Monday, January 29, 2018

The Colors of friends...

I am blessed to have dear friends in my life - the kind I can be honest with…the good, bad, and ugly of life in visceral honesty. For anonymity's sake, I will name them as colors - the hues that ground and brighten my life. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple - I love you all!

By order of rainbow….

Red. She is passionate about life, even when the cards she has been dealt are a mess of tattered edges and tears. Regardless to health, family, and chaos, she is the embodiment of strength and dignity. She is a free spirit in a grounded body, a wise "risk taker." Like the fire in a hearth, she burns brightly, warming my heart and cold feet.

Orange. When I think of this color, I imagine the bright hues of the autumn trees; leaves in their final stage of life, brimming with vibrance despite the season's storms. Orange has been through unimaginable life storms, yet she radiates. She has been my rock with issues of PTSD, my fellow mother of children with ADD and Autism - my autumn leaf beside me in the winds of life.

Yellow. Like the sun shining into the darkness, Yellow is light to me. She guides with a warm hand and is always there. She is faithful. Even when clouds hide her view, she lives truth and exudes love. Without the sun, plants wilt and wither - she inspires this plant to stand tall and grow!

Green. She is the color of life and springtime - the blades of grass peeking out of the dirt, revealing the life within. Her perspective is as fresh and her potential is like the long, green stem of a flower in bloom. Our bonds surpass blood and runs freely into the vast fields of friendship.

Blue. She isn't the color of sadness, but of the sea and sky. The world is wide and she has spread her wings to fly to the farthest parts of it. She is an inspiration of opportunity. Her heart is massive, like the ocean, and she has allowed me to witness the waves. In spirit, she brings me along on adventures of triumph and defeat, truth and lies, weakness and strength.

Purple. She is strength, a leader and guide into the unknowns of life. She cares for those in need, volunteers her time and energy, crochets encouragement into the chaotic patterns of my life. She is not a violet, but an iris - brightly swaying in the breeze, leaving a welcoming scent. She inspires me to grow, to better myself in marriage and motherhood.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

The squirrels of ADHD...

"Evan, go upstairs and get your socks," I tell the blonde boy of seven years.
"Ok!"
Up the stairs he goes…down again, five minutes later, still barefooted.
"Evan, where are your socks?"
Blue eyes wide, "Oh!!"
Up the stairs he goes again…another five minutes, still without the socks.
This would play on repeat, everyday, until I began to tell him to say the word "SOCKS" until he retrieved a pair and had them on his feet.

He wasn't deliberately disobeying. Instead, once upstairs, he would get distracted, forget that mounting the stairs had a purpose, and come back down. We call them squirrels, thanks to Pixar's "Up." I saw the signs, the similarities that I struggled with for decades before diagnosis. ADD or ADHD. Like me, it was the latter.

A quick schooling on ADD and ADHD - it is a brain thing, focus specific. We have too many nerves firing off at the same time. While this gives us the unique ability to multi-task, it does leave us lacking in the ability to reign it all in, quiet the noise. A friend once put it perfectly - ADD is like being in a room with three radio stations playing, two tvs on, you are cooking an egg, and someone wants to have your full attention to answer an important question. Yes! I would imagine if you did that with anyone, they would have to utilize great energy to listen to the question and reply with all the noise! Yet, that is our "norm."

As for the H in the letters, hyperactivity is often misunderstood. You might picture a four year old streaking through the house, full throttle, chaos in their wake. However, it isn't necessarily external hyperactivity that is expressed with the H. It does mean something extra must be muted to remain focused. I "self medicated" for decades - in the form of twirling my hair while watching tv or listening to lectures, pacing back and forth in a room while on the phone, wiggling my toes inside my shoes when expected to maintain complete stillness. Hyperactivity is also what my son and I call our "super power" - in the form of hyper focus, we can funnel all the channels into one, that is so loud, it drowns out everything else. If I hyper focus while writing or digging through genealogical records, the fire alarm could be going off and it would take a bit to get my attention! Hours pass that feel like mere moments.

While writing this blog - the squirrels have been running through the room: Dog comes in, squirrel! I overhear my husband and son playing on x-boxes, "you have to go under the water." What do they mean? Squirrel! Youngest puts a gerbil on my shoulder…well, that one is almost a real squirrel, still - squirrel!

And sometimes a squirrel literally distracts your day…when you find one in the yard - Squirrel!

Monday, January 15, 2018

55 Years - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Growing up - I was not raised to "see" color. Race and ethnicity were not the essence of bias, character was. My childhood friends were a hodgepodge of skin hues, all darker than my own. (This is pretty much a given in any social scenario - I come in two tones, pale and burned red!) Immigrant and native born, my circle was wide. I am grateful for this upbringing, yet it makes grasping the reasons for hate due to hue all the more difficult!

Today, we remember Martin Luther King, Jr, the man who stood in Washington, DC. and gave the iconic "I have a dream" speech. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."The content of their character, beautiful alliteration. Judging by color, at that time, meant whether the skin was dark or light. As the years have passed, America has added many hues that range between and, sadly, each is still "judged."

"In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred." Fifty-five years has brought wars and recessions, technology and medical advancements - progress in much of life, yet the divisions continue. Beyond the color of our skin, we divide and judge gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, financial positions, and political affiliations. Toddler-like tantrums due to opinions voiced, people "unfriending" each other on social media platforms due to the votes they cast, violence erupting in streets, with fists and weapons…wrongful deeds, bitterness and hatred. These were the warning words of a man who is honored this January day, yet where is the honor in these behaviors? I can answer that - there is none!

Martin Luther King, Jr. had integrity and spirit - he loved people and had courage to peacefully voice and advocate his beliefs. He united both blacks and whites to follow and pursue the cause; he inspired.

Now - I have a dream. I have a dream that my three children might one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, by the multiple ethnicities flowing through their veins, by the religion in which the believe and follow, by their sexuality, by whether they are rich or poor, by whether they vote Democratic or Republican, by the career path the choose, or by anything more than the content of their character. Might they be judged as fair and kind, sensitive to the needs of others, loving towards the people around them, open to voicing opinions while respecting the opinions of others. May they be judged for their forgiveness and acts of charity, for following laws and being productive members of society, and for being hard workers, earning and not entitled.

(Quotes: Thanks to www.archives.gov/files/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf Copyright 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Monday, January 8, 2018

Where is the toilet plunger?!...

Shel Silverstein - I was first introduced to his poems 30 years ago, when a friend gifted me a hard copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends. Lines read and re-read, some even pasted into memory - the kind so tightly glued that they can still be quoted years later, decades later!

It all began when the toilet plunger became a pretend light saber. The life of that play was cut immediately short. "Do you know where that has been?!" Inside shutter, slight gag, before demanding hand washings. "Teddy said it was a hat, so I put it on. Now Daddy's saying, "Where the heck's the toilet plunger gone?" The words tumbled out of my memory and mind, onto my tongue. I laughed. It could have been worse, right?

It provoked me to contemplate the aspects of memory - the way the brain works and remembers. Obviously, if we constantly repeat things, we tend to remember them....or maybe not obviously, but it seems to be the case. However, do you remember that song - the one that came out when you were twelve and played through the speakers of your radio continuously, for months. You knew every word and pause, every building crescendo, every staccato sounding word. Decades have now past - that same song that filled your every day has only passed your ears a dozen times since then, but it begins to play on a radio station. Before your kids can flip the station, your hand freezes their motion. There you are again, decades later, singing every word in sync with the artist. But how do you remember it all?

I honestly think music and rhyme play a big part of the memorization - that poem, that song...it is the rhythm and rhyme that catch, crocheting of lyrics into the recesses of memory, easily pulled out, like a loose string from fabric.

Now to sanitize that plunger, just in case star wars calls for another saber fight!