Bye-bye, Vacation Bible School!

Vacation Bible School (VBS) is kind of an odd week for me every year. I’ve been experiencing a bit of a crisis of faith for a while now, and yet I truly want to share this fun, worthwhile program with my kids. Plus, each year there’s a part of me that looks to my little charges for some evidence of the childlike faith that I once had. Maybe I’m just looking for a way to re-connect. Who knows? The point is that, every year, something wonderful and unexpected comes right on up and bites me in the ass. It’s my little VBS Miracle.

This year, it came in the form of a little boy named Brandon. He was in my class last year, and his Mom is one of the other teacher/volunteers. Halfway through the week, she came up to me and told me that Brandon was very upset, because he’d wanted to have me for a teacher again this year.

And I just about fell over. Because I remember Brandon from last year. He’s a dear, sweet boy, but – like most other five year-old boys – he's a fidget factory. So the entire week last year was: “Brandon, honey, pay attention to Pastor Bell. Brandon, sweetie, please give your attention to the music teacher.” And of course: “Brandon, stop hitting Matthew/Maxwell/Danny in church.”

Now, I never called him a name, I never raised my voice and I was always encouraging of his singing and his crafts. But I still figured that this little kid must hate my guts, because I was on his fidgety little butt nonstop for the whole week.

Just goes to show you how wrong you can be about the effects your actions are having on a child. So today I tousled his cowlicked hair, gave him my best VBS smile and told him that – for sure – we’d be together next year.

And then I sat down to try to figure out how this little boy got so smart and I got so dumb. I tried to get back to a time when I was five, and my Mother’s was the loudest voice on the playground. When I knew that, no matter what I was up to in the house, she was listening and seeing and knowing. And how I was absofuckinglutely certain that, no matter what happened to me in my often financially-uncertain childhood, my Mother loved me enough to yell at me when I needed it.

Someone told me that Reese Witherspoon recently said: “If you’re not yelling at your kids, you’re not spending enough time with them.” And there’s something in that. It’s not about tearing your kids down and making them feel badly just for the sake of proving your dominion over them. It’s about setting reasonable limits, watching out after them, and – in the end – showing them that rational, tempered discipline is just another form of love.

And that’s my little VBS lesson for this year.

The Mother of All Divas

I went to see Madonna at Madison Square Garden last evening. It was a Mother's Day gift from my Mom - a nite out with my sisters and our favorite Aunt Theresa (she's the cool Aunt of your childhood; mom/dad's youngest sib, and the one who let you eat ice cream from the carton when she babysat).

So Madonna, being Madonna, decreed that there ought be no air conditioning for the 20K fans in attendance. Apparently, it's bad for the vocal chords. So we sweated, and she sweated, and I guess everyone got about what they expected.

And, may I just say: the personal trainers and dieticians who keep her looking and moving like that at 47 (and after the injury she recently suffered) are some sort of freaking magicians. Either that, or the woman has a sagging, wrinkled portrait hidden away in the attic of that English manor of hers ...

This is Me

... and my Maddie, on the day of her end-of-year Kindergarten show. She was dressed as a kangaroo, and she did a fabulous job. Of course, I'm a little biased. But if your Momma won't show up at your Kindergarten show and howl like an idiot, who will?

And yes, even though we don't share hair color, eye color, skin tone or any other physical characteristic, she's mine. And I have the C-section scar to prove it.

Wacky (Tacky) Wisdom

Every once in a while I'll recall some piece of sage wisdom from my childhood, or some comedic bit from college or law school that gave me a good giggle. It's usually a pro pos of nothing, but I've never before had a place to share these little pearls. So here's the first of what I hope will be many bits of Wacky, yet oddly Tacky, Wisdom.

Recently, a dear friend who underwent a double mastectomy began the painful reconstructive process. So we've been discussing boobs a lot, and in particular the size her new ones ought to be (I'm just awed at the prospect that you could have two which are roughly the same size and shape). Her husband thinks that her slim frame deserves a whole new look, and so he's pushing for his dream: D cups. And I was reminded of a piece of a comedy routine I heard years ago. If I could recall the source, I'd credit him. It goes a little like this:

"In Paris, they say that the perfect sized breast should fill a champagne glass.

In Brooklyn, it should clog a toilet."

I don't know why I find that funny, but I do.

Do Not Go Gently

Into That Good Night

Okay, so some of my Blog friends are taking a sabbatical. Which I totally get. But I felt the need to tell them that I adore and respect them, and that I am not removing the links to their used-to-be blogs.

Because hope springs eternal. And because I think - with all of the insanity on the planet - it's nice when good-hearted folks find each other.

Alive!

Okay, so the dreaded blood poisoning never materialized, and those nasty red streaks on my arms are fading away as we speak. Which means that, thanks to concerned family and friends (and three kinds of antibiotics), I'm going to live. And that's good news.

Thanks so very much for the good wishes and prayers; it all means so much!

And, as I've just recently been reminded, we women ignore our own health and well-being far too often. So: listen to your body, take your medicine, be your own health advocate, and get sufficient rest. The laundry will wait, for crying out loud. Your family, friends, kids and grandkids need you more than they know.

The alternative, as I've recently discovered, is enough antibiotics to trigger The Mother of All Yeast Infections.

Happy

Flag

Day!

Here's Thomas, enjoying the Flag Day celebration at Maddie's elementary school. I wish I'd photographed all of the flowers that our little hard-core PTA group planted on Monday afternoon ... they were a hit with the crowd.

Less popular were the giant welts on my wrist, where some demon insect bit me as I planted, and the angry red lines which radiate out from said welts and up my arms. I went to the Urgent Care Facility (read: "Doc in a Box") Tuesday evening, and the lovely physician's assistant there looked at my arm and said: "Oooh, you're gonna need to go to the ER for that!"

At the ER, they pumped me full of IV antibiotics and sent me home. Where it promptly got worse, and the pain in my elbow really began to concern me. And so, today, I went to see my lovely primary care physician (he really is). He gave me a shot in the ass of still more antibiotics, lest I wind up with sepsis (read: "blood poisoning") and croak.

Shit, and I thought the poison ivy was a pain ...

But, Happy Flag Day ... and thank God for antibiotics!

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I've just been informed that, during our "Father/Daughter Luau" last Friday, some juvenile delinquents broke into a third-grade classroom, stole some hermit crabs and trashed a teacher's desk. So I spent the morning at the elementary school, apologizing to everyone in sight, and trying to get rid of this ache in the pit of my gut.

I hate it when something like this happens. It just ruins the whole thing for me ... And may they get hit by a truck as they skate home on their "heelie" shoes!

"Relay for Life"

Last night myself and a few of the elementary school parents participated in the annual "Relay for Life," a 12-hour overnight walk-a-thon (6pm to 6am) to help raise money and awareness for the American Cancer Society. District-wide, more than $70,000 was raised. Our little team raised the most of any single organization at last night's event, around $4,000.

It was 40-something degrees out last night, and the wind whipped at us non-stop. There were teenagers passed out all over the field, but the adults kept walking. Must have been all of the coffee and conversation.

But, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to bed now.

The Father/Daughter Luau ...

... was a smashing success. We had about 185 dads and daughers, including my Mike and Maddie. There was the usual fun (a limbo contest, hula lessons and inflatable beach balls), and the K-5 girls had an amazing time. All in all, it was worth the grey hairs and stomach aches that its planning inspired.

I'm looking forward to next year's event ...

“It’s not brain surgery, after all.”

I love it when people say that something is or is not “brain surgery.” Because I know a little something about it, and, as a consequence, I feel uniquely qualified to make such an assessment.

I recently learned that I’m not the only one with these qualifications. That revelation, and a friend’s recent post about peace and death, have had me thinking about all of this again. So here goes:

Eleven years ago I was a 26 year-old lawyer working in New York City. I took a late lunch one Tuesday afternoon and met up with an assistant district attorney I’d been dating in the Astoria section of Queens. After a very pleasant lunch, he began walking me back to the subway.

And then I collapsed, unconscious, on the street. When I awoke in the ambulance, my date explained that I’d had a “little seizure,” but that I was not to worry. He would stay with me for as long as I needed, and – he was sure – we’d soon get the answers to the questions that were written all over my face.

Except the answers weren’t what I hoped. In the coming days, two very competent neurosurgeons at two of the best hospitals in Manhattan made the same pronouncement: I was afflicted with a rather nasty Arteriovenous Malformation (“AVM”), and – unless I allowed one or the other of them go rooting around in my cranium – I was likely going to die.

In the movies, this is the point in the story when everybody breaks down crying. There’s a lot of hugging, and a fair bit of hysteria ensues. This is especially true when the story concerns ethnic types, such as my own Italian-American family. But this wasn’t the movies, and there wasn’t any hysteria. I just listened to what each of the surgeons said and, after I’d digested the concurring opinion at Mount Sinai hospital, I decided to allow them to go ahead and give it a try.

The doc at Mount Sinai made no guarantees; he was hopeful, but he was also careful to advise that the surgery itself was risky, and that I might suffer long-term consequences. I heard him, except that the whole time he was talking, I was quietly peering over at my mother. She looked more terrified than I’d ever seen her, and I knew why: the thought of losing a daughter before her fiftieth birthday was simply incomprehensible. So I just said yes. As in: get it the fuck out of my head -- now!

In the week between the diagnosis and the surgery, I made my peace with the universe and settled my affairs. I also cleaned up my office, and disposed of anything I didn’t want found in the event I had my ticket punched. Then, just in case, I bought some scarves to cover my head if I lived and was able to work.

As is so often the case, the cure was a bit worse than the disease. My brain swelled after the surgery, and I lost the ability to speak and/or comprehend language for several interminable days. It was a little frustrating. I was also abused by a nurse in the Neuro-ICU, but was unable to speak or write to tell anyone about it.

And, once that passed, I got the news that – oops! – it wasn’t a potentially-fatal AVM at all, but a more benign condition known as a Cavernous Hemangioma. And the topper: the CA was nestled so deeply in my brain that the surgeons had been unable to remove it during the seven-hour procedure. Back, as they say, to square one.

So there I was, eleven days in the hospital, half-bald, looking like the Bride of Frankenstein, and so fucking grateful for my situation that – if I’d been able to speak English – I would have shouted from the rooftops. Because, in the end, I’m still here. And, even with the occasional “hello” I get from The Thing in My Head, life is still pretty good. I’m fond of reminding myself, “Other people live with so much worse.” And I mean it every single time.

Even if what happened to me was exactly like brain surgery.

Thank You!!!

Dear Miss Judy and Miss Jill:

My brother Thomas and I just wanted to say thank you for what you both did to make our Mommy so happy. We know it was something good, ‘cause she baked us cookies and made us chocolate milk. And then she let us eat it all on the living room couch!

So we figure that you two are like the big people version of the Tooth Fairy. Because Mommy was saying something about dreams coming true and “fairies” or “fantasies” or something else with an “f” at the beginning of it. And then she went upstairs to her room with a bunch of stuff in her hands and closed the door and turned on the TV up there. Usually when she does that, Thomas and I try to sneak on up there and get into bed with her and watch TV too. Only we got cookies down here. And chocolate milk. So we are sure not moving.

Anyways, Thomas says that if you’re not the Tooth Fairy, then probably you gotta be those beautiful Angels that Grandma is always talking to. So thank you again, Angels. If you were here right now, we’d share our cookies with you. Well, probably.

Love, Maddie and Thomas