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.

7.21.13 Took Off Down The Road

Years ago when my two youngest were maybe 7 and 8, we used to drive 20 minutes down the road every few days to Leverett, where this old farmer lived in a rambling white cape, a big worn red barn out back that was rife with sick, breeding farm-turned-ferals cats .

I would cook up the same food I made my own dogs and cats, meat and (in those days) oats and then lots of medicinal herbal tinctures and nutritional yeast, all cooked in steamed vegetable water, to slowly treat their eye infections and chest infections and foot infections and have them have some food. I would leave out water, as the water for them was a small pond maybe ¼ of a mile away, too far for many of the young ones.

I went to the farmer's  door one day in the beginning, asking her permission , and she glanced at me sideways, my kids kinda hiding-beneath-my-skirts, and nodded a sort of ‘Why not” , as in, "Who the hell are  you but far be it for me"…that kind of look.

So I did and we did, and now and then when a new litter arrived, in betwixt the cats losing eyes from infection and all, I would sidle up to those tiny ones, lure them with the food, then GRAB their small wild bodies, and toss them in a cat carrier, to lug on home.

Once I managed to grab an older young one, blue eyes (some at one time were Siamese) with thick butterscotch stripes, and pop them into the cat carrier before they knew what hit them. It was a mistake, is all  I’ll say. My own. They were too old, and so scared. The older of my two kids there got into the car, all of 8, and for some reason opened the carrier, so then we had a freaking out 8 year old with a completely traumatized young feline racing about the car, crying, frantic. Oh my. I slipped into the car, and at one juncture, with the 7 year old outside looking in, managed to grab the poor young cat, and with many ripped up arms, get them back into the carrier. 

Later, I put him in one of the bunny cages outside under the trees. We had four huge rabbit cages, divided into two separate cages,8 feet long, each about 4 feet wide, with a small house at the end, doors on each end, so they could run and see the other  8 bunnies, and be warm in winter when I wrapped them all up in plastic. But one day my sweet kid went out again, called by this elegant creature, opened the door to say hello to the wild one, and off he went. Still today with my prayers and regret.

Once we brought home two or three small grey creatures, maybe 5 weeks old, because they won’t come to you any later…so it’s then or never. My 8 year old had a beloved cat, fixed, who took each of them by the scruff of the neck, and put them in a sleeping bag she chose, tossed on some floor upstairs, pushed them in, lay down to nurse them until her small teats were sore, and growled whenever we came near. Eventually she mothered them into 8 or 9 weeks, strong and healthy and easy going, and we found homes for them quick as you could say ‘beautiful feral kitten’.

Later on when my kids were all a bit older and at horseback riding lessons nearby, I went  on over to devlier some food and water, and up on a golf cart comes the bent over farmer, a huge load of Jerusalem Artichokes filling a barrel in the back of the cart, all dug and scrubbed squeaky clean.

 Lobbed one at me with a smile. I bit in, thanked her, and took off down the road.

7.21.13 Definitive Glory

Woke up to the 12 string by my bed, a bit dusty, calling my name.

'Wild Horses' wiggles around the chords over and over til I finally get what song is waiting to be sung.

I'm struck as I sit here, almost 61, flashing to a moment years ago, standing on a friend’s dock at her family's island home, far into the St. Lawrence Seaway... 

There she is, standing there on the lawn in her blonde, definitive glory, and my older brother in his, and as I stand on the dock, his absolutely beloved Nikkormat in hand, to take their photo, beautiful adolescent faces, so much behind, so very much to come, I step back looking thru the lens finder, then back again for a better shot , and, you got it, off I go - falling into the chest deep water , but yea, as my hand is as straight as an arrow, and tho I may go under, the camera, women and men, is safe. 

Relieved as I emerge, water streaming from my soaked self, they laugh hysterically, as I climb out, dripping and laughing, and after delivering his beloved camera to his awaiting hands, land him a good hard punch to the arm.

And that's what I had for breakfast.

7.20.13 Adante Divinis

Ahem. Clear your throat. Ok, now, to the tune of "It's Starting To Look a Lot Like Christmas",

“He's starting to look a lot like a Shepherd”

As a 7 week old, seemed this was a large, puffy, black Pomeranian. At 4 ½ months, it's clear he's a long coat Shepherd. Busy going to school with his daddy, can't figure out if he should ferociously guard the car or jump out of the window and greet the people, doesn't talk back, you don't have to sit with him while he falls asleep, he doesn’t complain about his friends or a losing soccer game, he has homework, bites more than human kids do, his kisses are dangerously , wonderfully nibbly, he loves to wrestle and growl ( my favorite) follow rules ( Kevin's favorite) has huge wolfey teeth on the way in, And while you're asleep, he loves to throw himself on top of you both and and cuddle. As in , BAM. Old Shiva Louisa Latrine not appreciative but possibly more spoiled, and relishing our insistence upon her dominance. Looks like feels like smells like sounds like heaven... to me.

7.19.13 Guerilla Gardening

   I run out in spurts, race past the haranguing, hungry female mosquitoes with their instant-alert super abilities, kneel down into the garden soil, wide handedly reach round plants to encompass weed grass and all else, pull pull while holding down the plants to not pull pull them too.

The ruthless July sun is cooking into my back and arms, within seconds the river of sweat rolling down my back in waves, dripping from face, unbelievable.

I’m slapping at the happily focused mosquitoes, tossing the weeded stuff in a pile, then stand to rush over and move the sprinkler, trying to evade the winged scourge as I turn the tap and let the plant’s thirsty drinking begin. Then, curiously out of breath, race indoors again.

I call it Guerilla Gardening. 

Crappola. Summer is here.

Course, for those of us with seasons, I always say we love to complain. About the weather. Ohhhh, it's so cold. Ohhhh, it's so hot. 

Once my beloved was on a plane, years ago, coming back from Europe. The person next to them was from Germany, reading up on what the U.S. was like. He turned to him, asking " Is it true people in the U.S. talk about the weather all the time?". Like it was a weird thing. An unusual thing. 

I sat back when he described this to me, in amongst his dreamlike experiences in Iceland, in Italy, wandering about. This in our early days, all entwined we were, I leaned back and thought " Wow, other people don't?". 

Yup. All that love.