Dream a Little Dream.....

...of......???


God only knows. I just awakened from another of my epic extravaganzas. No wonder I'm always exhausted.


I wish we could hit rewind when we are awake and cognizant. My dreams are so bizarre, so nonsensical, so full of light, color, sound and emotion. Sometimes I wake up with my heart slamming against my chest wall. Thirty seconds later, I have no idea why.


Often, I dream about work, Sometimes I'm a hero, sometimes, a real loser. I guess after years of working full time, it's not going to be easy to forget about it. I'm glad we don't remember our dreams for long, I would hate to put so much feeling into something without getting paid for it.


Often, I dream about my kids when they were little..since they're quickly approaching forty, that's really about the past, the far past. It was the time of my life, so that must be why I harken back to those (idyllic?) days.  I bet their dreams are a lot different.


I dream about deceased loved ones. That's heavy. Must mean unfinished business, I know there are schools of thought about dream interpretation, but I just can't go there - look what happened to the Virgin Mary, not too mention her betrothed ! YIKES !


Usually I can at least connect the dots. I was just thinking about so-and-so, no wonder I dreamt of her.  I can dream about poker hands, backgammon boards, scrabble. I dream about game shows and animals. These are all things I love.


When my curiosity gets the best of me, I'll cave and look up some of my dreams on the internet or in books, but I ain't buyin' it. They say your dreams are of wishes unfullfilled, or unfinished business or unresolved anger.  I'm pretty sure all my anger is resolved, most of my business is finished and I hate to think I'm so shallow that my biggest wish is for a good poker hand.

All in all, it's at the very least, mildly entertaining...at the very most, exhausting.



Erma Bombeck said : "It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else."



They don't call me chicken for nuthin'.



Stressed is Just Desserts Spelled Backwards

Everything is relative, right? We all have different takes on the same things.  I'm beginning to think I have a really weird perspective.



I just returned from the grocery store, at the ungodly hour of 8 am. I set my clock because we're in the middle of a heat wave and I can't take it. I got up early to run errands, walk the dog and watch a friend in a tennis tourmament for awhile.  After that I will sequester down, make a pasta salad, read, nap and do laundry in the air conditioning. Life is good.


Except.


I just narrowly averted a full blown panic attack. This was triggered by....(doon-doon...)  the self check out lane at my grocery store.  It was so early, the store hadn't even opened cashier lanes. I was forced to engage in a ritual that would be, for most people, mildly interesting. For me, paralyzing. I get nervous, downright scared and usually fumble my way through with help from the real cashier.



I have other day to day tasks that unnerve me, too. Things you wouldn't even give a second thought. I have anxiety over merging, I have not, nor ever will, stuffed a turkey and each Sunday mass I worry about being asked to take the gifts up to the alter. I've accomplished all of these  things (except the turkey) and beautifully, but in sheer panic mode. 



Here's the conundrum:  I can do things a lot of people cannot/would not without a glimmer of angst.



My life in medicine brought me much joy and satisfaction. I spent years in the operating room, scrubbed in on a myriad of surgeries, right there, ready with instruments, suction, and counting bloody sponges.  I have run and warned the surgeon when I would be shutting down the laser on vision correction. (It's not up to him, really, it's up to the laser)  I catheterized my own young son, for several years, every 4 hours. I accomplished all this with nothing more than satisfaction of a job well done. I was in my comfort zone.



How many other people can lay claim to that kind of accomplishment? Granted, not a lot, but I bet most people do not freeze over daily tasks, like merging or stuffing turkeys. 



I hope retirement does many things, but mostly I hope it gives me new perspective so I can relax and enjoy it.



Malcom Forbes said: "Retirement kills more people than hard work ever did."



He may be right !

If You Love it Let it Go....

if it was meant to be, it'll come back to you. (not so much.)


They say "Write it, don't send it"  (for obvious reasons) I hope I don't regret posting this, but, true to form, I'm goin' for it ! I wish I had the balls to call Oprah and set the record straight, but I'd probably get sued.


It's this: I am part of a miracle. One I never asked for.


In today's world, so many things have been challenged and changed. Some, for the better. In my case, not so much. The grief my miracle brought is starting to outweigh the joy.


Somebody (not me) should write a book about the heartache of adoption reunions. Ours is eleven years old.


I've seen and read a lot about these reunions because I have an avid interest. I'm a "Birth Mother." God, the stigma that goes with that can be an albatross around my neck. Now, adoption numbers are falling because mothers choose to keep their children, no matter what. A good thing? Sure, in many cases.


In my case almost 42 years ago, it didn't seem like a good option. I was married briefly, to someone I'd known, but lost track of for many years. We had no idea what the hell we were doing. Viet Nam was raging. I was completely without direction, just sort of treading water, living in a Godforsaken little town where I knew no one. He was sure to go to Viet Nam, and probably needed to set down roots to come home to. We were eighteen, fercrissakes !


I was horribly homesick and terribly pregnant.  My husband, who is a better friend to me now than he ever was then, could do nothing right, poor kid. I wanted to go home and I wanted to go NOW!. My parents were so confused, they liked this guy so much and could not understand why I wanted to abandon the very plan I'd insisted on carrying out several months earlier.

But you know what? I firmly believe in the "Everything Happens for a Reason" school of thought. Our daughter was meant to be conceived. It was all part of God's plan and it all had to do with DNA. She was meant to be delivered by me and placed in the much-more-capable-hands of her adoptive parents. If things had gone differently, she never would've come to know the wonderful people in her life, and certainly would not have come to know the father of her beautiful children. (Without whom she couldn't enjoy the wonderful life she has now.)


I wouldn't have had my reason for being, either. My twins, who arrived three years after she was born and placed. My husband, her father, would not have known the wife he chose to spend eighteen years with, or served overseas in a noble capacity, the Peace Corp, giving so much more than he got.


It's all good, right?


Not so fast.


When you see the constantly running stories of the tortured souls who spend years looking for each other, you only see the honeymoon phase. You don't get to see that these reunions sometimes wreak havoc in so many lives who didn't deserve it. The 'afterglow' is much more of a furnace. It burns, and in my case, left deeper scars than the original loss.


We reunited after my "birth daughter's" parents were deceased. That was the only way I could've ever agreed to meet. I never wanted to start these wheels turning, lest I hurt the very people to whom I owed so much. Certainly I was curious all those years, thinking of her on her birthdays, Mothers Day, Fathers Day. But thanks to her 'birth father's' diligence, her safety and well being had been established when she was still a toddler.


Now, she's back, she's reunited with her relatives, she's formed strong bonds with some of them and offended many of them, too. Mostly, us. her birth parents.


She can be polite, but distant. She can be fierce, in a covert way. She may share our DNA, but she shares little else. I've met her children, a true gift from God, and I'm satisfied in knowing everything turned out well for her, for all of us. But the emotions she plays with are in danger of triggering some aftershocks, even after these eleven years. Now, there are even bigger issues.


I love this girl, so does her father, we wish her only the best, as we always have. I don't know how to assuage her anger, though, and I thought that once she had kids of her own, she would understand. She says she has no regrets, but I'm saying she has residue. I hope one day she'll really come back to us, but I guess that would be too much of a miracle.


I'm posting this because I'm tired of walking on eggs, I needed to say this, and I'm safe because, she doesn't even know I blog.


DNA: the gift that keeps on giving.

I Seldom See it Coming......

I heard some news today I wasn't expecting. I guess that's what makes it news.


I called a friend to confirm a lunch date & was mildly surprised when she didn't seem to remember our plans. I was going to take her out to distract her, because her mom had a 'mild' stroke last week and was still in rehab. My friend needed a break so I thought I'd treat her.


Turns out, her mom suffered a severe stroke yesterday and is now in hospice. Just hearing those words shot me right into my fugue state, that gift God allows me when I can't take the news. In fact, as I write this I'm in my fugue state. It's amazing how much one can accomplish while in shock. Some of my finest works have been completed while under this influence.


It's a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that things get handled beautifully, my son's special needs were always met and he flourished. My Dad had a beautiful funeral, family in from all over, visitation,rosary, service, luncheon, all went smoothly, I'm told.



Herein lies the curse. I have no memory of it.



I have vague recollections of cousins being in town all those years ago, when I lost my dad, a fleeting vision of a bunch of us, after all the hoopla, taking my mom back upstate so she wouldn't have to enter the house alone. I do remember that. Naturally, being Irish, we turned the whole thing into an extravaganza of rearranging furniture and home movies late at night, accompanied by 'cleaning out' the liquor cabinet.


My son sent me into overdrive for approximately nine years. It was then that he finally stabalized. It was nine years of surgery after surgery, top to bottom and I mean that literally. Six brain surgeries, scads of orthopedic procedures, a lot of nephrology (kidney) and then, just to be cruel, fate stepped in and sent us stoopid things like hernias and tonsils.


When I look back at it now, I remember most vividly his winning the Special Olympics in every event, every year. (Those athletes are all winners all the time, you betcha) I remember him being interviewed on t.v. on all the channels after his participation in those events. I remember that he was a cub scout and on a bowling league. I remember that he liked to turn his pillow over each night for "the cool side."


So, yes, I've been given a gift. The gift of automatic pilot. The gift of selective memory.


A gift I'll never exchange.

Rollercoasters are Supposed to be Seasonal

Usually considered a thrill ride. Certainly, a ride. I seem to be on one and can't get off. I suppose everyone feels that way at times, I just happened to get a look at my pattern recently and likened my life to a rollercoaster. I hated them as a kid, I rode them, to be sure, so that no one would know of my terror. I guess it was good practice for the ride I'm on now.


Just when you think you're at a stage in your life when everything is going to go smoothly, supposed to go smoothly, you get hit with all kinds of challenges. I never see them coming, but I'm seldom surprised.


I wrote about my dog and her health issues, she's on her own rollercoaster. Sometimes markedly improved, then a relapse. One day at a time for that challenge, for both of us.


The next thing to come along is a move. Perhaps in the fall. I have moved twenty times in my life, always thinking it would be the last time. At this age, I'm making damn sure this one is the last time. I've just begun looking, I hope to move in the fall, but that remains to be seen. The task is overwhelming, everything from even looking, to the actual event. I'm pretty good at it by now, but age is creeping up on me and the task seems monumental.


The summer is flying by, lots of good times with family and good friends and lots of time to watch my grandson flourish. He is doing well, although from time to time (like now) even he gets sidelined with a virus.


One of my friends who was unemployed, like me for awhile, found a job eighteen months ago and loved it. Until politics and attitude made her step back and re-evaluate the situation, She took a stand. I'm proud of her. At our age we can sometimes be more objective. Now she's waitng to see if her life is going to change, again.


I can sum it up in three words:


It goes on.