Attitude. It's Everything.

When my father was 12 years old he contracted gangrene and had his leg amputated at mid thigh. Penicillin was a few years away from discovery. When I was a teenager he told me that he could still remember the horrific pain of the amputation and that, even after decades and decades, he still felt the phantom limb. That was the first and last time he ever mentioned it to me.

My father was not defined by the loss of his leg. He never considered himself disabled. He fished, he hunted, he climbed ladders to make home repairs, he tended to our huge yard and he never took a handicapped space in a parking lot. He offered words of encouragement to other amputees. I saw him approach a young boy in a wheelchair whose leg had recently been amputated. I will never know what he said to the child but I saw my dad pull up his own pant leg and I watched the little boy take a timid hand and softly knock on my dad's wooden leg. The child smiled.

My dad wasn't a man who talked a lot. He certainly wasn't a man who complained. His wooden leg was just that...made of wood. It was heavy and it was cumbersome. The old artificial limbs were not nearly as efficient as today's lightweight limbs. My dad's had a hole cut out where he would place his "stump." He would pull a white cotton rag through a small hole and create suction that kept the leg attached. He would screw on the valve, tighten it just so, and be set for the day. The leg rarely fell off. But, sometimes it did.

After a business dinner one night in Galveston he headed downstairs with a group of men. My dad's leg made it downstairs before anyone else. Picture the heavy rogue leg bouncing down a very long flight of wooden stairs near a beach boardwalk. For the guys who drank too much at dinner and for the people passing by on the sea wall below,  I'm sure it was a shock. My dad thought it was funny. Attitude is everything, isn't it?

Lately, I've been putting that "attitude is everything" mantra to good use. My friends know how difficult it is for me to publicly acknowledge my own health issues and I'm sure they've always wondered why. My father is my reason why.

I feel like even mentioning how I feel is the same as complaining. Oh, I know that's crazy. But, I grew up with a father who spent his life propelling himself forward and upward even when faced with obstacles that seemed too high to scale. He put on a happy face. He must have saved the complaining for his private moments but I wasn't privy to it. His physical disability did not define him. He would hate that I used the word disability.

A year or so ago I was diagnosed with Connective Tissue Disease. For most of my life I have felt like there was something wrong. Over the years I have made intermittent trips to doctors and have been diagnosed, incorrectly, with a variety of things. My faith in medicine was not so great. The closest any doctor came to a correct diagnosis was my obstetrician. Both of my children were premature and he recognized that my pregnancies were very similar to the high risk pregnancies of women with Lupus. So, I diligently reported to his office every 6 months for a few years and each and every time my autoimmune tests came back negative. I quit having it checked and thought feeling bad was just my lot in life. I now know that it can take years and years to get a correct diagnosis and that it hasn't been until recently that doctors are getting a clearer picture of Connective Tissue Disease and all autoimmune diseases.

Over the years I pushed through a lot of physical pain and fatigue and just kept keeping on even though I would have stretches of time where it was an effort to get out of bed.

I just read that last sentence and I want to delete it. To me, it sounds like complaining. But, I'm going to suck it up and let it stand.

I worked hard, I played harder, I raised my kids, I moved to Los Angeles from Dallas and spent 7 long years living apart from my husband while my young daughter and son chased their own dreams. My husband joined us in LA when my health became a larger obstacle. For him, having to start over in a new city when he is past 50 has been a challenge. He keeps a smile on his face, too.

For me, a diagnosis of cervical cancer and the subsequent surgery was the impetus that brought on an onslaught of symptoms that were like my past physical ailments times one hundred and one. My body's wiring is way off. My B Cells and T Cells attack healthy tissue and muscles that they mistake for foreign invaders. It's all very James Bond. There's a war raging inside me and my own system thinks it's fighting the good fight to save me but the soldiers are getting the orders all wrong. Rashes, fatigue, sore muscles, weakness in my hips, thighs and arms, a cough that will not go away,  small blood vessels collapsing, lab results that now show high positive markers for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus, neurology tests that are positive for Dermatomyositis and a long and boring list of other things that go hand in hand with the umbrella diagnosis of Connective Tissue Disease. And if the disease doesn't do you in you certainly feel like the drug regimens will.

I keep a smile on my face. I dress for the day each and every day. My skin rashes, swells and peels and I have not worn makeup in over a year. If you know women in the South and women in Los Angeles then you know that the one thing they have in common is that they don't even go to the mailbox without mascara, eye shadow and lipstick. I keep a smile on my bare face. I figure I save 30 minutes a day and that's 182.5 more hours a year that I can do something great. I hope that's right. Math was never my thing.

Why am I writing this now? I have a brain that doesn't shut down. I am my own best therapist. (I tried real therapy once. I tried to run the session. Did I mention that I am also bossy?) I have often said that this blog is for me and if people choose to read it I hope they enjoy it but I'm the one getting the most good out of it. There's something about writing and hitting publish that does more to clear my brain than any other tonic. My brain is switched to "on" 24/7 and lately I have been questioning why I have such a hard time letting others do for me...even my own family. They try to keep me out of the kitchen and away from the laundry and insist that I get the amount of rest that I need. I slip behind their backs and do loads of laundry and attempt to clean baseboards. I pay for it the next day. I spend time shopping for my vintage store even when my back is hurting and sorting through racks of clothing makes my arms feel like they will fall off.  I do all that for me. I do that to prove to myself that I can still do it well...or reasonably well.

I imagine my father. I imagine him never giving up. I remember him taking off his wooden leg at the end of busy days and lancing huge blisters. The very next day he would be back at work. He put on that happy face and lived his life.

The Tea Pot is Whistling

 
I've spent most of my life as a talker. Lately, I've become an observer. Learning to reign in my words has been a good thing but the problem with observing is that, eventually, I talk about all the things I see. And when I do decide to talk it all comes spewing, no filter, almost a rant, a definite emotional release but possibly off putting to some. Like the teapot ready to pour I'm letting off steam. I am an open book and if you don't like the story feel free to turn the page or set me back on the bookshelf.

Here I go. Unfiltered and with topics all over the place because that's the way my brain works.

Gender issues and stupidity.  Decades ago, the 1970s in fact, my father's secretary welcomed a much anticipated grandchild and everyone was so excited to welcome this beautiful baby into the world. When well wishers asked if they should buy baby blue or sweet pink the new parents had no answers. The precious child had ambiguous genitalia. Testing confirmed that the child had ovaries and undescended testicles. The course of treatment at the time was to immediately amputate the penis, perform a series of reconstructive surgeries, give the baby female hormones and raise her as a girl. All these years later I still wonder about this child who would now be 40 years old. Times have changed and the experts now advise waiting until the child is able to give voice to their gender.

It is beyond my comprehension to understand why anyone thinks gender issues are new issues. And if anyone thinks gender reassignment is a choice then they are wrong. It's a miracle that any of us arrive into the world with all of our parts working. We readily accept and embrace the child born without a limb, without sight or hearing or without a working heart. So why do we have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people that gender issues are real?

Mean girls, mean women and what's really going on. Like most women who reach 54 years of age I've had my share of run ins with mean girls. I watch my young adult daughter navigate the waves of mean girls in her own life. I'm pretty quick to strike mean women from my list of friends but the hurt that they cause sticks around much longer than I'd like. Time puts things into perspective. The raw wounds heal but the scars are still tender. So, what is really going on? I'm not a mean girl by nature but I know that the times I have been, well, let's just say not so nice, there were deeper issues going on internally. Insecurity, jealousy, stress...they all play a part in how we react to others. How we were raised and emotional blockages that we are aware of and unaware of contribute as well. Take a step back and take a long look at the real person and not the mean girl facade. You still may not want that person in your life but it certainly helps to understand the whys of their behavior.

We are rarely what we seem to be. I have been blessed to experience many stations in life. I've lived in North Dallas, and for those that are unfamiliar with that particular portion of Texas, it is generally wealthy with a predominantly poor neighborhood sitting on its western border and Ross Perot's neighborhood sitting to the east. I've had the 4 bedroom house with a big yard and pool and I've lived in apartments. I've lived in Texas and now live in California. I've had money to burn and no money at all.

My children attended private school and public school and I have served as a volunteer at both. I grew up in the Memorial area of Houston. It's wealthy and privileged although my own family lived in a modest ranch style house and we never had an excess of money.

I have spent volunteer time in the trenches with crack addicts and alcoholics and the homeless. I have spent volunteer time with wealthy women who plan fundraisers and galas. I prefer the crack addicts.

I believe that marijuana should be legalized and that by doing so we solve a multitude of other problems. I believe in marriage equality. My heart breaks over abortion. I understand why women and young girls have abortions. I knew after my second child was born that a third pregnancy would be life threatening for me. I practiced birth control even though I was Catholic at the time. I knew that if I ever did end up pregnant again I would not have had an abortion. I can't explain that and I shouldn't have to. It's my belief and I own it. For the women I know who have had abortions I understand that it was after much soul searching and that the physical scars pale in comparison to the emotional scars. I have zero judgment in my heart. My feelings on abortion are a mishmash of emotion and contradictions and that's okay. I don't need to have an answer for everything.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because, from what I see, we are forgetting that life is a muddy gray much more often than it is stark black and white. Because what you see is rarely what you get in this world. I am a middle aged woman with a passionate mix of moderately conservative and wildly progressive ideas about my own life and the world. Yes, that is possible. No, it is not contradictory. It is me.

The Internet is only as wise as the people uploading content. Just because someone "tweeted" it or posted it on Facebook or Instagrammed it or wrote it on an obscure blog or a wildly popular website doesn't make it factual and doesn't make it worthy of reposting anywhere. When did so many people become lemmings? When did so many people stop fact checking? Facebook, sometimes I dislike you because I used to think everyone I knew was smart. Now we are all open books and the content can be quite scary. I'm sure there are plenty out there who closed the book on this blog before they even got this far.

Questioning is good. I raised my children to have open minds and open hearts.  I raised them to question the status quo. They are grown but I still challenge them to question those who think that their way is the only way, that political issues are black and white and that science has no place in religion.

In past blog posts I have commented on but never wholeheartedly lamented the lack of religious upbringing in my own life. Since my family was not deeply religious it gave me the power to make my own spiritual decisions and find my own way. God has always been in my heart. I have never questioned that. I just wish more people actually lived a Christ like life instead of spouting Bible verses out of context. I will always question people who use religion as a tool for hate and I hope my children always do the same.

The tea is poured. Lately, I write in fits and starts and without the routine that I used to pride myself on. (I also let myself end a sentence with a preposition and don't give a flip what the grammarians think.) Life changes have happened much more rapidly lately and I've given myself permission to find my own daily rhythm. I hope the stretch between writing is not so long next time. We'll see. Make it a great day. Pay forward some good.