stepson were playing a little more roughly than I'm entirely comfortable with. My "niece" Katrina was standing on the sidewalk holding the beautiful and charming Brenna, and she said, "Show Aunt Tiff how you..."

And all was right with my world, for the moment anyway. You see, my mother-in-law's house has always existed as a kind of respite from the world. When I first started dating my husband, she had goats in her backyard. Summer Sundays a dozen family members would play football or badminton or whatever someone happened to suggest, usually barefoot in the grass alongside her house, while someone grilled. I've never really lived in a world where things moved slowly, no one kept an eye on the clock, and the grass was always thick and soft under your feet.

Her town is so small that the first time I sat alone on her front porch, each car that passed slowed and the driver squinted at me, clearly trying to work out who I might be and why I was there. I sat with my husband on the covered porch in the middle of the night and watched it storm.

But, as you probably know, my mother-in-law is my mother-in-law no more. The niece who told her daughter to "show aunt Tiff" was my niece by virtue of a marriage that is no more. I separated from my husband four years ago.

But my former in-laws are still the people they were all those years ago, when I was shocked by the ease with which they accepted me into their family and the comfort I felt barefoot in their grass. I'm not sure what their reasoning is. It could be that they're still Tori's family and I'm still hers. It could be that relationships grow independent of the one that kicked them off. It could be that they don't reason at all, and they're just generous and loving people who are more concerned with opening doors than closing them.

Whatever it is, it's a gift. It even felt like a gift when my stepson--whom I hadn't seen in two months--said, "Mom, will you buy me minutes for my TracPhone?" That's right, kid--you just stay that comfortable. Please.

Here are some more pictures of my new "grandson", just because I feel like it.
















With my stepson Matt and daughter Tori.
















With his daddy, Shawn.
















In his mommy's arms.

So I'm Kind of Sort of Almost Going to Be a Grandmother Tomorrow

I suppose technically the child of my ex-stepdaughter is not my grandchild, but "ex" and "daughter" don't really work well together, even if there is that pesky prefix involved. When you've sewn a child's curtains and made her breakfast and taught her to write her name and later helped her fill out her first job application, when you've walked her to the door the first day at a new school (and been shocked that, at thirteen, she kissed you goodbye in the hallway) and cheered her on during swim meets, there's no end to that.


At seven, holding on to MY baby...watch this space next week for pictures of her cradling her own.


Her ninth birthday, at Discovery Zone.


Creeping up on adolescence (with brother Matt, cousin Branden and my daughter)



And all grown up...I'm still not quite sure how this happened, how we got here from homemade Power Ranger pillows and Barbies and even N'Sync and summer jobs and teenage boys at the door.

It Can Only be a Divine Message

After much soul searching and some hard questions about refrigeration and shipping, my sister and I have decided to offer up the Miraculous Onion Ring on ebay.

We can only hope that it will go to someone who will truly appreciate and draw on its special properties, rather than just popping it in his mouth as my sister nearly did.

So--Just Curious--Have You Ever Gotten Locked in a Bathroom?

Several years ago, I took my daughter to a birthday party at McDonald's. She was always a little shy in new crowds and she didn't know many people at the party, so she asked me to stay. I wanted to give her a bit of security and also a bit of independence, so I got a coke and sat down in the restaurant, but outside the party room--she was on her own, but she could see me.

For a while.

And then I had to get up and go to the bathroom. All went as could be expected until I attempted to leave the stall and discovered that the door wouldn't open. I worked at it quite a bit before speaking to someone outside the door. I'd actually been about to use my cell phone to call the restaurant and tell them I was locked in the bathroom when someone mercifully entered.

She didn't answer the first couple of times--I guess you don't expect a stranger to be speaking to you from inside a bathroom stall. When I finally got her attention, she reluctantly attempted to open the door from the outside. She failed. Eventually, she fetched an employee, who was able to open the door. Amazingly, after she let me out she said, "That keeps happening."

I suggested that perhaps a sign on the door would be in order. She said, "Maybe" and left the room without posting one. I didn't see her go back. By the time I returned to the outer area, the party was ending, and my daughter had mercifully settled in and not noticed my absence.

But that's not the funny part. The funny part is that five or so years after this happened, I mentioned it to a friend of mine. She laughed uproariously and insisted that I was the only person in history ever to have been locked in a bathroom. I knew that couldn't be right, and pointed to the fact that the McDonald's employee had said, "that keeps happening." Obviously, it had happened to other people RIGHT THERE IN THAT VERY MCDONALD'S.

Still, my friend protested that she'd never heard of anyone getting locked in a bathroom before. She demanded to know whether I had, and I had to admit that I had not. We were in our late thirties at the time, so it seemed likely that, if this kind of thing was happening, we'd have heard about it a time or two. So we started asking around.

Guess what?

Exactly 50% of the people we asked had been locked in a bathroom at some point in their lives.

Half.

Apparently, they'd just done a very good job of keeping it under wraps.

The White Castle Straw

Okay, I KNOW it defeats the purpose of the whole Wordless Wednesday thing, but I just have to explain. It's been more than two weeks, and I was biting my tongue (or sitting on my hands, perhaps) to keep from explaining when I posted it, and the urge never passed. And then, when I posted ANOTHER Wordless Wednesday photo a week later and the VERY FIRST PERSON TO COMMENT saw my point exactly...well...I just can't help myself anymore.

Take a look at the ends of the wrapper. You may have to enlarge the photo.

And then tell me...is this a really clever and subtle joke, or a really, really stupid design?

White Castle Straw

So It Turns Out I'm Too Pissy To Blog

I've got medical problems. Nothing life-threatening this time around, just temporarily debilitating enough to be really frustrating. I can't move around much and I'm too medicated to do much work, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to catch up on blogging...but it didn't quite work out that way.

First, I headed over to RockStories, my writing blog. I planned to post about the fact that a publisher had asked to see the first three chapters of the romance novel I've had lying around my hard drive for a year and a half. Apparently, though, that ws too positive for me in my current state of mind, because instead I ended up starting a post about a spam comment I got on that blog.

Now, the irritation was legitimate. The comment linked back to a THESIS WRITING SERVICE. Right. Because writers always need those. And besides, anyone who read my writing blog would DEFINITELY think I'd be up for promoting plagiarism and academic fraud, right? (As you can see, I'm not really over it.)

Eventually, I wandered over here, where the subject matter is broader. Maybe I could write about how I'm celebrating my birthday next month (# 42) for the first time in as many years as I can remember. Maybe I would write about how my friend Barb's cat miraculously came home after being lost in a strange city for six weeks. Maybe I could even write about how much it sucked to spend half the night in the emergency room--not everything is going to be roses, right?

But no. I'm still writing about the $#!@**# spam post.