she - and sympathy

Empathy: Identification with and understanding of another's feelings and situation.

Not to be confused with...

Sympathy: An expression of pity.   

I remember when I learned about empathy as a student in nursing school.  The concept stuck out for some reason.  It caught and held my attention.  I recall even who taught it to me,  where exactly I sat and beside whom, what I had on, what I felt about it and then I recall how very much I hoped, deep inside of me, that I possessed the character trait that would allow me to practice it often in my future.  It was a monumental moment for me, but I never imagined empathy would become a part of my everyday existence here at home; where I love, live with, do my best to parent my little gift of a child, my little Aspie girl.  

I've come to understand that kids with Asperges Syndrome tend to have a hard time understanding the feelings and emotional displays of others, though they may actually long to.  It can be extremely confusing for them and well, I can see for myself that confused is not all that wonderful a way to feel.   For her constant confusion, I have sympathy.


My daughter's inability to place herself in other's shoes, gives me constant call for putting my own self into her precious, unusual, sometimes uncomfortable little boots.  


Michael J. Fox once said at a conference where I saw him speak, "Parkinson's is the gift that keeps on taking" and I felt sympathetic toward him as he vibrated across the stage.  It made me wince.  I think I closed my eyes so that I didn't have to watch him, in all his beautiful agony.   He is remarkable.  I now proudly say, "Asperges coming into my life is the gift that keeps on giving".  It gives me the opportunity and chance to be ever mindful of the feelings of others, including and especially the one who can not feel for others and it allows me to practice empathy, helps me remain flexible, be hopeful, stay open.  It pushes me to prioritize and I find that in particular a true blessing; to be reminded of what is truly important to me, does me the great favor of noticing what simply is less so.  


My different child and I have become over the past few years quite Simpatico:  We work well together, understanding what affects one, correspondingly affects the other.
I can't ask for sympathy, when empathy gives me a closeness to another human being who is so full of love and light that her mere existence and presence in my life makes sweeter my days and softens me to the simple joy of understanding her as well as those around me.
I love my life with her.  I love the startling yet small surprises.  I love her and I cherish the challenge, the gifts of Asperges.   I'm it's biggest fan, in fact.

I'll be the greatest fan of your amazing life, my Girl.

  

spin for me

There are moments, few and far between, but they exist, when I'm absolutely certain that the world revolves around me.

I know this, just as I know that most of the time it does not.  

 I assume that much of the time it revolves around you.  About which you may or may not even be aware.   I hope though that you are, because, I can tell you there is nothing like it.

Leaving Las Vegas and the million lights, driving into the peaceful nothingness of the desert, all that I felt inside of me manifested into a series of remarkable, powerful, beautiful, dangerous, incredible, planet altering storms.   These storms swept people in their vehicles right off the not terribly crowded roadway, ignited fires, blew the earth into the air, disturbed everything in their paths, except me.   Repeatedly engulfed in the center of each turbulent pocket, I was somehow unafraid, but not unaffected and absolutely not unmoved.  I was simply a spectator as the world revolved around me, secure, dazzled, blissful and positive it was all about me.  In the storm, my storm, I was impossibly safe and I knew it and I loved it.

 This storm was mine.  

It was Me, the wind.

Me the clouds.

Me the dissipating heat.

Me the hail.   

Me the lightening.

Me the thunder.  

Me the fire. 
Me the cold.

Me the water. 

Me the returning sun. 

Me the silence. 
Me the storm.

These were my feelings; my questions, my answers, my love, my freedom, my worry, my plans, my carelessness, my joy, my havoc, my calm, my fear, my ambivalence ... and afterward it was my awe, my good fortune, heaven to me and until now, it was for the most part, my secret.   

Then the world's crazy revolution was about me.  I caused it, as if I put my finger tips to a globe and sent it spinning 100 times faster.   It was about me, until inevitably it was not and it hasn't been since, as it rarely was before.  But, it was me, the axis and now it's not and I love that too.   I only want the world to revolve around me every now and again.

Not so long ago the world revolved around me... and I have the pictures to prove it

always with me

It was not entirely out of the ordinary for me to be found stranded at the supper table for hours after others had finished dinner.   I don't care for peas. 

 Eight years old, given to telling tall tales.  

 My mother, with her balanced meals and long developed immunity to my bullshit is having a hard time believing me when I say that I literally cannot eat.  I have a terrible pain at my shoulder, can't turn my neck,  lift my arm, never mind a fork full of the loathsome peas.

 It's nothing short of a miracle that I survived my youth, having so deftly avoided nutrition as I managed to for the most part.

Hours earlier, I'd been working on my pirouettes.  I wasn't allowed to wear my ballet attire unless I was in my weekly class or practicing and since I felt awfully special in that get-up, I was often found practicing, but it hardly benefitted me. 

 Everyone knows that spinning round and round is oh so much greater when done in rapid succession.  It's the dizziness that makes it wonderful and it was the dizziness that led me to tumble softly and not so gracefully to the carpeted floor in our living room, near the hifi, where I'd spun and spun and spun.

Wolf cryer,  exaggeration prone, attention seeking, little white liar, now with a broken collar bone and absolutely no way to make myself believable.

  

Such a big and permantent lesson to be learned by such a small person.

My mother's guilt driven attention, which flowed thick and heavy all over me upon realizing that I was actually injured and not simply escaping vitamin consumption was sadly no real consolation.  I took no great pleasure in any special treatment that seemed to come so automatically for the invalid sporting a cast.   I was in some self imposed bubble, able to see it all, but not  feel anything as I realized all the way down to the calcium hardness of my very, apparently breakable bones, at the tender age of eight,  I had no credibility.   None.  Understanding fully what it meant to be untrusted and then the bigger burden; finding a way to become truthful knowing then that my life might get awfully uncomfortable if I could not figure out how to speak without embellishment.

So today, these days, now, when I speak of something somewhat monumental and close to my soul, I can be stifled by my own base need for delivering my words with bluntness.   It seems it's either fantasy or frankness when I talk about my inner most feelings and never in between.  I'm pretty sure this is why...         

my collar bone was connected to my heart bone.  

Coffee, Tea or Me

Thicker then water, they say blood is, but in my mother's family, we'd say it was thicker then tea.

Scottish, Irish, Just us-ish.   

My Aunt Jean has passed away and I miss her, though I've not seen her in years, it doesn't matter.   I'd know her in the dark, but to know her is to not know dark.   

There is something about the people in my mother's family.  

If you walk into their typically crowded homes, you don't feel the need to leave.  

Someone will notice you... or not notice you, if you'd prefer that.  

Whatever your need, it's met.  It just is.

If there is one blessing I must count on, it's that I was born into a clan.  

In the clan the women take care of the children, all of them, every one of them, be them their own or their other's own.

The men will squeeze the children's knee caps till the kid calls uncle and then maybe a little longer still, because they know you really don't want to quit the electric shock laughter that comes when strong pointers and thumbs clinch at the knobbiest knees in just the right spot.  Who doesn't love a miserable tickle that drives you to gasp for air?

Dogs and cats don't scratch or bite.

It's perfectly acceptable for company to do the dishes.

Help yourself means more then pour yourself something to drink.  It means talk to me, look to me, let me know you and you are loved.

I can picture Aunt Jean's kitchen from a time when my eyes were the same height as the counter.

I know the creek in the staircase.

I know the thrill in the smell from passing the Nabisco cookie factory.  It means you're half way there.

In Aunt Jean's house, I'd notice the change in my mother's voice when I'd overhear conversation wafting from one room to another, the tone of unconditional acceptance and comfort.

The relatives in my mother's family are parents to us all.  Each is in charge, each is responsible, each is present and a force.  Never has it been established as such, it just is.  It's just their way.  It's just them.  It's just us.  Broken together.

...and I love them all, with all that I am for all that they are.