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Posts Tagged ‘Groundhog Day’

buddha, mary, kurt vonnegut, gandhi, & w.w.

Posted in autism, grandma, placement, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2011| 3 Comments »

“The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh (The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching)
 
I am losing a lot, like it or don’t, as P would say.  But I’m tired of myself, tired of carrying on in my grief, so I’m turning (as you may have noticed) to Thich Nhat Hanh, one of my favorite Buddhist monks, for guidance and peace.  I’m turning to the Buddhist view of impermanence – that which says nothing has permanence, that permanence is an illusion we cling to.
 
Well I’m a Buddhist by circumstance, then. Yet I am also many more things: raised Catholic, I still go to Mass on occasion and cling to my roots, finding solace in the ritual of the Mass.  I may be other things I haven’t even discovered yet.  So it goes, to throw in some Vonnegut.  This is my favorite little story about Kurt Vonnegut, taken from Wikipedia:
 
In the mid 1950s, Vonnegut worked very briefly for Sports Illustrated magazine, where he was assigned to write a piece on a racehorse that had jumped a fence and attempted to run away. After staring at the blank piece of paper on his typewriter all morning, he typed, “The horse jumped over the fucking fence,” and left.[17] On the verge of abandoning writing, Vonnegut was offered a teaching job at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. While he was there, Cat’s Cradle became a best-seller, and he began Slaughterhouse-Five, now considered one of the best American novels of the 20th century, appearing on the 100 best lists of Time magazine[18] and the Modern Library.[19]

The lesson I take away from all of this is I can’t abandon life by sitting in my soiled self in the sorrowful, shallow end of the pool.  I have to keep writing because it saves me.  I can come out the other side of this, make myself into someone good, be Jonah’s mother as best I can, be the change I want to see in this world (thanks, Gandhi) instead of complaining about the changes that aren’t happening.  I may moan and rave, cry and bitch, but I’m not going down without a fight.  I am recharged with people all around me, some who don’t even know me.  They care and they tell me so and it helps like they will never know.  I am not alone, I tell myself, mantra-like.  I am not alone.

Mary helps me too.  Yes, that Mary.  The mother of God Mary.  She sure had a difficult child, an only child (it seems) and she lost him too, in many ways, before she really lost him.  She understands. 

  • St. Josemaria Escriva: “Love our Lady. And she will obtain abundant grace to help you conquer in your daily struggle.”  “When you see the storm coming, if you seek safety in that firm refuge which is Mary, there will be no danger of your wavering or going down.”

How can I believe all these things simultaneously? 

“Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then; I contradict myself.  I am large – I contain multitudes.” ~Walt Whitman

(I’m actually quite scrawny, but I think Walt was being metaphorical). 

I am going over to see Jonah-boo tonight, to take him on the “Groundhog Day” tour of his favorite things:  the train, car ride, maybe grandma or a peanut butter roll.  If it is warm enough, swimming and splashing. 

I am looking forward to it, whatever it brings.  I love him so much.

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groundhog day

Posted in autism, behavior, grandma, tagged , , , , on May 8, 2011| 3 Comments »

Phil Connors:  Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.  ~ from the movie Groundhog Day

This Mother’s Day was an amalgam of a whole lot of days with Jonah Russell, all rolled into one.  M and I had him for four hours.  There was grandma, the woods, waterfall, peanut butter roll, trains, kicking, hitting the car window, requests for black soda and Burger King and Cranberry Guster.  Jonah even scratched me all to hell.  He’d requested mama to put him in his car seat, then he grabbed at my face and dug in tight with his little claws (time to cut his nails).  My resulting look was puffier, more painful, and bloodier than usual, and when I dropped him back home I was not sorry to go.

He’s on a new med again – Zyprexa, while continuing with the Risperdal.  It’s only been a couple of days but so far there isn’t any improvement.  As usual.  Round and round we go….one day mushing into the next, a routine of events that makes me so tired I could sleep for 100 years.

It’s another of those days when I will put up pictures instead of expressing useless self-pity.  My face will heal, and Jonah did have some happy times today, despite his on-again off-again agitation.

He’d said “bye bye mama” so I watched from the top of the hill.

Then I came down with him, slowly, as he was playing near & in the water…


…only to be scared off by splashes and a rock-toss.  I was far enough away to miss the rocks but not the splashes…

In the car he didn’t want his picture taken…

…then he did.

I hope there’s a tomorrow

tomorrow.

P.S.  I still don’t know the identity of the flower-sender.  My bet’s on a miracle right now, ’cause that’s the most fun.

P.P.S. If you click on that box on the right hand side that says “We’re on the Fence” it will mean that I get one “like” and might get more readers.  Click only if you want to!

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two veeeerrrry long days

Posted in autism, snow day, Wildwood, tagged , , , , on February 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The bus was late yesterday because of the beginning of the snowstorm, and it was a half day of school besides, and Jonah’s got a bit of a cold, so Andy just kept Jonah home.  The snow got worse and I don’t think Andy felt the roads were safe enough to drive on, so it must have been a very long day.

Probably lots of baths.

Today we’re inundated with sugar-sifty snow and sleet, supposedly to be followed by even more snow.  The Albany city government offices are shut down and of course all the schools are closed.  After work I’m going to go to the house and watch monkey-boo until he goes to sleep to give Andy an escape from what must, at this point, feel something akin to insanity. 

Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring this Groundhog Day – a very rare predication , I hear – but spring seems light-years away as I look out my window at all the piling white…

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