7.22.13 100 Kisses Within A Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time in a land far away, ( maybe 20 years ago and 20 miles away) , we did live in a home given us by his father, to us and his sister, and we, with three young ones, did sell it to her, and move our small family to a nearby town, with better schools and close to the university for his doctoral work, and into a stately Victorian rental , off the middle of  town, on a small forested street inhabited by many old New England homes.

The first night there, my oldest and I left in the darkness, after the two and three year olds were fast asleep, to walk the German Shepherd and the Australian Shepherd round the block.

Round we went to the main street, where we came upon hoardes of Umass students in long long lines covering the sidewalks, police keeping order as they awaited their turn to enter various drinking establishments, screaming and laughing, pushing and shoving each other in their youthful urgency.

Not a little surprised, I ushered my 12-year-old down past the crowds, as we approached a small compact car backing into a parking space. It aimed irregularly, and as we stood by, it backed up upon the hood of a red Corvette parked behind it. Up up its little compact back wheels went onto the hood, not quite to the windshield, then, possibly detecting a problem, the driver drove back down , turned off their offending car,  taking a quick look at the car behind them, and leaving quite quickly on foot.

I jotted down the license number of the compact, stuck it on the Corvette with my number, and off we went, not a small bit stunned, to finish out dog walk.

Turns out the lovely Victorian we all enjoyed so much was over sprayed with Diazinon, an anti-cholinesterase inhibitor, initially designed as a pesticide for use in chemical warfare, and , due to an excess left over from WW2, reassigned a job for commercial use. Carpenter Ant prevention. Cockroach prevention. Seems it’s role is to  ensure that yours, mine, and insect’s nerve synapses stay stuck together, instead of coming together for a neural impulse or message, letting the message pass by, then separating. To be stuck together causes neural damange, kind of a toasting of whatever circuit is involved- leg, heart, brain, you name it. Thus it is a neurotoxin, with, wait for it, a 500 year half life. Yup. So in 500 years, it will be half fallen apart. In the meantime, it offgasses for quite awhile, then falls asleep, then when you pull off a board to do work on your house, boom, it wakes up anew, and in your body it goes to stay and fester and foster all kinds of possible vulnerabilities.

Not only that; it was designed to be chemically unstable. So up til a few years ago, and still in ‘developing’ countries, it nomadically wanders up to 40 feet in every direction, and even better, chemically combines with everything, I mean everything, in its path. Now let’s just stop and imagine a hardware store. Right? Can you see it? Wandering about and chemically combining, kind of like Ghostbusters or something? Right. That’s it.

Charming.

So we began to get swollen red, chapped lips and pale faces and stomach aches and twitches and I began looking around for a cause, as the upstairs rooms smelled perennially like RAID no matter how much I sponged and washed them down, and the kids all began to get sick and I was like an empty vessel, myself.

Finally I found out that the house had not only been sprayed, but over sprayed, and we were…environmentally ill. Back when everyone was like, “Oh, how silly. How stupid. No such thing.”. You know, and all that. When Fibromyalgia was a stupid human invention that was not real, and ALS and Asthma were psychosomatic. It’s important we not have amnesia. It’s important we don’t expect medicine to be perfect and know EVERYTHING right NOW. At the same time, the only thing doctors need to somehow, somehow learn to do, is to say that as far as they KNOW RIGHT NOW, they can detect nothing. So simple. Just leave the door open for what we, at this time, cannot detect. Seems so simple, to me.

I insisted we move once again 2 months later, a disaster for his dissertation, but I found a new house, brandy new, not knowing that…we would become allergic to the new, off gassing chemicals of the carpets and the walls made of  particle board and the new paint and all. Which we slowly and painfully and sick-ily discovered.

Eventually I found an older home, no work done on it in awhile. I learned to call the pesticide companies, as they kept records by house, and ask sweetly if the house in question had a ‘maintenance agreement’, as if it was something I wanted and liked and all, and they would smile over the phone and let me know about each and every rental I checked out til I picked this one, in the north part of town, within walking distance to the tiny town library, the town park, the woods, the fields and stream the martial arts classes, the grocery store my oldest would cut his teeth on while homeschooling, on his way to becoming a business maven. Nice house, kids in the neighborhood.

So, like “Make Way For Ducklings”, we happily once again leaned on our tired and sore friends to help us once again move to the older house.

By then, the kids were allergic to stores and new buildings and ….school. the dogs were sick too, the older one with Lymphatic Cancer.  Mostly the two younger ones, and myself,  had been in the house the most, so were most impacted.

This was pre-internet, but I located a naturopathic practitioner, brilliant really, who utilized an electron microscope to do Live Cell Analysis among other things, and we effectively used up all our money from selling the house to address this horrible chemical, which had a nicely high danger of a number of conditions, including childhood leukemia. I thought it was worth the loss of house money, and to this day, it is and was.

I learned that years ago, the earth grew trees but had not developed the enzymes necessary to break down the trees once they fell and died. And so, human made things like pesticides and chemicals and medications, even when helpful, are complex compounds that are very hard, if not impossible, for humans to break down and get OUT of the body.

The world knows much more about this now than it did then.

The kids and I had chronic bronchitis, which was renewed by any exposure to new shoes or carpet or being in a restaurant when they sprayed Ammonia, when we would go racing out, while trying not to alarm the young ones.

We actually at one point washed the carpets of an entire elementary school three times, then applied a sealant twice so it would be ok for the kids.
But they ended up having to homeschool for three years or so, which I somehow did while driving my disbelieving, suffering husband nuts, and being environmentally ill. Never made it a big issue with the kids as to why exactly we were homeschooling, and got really into it, because, what are you to do???

Here we are , finally getting to the 100 kisses. Be patient.

During that time, I bought these little plastic bears to use for mathematics, and eventually my two youngest began coming over, hand it to me, and ask for a kiss. As if they wouldn’t get a kiss anytime anyway, but they thought it was fun, trading a  plastic bear for a kiss.

Eventually one of them had a serious  injury and a very very difficult time for many years, and he would come to me with  a bear in his small hand, and ask for 100 kisses. 100. I would look at him, see the empty bucket in need of kisses deep inside there, pull him up on  my lap, and  he would sit expectantly, while I would kiss his cheek once, twice, 47, 78, 100 times.

Then he would get down, all filled up, say “Thanks Mum”, and run off to make huge block buildings or lego creations or hamster tunnels and all.

Eventually we all got better, I learned how to treat Environmental Illness with herbs, supplements and bodywork, palpating organs and systems and describing and showing clients how to detect what was challenged, and show them how to tell by palpating or looking at their faces or other measure how they were improving.

Today, driving my husband home from work, the old dog wanting his front seat but BAD, the enormous pup intermittently lunging forward to deliver toothy kisses, we both remembered the 100 kisses, and the plastic bears.

Back home, I went into the bathroom and peered into one of the cloth containers, and there it was, the last one, red, small, a tiny bear, worthy of 100 kisses.