Romans 12:12 Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
By D’Ann White
Managing to arouse myself from the fog I’d been immersed in for several weeks, I noticed that my 13-year-old son, Ian, was playing his electric guitar.
“Shouldn’t you be reading the books on your summer reading list?” I yelled in an effort to be heard over the amplifiers.
He turned down the amps and shrugged.
“What’s the point?” he asked.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Well, you were an A student, on the honor roll, the National Honor Society. You did everything you were supposed to and look where it got you.”
Hmm. I could see his point. After nearly 25 years with the company, The Tampa Tribune laid me off in May.
As far as Ian was concerned, I was living proof that there is no reward for hard work, dedication and loyalty.
As an estimated 400 St. Stephen parishioners who have lost jobs over the past couple of years can attest, shock and grief doesn’t begin to describe what I was feeling.
Intellectually, I understood that it’s a lousy economy, that I wasn’t the only one to lose my job and that it wasn’t a reflection on me or my work.
But emotionally, I wondered why the powers-that-be chose me and not the co-worker who didn’t have as much experience or didn’t write as many stories. What did I do wrong?
On top of all these doubts, I was consumed by guilt.
I carried all the health and life insurance for the family. Now what would we do?
I wondered if this was perhaps God’s punishment for my selfishness. You see, being a journalist wasn’t simply a career for me. I felt it was a calling. I truly believed that I could help and inspire others with my words, that I could make a difference in the world.
I could conceive of no reason God would allow my career to be taken away except He felt I wasn’t using my gifts to glorify and serve Him; I was using them to serve myself.
After the layoff, I couldn’t attend Mass. I couldn’t accept the Holy Eucharist. I felt as if I’d let God down and I was no longer welcome in His House.
Friends tried to reassure me. They would tell me that God has greater plans for me. But, no, that didn’t seem right. Something told me my layoff was God’s way of keeping me humble, of reminding me that, at the end of the day, what I do for a living isn’t all that important.
So, if what we do in life isn’t important, what is?
Surely God didn’t intend to give my son the message that hard work, loyalty and dedication are misguided virtues.
Then it occurred to me, perhaps that’s the problem. We all expect to be rewarded for hard work, loyalty and dedication.
But God never promised us riches, happiness, admiration, the love of others, health or any other rewards on earth. He only promised us rewards in heaven.
Remember, La Immaculata Concepcion reiterated this to Saint Bernadette in the grotto at Lourdes, saying, “I cannot promise to make you happy in this world, only in the next.”
As individuals, we are here for such a short time and, for the most part, our contributions are nebulous, quickly forgotten. A person isn’t measured by his fleeting accomplishments or successes.
Instead, as the saints show us, we are measured by our faith.
That faith gives us the ability to overcome adversity, to tackle innumerable challenges and emerge with our devotion intact.
That faith gives us the ability to know that, no matter what obstacles are put in our path; God will never desert us as long as our belief remains strong.
That faith gives us the ability to carry on and continue serving Him without expecting glory for ourselves here on earth.
That faith gives us the moral rectitude to accept life’s inequities without becoming bitter.
That faith allows us to strive for sanctity knowing that we’re imperfect and will have to forgive ourselves for our setbacks.
It took two months of prayer and soul-searching, but I finally had my reply to Ian’s comments.
I told him we must strive to be our best, to use our God-given gifts to serve Him not for how it will benefit us but for how it will benefit others.
Even if no one remembers what we did to serve God, the fact that we served God with passion, that we glorified Him in the way we knew best, is enough to give our lives meaning.
“So don’t you dare use my layoff as an excuse to be a slacker,” I warned him.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Don't Look For My Christmas Card
I wrote this column a few years ago but it was nice to see that certain things don’t change. Once again this year, Lenny was the first on the block to brave the dust and daddy longlegs in the attic and pull out the Christmas decorations.
This time he started the day before Thanksgiving, getting a head start on the entire neighborhood and earning scowls from all the husbands around them who weren’t looking forward to hearing their wives harangue them about spending their Thanksgiving weekend decorating the house.
I drove up just as Lenny was putting the finishing touches on his holiday outdoor artistry, which included a lighted plastic rendition of the Holy Family. A faithful Catholic, Lenny still believes Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ, and his decorations reflect that belief.
In my column a few years ago, I related his frustrations with a nonworking lighted “Merry Christmas” sign. Lenny continues to search for a working sign that proclaims “Merry Christmas,” but said he has yet to find one.
“If you see one, buy it and I’ll pay you back,” he told me, earnestly.
I laughed and reminded him of the column I wrote about his “Merry Christmas” sign. I then threatened to revive the column on my blog.
So, here it is:
Yarissa and Lenny were the first people on our street to put up their Christmas decorations.
Lenny began stringing lights as soon as his turkey and dressing digested. I told Yari she was making us all look bad but she explained it was out of necessity.
Lenny’s a Black Hawk helicopter pilot and was going to be gone for most of the month of December. If the lights weren’t put up now, she said, they never would be.
While Lenny put the finishing touches on his front-yard extravaganza, Yari and I headed to church for the first rehearsal of the Christmas pageant featuring the traditional nativity story starring the parish’s 5- to 10-year-olds.
I was assigned the unenviable, um, I mean coveted, task of directing the 4:30 Christmas Eve pageant. That’s typically the family Mass and, as predicted, dozens of would-be Josephs, Marys, innkeepers and shepherds lined up to be in the pageant, including Yari and Lenny’s two young daughters, Natasha and Alexandra. Both girls originally wanted to be angels but Alexandra, the youngest of the two, changed her mind at the last minute and opted to be a shepherdess.
Talent isn’t a factor when it comes to our pageant. Children are chosen for the roles based on who selects the number closest to what some adult is thinking. If we get lucky and the kid happens to have some acting skills, so much the better. However, I was prepared to accept the fact that my directing skills would be limited to reminding Mary not to hold Baby Jesus upside-down and prompting the innkeeper to remove his hand from his wee-wee long enough to point Mary and Joseph to the stable.
With about 40 children, including a barn full of pigs, sheep and cows, on board for the pageant, I returned home, anxious to see Leonardo’s handiwork. He’d taken Natasha to figure-skating lessons and Yari and Alexandra were excitedly awaiting the moment when darkness fell and the automatic timers took over, painting their front yard in glorious Christmas splendor.
Dismayed that the trend was to remove “Christmas” from what was essentially the Christmas season for the sake of political correctness, Yari was especially proud of her giant lighted sign that read “Merry Christmas.”
However, when night fell, the effect wasn’t quite what she was hoping for. Instead of remaining lit, all the lights were set on an intermittent cycle. You’d just spot poor Rudolph and his fellow reindeer in the front yard, and suddenly they’d disappear into a miasma of darkness.
But, for Yari, the biggest affront was her “Merry Christmas” sign. Two of the letters weren’t working so the sign read “Merry Chris as.”
“Merry Chris..as!” she protested. “That’s not the statement I wanted to make to the neighborhood.”
It looked like poor Lenny had more work ahead of him.
In the meantime, I hadn’t begun decorating, shopping or even thinking about decorating or shopping. It looked as if Christmas would come and go before my tree had a single ornament. I glanced at the Sunday fliers and was dismayed to see them advertising last-minute gifts.
The anxiety welled up and I couldn’t contain my tears of frustration at a gathering of friends that afternoon.
It turns out, I wasn’t alone. Far from it.
As far as my friends, Amy and Ivette, were concerned, I was way ahead of the game. You see, I already had a costume for my son for Tuesday’s school Christmas program. The theme was holidays around the world and my son’s teacher suggested I use the same costume I made for his All Saint’s Day report in November.
He did his report on Saint Isidore, patron saint of farmers and farm workers, an Italian saint who lived in the 1600s. I had no idea what an Italian farmer in the 1600s looked like and I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. I stopped by the party store and bought a long, gray beard (all male saints have beards, right?) and then on to Wal-Mart where I picked up some colorful striped discount fabric that I turned into a vest and scarf. A baggy pair of black sweatpants completed the look. As I was walking to the checkout, I saw some corduroy peasant-type hats discounted for a couple of bucks and the look was ideal for an Italian saint.
My son was delighted. The next morning he eagerly donned his costume and, voila! He looked exactly like Fidel Castro.
When my son’s teacher suggested he wear the same costume for the Christmas program, I thought she was joking.
“You want Fidel Castro in the Christmas program?” I asked her.
“Well,” she said. “You can leave off the beard. The rest is perfect.”
My friend Amy was envious. She doesn’t sew and her youngest son needed a shepherd’s costume. She bound his entire costume with iron-on tape and asked us to pray the costume wouldn’t fall apart the moment he walked onto the stage.
Ivette didn’t even know her son needed a costume. She found out Sunday, two days before the event.
As for decorating, my friend Mary assured me she won’t be winning any House Beautiful awards this year. Her son declared their Christmas decorations “the lamest in the neighborhood. Our reindeer’s butt doesn’t even light up anymore.”
My friend Lisa said she put up about half of her decorations and left the rest of the boxes in the family room, hoping she’d find time to complete the task. When she never found the time, she moved the rest of the boxes to the garage. No one ever suspected she didn’t finish decorating.
“I guess that tells you I didn’t need them in the first place,” she said.
At that moment I realized I had two choices.
I could be at home by myself decorating my Christmas tree or out shopping for gifts for the very friends who now surrounded me.
Or I could be with those friends, sharing moments like this -- frustrations, tears, laughter, comfort, joy, and the true meaning of Christmas.
This time he started the day before Thanksgiving, getting a head start on the entire neighborhood and earning scowls from all the husbands around them who weren’t looking forward to hearing their wives harangue them about spending their Thanksgiving weekend decorating the house.
I drove up just as Lenny was putting the finishing touches on his holiday outdoor artistry, which included a lighted plastic rendition of the Holy Family. A faithful Catholic, Lenny still believes Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ, and his decorations reflect that belief.
In my column a few years ago, I related his frustrations with a nonworking lighted “Merry Christmas” sign. Lenny continues to search for a working sign that proclaims “Merry Christmas,” but said he has yet to find one.
“If you see one, buy it and I’ll pay you back,” he told me, earnestly.
I laughed and reminded him of the column I wrote about his “Merry Christmas” sign. I then threatened to revive the column on my blog.
So, here it is:
Yarissa and Lenny were the first people on our street to put up their Christmas decorations.
Lenny began stringing lights as soon as his turkey and dressing digested. I told Yari she was making us all look bad but she explained it was out of necessity.
Lenny’s a Black Hawk helicopter pilot and was going to be gone for most of the month of December. If the lights weren’t put up now, she said, they never would be.
While Lenny put the finishing touches on his front-yard extravaganza, Yari and I headed to church for the first rehearsal of the Christmas pageant featuring the traditional nativity story starring the parish’s 5- to 10-year-olds.
I was assigned the unenviable, um, I mean coveted, task of directing the 4:30 Christmas Eve pageant. That’s typically the family Mass and, as predicted, dozens of would-be Josephs, Marys, innkeepers and shepherds lined up to be in the pageant, including Yari and Lenny’s two young daughters, Natasha and Alexandra. Both girls originally wanted to be angels but Alexandra, the youngest of the two, changed her mind at the last minute and opted to be a shepherdess.
Talent isn’t a factor when it comes to our pageant. Children are chosen for the roles based on who selects the number closest to what some adult is thinking. If we get lucky and the kid happens to have some acting skills, so much the better. However, I was prepared to accept the fact that my directing skills would be limited to reminding Mary not to hold Baby Jesus upside-down and prompting the innkeeper to remove his hand from his wee-wee long enough to point Mary and Joseph to the stable.
With about 40 children, including a barn full of pigs, sheep and cows, on board for the pageant, I returned home, anxious to see Leonardo’s handiwork. He’d taken Natasha to figure-skating lessons and Yari and Alexandra were excitedly awaiting the moment when darkness fell and the automatic timers took over, painting their front yard in glorious Christmas splendor.
Dismayed that the trend was to remove “Christmas” from what was essentially the Christmas season for the sake of political correctness, Yari was especially proud of her giant lighted sign that read “Merry Christmas.”
However, when night fell, the effect wasn’t quite what she was hoping for. Instead of remaining lit, all the lights were set on an intermittent cycle. You’d just spot poor Rudolph and his fellow reindeer in the front yard, and suddenly they’d disappear into a miasma of darkness.
But, for Yari, the biggest affront was her “Merry Christmas” sign. Two of the letters weren’t working so the sign read “Merry Chris as.”
“Merry Chris..as!” she protested. “That’s not the statement I wanted to make to the neighborhood.”
It looked like poor Lenny had more work ahead of him.
In the meantime, I hadn’t begun decorating, shopping or even thinking about decorating or shopping. It looked as if Christmas would come and go before my tree had a single ornament. I glanced at the Sunday fliers and was dismayed to see them advertising last-minute gifts.
The anxiety welled up and I couldn’t contain my tears of frustration at a gathering of friends that afternoon.
It turns out, I wasn’t alone. Far from it.
As far as my friends, Amy and Ivette, were concerned, I was way ahead of the game. You see, I already had a costume for my son for Tuesday’s school Christmas program. The theme was holidays around the world and my son’s teacher suggested I use the same costume I made for his All Saint’s Day report in November.
He did his report on Saint Isidore, patron saint of farmers and farm workers, an Italian saint who lived in the 1600s. I had no idea what an Italian farmer in the 1600s looked like and I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. I stopped by the party store and bought a long, gray beard (all male saints have beards, right?) and then on to Wal-Mart where I picked up some colorful striped discount fabric that I turned into a vest and scarf. A baggy pair of black sweatpants completed the look. As I was walking to the checkout, I saw some corduroy peasant-type hats discounted for a couple of bucks and the look was ideal for an Italian saint.
My son was delighted. The next morning he eagerly donned his costume and, voila! He looked exactly like Fidel Castro.
When my son’s teacher suggested he wear the same costume for the Christmas program, I thought she was joking.
“You want Fidel Castro in the Christmas program?” I asked her.
“Well,” she said. “You can leave off the beard. The rest is perfect.”
My friend Amy was envious. She doesn’t sew and her youngest son needed a shepherd’s costume. She bound his entire costume with iron-on tape and asked us to pray the costume wouldn’t fall apart the moment he walked onto the stage.
Ivette didn’t even know her son needed a costume. She found out Sunday, two days before the event.
As for decorating, my friend Mary assured me she won’t be winning any House Beautiful awards this year. Her son declared their Christmas decorations “the lamest in the neighborhood. Our reindeer’s butt doesn’t even light up anymore.”
My friend Lisa said she put up about half of her decorations and left the rest of the boxes in the family room, hoping she’d find time to complete the task. When she never found the time, she moved the rest of the boxes to the garage. No one ever suspected she didn’t finish decorating.
“I guess that tells you I didn’t need them in the first place,” she said.
At that moment I realized I had two choices.
I could be at home by myself decorating my Christmas tree or out shopping for gifts for the very friends who now surrounded me.
Or I could be with those friends, sharing moments like this -- frustrations, tears, laughter, comfort, joy, and the true meaning of Christmas.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
A Daughter's Wish
This is a column I wrote in June 2007, six months before my father died from a brain tumor. I'm still so grateful that I flew to St. Louis the day after Thanksgiving to be with him, and that I was by his side when he took his final breath. I still miss him so very much.
Along with about 20 other sons and daughters, I spent a chunk of my Sunday afternoon standing in the greeting card aisle at Walgreens in Bloomingdale perusing the selection of Father’s Day offerings.
Like always, I welled up at the sentimental Hallmark Celebration offerings and made a fool of myself laughing out loud at the company’s Shoebox cards.
The guy standing next to me looked as if he was ready to call 911 so I tried explaining to him why I was busting a gut.
I showed him the cartoon on the card. “You see there’s a father and son at the beach looking at this dead seagull and the kid asks the dad what happened to the bird. The father tells him that it died and went to heaven. And the kid looks down at the dead bird and asks his dad, ‘Did God throw him back down?’”
I burst into laughter all over again. The fellow customer just looked at me and walked away, leaving me to marvel at the subjectivity of humor. Obviously the person who wrote the greeting card and that person’s boss thought it was funny or it never would have ended up on the greeting card rack at Walgreens.
Despite the tears and guffaws, I left the store empty-handed. How can some stranger back at Hallmark headquarters in Kansas City possibly summarize my feelings about my dad?
My sister and I were talking on the phone about that very subject -- my dad -- recently. She lives in St. Louis, about a mile from my parents, and gets to see them a lot more than I do. We were discussing the fact that neither of us knew my dad as well as we would have liked to.
My father wasn’t around a whole lot when we were growing up. He was a vice president for an international insurance brokerage firm that required him to constantly travel around the world.
Frankly, my younger brother and I were convinced the whole insurance brokerage thing was a front and that our father was really spy for the CIA. After all, he was former Army Intelligence, serving during the Korean War; his biggest client was McDonnell Douglas, a major American aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor based in St. Louis before merging with The Boeing Co. in 1997; and he bore a marked resemblance to Robert Wagner in the ‘60s television series, “It Takes a Thief,” in which Wagner worked for a secret government agency called the SIA.
My dad would return home from overseas trips carrying one of those black leather attaché cases with the combination locks where we were certain top-secret documents were stashed. We never got a chance to peek inside, but we did manage to snoop around in his luggage on occasion, searching for microfilm and dissecting his pens to see if they contained cyanide capsules or miniature weapons a la James Bond.
We never found anything but that’s only because the CIA undoubtedly took precautions against snoopy children of operatives. To this day, my dad has never emphatically stated one way or the other if he was a secret agent.
No, dad wasn’t around as much as other fathers in the neighborhood when we were youngsters. By the time we were old enough to engage in real conversations with him, we weren’t all that interested in hanging around the house getting to know dad better. And since my dad tended to be quiet and contemplative, downright distracted at times, starting a conversation with him was like pulling teeth.
But after my sister and I ended our phone conversation, I began looking back on our relationship through the years. No, we don’t have the kind of bond where I feel comfortable calling him out of the blue to talk about whatever’s on my mind.
However, now that I think back on it, despite all his travels, my dad was on hand for every landmark event in my life, as well as a few he’d probably rather forget but his presence made all the difference in the world to me.
Yes, he abandoned his missions to foil Brezhnev’s KGB agents’ devious plots long enough to attend my figure-skating recitals and high school graduation. I kept my promise to him and declined other dates when I turned 21 so my father could take me out for my first drink. He was front and center at my college graduation and flew to New England on the pretense of a business trip to make sure I was settled in at my first real job.
He picked me up in his arms and ran home cradling me when I was 8 after spotting me wearing one white sneaker and one red sneaker. A sharp rock had pierced the rubber sole of the red sneaker and gone straight through my foot. My blood had soaked the shoe and I was afraid to tell anyone because my mom had just bought the sneakers.
And he was there for the darkest moments of my life.
He held my hand when the doctor assembled our family in a hospital room and solemnly told us that my little brother wouldn’t live through the night.
And he rushed to Columbia, Mo., when the police called to tell him his daughter was at the university medical center, the victim of a campus serial rapist.
No offense to Hallmark or American Greetings, but the sentiments on their cards all seemed so hackneyed and indifferent when compared to what I was feeling, what I wanted to say to this man.
You see, my dad, now in his 70s, has cancer. The man who used to begin his day with a brisk 5-mile walk followed by 18 holes of golf barely has the strength these days to walk from the bedroom to the family room.
The last time I saw him, I couldn’t even give him a hug because the chemotherapy and radiation had weakened his immune system to such a point that he had to wear surgical masks around his own family.
So I walked out of Walgreens without a card and, instead, stopped by my church and offered a Father’s Day Novena for my dad. Then I made a donation to the Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in his honor.
A prayer for my dad and the hope of ending the suffering of future dads: that’s my Father’s Day gift.
Along with about 20 other sons and daughters, I spent a chunk of my Sunday afternoon standing in the greeting card aisle at Walgreens in Bloomingdale perusing the selection of Father’s Day offerings.
Like always, I welled up at the sentimental Hallmark Celebration offerings and made a fool of myself laughing out loud at the company’s Shoebox cards.
The guy standing next to me looked as if he was ready to call 911 so I tried explaining to him why I was busting a gut.
I showed him the cartoon on the card. “You see there’s a father and son at the beach looking at this dead seagull and the kid asks the dad what happened to the bird. The father tells him that it died and went to heaven. And the kid looks down at the dead bird and asks his dad, ‘Did God throw him back down?’”
I burst into laughter all over again. The fellow customer just looked at me and walked away, leaving me to marvel at the subjectivity of humor. Obviously the person who wrote the greeting card and that person’s boss thought it was funny or it never would have ended up on the greeting card rack at Walgreens.
Despite the tears and guffaws, I left the store empty-handed. How can some stranger back at Hallmark headquarters in Kansas City possibly summarize my feelings about my dad?
My sister and I were talking on the phone about that very subject -- my dad -- recently. She lives in St. Louis, about a mile from my parents, and gets to see them a lot more than I do. We were discussing the fact that neither of us knew my dad as well as we would have liked to.
My father wasn’t around a whole lot when we were growing up. He was a vice president for an international insurance brokerage firm that required him to constantly travel around the world.
Frankly, my younger brother and I were convinced the whole insurance brokerage thing was a front and that our father was really spy for the CIA. After all, he was former Army Intelligence, serving during the Korean War; his biggest client was McDonnell Douglas, a major American aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor based in St. Louis before merging with The Boeing Co. in 1997; and he bore a marked resemblance to Robert Wagner in the ‘60s television series, “It Takes a Thief,” in which Wagner worked for a secret government agency called the SIA.
My dad would return home from overseas trips carrying one of those black leather attaché cases with the combination locks where we were certain top-secret documents were stashed. We never got a chance to peek inside, but we did manage to snoop around in his luggage on occasion, searching for microfilm and dissecting his pens to see if they contained cyanide capsules or miniature weapons a la James Bond.
We never found anything but that’s only because the CIA undoubtedly took precautions against snoopy children of operatives. To this day, my dad has never emphatically stated one way or the other if he was a secret agent.
No, dad wasn’t around as much as other fathers in the neighborhood when we were youngsters. By the time we were old enough to engage in real conversations with him, we weren’t all that interested in hanging around the house getting to know dad better. And since my dad tended to be quiet and contemplative, downright distracted at times, starting a conversation with him was like pulling teeth.
But after my sister and I ended our phone conversation, I began looking back on our relationship through the years. No, we don’t have the kind of bond where I feel comfortable calling him out of the blue to talk about whatever’s on my mind.
However, now that I think back on it, despite all his travels, my dad was on hand for every landmark event in my life, as well as a few he’d probably rather forget but his presence made all the difference in the world to me.
Yes, he abandoned his missions to foil Brezhnev’s KGB agents’ devious plots long enough to attend my figure-skating recitals and high school graduation. I kept my promise to him and declined other dates when I turned 21 so my father could take me out for my first drink. He was front and center at my college graduation and flew to New England on the pretense of a business trip to make sure I was settled in at my first real job.
He picked me up in his arms and ran home cradling me when I was 8 after spotting me wearing one white sneaker and one red sneaker. A sharp rock had pierced the rubber sole of the red sneaker and gone straight through my foot. My blood had soaked the shoe and I was afraid to tell anyone because my mom had just bought the sneakers.
And he was there for the darkest moments of my life.
He held my hand when the doctor assembled our family in a hospital room and solemnly told us that my little brother wouldn’t live through the night.
And he rushed to Columbia, Mo., when the police called to tell him his daughter was at the university medical center, the victim of a campus serial rapist.
No offense to Hallmark or American Greetings, but the sentiments on their cards all seemed so hackneyed and indifferent when compared to what I was feeling, what I wanted to say to this man.
You see, my dad, now in his 70s, has cancer. The man who used to begin his day with a brisk 5-mile walk followed by 18 holes of golf barely has the strength these days to walk from the bedroom to the family room.
The last time I saw him, I couldn’t even give him a hug because the chemotherapy and radiation had weakened his immune system to such a point that he had to wear surgical masks around his own family.
So I walked out of Walgreens without a card and, instead, stopped by my church and offered a Father’s Day Novena for my dad. Then I made a donation to the Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in his honor.
A prayer for my dad and the hope of ending the suffering of future dads: that’s my Father’s Day gift.
Friday, November 20, 2009
When All Else Fails, Try Humor
I'm hardly the first person you'd coming running to for parenting advice.
Before my son was born, I'd never even diapered a baby.
When I found out I was pregnant, I began practicing on my pet Pekingese who was amazingly tolerant when I'd get the sticky tabs of the Pampers stuck to his fur.
After a few dozen attempts, I became pretty proficient at diapering a Pekingese. Too bad my son wasn't born with a tail.
A lot of women are born mothers. I'm not one of them. I felt inadequate more times than not. I kept waiting for someone to accuse me of being an imposter.
A few came close. Like the time I walked out of the grocery store pushing my cart filled with bags only to hear the cashier yell after me, "Hey, lady, you forgot your baby!"
Sure enough, my sleeping infant was snuggled in his carrier, which was attached to the seat of a different shopping cart.
Luckily, Ian was oblivious that time. He caught on when he was a little older, though. There was that horrifying moment my husband and I rushed from our jobs to attend his kindergarten open house. We arrived at the same time, looked at one another and realized neither of us had picked up our son from preschool. I rushed over to get him. He was waiting, hands on his hips.
"You forgot me again, didn't you?" he said, sighing. I made him promise this incident wouldn't send him into therapy when he's 30.
Of course, wise beyond his years, my son relished bolstering my sense of inadequacy. As soon as he learned to talk, way too soon as far as I was concerned, he delighted in causing me public embarrassment.
One day he threw a tantrum in the grocery store because I wouldn't buy him a toy in the toy aisle.
I explained to him that the grocery store toy aisle is simply a marketing ploy designed to torment harried mothers into buying overpriced plastic army men for spoiled children. But the decibel of my son's screams rose to ear-piercing levels, attracting tsks from elderly women who had apparently raised perfect children.
Reaching the limits of my patience, I firmly grabbed his chubby cheeks, ordered him to shape up and dragged him away from the toy aisle.
As we were standing in line waiting to check out, he announced to anyone who'd listen, "My mom is a face-hurter, and a hand-squeezer, too!"
I wasn't really surprised when Ian graduated from preschool with the dubious class title of "Most Irrepressible."
I recalled these events as I drove to the hospital to visit a friend’s newborn baby. And I pondered what advice I might offer the new parents, not that they'd ask for my advice so it'd have to be unsolicited.
First and foremost, I'd tell them to find the humor. Laugh at discovering you've been walking around all day with a glob of baby vomit on your shoulder.
Secondly, watch what you say. Although they may not seem to be listening, kids will regurgitate the most unlikely comments you make at the most embarrassing moments.
I remember cringing at the beach when my friend's 5-year-old daughter ran up to us sobbing. "I was poking a stick at a horseshoe crab and Ian told me I was going to grow up to be a serial killer."
My final suggestion is to have answers prepared when your child starts asking life's big questions, somewhere between ages 2 and 5. Keep in mind that kids don't necessarily want a technical explanation or scientific theories. They just want a simple answer they can wrap their little brains around.
Feel free to borrow my answers:
Why is the sky blue? Because God used a blue crayon.
Why did He use blue? Because He'd already used his yellow crayon for the sun and His green crayon for the grass.
Will there ever be dinosaurs again? (Trust me, they aren't interested in a theory about the Ice Age). Yes, they'll be back on Tuesday (kids this age have no concept of time).
Why do people go to war? Because they don't know how to share with their friends (that way you slip in a moral lesson at the same time).
Why do people wear clothes? (Avoid a lengthy diatribe about Adam and Eve. Kids' attention spans aren't that long.) So they don't get arrested.
Why don't dogs wear clothes? Because they want to get arrested. (OK, I didn't have time to think that one through).
What do grownups do after kids are in bed? We play with your toys.
Where was I before I was in your tummy? You were in God's tummy.
Where was I before I was in God's tummy? You were a prayer. (Spiritual explanations are always good because they can't be disproved. He won't come back when he's 17 and call you a liar.)
Why do grownups work? So they have an excuse to send their kids to school.
Is there life on other planets? Yes. There's some little alien child in the universe right now annoying his mother with endless questions.
Before my son was born, I'd never even diapered a baby.
When I found out I was pregnant, I began practicing on my pet Pekingese who was amazingly tolerant when I'd get the sticky tabs of the Pampers stuck to his fur.
After a few dozen attempts, I became pretty proficient at diapering a Pekingese. Too bad my son wasn't born with a tail.
A lot of women are born mothers. I'm not one of them. I felt inadequate more times than not. I kept waiting for someone to accuse me of being an imposter.
A few came close. Like the time I walked out of the grocery store pushing my cart filled with bags only to hear the cashier yell after me, "Hey, lady, you forgot your baby!"
Sure enough, my sleeping infant was snuggled in his carrier, which was attached to the seat of a different shopping cart.
Luckily, Ian was oblivious that time. He caught on when he was a little older, though. There was that horrifying moment my husband and I rushed from our jobs to attend his kindergarten open house. We arrived at the same time, looked at one another and realized neither of us had picked up our son from preschool. I rushed over to get him. He was waiting, hands on his hips.
"You forgot me again, didn't you?" he said, sighing. I made him promise this incident wouldn't send him into therapy when he's 30.
Of course, wise beyond his years, my son relished bolstering my sense of inadequacy. As soon as he learned to talk, way too soon as far as I was concerned, he delighted in causing me public embarrassment.
One day he threw a tantrum in the grocery store because I wouldn't buy him a toy in the toy aisle.
I explained to him that the grocery store toy aisle is simply a marketing ploy designed to torment harried mothers into buying overpriced plastic army men for spoiled children. But the decibel of my son's screams rose to ear-piercing levels, attracting tsks from elderly women who had apparently raised perfect children.
Reaching the limits of my patience, I firmly grabbed his chubby cheeks, ordered him to shape up and dragged him away from the toy aisle.
As we were standing in line waiting to check out, he announced to anyone who'd listen, "My mom is a face-hurter, and a hand-squeezer, too!"
I wasn't really surprised when Ian graduated from preschool with the dubious class title of "Most Irrepressible."
I recalled these events as I drove to the hospital to visit a friend’s newborn baby. And I pondered what advice I might offer the new parents, not that they'd ask for my advice so it'd have to be unsolicited.
First and foremost, I'd tell them to find the humor. Laugh at discovering you've been walking around all day with a glob of baby vomit on your shoulder.
Secondly, watch what you say. Although they may not seem to be listening, kids will regurgitate the most unlikely comments you make at the most embarrassing moments.
I remember cringing at the beach when my friend's 5-year-old daughter ran up to us sobbing. "I was poking a stick at a horseshoe crab and Ian told me I was going to grow up to be a serial killer."
My final suggestion is to have answers prepared when your child starts asking life's big questions, somewhere between ages 2 and 5. Keep in mind that kids don't necessarily want a technical explanation or scientific theories. They just want a simple answer they can wrap their little brains around.
Feel free to borrow my answers:
Why is the sky blue? Because God used a blue crayon.
Why did He use blue? Because He'd already used his yellow crayon for the sun and His green crayon for the grass.
Will there ever be dinosaurs again? (Trust me, they aren't interested in a theory about the Ice Age). Yes, they'll be back on Tuesday (kids this age have no concept of time).
Why do people go to war? Because they don't know how to share with their friends (that way you slip in a moral lesson at the same time).
Why do people wear clothes? (Avoid a lengthy diatribe about Adam and Eve. Kids' attention spans aren't that long.) So they don't get arrested.
Why don't dogs wear clothes? Because they want to get arrested. (OK, I didn't have time to think that one through).
What do grownups do after kids are in bed? We play with your toys.
Where was I before I was in your tummy? You were in God's tummy.
Where was I before I was in God's tummy? You were a prayer. (Spiritual explanations are always good because they can't be disproved. He won't come back when he's 17 and call you a liar.)
Why do grownups work? So they have an excuse to send their kids to school.
Is there life on other planets? Yes. There's some little alien child in the universe right now annoying his mother with endless questions.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
'Man did eat angels' food'
Jesus Christ was stabbing me in the throat again last night.
I always take it as a sign from God that I’m headed in the wrong direction when He gouges me with my crucifix while I’m sleeping.
I believe God speaks to us in subtle ways. We just have to be aware.
I always know I’ve really messed up when I go to communion and Jesus’ body gets stuck in my teeth instead of delicately dissolving in my mouth and filling me with the Holy Spirit.
It’s time for a toothpick, some quiet contemplation and a trip to the confessional.
But while He may be great at sending signs, His son will be the first to tell you that God isn’t as forthcoming with His advice. He’s quick to tell you you’re doing wrong. He’s reticent to tell you what you should do to fix it.
That’s when I turn to my Bible: God’s words, flipping through the pages for enlightenment.
That’s just what I did last night after turning on the light and readjusting the pesky crucifix. I wasn’t quite sure where I had erred in God’s eyes but I was certain there was something God needed to tell me.
There, in the Book of Psalms, I stumbled upon the words, “Man did eat angels’ food.”
I had enjoyed a heavenly evening at the Angels Among Us Auction and Dinner for St. Stephen Catholic Church and School the night before. We dined on rare roast beef, mahi mahi, a variety of pastas, chocolate and carrot cake, and sipped fine wines.
It was truly a meal fit for angels. Instead of relishing the opportunity to enjoy an evening of good food and good friends, I was lamenting the fact that I had no money to bid on the variety of goodies being auctioned due to my recent layoff. I found myself wishing I had the freedom to bid thousands of dollars without a qualm like some of the auction-goers around me.
God was sternly reminding me to count my blessings. I had the chance to attend the event, watch the excitement, taste the foods and chat with friends. There were many, many people who could not even afford a ticket to attend the event. In fact, it was partly to help supplement their children’s religious education that the dinner and auction was held.
OK, God. I got the message. You can quit making your son jab me in the neck. It was a glorious evening and I was fortunate to take part in it as a volunteer and participant. Dena Craig, Mel Williams, Jean Weber and the other members of the Angels committee did an extraordinary job putting the event together and raising funds in one of the worst economies we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
If You are willing, my fortunes may change. If they don’t, I count myself fortunate anyway.
I always take it as a sign from God that I’m headed in the wrong direction when He gouges me with my crucifix while I’m sleeping.
I believe God speaks to us in subtle ways. We just have to be aware.
I always know I’ve really messed up when I go to communion and Jesus’ body gets stuck in my teeth instead of delicately dissolving in my mouth and filling me with the Holy Spirit.
It’s time for a toothpick, some quiet contemplation and a trip to the confessional.
But while He may be great at sending signs, His son will be the first to tell you that God isn’t as forthcoming with His advice. He’s quick to tell you you’re doing wrong. He’s reticent to tell you what you should do to fix it.
That’s when I turn to my Bible: God’s words, flipping through the pages for enlightenment.
That’s just what I did last night after turning on the light and readjusting the pesky crucifix. I wasn’t quite sure where I had erred in God’s eyes but I was certain there was something God needed to tell me.
There, in the Book of Psalms, I stumbled upon the words, “Man did eat angels’ food.”
I had enjoyed a heavenly evening at the Angels Among Us Auction and Dinner for St. Stephen Catholic Church and School the night before. We dined on rare roast beef, mahi mahi, a variety of pastas, chocolate and carrot cake, and sipped fine wines.
It was truly a meal fit for angels. Instead of relishing the opportunity to enjoy an evening of good food and good friends, I was lamenting the fact that I had no money to bid on the variety of goodies being auctioned due to my recent layoff. I found myself wishing I had the freedom to bid thousands of dollars without a qualm like some of the auction-goers around me.
God was sternly reminding me to count my blessings. I had the chance to attend the event, watch the excitement, taste the foods and chat with friends. There were many, many people who could not even afford a ticket to attend the event. In fact, it was partly to help supplement their children’s religious education that the dinner and auction was held.
OK, God. I got the message. You can quit making your son jab me in the neck. It was a glorious evening and I was fortunate to take part in it as a volunteer and participant. Dena Craig, Mel Williams, Jean Weber and the other members of the Angels committee did an extraordinary job putting the event together and raising funds in one of the worst economies we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
If You are willing, my fortunes may change. If they don’t, I count myself fortunate anyway.
Friday, October 23, 2009
My own fairy princess
There are no accidents.
God brings certain people into your lives at certain times for very specific reasons.
I’d been having a crummy year. There were massive layoffs and shakeups at work. My dog died after I fed her contaminated dog food. My father was slowly dying from cancer. I figured it was just more of the same bad luck when we received the call from a doctor at a hospital in Burbank, Calif., on that August day in 2007.
In a solemn voice, the doctor told us that my sister-in-law, Mara, was in the hospital. It happened to be the same day my father-in-law was scheduled for major surgery at Brandon Regional Hospital. We’d just been informed that this normally independent, vibrant 83-year-old man was going to have to come live with us while he recuperated.
Now this doctor in Burbank was delivering a second blow. In a shaky voice, she told us that Mara had advanced non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Stage IV.
There was no hope, the doctor said. She thought the best thing was for us to come to California and bring Mara back to Florida so she could die surrounded by her family.
I never gave it a second thought. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t a matter up for consideration. There was only one thing to do.
I turned to my husband, Michael, and said, “I’ll take care of your dad. You go get Mara.” It was the first time in our 25 years of marriage that I saw my husband cry. His father was facing major surgery that could end his life. His sister had been given a death sentence. And all I could be certain of is that God, for whatever reason, had placed the care of these family members in my hands.
I desperately needed a fairy godmother.
Instead, God brought me a fairy princess complete with her own supply of fairy dust.
If you don’t believe me, take a close look inside my house. Mara has been gone nearly nine months now and my vacuum cleaner and duster are still picking up the fairy dust she left in her wake.
You see, my sister-in-law was a real-life fairy princess. The majority of the time, she was Snow White, though she would transform into Tinkerbelle, Cinderella and Princess Anastasia at various times. Frankly, after seeing her in the role, I, for one, truly believed she embodied the spirit of Snow White with her creamy white skin, long, wavy black hair and sweet, high-pitched voice.
One of Mara’s favorite sayings was, “Believe in miracles – expect magic.” I saw no reason why she couldn’t be the character she portrayed for children’s birthday parties.
She loved children and children loved her. I think one of the reasons she related so well to children is because they accepted her. They didn’t judge her. And they never took advantage of her generosity.
So creating a business as a children’s entertainer was ideal. Mara loved dressing up as storybook characters. She loved singing, dancing and performing magic tricks for children. She loved throwing parties for kids. And she loved being the center of attention.
I worried how she would cope when she became sick and had to leave all that behind.
Up until then, her appointment calendar had been filled with activities.
“Jan. 6 – party for Riley, age 3, Sleeping Beauty, $150 check, lovely thank you,” read her diary.
“Jan. 16 – Snow White party – Anna Sophia, 6, gave me a blush pink rose. It made me so happy.”
“Jan. 29 – mermaid party – Jessica gave me the mermaid from her cake.”
“March 4 – three doll cakes. So cute. Pink tablecloths. White chandelier with little pink birds.”
“April 17 – Jasmine party – macaroons, lily of the valley, hyacinth, pink, magenta, soft blue.”
She took as much delight in every party as the little girls who were honored.
But, once here, Mara seemed content to give up her party life and simply appreciate each moment she had left on earth “before God makes me his angel.”
“I always knew I’d die young,” she told me. “I’m the eternal woman-child. I never wanted to grow up. Now I’ll never have to.”
She loved to fill the bird feeders in our back yard with seed and watch the birds come and go or pick flowers from my garden and put them in vases all over my house. When my plumeria bush bloomed for the first time, she was convinced it bloomed just for her. She spent hours just staring at that white plumeria bloom, marveling at its beauty. I’ve never met anyone who was so appreciative and aware of the beauty around her.
Nor have I ever met anyone so appreciative of any kindness shown toward her. She was always making handmade thank-you cards and gifts for people in gratitude of the smallest expression of thoughtfulness.
I think her acceptance of her death lay in her enormous spirituality. She never married but wrote in her journal, “God is my prince.” She would note people she wanted to pray for on certain days and would pepper her appointment calendar with Bible verses like, “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God,” “Children are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” “Trust God; delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart,” “God will take care of those who serve Him and sincerely endeavor to do His will,” and “There shall be showers of blessings sent by God above.”
The toll on her physical appearance was the only indication of her illness’ progression. I never once heard her complain about pain or feel sorry for herself. I marveled at the way she kept going when most people would have been bedridden.
Apparently God thought I needed a reminder of how wonderful life is. So he sent me a fairy princess, a fairy princess who relished every moment of life until her death.
God brings certain people into your lives at certain times for very specific reasons.
I’d been having a crummy year. There were massive layoffs and shakeups at work. My dog died after I fed her contaminated dog food. My father was slowly dying from cancer. I figured it was just more of the same bad luck when we received the call from a doctor at a hospital in Burbank, Calif., on that August day in 2007.
In a solemn voice, the doctor told us that my sister-in-law, Mara, was in the hospital. It happened to be the same day my father-in-law was scheduled for major surgery at Brandon Regional Hospital. We’d just been informed that this normally independent, vibrant 83-year-old man was going to have to come live with us while he recuperated.
Now this doctor in Burbank was delivering a second blow. In a shaky voice, she told us that Mara had advanced non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Stage IV.
There was no hope, the doctor said. She thought the best thing was for us to come to California and bring Mara back to Florida so she could die surrounded by her family.
I never gave it a second thought. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t a matter up for consideration. There was only one thing to do.
I turned to my husband, Michael, and said, “I’ll take care of your dad. You go get Mara.” It was the first time in our 25 years of marriage that I saw my husband cry. His father was facing major surgery that could end his life. His sister had been given a death sentence. And all I could be certain of is that God, for whatever reason, had placed the care of these family members in my hands.
I desperately needed a fairy godmother.
Instead, God brought me a fairy princess complete with her own supply of fairy dust.
If you don’t believe me, take a close look inside my house. Mara has been gone nearly nine months now and my vacuum cleaner and duster are still picking up the fairy dust she left in her wake.
You see, my sister-in-law was a real-life fairy princess. The majority of the time, she was Snow White, though she would transform into Tinkerbelle, Cinderella and Princess Anastasia at various times. Frankly, after seeing her in the role, I, for one, truly believed she embodied the spirit of Snow White with her creamy white skin, long, wavy black hair and sweet, high-pitched voice.
One of Mara’s favorite sayings was, “Believe in miracles – expect magic.” I saw no reason why she couldn’t be the character she portrayed for children’s birthday parties.
She loved children and children loved her. I think one of the reasons she related so well to children is because they accepted her. They didn’t judge her. And they never took advantage of her generosity.
So creating a business as a children’s entertainer was ideal. Mara loved dressing up as storybook characters. She loved singing, dancing and performing magic tricks for children. She loved throwing parties for kids. And she loved being the center of attention.
I worried how she would cope when she became sick and had to leave all that behind.
Up until then, her appointment calendar had been filled with activities.
“Jan. 6 – party for Riley, age 3, Sleeping Beauty, $150 check, lovely thank you,” read her diary.
“Jan. 16 – Snow White party – Anna Sophia, 6, gave me a blush pink rose. It made me so happy.”
“Jan. 29 – mermaid party – Jessica gave me the mermaid from her cake.”
“March 4 – three doll cakes. So cute. Pink tablecloths. White chandelier with little pink birds.”
“April 17 – Jasmine party – macaroons, lily of the valley, hyacinth, pink, magenta, soft blue.”
She took as much delight in every party as the little girls who were honored.
But, once here, Mara seemed content to give up her party life and simply appreciate each moment she had left on earth “before God makes me his angel.”
“I always knew I’d die young,” she told me. “I’m the eternal woman-child. I never wanted to grow up. Now I’ll never have to.”
She loved to fill the bird feeders in our back yard with seed and watch the birds come and go or pick flowers from my garden and put them in vases all over my house. When my plumeria bush bloomed for the first time, she was convinced it bloomed just for her. She spent hours just staring at that white plumeria bloom, marveling at its beauty. I’ve never met anyone who was so appreciative and aware of the beauty around her.
Nor have I ever met anyone so appreciative of any kindness shown toward her. She was always making handmade thank-you cards and gifts for people in gratitude of the smallest expression of thoughtfulness.
I think her acceptance of her death lay in her enormous spirituality. She never married but wrote in her journal, “God is my prince.” She would note people she wanted to pray for on certain days and would pepper her appointment calendar with Bible verses like, “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God,” “Children are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” “Trust God; delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart,” “God will take care of those who serve Him and sincerely endeavor to do His will,” and “There shall be showers of blessings sent by God above.”
The toll on her physical appearance was the only indication of her illness’ progression. I never once heard her complain about pain or feel sorry for herself. I marveled at the way she kept going when most people would have been bedridden.
Apparently God thought I needed a reminder of how wonderful life is. So he sent me a fairy princess, a fairy princess who relished every moment of life until her death.
Blogging with a purpose: Who cares what I have to say?
What do I have to say? And, most importantly, why should you read anything I write?
I had the same questions. As a full-time journalist for more than 25 years, I’m accustomed to interviewing people, covering government meetings and making phone calls so I can regurgitate facts accompanied by carefully quoted opinion about how those facts are going to affect readers.
Stay neutral, remain unbiased, avoid any semblance of favoritism. That’s always been the journalist’s mantra -- until recently.
Suddenly, journalists not only allowed to have opinions, but are encouraged to express them publicly.
It’s like opening the floodgates, tearing down the Berlin Wall, ripping through that miasma of objectivity that’s prevented us from telling all that we really know in the guise of fairness.
I’m not timid about expressing my opinion. My journalistic integrity, however, has kept me on a short leash in the public realm.
But now there’s this thing called a blog, an abbreviation for Web log, representative of random thoughts about sundry topics designed to evoke equally random responses from Web surfers.
Eleven years ago, there were about 50 blogs on the Internet. Today there are more than 10 million blogs. The blogosphere is inundated with everything from political commentary attracting half a million visitors a day and having untold influence on American public opinion to inexpert opines that appear to be more self-promoting than elucidating.
That’s just one of the reasons for the decline of newspapers and the high unemployment rate of journalists.
They’ve been replaced by citizen journalists and user-generated content providers who can do the job for free.
Well … they COULD do the job. Except most don’t want to make the effort to sit through boring meetings, wade through reams of boring documents, makes tons of phone calls and interview tons of people to get both sides of the story and then go out of their way to make sure the story is well-written, interesting, factual and, most importantly, credible.
As a result, the public is subjected to endless streams of blogs posted by self-professed authorities on various subjects. We find fiction presented as fact, propaganda passing for information and self-serving punditry qualifying as legitimate truth.
People aren’t sure where to turn for fair, unbiased information in this digital age. The public doesn’t have any guarantee that it’s getting facts or even half truths from the Internet. After all, who is holding the blogger accountable?
In this era when we’re bombarded with information from computers, cell phones and iPods, a generation of self-proclaimed experts have established themselves as bloggers and twits with forums that provide them with legitimacy despite the fact that they have no credentials.
Frankly, I don’t care to read the uninformed opinion of some stranger who managed to save up $800 to buy a computer. If I must blog, I’m either going to provide thought-provoking commentary or I'm going to stick to the principles of journalism and provide information that will allow readers to form their own opinions.
OK, I might take a stab at being entertaining as well.
I had the same questions. As a full-time journalist for more than 25 years, I’m accustomed to interviewing people, covering government meetings and making phone calls so I can regurgitate facts accompanied by carefully quoted opinion about how those facts are going to affect readers.
Stay neutral, remain unbiased, avoid any semblance of favoritism. That’s always been the journalist’s mantra -- until recently.
Suddenly, journalists not only allowed to have opinions, but are encouraged to express them publicly.
It’s like opening the floodgates, tearing down the Berlin Wall, ripping through that miasma of objectivity that’s prevented us from telling all that we really know in the guise of fairness.
I’m not timid about expressing my opinion. My journalistic integrity, however, has kept me on a short leash in the public realm.
But now there’s this thing called a blog, an abbreviation for Web log, representative of random thoughts about sundry topics designed to evoke equally random responses from Web surfers.
Eleven years ago, there were about 50 blogs on the Internet. Today there are more than 10 million blogs. The blogosphere is inundated with everything from political commentary attracting half a million visitors a day and having untold influence on American public opinion to inexpert opines that appear to be more self-promoting than elucidating.
That’s just one of the reasons for the decline of newspapers and the high unemployment rate of journalists.
They’ve been replaced by citizen journalists and user-generated content providers who can do the job for free.
Well … they COULD do the job. Except most don’t want to make the effort to sit through boring meetings, wade through reams of boring documents, makes tons of phone calls and interview tons of people to get both sides of the story and then go out of their way to make sure the story is well-written, interesting, factual and, most importantly, credible.
As a result, the public is subjected to endless streams of blogs posted by self-professed authorities on various subjects. We find fiction presented as fact, propaganda passing for information and self-serving punditry qualifying as legitimate truth.
People aren’t sure where to turn for fair, unbiased information in this digital age. The public doesn’t have any guarantee that it’s getting facts or even half truths from the Internet. After all, who is holding the blogger accountable?
In this era when we’re bombarded with information from computers, cell phones and iPods, a generation of self-proclaimed experts have established themselves as bloggers and twits with forums that provide them with legitimacy despite the fact that they have no credentials.
Frankly, I don’t care to read the uninformed opinion of some stranger who managed to save up $800 to buy a computer. If I must blog, I’m either going to provide thought-provoking commentary or I'm going to stick to the principles of journalism and provide information that will allow readers to form their own opinions.
OK, I might take a stab at being entertaining as well.
Clinic proof of need for health-care reform
Caller ID indicated that my doctor’s office was phoning.
My heart skipped a beat. Were they calling to tell me I had some horrible, painful, disabling disease?
My panic was allayed by the nurse who explained that they had received my request for a prescription refill from my pharmacy and wanted me to see the doctor for a routine checkup.
My doctor was asking to see me. In fact, he had some openings right away.
Hmm. In the past, I had to wait weeks to get an appointment. And rarely had my doctor’s office called to invite me for a visit.
Things became clearer when I arrived at my primary physician’s office the next day. Rather than walking into a crowded waiting room where I had to wait an interminable period of time to see the doctor, I arrived to find the room empty. I was ushered into an exam room five minutes later. I’d barely cracked open a 2-month-old copy of Time magazine when my doctor walked in.
He apologized for keeping me waiting. I told him he hadn’t kept me. In fact, I’d just become engrossed in an interesting article and he’d disturbed me.
It occurred to me that I was witnessing one of the many consequences of the economic crisis in Tampa Bay. With an 11 percent unemployment rate, residents no longer have access to health insurance, and bustling medical practices are going bust.
By contrast, hospital emergency rooms are inundated with patients who have neglected health concerns, permitting perfectly treatable ailments to turn into life-threatening emergencies.
And free clinics like the Brandon Outreach Clinic in Brandon and the Judeo Christian Health Clinic in Tampa have more patients than they can possibly accommodate.
Drs. Stephen Parks and Pat Jeansonne started the nonprofit Brandon Outreach Clinic 20 years ago to help those people who fall between the cracks – the working poor who don’t make enough money to afford health insurance but make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.
Parks was able to get help for one man with a painful, disfiguring chest tumor. He’d been denied treatment because he had no insurance. In desperation, he sought help at Parks’ clinic. He told Parks he was prepared to excise his own tumor with a razor blade if necessary.
A pregnant woman with no insurance walked into the clinic one evening. However, the nurses quickly discovered she wasn’t pregnant. She had an ovarian cyst the size of an eight-month-old fetus.
Last year, Parks and other volunteer doctors treated 1,735 people. Already this year the clinic is seeing a 30 percent increase in the number of patients needing help.
Last week, politicians got together to kick off a free mobile dental health clinic for children at the Tom Lee Community Health Care Center in Dover to provide dental care to the county’s 141,000 children living below the federal poverty line. Workers at the clinic noted that many children they see, some 13 and 14 years old, have never even had a dental exam.
And, yet, we still have Americans questioning the need for health-care reform. Unbelievable.
My heart skipped a beat. Were they calling to tell me I had some horrible, painful, disabling disease?
My panic was allayed by the nurse who explained that they had received my request for a prescription refill from my pharmacy and wanted me to see the doctor for a routine checkup.
My doctor was asking to see me. In fact, he had some openings right away.
Hmm. In the past, I had to wait weeks to get an appointment. And rarely had my doctor’s office called to invite me for a visit.
Things became clearer when I arrived at my primary physician’s office the next day. Rather than walking into a crowded waiting room where I had to wait an interminable period of time to see the doctor, I arrived to find the room empty. I was ushered into an exam room five minutes later. I’d barely cracked open a 2-month-old copy of Time magazine when my doctor walked in.
He apologized for keeping me waiting. I told him he hadn’t kept me. In fact, I’d just become engrossed in an interesting article and he’d disturbed me.
It occurred to me that I was witnessing one of the many consequences of the economic crisis in Tampa Bay. With an 11 percent unemployment rate, residents no longer have access to health insurance, and bustling medical practices are going bust.
By contrast, hospital emergency rooms are inundated with patients who have neglected health concerns, permitting perfectly treatable ailments to turn into life-threatening emergencies.
And free clinics like the Brandon Outreach Clinic in Brandon and the Judeo Christian Health Clinic in Tampa have more patients than they can possibly accommodate.
Drs. Stephen Parks and Pat Jeansonne started the nonprofit Brandon Outreach Clinic 20 years ago to help those people who fall between the cracks – the working poor who don’t make enough money to afford health insurance but make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.
Parks was able to get help for one man with a painful, disfiguring chest tumor. He’d been denied treatment because he had no insurance. In desperation, he sought help at Parks’ clinic. He told Parks he was prepared to excise his own tumor with a razor blade if necessary.
A pregnant woman with no insurance walked into the clinic one evening. However, the nurses quickly discovered she wasn’t pregnant. She had an ovarian cyst the size of an eight-month-old fetus.
Last year, Parks and other volunteer doctors treated 1,735 people. Already this year the clinic is seeing a 30 percent increase in the number of patients needing help.
Last week, politicians got together to kick off a free mobile dental health clinic for children at the Tom Lee Community Health Care Center in Dover to provide dental care to the county’s 141,000 children living below the federal poverty line. Workers at the clinic noted that many children they see, some 13 and 14 years old, have never even had a dental exam.
And, yet, we still have Americans questioning the need for health-care reform. Unbelievable.
Economy to blame for upsurge in crime against women, children
It’s the stupid economy.
Apparently the dour economy is to blame for the revolting headlines inviting readers to delve into the details of men killing babies, beating and raping women and murdering their families.
David Braughton, chief executive officer of the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, says rape, child abuse and domestic violence in Tampa Bay has shot up as the economy has taken a downturn.
And he believes there is a direct correlation between crimes against women and children and financial woes.
He said child abuse, rape and domestic violence is most often committed by men who feel inadequate and need to be in charge. It’s a panacea against feelings of helplessness and frustration.
Upon losing his job and the ability to control his financial security, an already-mentally unstable man may seek other ways to regain a sense of control including attacking those who are less powerful.
With Tampa Bay’s unemployment rate reaching 11.1 percent last month, Braughton’s theory explains a lot of the insanity we’ve seen in recent months including the horrific May 3 shootings of a Lakeland mother and her two children by her husband followed two days later by the death of an infant thrown from a car window along Interstate 75 in Tampa.
Braughton said rape is one of the most underreported crimes in the county. Eighty percent of the time, it’s committed by someone the victim knows, and she’s too ashamed to report it.
Despite rape victims’ reluctance to report the crime, the crisis center has experienced a 10 percent increase in the number of calls for sexual assault exams over the past year.
“We’re now seeing a victim a day,” said Braughton. “It’s all about power and control, people venting their frustrations on others. As unemployment and other stresses go up, we see more victims.”
Last year his office did a record 340 sexual assault exams, prompting the nonprofit to add a full-time rape advocate.
“The demands for our services are skyrocketing,” he said. “Calls to our 24-hour 2-1-1 crisis hotline have gone up 50 percent and requests for financial help have more than doubled. We’re admitting 20 to 30 new cases each month to our specialized counseling program for sexually abused children.”
While we focus on the homeless, the hungry and the unemployed, these faceless women and children may very well be the most tragic victims of the recession.
Apparently the dour economy is to blame for the revolting headlines inviting readers to delve into the details of men killing babies, beating and raping women and murdering their families.
David Braughton, chief executive officer of the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, says rape, child abuse and domestic violence in Tampa Bay has shot up as the economy has taken a downturn.
And he believes there is a direct correlation between crimes against women and children and financial woes.
He said child abuse, rape and domestic violence is most often committed by men who feel inadequate and need to be in charge. It’s a panacea against feelings of helplessness and frustration.
Upon losing his job and the ability to control his financial security, an already-mentally unstable man may seek other ways to regain a sense of control including attacking those who are less powerful.
With Tampa Bay’s unemployment rate reaching 11.1 percent last month, Braughton’s theory explains a lot of the insanity we’ve seen in recent months including the horrific May 3 shootings of a Lakeland mother and her two children by her husband followed two days later by the death of an infant thrown from a car window along Interstate 75 in Tampa.
Braughton said rape is one of the most underreported crimes in the county. Eighty percent of the time, it’s committed by someone the victim knows, and she’s too ashamed to report it.
Despite rape victims’ reluctance to report the crime, the crisis center has experienced a 10 percent increase in the number of calls for sexual assault exams over the past year.
“We’re now seeing a victim a day,” said Braughton. “It’s all about power and control, people venting their frustrations on others. As unemployment and other stresses go up, we see more victims.”
Last year his office did a record 340 sexual assault exams, prompting the nonprofit to add a full-time rape advocate.
“The demands for our services are skyrocketing,” he said. “Calls to our 24-hour 2-1-1 crisis hotline have gone up 50 percent and requests for financial help have more than doubled. We’re admitting 20 to 30 new cases each month to our specialized counseling program for sexually abused children.”
While we focus on the homeless, the hungry and the unemployed, these faceless women and children may very well be the most tragic victims of the recession.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Kids Take The Fun Out Of Halloween
I looked over the inventory of Halloween costumes at the store and was temporarily stupefied. Then I examined the price tags and was momentarily petrified.
When I was growing up, there were basically two choices of Halloween costumes: you bought a Collegeville costume consisting of a chintzy plastic mask and vinyl suit bearing the likeness of a cartoon character or a witch, or you made your own costume
In my house, it usually came down to the latter, and the latter meant making something as easy as possible. I’m talking a white sheet with eyeholes cut out.
I have a photo of myself and my brother dressed up for Halloween one year. My long hair is in ponytails; I’ve painted freckles on my face; and I’m wearing a baby doll dress. I think I was supposed to be Pippi Longstocking.
My brother has a piece of burlap over his head and tied around his neck. God only knows what he’s supposed to be.
When my son was born, I wasn’t about to resort to a store-bought costume. Weeks before Halloween, I’d begin making the cutest, most creative costume I could come up with, keeping in mind my limited crafting and sewing skills.
That first year I kept it simple since my son was only 10 weeks old: a pumpkin.
I’d just come off maternity leave and brought my baby with me to a staff meeting where most of my co-workers were seeing him for the first time -- an adorable cherub-cheeked infant dressed as a fat, orange pumpkin. Unfortunately, my son was having some stomach discomfort that day and, just as my boss began to speak; he let loose, forever becoming known as the smelly little pumpkin.
I thought my idea to make him one of the new blue M&Ms the following year was a stroke of genius. I found a royal blue, long-sleeved jumper. I then enlarged an M&M package on the copy machine and used it to cut out a white felt M&M logo to attach to the front. I put a royal blue baseball cap on him with the same logo. I then stuffed the inside of the jumper with foam to ensure he’d be nice and round like the candy-coated chocolate.
It was adorable. Unfortunately, having just learned to walk, my son didn’t quite have his balance yet. And all that foam didn’t help. He looked like a Weeble, only this one did fall down -- about every two steps.
My coup de grace, though, had to have been the turtle. That took a lot of wire hangers and every piece of green felt Michaels craft store had, but it was worth all the envious looks from the other mothers at the Center Place Halloween Horribles parade that year. My son the turtle even made the cover of the Hillsborough County recycling newsletter. What a compliment. Cute and environmentally aware.
The only problem was the size of the costume. In his enthusiasm to get to the next treat station at the Halloween Horribles parable, he kept inadvertently knocking all of the other kids off the path with his massive shell. You could hear screams and cries in his wake.
Those days were over way too soon. I watched in dismay as parents proudly paraded their toddlers in whimsical costumes that I could have created if my son had just given me a few more years to experiment with him.
But, apparently, there comes a day when mom-made costumes are deemed uncool and anything that even hints of cute is unworthy.
So goodbye to 10-cent sheets of felt and hello to $39.99 Freddy Krueger masks.
I don’t even get to prance around the neighborhood in my witch’s hat anymore with my best friend, Rita, ushering our children from house to house anymore. They’re now too old to trick or treat with mom.
Instead, I sit in my house; sipping wine and answering the door, listening to Rita lament the fact that she didn’t realize her youngest son, Jimmy, wasn’t wearing shoes until she had already driven to our house. Now he has to trick or treat in his socks.
Meanwhile, I’m bewailing the fact that I underestimated the number of children that would be knocking on my door begging for goodies. After spending all that money on my son’s store-bought mask, I’d gotten stingy with the candy.
After giving out all this year’s candy as well as last year’s leftover candy and some dime store toys I scrounged from my son’s bedroom, Rita and I desperately begin combing through my kitchen cabinets.
“Here we go,” said Rita, spotting a cache of soy sauce packets from a local Chinese restaurant in my refrigerator. “The kids just want to get something. Their parents can weed out the inappropriate stuff later.”
Suddenly I understood why my son would return from trick or treating with an occasional ketchup packet or keychain with the logo of some bank on it.
“That’ll do,” I said, pouring us another glass of wine.
When I was growing up, there were basically two choices of Halloween costumes: you bought a Collegeville costume consisting of a chintzy plastic mask and vinyl suit bearing the likeness of a cartoon character or a witch, or you made your own costume
In my house, it usually came down to the latter, and the latter meant making something as easy as possible. I’m talking a white sheet with eyeholes cut out.
I have a photo of myself and my brother dressed up for Halloween one year. My long hair is in ponytails; I’ve painted freckles on my face; and I’m wearing a baby doll dress. I think I was supposed to be Pippi Longstocking.
My brother has a piece of burlap over his head and tied around his neck. God only knows what he’s supposed to be.
When my son was born, I wasn’t about to resort to a store-bought costume. Weeks before Halloween, I’d begin making the cutest, most creative costume I could come up with, keeping in mind my limited crafting and sewing skills.
That first year I kept it simple since my son was only 10 weeks old: a pumpkin.
I’d just come off maternity leave and brought my baby with me to a staff meeting where most of my co-workers were seeing him for the first time -- an adorable cherub-cheeked infant dressed as a fat, orange pumpkin. Unfortunately, my son was having some stomach discomfort that day and, just as my boss began to speak; he let loose, forever becoming known as the smelly little pumpkin.
I thought my idea to make him one of the new blue M&Ms the following year was a stroke of genius. I found a royal blue, long-sleeved jumper. I then enlarged an M&M package on the copy machine and used it to cut out a white felt M&M logo to attach to the front. I put a royal blue baseball cap on him with the same logo. I then stuffed the inside of the jumper with foam to ensure he’d be nice and round like the candy-coated chocolate.
It was adorable. Unfortunately, having just learned to walk, my son didn’t quite have his balance yet. And all that foam didn’t help. He looked like a Weeble, only this one did fall down -- about every two steps.
My coup de grace, though, had to have been the turtle. That took a lot of wire hangers and every piece of green felt Michaels craft store had, but it was worth all the envious looks from the other mothers at the Center Place Halloween Horribles parade that year. My son the turtle even made the cover of the Hillsborough County recycling newsletter. What a compliment. Cute and environmentally aware.
The only problem was the size of the costume. In his enthusiasm to get to the next treat station at the Halloween Horribles parable, he kept inadvertently knocking all of the other kids off the path with his massive shell. You could hear screams and cries in his wake.
Those days were over way too soon. I watched in dismay as parents proudly paraded their toddlers in whimsical costumes that I could have created if my son had just given me a few more years to experiment with him.
But, apparently, there comes a day when mom-made costumes are deemed uncool and anything that even hints of cute is unworthy.
So goodbye to 10-cent sheets of felt and hello to $39.99 Freddy Krueger masks.
I don’t even get to prance around the neighborhood in my witch’s hat anymore with my best friend, Rita, ushering our children from house to house anymore. They’re now too old to trick or treat with mom.
Instead, I sit in my house; sipping wine and answering the door, listening to Rita lament the fact that she didn’t realize her youngest son, Jimmy, wasn’t wearing shoes until she had already driven to our house. Now he has to trick or treat in his socks.
Meanwhile, I’m bewailing the fact that I underestimated the number of children that would be knocking on my door begging for goodies. After spending all that money on my son’s store-bought mask, I’d gotten stingy with the candy.
After giving out all this year’s candy as well as last year’s leftover candy and some dime store toys I scrounged from my son’s bedroom, Rita and I desperately begin combing through my kitchen cabinets.
“Here we go,” said Rita, spotting a cache of soy sauce packets from a local Chinese restaurant in my refrigerator. “The kids just want to get something. Their parents can weed out the inappropriate stuff later.”
Suddenly I understood why my son would return from trick or treating with an occasional ketchup packet or keychain with the logo of some bank on it.
“That’ll do,” I said, pouring us another glass of wine.
Putting together the pieces of the Asaba puzzle
TAMPA, Fla. (Oct 12, 2009) They were unprepared for the flood of emotions that engulfed them when survivors of the 1967 massacre in Asaba, Nigeria, solemnly stood at the podium and told their stories.
Without tissues on hand, tears streamed down the faces of the men, soaking the collars of both Western suitcoats and traditional Nigerian bubas.
For some in the audience, this was the first chance in 42 years to learn the fate of their loved ones.
“This is the first time in my life that I’ve been told the story of what happened, and my own father was killed in that war,” said Michael Nwanze, a political science professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. “I buried my father but I was never able to mourn him because I didn’t know the truth.”
The survivors of the Oct. 7, 1967, massacre in Asaba, Nigeria, had been waiting more than four decades to shed light on the nightmare that haunts them still and to tally and honor the dead – estimated by some accounts to be from 500 to 2,000 men and boys. The massacre occurred during Nigeria’s bitter civil war, and those targeted were of Igbo ethnicity.
Helping the Nigerian people piece together the puzzle of the long-buried tragedy is anthropology professor Elizabeth Bird, assistant anthropology professor Erin Kimmerle and Fraser Ottanelli, chairman of the department of history, who are working with the USF Libraries Holocaust & Genocide Studies Center and a Tampa Police Homicide Det. Charles Massucci.
The researchers are gathering documents, recording oral histories and this spring will travel to Nigeria to examine mass graves in the hopes of creating a memorial to the decades-old slayings.
The Oct. 9-10 Asaba Memorial Project symposium at USF kicked off the effort that included launching the Asaba Memorial Project website. The site will serve as an international record of the massacre, including archive images, oral histories, official records, newspaper articles and other materials the USF team gathers.
It will be no small task. Memories of the massacre are hazy and details conflict. Nevertheless, Ottanelli said it’s the oral histories - the voices of the people - that will make the events of Asaba come alive.
“It humanizes what we’ve been reading,” he said. “It takes an event so far away and puts a human face to it. The testimony is very powerful. We’re honored and humbled by this awesome responsibility.”
For the survivors, a public acknowledgement of the deaths and a permanent memorial to their lost loved ones will bring a measure of justice that has been elusive for more than four decades.
“We can forgive but we should never, ever forget,” said Chinelo Egwuatu, 53, a 15-year Tampa resident who survived the Biafra-Nigerian civil war and post-war famine, although two of her siblings perished. “This is a good thing USF is doing. There is no way you can bring the people back, but you can at least acknowledge that it happened.”
Up until now, little has been recorded about the Asaba massacre. Details were hidden from the international press. Nigerian government officials refused to comment publicly. And an international observer team was accused of conducting a hasty, haphazard investigation in which it concluded no genocide had occurred.
This left survivors, particularly eyewitnesses to the event, with no sense of closure.
Asaba, a key Nigerian town populated by civilian government employees, doctors, lawyers, engineers, athletes and scholars of the influential Igbo ethnic community, was loyal to the Nigerian federal government. Nevertheless, the town was targeted by a faction of that same military government for annihilation.
No one is sure who gave the orders or why. Nor is anyone certain how many lives were lost when soldiers opened fire on the men and boys in town.
For Egwuatu, the war is embodied in the face of a little boy who was once her playmate. She was only 11-years-old in 1967 and, although she wasn’t a witness to the Asaba massacre, she remembers seeing body parts strewn on the village streets. She also recalls coming across the body of her friend.
“I’ll never forget the look in his eyes,” she said, rifling through her handbag for something to staunch the flow of tears. She pulled out a Little Caesars pizza napkin and dabbed her face.
“It was terrible. This was barbaric. You never expected human beings to behave like that. It was evil.”
“Evil” also is the word Ifeanyi Uraih used to describe what he witnessed that day.
He was living in Asaba with his parents and nine siblings when the federal troops came to town.
“They ordered everyone to come out to the town square. (Col. Ibrahim) Taiwo said it was time to dance around town and join our brethren, and he warned that everyone should come along,” he recalled.
The people did as they were told, thinking they were being invited to a victory party. They didn’t realize it was a ruse to coax all the men out of hiding. Suddenly, the celebratory atmosphere evaporated. Taiwo’s troops began separating the men from the women.
“They were honest with us,” said Uraih. “They told us they were going to kill us. They took us to the mounted machine guns. Then it dawned on us that it was true.”
Uraih estimates that 2,000 men stood in the killing field that day.
“I was standing with my older brother at the edge of the crowd. He was holding my hand. He had always taken care of me. We shared the same bed. He was the first to be dragged away by the soldiers. He let go of my hand and pushed me into the crowd. He was shot in the back. I could see the blood gushing from his back. He was the first victim of the massacre. Then all hell let loose.”
Uraih survived because he was buffered by bodies that were shot and fell on top of him.
“I lost count of time,” he said. “To this day, I live with the smell of the blood of my brethren that night. Even the heavens wept for the victims of this holocaust. Finally the bullets stopped.
Decades later, Uraih was in the reception room of a doctor’s office in London when Gen. Yakubu Gowon, head of the Nigerian military government at the time of the massacre, happened to walk in for an appointment.
“We talked and he said he sincerely regretted what occurred that day, that it was one of his greatest regrets,” said Uraih, adding that he believed Gowon. “I cannot tell this story without tears in my eyes, but I have no bitterness in my heart.”
Chief Philip Asiodu, who hailed from Asaba and was a member of Gowon’s cabinet at the time of the genocide, said he too has no room for bitterness despite the fact that his brother, Sydney Asiodu, a promising Olympic hurdler, long jumper and runner, was a victim of the massacre.
Asiodu, who later became chief economic adviser to the Nigerian president and minister for petroleum, said Asaba should have been the last village targeted by federal troops because it was populated by current and former Igbo civil servants loyal to the federal government.
It’s been reported that Taiwo had a master list containing the names of prominent citizens and civil servants targeted for death. Some believe that Gen. Murtala Mohammed, commander of the Second Division of the federal troops and Taiwo’s superior, wanted to rid himself of opposition so he could launch a coup. Mohammed later toppled Gowon to become head of state.
Like fellow Nigerians assembled at USF for the symposium, Asiodu said he’s supporting the Asaba Memorial Project because he believes the people need to know what happened.
“Once we do, I still have faith we can change the ethics of our current government and become the vanguard for African progress,” he said.
The truth may be a long time coming, however. Like those killed in the Asaba genocide, documents have long been buried or unavailable. “There will always be debate,” said Elizabeth Bird, USF professor of anthropology. “The official records are woefully inadequate.”
Bird pointed to the importance of the book Blood on the Niger as the first publication that drew attention to the massacre. Its author, Emma Okocha, himself a survivor, was crucial to the project – initially contacting Kimmerle, and bringing together the network of scholars, activists, and community members who attended the symposium.
Last year, Kimmerle and a research team traveled to Lagos, Nigeria where they investigated methods for human identification in collaboration with John Obafunwa, provost of the College of Medicine at Lagos State University. Kimmerle has done human rights work throughout the Balkans, Peru and Nigeria and her research team is working on new methods of identification, research for investigations of “cold cases” and forensic science education.
Kimmerle and her team also traveled to Asaba to meet with community leaders and began interviewing witnesses to the massacre. The work will involve more fieldwork over the next few years and is part of an effort to develop new methods and technologies to solve cold cases both in the United States and abroad. The project is supported financially by the National Institute of Justice.
The USF team hopes to launch the third phase of the project this spring when they travel to Asaba to begin the excavation and collect further information.
Once the project is completed, the people of Asaba can consider what type of memorial they would like to erect “so our children and our children’s children never forget what happened and so it will never happen again,” said Nwanze. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure this program succeeds. If you don’t honor the dead, what becomes of the path of the living?”
Story by D’Ann Lawrence White
A journalist for more than 25 years, White is a freelance writer reporting on behalf of USF.
Without tissues on hand, tears streamed down the faces of the men, soaking the collars of both Western suitcoats and traditional Nigerian bubas.
For some in the audience, this was the first chance in 42 years to learn the fate of their loved ones.
“This is the first time in my life that I’ve been told the story of what happened, and my own father was killed in that war,” said Michael Nwanze, a political science professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. “I buried my father but I was never able to mourn him because I didn’t know the truth.”
The survivors of the Oct. 7, 1967, massacre in Asaba, Nigeria, had been waiting more than four decades to shed light on the nightmare that haunts them still and to tally and honor the dead – estimated by some accounts to be from 500 to 2,000 men and boys. The massacre occurred during Nigeria’s bitter civil war, and those targeted were of Igbo ethnicity.
Helping the Nigerian people piece together the puzzle of the long-buried tragedy is anthropology professor Elizabeth Bird, assistant anthropology professor Erin Kimmerle and Fraser Ottanelli, chairman of the department of history, who are working with the USF Libraries Holocaust & Genocide Studies Center and a Tampa Police Homicide Det. Charles Massucci.
The researchers are gathering documents, recording oral histories and this spring will travel to Nigeria to examine mass graves in the hopes of creating a memorial to the decades-old slayings.
The Oct. 9-10 Asaba Memorial Project symposium at USF kicked off the effort that included launching the Asaba Memorial Project website. The site will serve as an international record of the massacre, including archive images, oral histories, official records, newspaper articles and other materials the USF team gathers.
It will be no small task. Memories of the massacre are hazy and details conflict. Nevertheless, Ottanelli said it’s the oral histories - the voices of the people - that will make the events of Asaba come alive.
“It humanizes what we’ve been reading,” he said. “It takes an event so far away and puts a human face to it. The testimony is very powerful. We’re honored and humbled by this awesome responsibility.”
For the survivors, a public acknowledgement of the deaths and a permanent memorial to their lost loved ones will bring a measure of justice that has been elusive for more than four decades.
“We can forgive but we should never, ever forget,” said Chinelo Egwuatu, 53, a 15-year Tampa resident who survived the Biafra-Nigerian civil war and post-war famine, although two of her siblings perished. “This is a good thing USF is doing. There is no way you can bring the people back, but you can at least acknowledge that it happened.”
Up until now, little has been recorded about the Asaba massacre. Details were hidden from the international press. Nigerian government officials refused to comment publicly. And an international observer team was accused of conducting a hasty, haphazard investigation in which it concluded no genocide had occurred.
This left survivors, particularly eyewitnesses to the event, with no sense of closure.
Asaba, a key Nigerian town populated by civilian government employees, doctors, lawyers, engineers, athletes and scholars of the influential Igbo ethnic community, was loyal to the Nigerian federal government. Nevertheless, the town was targeted by a faction of that same military government for annihilation.
No one is sure who gave the orders or why. Nor is anyone certain how many lives were lost when soldiers opened fire on the men and boys in town.
For Egwuatu, the war is embodied in the face of a little boy who was once her playmate. She was only 11-years-old in 1967 and, although she wasn’t a witness to the Asaba massacre, she remembers seeing body parts strewn on the village streets. She also recalls coming across the body of her friend.
“I’ll never forget the look in his eyes,” she said, rifling through her handbag for something to staunch the flow of tears. She pulled out a Little Caesars pizza napkin and dabbed her face.
“It was terrible. This was barbaric. You never expected human beings to behave like that. It was evil.”
“Evil” also is the word Ifeanyi Uraih used to describe what he witnessed that day.
He was living in Asaba with his parents and nine siblings when the federal troops came to town.
“They ordered everyone to come out to the town square. (Col. Ibrahim) Taiwo said it was time to dance around town and join our brethren, and he warned that everyone should come along,” he recalled.
The people did as they were told, thinking they were being invited to a victory party. They didn’t realize it was a ruse to coax all the men out of hiding. Suddenly, the celebratory atmosphere evaporated. Taiwo’s troops began separating the men from the women.
“They were honest with us,” said Uraih. “They told us they were going to kill us. They took us to the mounted machine guns. Then it dawned on us that it was true.”
Uraih estimates that 2,000 men stood in the killing field that day.
“I was standing with my older brother at the edge of the crowd. He was holding my hand. He had always taken care of me. We shared the same bed. He was the first to be dragged away by the soldiers. He let go of my hand and pushed me into the crowd. He was shot in the back. I could see the blood gushing from his back. He was the first victim of the massacre. Then all hell let loose.”
Uraih survived because he was buffered by bodies that were shot and fell on top of him.
“I lost count of time,” he said. “To this day, I live with the smell of the blood of my brethren that night. Even the heavens wept for the victims of this holocaust. Finally the bullets stopped.
Decades later, Uraih was in the reception room of a doctor’s office in London when Gen. Yakubu Gowon, head of the Nigerian military government at the time of the massacre, happened to walk in for an appointment.
“We talked and he said he sincerely regretted what occurred that day, that it was one of his greatest regrets,” said Uraih, adding that he believed Gowon. “I cannot tell this story without tears in my eyes, but I have no bitterness in my heart.”
Chief Philip Asiodu, who hailed from Asaba and was a member of Gowon’s cabinet at the time of the genocide, said he too has no room for bitterness despite the fact that his brother, Sydney Asiodu, a promising Olympic hurdler, long jumper and runner, was a victim of the massacre.
Asiodu, who later became chief economic adviser to the Nigerian president and minister for petroleum, said Asaba should have been the last village targeted by federal troops because it was populated by current and former Igbo civil servants loyal to the federal government.
It’s been reported that Taiwo had a master list containing the names of prominent citizens and civil servants targeted for death. Some believe that Gen. Murtala Mohammed, commander of the Second Division of the federal troops and Taiwo’s superior, wanted to rid himself of opposition so he could launch a coup. Mohammed later toppled Gowon to become head of state.
Like fellow Nigerians assembled at USF for the symposium, Asiodu said he’s supporting the Asaba Memorial Project because he believes the people need to know what happened.
“Once we do, I still have faith we can change the ethics of our current government and become the vanguard for African progress,” he said.
The truth may be a long time coming, however. Like those killed in the Asaba genocide, documents have long been buried or unavailable. “There will always be debate,” said Elizabeth Bird, USF professor of anthropology. “The official records are woefully inadequate.”
Bird pointed to the importance of the book Blood on the Niger as the first publication that drew attention to the massacre. Its author, Emma Okocha, himself a survivor, was crucial to the project – initially contacting Kimmerle, and bringing together the network of scholars, activists, and community members who attended the symposium.
Last year, Kimmerle and a research team traveled to Lagos, Nigeria where they investigated methods for human identification in collaboration with John Obafunwa, provost of the College of Medicine at Lagos State University. Kimmerle has done human rights work throughout the Balkans, Peru and Nigeria and her research team is working on new methods of identification, research for investigations of “cold cases” and forensic science education.
Kimmerle and her team also traveled to Asaba to meet with community leaders and began interviewing witnesses to the massacre. The work will involve more fieldwork over the next few years and is part of an effort to develop new methods and technologies to solve cold cases both in the United States and abroad. The project is supported financially by the National Institute of Justice.
The USF team hopes to launch the third phase of the project this spring when they travel to Asaba to begin the excavation and collect further information.
Once the project is completed, the people of Asaba can consider what type of memorial they would like to erect “so our children and our children’s children never forget what happened and so it will never happen again,” said Nwanze. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure this program succeeds. If you don’t honor the dead, what becomes of the path of the living?”
Story by D’Ann Lawrence White
A journalist for more than 25 years, White is a freelance writer reporting on behalf of USF.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Now Everybody's An Expert
Juggling four offices and a 60-hour work week in his forensic counseling practice, my husband rarely has time to chill out and watch TV.
So it was an occasion worth noting when I walked into the family room and saw him seated in front of the big screen chuckling to himself.
“What’s so funny?” I asked him.
“This info-mercial,” he replied. “This so-called therapist is hawking his book and tapes on how to change your life by changing your attitude.”
“So?” I shrugged. “It’s not like we haven’t heard that song and dance before.”
“Yea, but I personally know this guy,” said my husband, shaking his head. “He doesn’t even have a degree in psychology much less a license to practice. All he has is a hypnotherapy certificate. Where does he get off posing as if he’s some big expert?”
“That’s just the problem with society today,” I told him. “Everybody thinks they’re an expert whether they truly are or not.”
Yep, that’s one of the reasons I’m sitting here at home blogging and collecting unemployment instead of doing something productive like looking into the reason for cost overruns on what should have been a routine road construction project.
I’ve been replaced by citizen journalists and user-generated content providers who can do my job for free.
Well … they could do my job. Except they don’t want to make the effort to sit through boring meetings, wade through reams of boring documents, makes tons of phone calls and interview tons of people to get both sides of the story and then go out of their way to make sure the story is well-written, interesting, factual and, most importantly, credible.
I’m flabbergasted as I read through endless streams of blogs posted by self-professed authorities on various subjects and find fiction presented as fact, propaganda passing for information and self-serving punditry qualifying as legitimate truth.
Where can the public turn for fair, unbiased information in this digital age? The public doesn’t have any guarantee that its getting facts or half truths from the Internet. After all, who is holding the blogger accountable?
In this information era when we’re being bombarded with content from televisions, computers, phones, IPods, radios and anywhere else marketers can think of to infiltrate our brains, we’re getting carpet bombed by a generation of self-proclaimed experts who have established themselves as bloggers and twits with forums that provide them with a semblance of legitimacy despite the fact that they have no credentials.
Sites such as HubPages, Allvoices.com and Examiner.com have recruited bloggers on virtually every subject matter of interest in every community across America.
For instance, Meryl Lee, the Tampa Beauty Examiner for Examiner.com, is available to provide all sorts of practical advice on fighting frizz and keeping your skin smooth.
“We all have seen the commercials for Smooth Away promising lasting hair free results. Now you can buy them in any store. The question is, do they work.” said Meryl Lee in her blog, minus question marks and hyphenation.
I’m anxious to hear what Meryl Lee, who looks about 15 years old in her photo, has to say. After all, she’s the Tampa Beauty Examiner.
“The result is no they don’t. I wanted to try these because I hate shaving. Also my skin cant tolerate shaving my legs more than once every two weeks.”
Thanks for sharing and forgetting the apostrophe, Meryl Lee.
She ended her blog saying that Smooth Away does have some redeeming qualities.
“I would add that the smaller pad is great for little patches of hair. If you have a few hairs on your toes or stomach that you would like to get ride of this works really well.”
Hey, guess what Meryl Lee? You’re a freak. I don’t have hair on my toes or stomach.
As a Tampa Bay homeowner, I especially appreciated this blog on AllVoices under the headline “Tampa Bay Real Estate Great Place For Your Investment.”
“Tampa real estate is the place where to look for quality of home to purchase whether it is a vacation home or a place where to retire to. If you are thinking of place to relocate, you do not have to worry because Tampa can provide you all that you need and trying to look for.”
Whew. Now I can sleep tonight, especially since this report received a top beta rating by Allvoices.com.
According to Allvoices.com, “This beta report credibility rating is intended to help our community sort through uncensored citizen media reports. The credibility is based on community interaction and response, reporter reputation and the power of the Allvoices intelligent news analysis platform.”
Alrighty then. On the HubPages. This is a site that allows creative, intelligent people to establish blogs on any area of interest. You’re probably going to get blogs from geneticists sharing the latest genome research or historians exploring how the Great Depression compares with today’s economic woes.
Or, more likely, you’ll encounter Sandra Rinck discussing female orgasms despite the fact that Rinck is the first to admit she’s no expert on female sexuality. In describing herself, she says, “I have two personal blogs, one for fly-fishing reels and equipment and the other is a rant blog about why religion is dead.”
However, she had no qualms about telling the world her opinion about female orgasms.
“I have totally heard about women who cannot get an orgasm or have never had one,” she tells her blog fans. “I think, wow! That must really suck. But obviously there is something going on mentally that is preventing you from having one.”
And this is one reason why I am no longer able to continue my lifelong desire to be a working journalist. No, that really sucks, Sandra.
So it was an occasion worth noting when I walked into the family room and saw him seated in front of the big screen chuckling to himself.
“What’s so funny?” I asked him.
“This info-mercial,” he replied. “This so-called therapist is hawking his book and tapes on how to change your life by changing your attitude.”
“So?” I shrugged. “It’s not like we haven’t heard that song and dance before.”
“Yea, but I personally know this guy,” said my husband, shaking his head. “He doesn’t even have a degree in psychology much less a license to practice. All he has is a hypnotherapy certificate. Where does he get off posing as if he’s some big expert?”
“That’s just the problem with society today,” I told him. “Everybody thinks they’re an expert whether they truly are or not.”
Yep, that’s one of the reasons I’m sitting here at home blogging and collecting unemployment instead of doing something productive like looking into the reason for cost overruns on what should have been a routine road construction project.
I’ve been replaced by citizen journalists and user-generated content providers who can do my job for free.
Well … they could do my job. Except they don’t want to make the effort to sit through boring meetings, wade through reams of boring documents, makes tons of phone calls and interview tons of people to get both sides of the story and then go out of their way to make sure the story is well-written, interesting, factual and, most importantly, credible.
I’m flabbergasted as I read through endless streams of blogs posted by self-professed authorities on various subjects and find fiction presented as fact, propaganda passing for information and self-serving punditry qualifying as legitimate truth.
Where can the public turn for fair, unbiased information in this digital age? The public doesn’t have any guarantee that its getting facts or half truths from the Internet. After all, who is holding the blogger accountable?
In this information era when we’re being bombarded with content from televisions, computers, phones, IPods, radios and anywhere else marketers can think of to infiltrate our brains, we’re getting carpet bombed by a generation of self-proclaimed experts who have established themselves as bloggers and twits with forums that provide them with a semblance of legitimacy despite the fact that they have no credentials.
Sites such as HubPages, Allvoices.com and Examiner.com have recruited bloggers on virtually every subject matter of interest in every community across America.
For instance, Meryl Lee, the Tampa Beauty Examiner for Examiner.com, is available to provide all sorts of practical advice on fighting frizz and keeping your skin smooth.
“We all have seen the commercials for Smooth Away promising lasting hair free results. Now you can buy them in any store. The question is, do they work.” said Meryl Lee in her blog, minus question marks and hyphenation.
I’m anxious to hear what Meryl Lee, who looks about 15 years old in her photo, has to say. After all, she’s the Tampa Beauty Examiner.
“The result is no they don’t. I wanted to try these because I hate shaving. Also my skin cant tolerate shaving my legs more than once every two weeks.”
Thanks for sharing and forgetting the apostrophe, Meryl Lee.
She ended her blog saying that Smooth Away does have some redeeming qualities.
“I would add that the smaller pad is great for little patches of hair. If you have a few hairs on your toes or stomach that you would like to get ride of this works really well.”
Hey, guess what Meryl Lee? You’re a freak. I don’t have hair on my toes or stomach.
As a Tampa Bay homeowner, I especially appreciated this blog on AllVoices under the headline “Tampa Bay Real Estate Great Place For Your Investment.”
“Tampa real estate is the place where to look for quality of home to purchase whether it is a vacation home or a place where to retire to. If you are thinking of place to relocate, you do not have to worry because Tampa can provide you all that you need and trying to look for.”
Whew. Now I can sleep tonight, especially since this report received a top beta rating by Allvoices.com.
According to Allvoices.com, “This beta report credibility rating is intended to help our community sort through uncensored citizen media reports. The credibility is based on community interaction and response, reporter reputation and the power of the Allvoices intelligent news analysis platform.”
Alrighty then. On the HubPages. This is a site that allows creative, intelligent people to establish blogs on any area of interest. You’re probably going to get blogs from geneticists sharing the latest genome research or historians exploring how the Great Depression compares with today’s economic woes.
Or, more likely, you’ll encounter Sandra Rinck discussing female orgasms despite the fact that Rinck is the first to admit she’s no expert on female sexuality. In describing herself, she says, “I have two personal blogs, one for fly-fishing reels and equipment and the other is a rant blog about why religion is dead.”
However, she had no qualms about telling the world her opinion about female orgasms.
“I have totally heard about women who cannot get an orgasm or have never had one,” she tells her blog fans. “I think, wow! That must really suck. But obviously there is something going on mentally that is preventing you from having one.”
And this is one reason why I am no longer able to continue my lifelong desire to be a working journalist. No, that really sucks, Sandra.
Friday, July 24, 2009
We Didn't Abandon Journalism; Journalism Abandoned Us
After three days of nonstop crying, my eyelids looked like Michelin tires.
I could barely see through the swollen red slits as I fumbled through the kitchen catch-all drawer, feeling around for something shaped like a writing instrument.
I thought I was prepared. I’d been expecting it for months. But the reality of receiving that phone call and learning that I was no longer needed after nearly 25 years on the job was a bigger disappointment than I was ready to handle.
Journalism wasn’t simply a job, or even a career. It’d been my life. Childhood friends as far back as elementary school recall me carrying around a reporter’s notebook, prodding them with endless questions and then writing little stories for the school newspaper.
Journalism is all I’ve ever wanted to do. Now it seemed as if my life was over. I had lost my purpose.
Voila! My fingers groping in the catch-all drawer uncovered what felt like a pen. Now for paper…
How ironic, I thought, grabbing a nearby pad of stationery bearing the logo of a local funeral home. It’d been a free gift for spending $10,000 in February cremating my sister-in-law; who had died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma way before her time.
It seemed apropos for my last will and testament.
I was forming the “G” in “goodbye” when I realized the pen wasn’t working. I had to spread my swollen eyelids open with my thumb and forefinger to inspect it closer. The pen bore the logo of the newspaper that had just laid me off. It figured.
I wasn’t about to scratch the words, “Goodbye, cruel world,” into the stationery using the end of a nonworking pen from a company responsible for my despondency, so I searched for an alternative.
On the kitchen wall was my antique Felix the Cat chalkboard.
“Goodbye, cruel world,” I wrote in chalk.
I stood back to admire my handiwork and couldn’t help but chuckle. The words appeared ridiculous on Felix’ round tummy. Well, it’d have to suffice.
I then ordered Oliver North, my Yorkshire “terror,” into the woods behind my house to retrieve a poisonous snake.
Just days before, the 7-pound Yorkie, a German shepherd wannabe, cornered and killed a water moccasin next to our pool. Oliver brooks no creatures trespassing into his yard and particularly delights in taking on snakes, which he whips around his head, beating them against the concrete until they die a slow, bloody, painful death.
With Oliver’s assistance, I figured I’d go out in style, like Cleopatra with her asp.
Oliver just looked at me and gave a hoarse bark as if to tell me that he had no intention of contributing to my death by venomous snake.
“It’s OK, boy,” I sighed, patting him on the head. “I wasn’t serious anyway.”
Why should I commit suicide when the newspaper industry had done a fine job of it for me?
The industry has been slowly killing itself for years.
Too late the industry realized it was easier to get news form the Internet and Iphones than to open a newspaper.
In an attempt to comfort me after I was laid off, friends commented, “They took away your job, but they didn’t take away your talent.”
“Yes, but they took away my ability to get paid for it. That’s pretty important, too,” I replied.
A fellow University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism grad who also received his marching papers put it into perspective.
“We didn’t abandon journalism,” he said. “Journalism abandoned us.”
This is true. We steadfast reporters stuck it out through all the many transitions, trends and technological evolutions journalism has experienced. We’ve always adapted. From typewriters to Compaq computers to laptops; from large-format cameras to 35 mm to digital; from letterpress to offset to composing; from narrative to inverted pyramid style to condensed news for today’s readers with no time to read. We’ve done whatever was demanded of us.
But when journalism could no longer keep up with the technology and still make money, when it failed to find a way to transition effectively to the Internet, the industry tossed aside those journalists who had devoted their careers to bringing fair, factual, thought-provoking news to readers.
The result is the public now receives condensed chunks of news from those remaining in the media who no longer have the time or resources to thoroughly research stories or the forum to run those stories even if they were able to conduct in-depth research.
Even worse, the public gets its news from so-called citizen journalists who have no training, no ethical guidelines and whose motivations are suspect.
This is not what Thomas Carlyle envisioned when he referred to journalism as the Fourth Estate in the early 19th century.
For the past 200 years, journalists have served as watchdogs, exposing countless political and corporate misdoings that would otherwise never have come to light.
Now zoning meetings once publicized by newspapers and attended by scores of concerned residents receive no publicity. Developments are approved helter-skelter with little to no opposition.
Issues that should be of general concern, such as a significant rise in domestic violence and rape in Tampa Bay associated with the economic downturn, go unreported. I know. I was working on this story when I was laid off.
As for me and my friends who have gotten the boot, we’ve always been flexible. We’ve always been willing to embrace new technology if it means reaching more people with our stories. Give us twitter. Give us video. Give us blogs. Give us air cards. We just want to report the news.
I could barely see through the swollen red slits as I fumbled through the kitchen catch-all drawer, feeling around for something shaped like a writing instrument.
I thought I was prepared. I’d been expecting it for months. But the reality of receiving that phone call and learning that I was no longer needed after nearly 25 years on the job was a bigger disappointment than I was ready to handle.
Journalism wasn’t simply a job, or even a career. It’d been my life. Childhood friends as far back as elementary school recall me carrying around a reporter’s notebook, prodding them with endless questions and then writing little stories for the school newspaper.
Journalism is all I’ve ever wanted to do. Now it seemed as if my life was over. I had lost my purpose.
Voila! My fingers groping in the catch-all drawer uncovered what felt like a pen. Now for paper…
How ironic, I thought, grabbing a nearby pad of stationery bearing the logo of a local funeral home. It’d been a free gift for spending $10,000 in February cremating my sister-in-law; who had died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma way before her time.
It seemed apropos for my last will and testament.
I was forming the “G” in “goodbye” when I realized the pen wasn’t working. I had to spread my swollen eyelids open with my thumb and forefinger to inspect it closer. The pen bore the logo of the newspaper that had just laid me off. It figured.
I wasn’t about to scratch the words, “Goodbye, cruel world,” into the stationery using the end of a nonworking pen from a company responsible for my despondency, so I searched for an alternative.
On the kitchen wall was my antique Felix the Cat chalkboard.
“Goodbye, cruel world,” I wrote in chalk.
I stood back to admire my handiwork and couldn’t help but chuckle. The words appeared ridiculous on Felix’ round tummy. Well, it’d have to suffice.
I then ordered Oliver North, my Yorkshire “terror,” into the woods behind my house to retrieve a poisonous snake.
Just days before, the 7-pound Yorkie, a German shepherd wannabe, cornered and killed a water moccasin next to our pool. Oliver brooks no creatures trespassing into his yard and particularly delights in taking on snakes, which he whips around his head, beating them against the concrete until they die a slow, bloody, painful death.
With Oliver’s assistance, I figured I’d go out in style, like Cleopatra with her asp.
Oliver just looked at me and gave a hoarse bark as if to tell me that he had no intention of contributing to my death by venomous snake.
“It’s OK, boy,” I sighed, patting him on the head. “I wasn’t serious anyway.”
Why should I commit suicide when the newspaper industry had done a fine job of it for me?
The industry has been slowly killing itself for years.
Too late the industry realized it was easier to get news form the Internet and Iphones than to open a newspaper.
In an attempt to comfort me after I was laid off, friends commented, “They took away your job, but they didn’t take away your talent.”
“Yes, but they took away my ability to get paid for it. That’s pretty important, too,” I replied.
A fellow University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism grad who also received his marching papers put it into perspective.
“We didn’t abandon journalism,” he said. “Journalism abandoned us.”
This is true. We steadfast reporters stuck it out through all the many transitions, trends and technological evolutions journalism has experienced. We’ve always adapted. From typewriters to Compaq computers to laptops; from large-format cameras to 35 mm to digital; from letterpress to offset to composing; from narrative to inverted pyramid style to condensed news for today’s readers with no time to read. We’ve done whatever was demanded of us.
But when journalism could no longer keep up with the technology and still make money, when it failed to find a way to transition effectively to the Internet, the industry tossed aside those journalists who had devoted their careers to bringing fair, factual, thought-provoking news to readers.
The result is the public now receives condensed chunks of news from those remaining in the media who no longer have the time or resources to thoroughly research stories or the forum to run those stories even if they were able to conduct in-depth research.
Even worse, the public gets its news from so-called citizen journalists who have no training, no ethical guidelines and whose motivations are suspect.
This is not what Thomas Carlyle envisioned when he referred to journalism as the Fourth Estate in the early 19th century.
For the past 200 years, journalists have served as watchdogs, exposing countless political and corporate misdoings that would otherwise never have come to light.
Now zoning meetings once publicized by newspapers and attended by scores of concerned residents receive no publicity. Developments are approved helter-skelter with little to no opposition.
Issues that should be of general concern, such as a significant rise in domestic violence and rape in Tampa Bay associated with the economic downturn, go unreported. I know. I was working on this story when I was laid off.
As for me and my friends who have gotten the boot, we’ve always been flexible. We’ve always been willing to embrace new technology if it means reaching more people with our stories. Give us twitter. Give us video. Give us blogs. Give us air cards. We just want to report the news.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Lead Them And They'll Find Their Way
By D'Ann Lawrence White
Poor Dr. Jeremy Poole.
I can still see the stunned look on his face as I sobbed and hugged him.
He’d just informed me that I was pregnant.
I’d been told my chances of having a child were slim to none due old scar tissue so I didn’t even try to contain my emotions when Dr. Poole made his surprising announcement 13 years ago.
I was 35 years old; my husband 41. We were pretty much resigned to life without a child. We chalked my pregnancy up to nothing short of a miracle.
Because of my age, doctors recommended I undergo amniocentesis. We agreed only to prepare ourselves for any problems we might encounter when our child was born. It didn’t matter if our child was born with Down syndrome or any other birth defect. We were prepared to treasure this child regardless of any special needs. This child was a blessing.
However, we did agree on some guidelines to raising him.
We vowed to never pressure him to be an all-star baseball player or straight-A student. After all, intelligence and athletic prowess are qualities you’re born with, whether you believe they’re inherited or God-given. They’re out of a parent’s control.
My heart always goes out to a child whose parent berates him for not swinging the bat correctly or for getting a B on his report card. We agreed to encourage our son to do his best but not set our expectations too high.
However, there are qualities a parent can nurture in a child. In a letter to our unborn child, we wrote down a few of those qualities we hoped to instill in our son.
We prayed that he would grow up to be kind, loving and forgiving, to respect others, to take life’s problems in stride, to have a sense of humor, to be honest and act with integrity when he’s wrong, to be empathetic and generous toward those who are less fortunate and to not fear trying, even if he doesn’t always succeed.
If he grows up possessing those qualities, we agreed we’d done our job as parents.
I recalled that letter as I read through a book my son’s fourth-grade classmates compiled discussing his “character traits.” Throughout the year, his teacher asked each student to write about their classmates’ strengths. Then, at the end of the year, she presented the bound collection to each student.
I chuckled at some of the comments. They could just as well have been written about me. “When Ian believes in something, he isn’t scared to tell his mind.”
“He stands up to people when they’re wrong.”
“Ian is always telling us what the right thing is. He will speak his mind.”
I was a bit surprised to discover that my son has cast himself into the role of peacekeeper, helping resolve disputes on the playground or lifting the egos of children who feel dejected.
“Ian sticks up for others.” That comment included a little cartoon of two kids fighting and a third child, Ian, I assume, standing over them. In a balloon next to Ian’s mouth are the words, “Stop fighting.”
“Ian shows leadership by stopping fights and helping people get more friends.”
And my personal favorite: “Ian is like a live little conscience that is watching you everywhere you are and whatever you’re doing.”
I could see that our efforts to instill the virtues of honesty and integrity stuck.
“If he does something wrong, like talking in class or in the line and teacher asks who’s talking, he says it was him. Ian is always ready to confess.”
Actually, a number of the children wrote about how quick he is to admit when he is doing something wrong and take his punishment, especially when another child might be blamed. I found that pretty impressive.
“He tells Mrs. Larsen that he’s talking during class when Mrs. Larsen thought James was talking.”
Yes, my son exhibits many of the qualities we vowed to nurture when he was born nearly, as well as a few we hadn’t anticipated.
Nevertheless, he is definitely his own person with abilities and personality traits we could have never predicted.
While I was spelling bee champion of Pierremont Elementary School and began composing short stories at the age of 7, my son gets average grades in spelling and groans whenever he has a writing assignment.
My husband was a quiet, well-behaved kid, the perennial teacher’s pet.
However, our son is anything but quiet. He never met a stranger. At his preschool graduation, the other children got awards for “Best Helper,” “Most Cheerful” and “Best at Following Directions.” My son received the dubious award for “Most Irrepressible.”
By the same token, he has a larger vocabulary than most adults I know and was off the charts in standardized testing for knowledge of social studies. His favorite channel is the History Channel but I’ve seen him become equally engrossed in a segment on Fox News.
Only time will tell what path his life will take. At various times, his career choices have ranged from politician to pope.
His most recent aspiration is to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs so he can learn to fly a plane. However, he doesn’t plan to use his flying skills for war, he tells us. Instead, he’ll become a general and hopes to be assigned as a presidential envoy to further world peace.
OK, Mr. Peacemaker. I can live with that.
Poor Dr. Jeremy Poole.
I can still see the stunned look on his face as I sobbed and hugged him.
He’d just informed me that I was pregnant.
I’d been told my chances of having a child were slim to none due old scar tissue so I didn’t even try to contain my emotions when Dr. Poole made his surprising announcement 13 years ago.
I was 35 years old; my husband 41. We were pretty much resigned to life without a child. We chalked my pregnancy up to nothing short of a miracle.
Because of my age, doctors recommended I undergo amniocentesis. We agreed only to prepare ourselves for any problems we might encounter when our child was born. It didn’t matter if our child was born with Down syndrome or any other birth defect. We were prepared to treasure this child regardless of any special needs. This child was a blessing.
However, we did agree on some guidelines to raising him.
We vowed to never pressure him to be an all-star baseball player or straight-A student. After all, intelligence and athletic prowess are qualities you’re born with, whether you believe they’re inherited or God-given. They’re out of a parent’s control.
My heart always goes out to a child whose parent berates him for not swinging the bat correctly or for getting a B on his report card. We agreed to encourage our son to do his best but not set our expectations too high.
However, there are qualities a parent can nurture in a child. In a letter to our unborn child, we wrote down a few of those qualities we hoped to instill in our son.
We prayed that he would grow up to be kind, loving and forgiving, to respect others, to take life’s problems in stride, to have a sense of humor, to be honest and act with integrity when he’s wrong, to be empathetic and generous toward those who are less fortunate and to not fear trying, even if he doesn’t always succeed.
If he grows up possessing those qualities, we agreed we’d done our job as parents.
I recalled that letter as I read through a book my son’s fourth-grade classmates compiled discussing his “character traits.” Throughout the year, his teacher asked each student to write about their classmates’ strengths. Then, at the end of the year, she presented the bound collection to each student.
I chuckled at some of the comments. They could just as well have been written about me. “When Ian believes in something, he isn’t scared to tell his mind.”
“He stands up to people when they’re wrong.”
“Ian is always telling us what the right thing is. He will speak his mind.”
I was a bit surprised to discover that my son has cast himself into the role of peacekeeper, helping resolve disputes on the playground or lifting the egos of children who feel dejected.
“Ian sticks up for others.” That comment included a little cartoon of two kids fighting and a third child, Ian, I assume, standing over them. In a balloon next to Ian’s mouth are the words, “Stop fighting.”
“Ian shows leadership by stopping fights and helping people get more friends.”
And my personal favorite: “Ian is like a live little conscience that is watching you everywhere you are and whatever you’re doing.”
I could see that our efforts to instill the virtues of honesty and integrity stuck.
“If he does something wrong, like talking in class or in the line and teacher asks who’s talking, he says it was him. Ian is always ready to confess.”
Actually, a number of the children wrote about how quick he is to admit when he is doing something wrong and take his punishment, especially when another child might be blamed. I found that pretty impressive.
“He tells Mrs. Larsen that he’s talking during class when Mrs. Larsen thought James was talking.”
Yes, my son exhibits many of the qualities we vowed to nurture when he was born nearly, as well as a few we hadn’t anticipated.
Nevertheless, he is definitely his own person with abilities and personality traits we could have never predicted.
While I was spelling bee champion of Pierremont Elementary School and began composing short stories at the age of 7, my son gets average grades in spelling and groans whenever he has a writing assignment.
My husband was a quiet, well-behaved kid, the perennial teacher’s pet.
However, our son is anything but quiet. He never met a stranger. At his preschool graduation, the other children got awards for “Best Helper,” “Most Cheerful” and “Best at Following Directions.” My son received the dubious award for “Most Irrepressible.”
By the same token, he has a larger vocabulary than most adults I know and was off the charts in standardized testing for knowledge of social studies. His favorite channel is the History Channel but I’ve seen him become equally engrossed in a segment on Fox News.
Only time will tell what path his life will take. At various times, his career choices have ranged from politician to pope.
His most recent aspiration is to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs so he can learn to fly a plane. However, he doesn’t plan to use his flying skills for war, he tells us. Instead, he’ll become a general and hopes to be assigned as a presidential envoy to further world peace.
OK, Mr. Peacemaker. I can live with that.
Sometimes Words Aren't Necessary
By D'Ann Lawrence White
I desperately struggled to find words that might comfort Dave Mangold.
We were at Wednesday night Eucharistic Adoration at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Valrico where we’re both members. I had just learned that they’d called in hospice for his wife, Wendi, the 35-year-old mother of three young children whose breast cancer had spread to her liver and spine.
I’d interviewed Wendi a few weeks before when her friends were organizing a benefit to raise funds for her to undergo clinical trials. I’d titled the article “Counting On A Miracle.”
My friend, Nancy Shirina, was with us at church, and I envied her ability to distract Dave, make him chuckle, giving his emotions a much-needed respite from the grief.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t contain my tears, and Dave admonished me.
“Wendi wouldn’t want you to cry,” he said sternly. “No tears.”
“But I was counting on a miracle,” I told him.
“We got our miracle,” he smiled and hugged me.
He was referring to the community’s response to the fundraiser -- the hundreds of people who showed up with yard sale items and baked goods, the businesses that donated raffle items, the residents who purchased tickets and supported the sale, raising $42,000, which will now go into a trust fund for the Mangold children: Mary, 1, Charlie, 3, and Davey, 5.
Dave told us how Wendi was ready to take her place with God; how she had chosen legacy gifts that her children would receive on their 18th birthdays; how she’d planned the details of her funeral and asked that everyone wear bright colors and celebrate her life rather than mourn her death.
Wendi died four days later and, just as she wanted, we all wore bright colors to celebrate her life at her funeral last Wednesday.
Two days after my conversation with Dave, I recalled Wendi’s healthy outlook toward death and the positive affect it will undoubtedly have on her children as we drove to St. Augustine for a rare family trip.
Our Yorkie, Cookie, was with us. Because of her small size, she went everywhere with us. She was perfectly content being carried around in a pouch and would rather be with her family than left with a pet-sitter or at a kennel.
Cookie never made it to the nation’s oldest city. She began having seizures while riding in the back seat with my 11-year-old son, Ian. We turned around and headed home, intending to take her to her vet. I was riding in the back seat holding her in my arms when she died.
Our regular vet, Dr. Sharon Hunter, was closed for the day so we stopped by Care Animal Hospital. Ian insisted on carrying Cookie into the clinic. A woman in tears rushed out as we entered the doors. Nodding knowingly when we described the symptoms, the veterinary technician told us Cookie was the sixth victim of contaminated pet food they’d seen that day.
I permitted Ian to choose an urn for Cookie’s cremated remains and I described to him how peacefully she died in my arms.
We went on to St. Augustine “because Cookie would have wanted it that way,” Ian concluded.
It was late by the time we reached the hotel but Ian couldn’t sleep. He wanted words of comfort, the same words I’d groped for when speaking with Dave earlier that week. I was tempted to call my pastor, Father Bill, but didn’t think he’d appreciate the late-night phone call so I began searching for the inevitable Gideon’s Bible in the hotel desk drawer instead.
I read Psalm 23 to Ian. He wasn’t inspired. He said he already knew the Lord was his shepherd and he didn’t fear death. He wanted to know how to make the hurt go away.
The next day our first visit was to the Mission of Nombre de Dios where we lit a candle and offered a Mass intention for Cookie at the Our Lady of La Leche Shrine.
As we explored the mission grounds we came upon the shrine of St. Francis, patron saint of animals. Cookie always wore a St. Francis medal on her collar.
Ian knelt and read St. Francis’ prayer out loud.
It’s a powerful prayer and Ian grasped its message immediately.
“…that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.”
“He’s saying I’ll stop hurting by reaching out and helping others to stop hurting, helping them understand that death is really eternal life,” Ian said with a wisdom that belied his young years.
Those were the words I wanted to say to Dave Mangold. But they weren’t necessary after all. Dave already knew them.
I desperately struggled to find words that might comfort Dave Mangold.
We were at Wednesday night Eucharistic Adoration at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Valrico where we’re both members. I had just learned that they’d called in hospice for his wife, Wendi, the 35-year-old mother of three young children whose breast cancer had spread to her liver and spine.
I’d interviewed Wendi a few weeks before when her friends were organizing a benefit to raise funds for her to undergo clinical trials. I’d titled the article “Counting On A Miracle.”
My friend, Nancy Shirina, was with us at church, and I envied her ability to distract Dave, make him chuckle, giving his emotions a much-needed respite from the grief.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t contain my tears, and Dave admonished me.
“Wendi wouldn’t want you to cry,” he said sternly. “No tears.”
“But I was counting on a miracle,” I told him.
“We got our miracle,” he smiled and hugged me.
He was referring to the community’s response to the fundraiser -- the hundreds of people who showed up with yard sale items and baked goods, the businesses that donated raffle items, the residents who purchased tickets and supported the sale, raising $42,000, which will now go into a trust fund for the Mangold children: Mary, 1, Charlie, 3, and Davey, 5.
Dave told us how Wendi was ready to take her place with God; how she had chosen legacy gifts that her children would receive on their 18th birthdays; how she’d planned the details of her funeral and asked that everyone wear bright colors and celebrate her life rather than mourn her death.
Wendi died four days later and, just as she wanted, we all wore bright colors to celebrate her life at her funeral last Wednesday.
Two days after my conversation with Dave, I recalled Wendi’s healthy outlook toward death and the positive affect it will undoubtedly have on her children as we drove to St. Augustine for a rare family trip.
Our Yorkie, Cookie, was with us. Because of her small size, she went everywhere with us. She was perfectly content being carried around in a pouch and would rather be with her family than left with a pet-sitter or at a kennel.
Cookie never made it to the nation’s oldest city. She began having seizures while riding in the back seat with my 11-year-old son, Ian. We turned around and headed home, intending to take her to her vet. I was riding in the back seat holding her in my arms when she died.
Our regular vet, Dr. Sharon Hunter, was closed for the day so we stopped by Care Animal Hospital. Ian insisted on carrying Cookie into the clinic. A woman in tears rushed out as we entered the doors. Nodding knowingly when we described the symptoms, the veterinary technician told us Cookie was the sixth victim of contaminated pet food they’d seen that day.
I permitted Ian to choose an urn for Cookie’s cremated remains and I described to him how peacefully she died in my arms.
We went on to St. Augustine “because Cookie would have wanted it that way,” Ian concluded.
It was late by the time we reached the hotel but Ian couldn’t sleep. He wanted words of comfort, the same words I’d groped for when speaking with Dave earlier that week. I was tempted to call my pastor, Father Bill, but didn’t think he’d appreciate the late-night phone call so I began searching for the inevitable Gideon’s Bible in the hotel desk drawer instead.
I read Psalm 23 to Ian. He wasn’t inspired. He said he already knew the Lord was his shepherd and he didn’t fear death. He wanted to know how to make the hurt go away.
The next day our first visit was to the Mission of Nombre de Dios where we lit a candle and offered a Mass intention for Cookie at the Our Lady of La Leche Shrine.
As we explored the mission grounds we came upon the shrine of St. Francis, patron saint of animals. Cookie always wore a St. Francis medal on her collar.
Ian knelt and read St. Francis’ prayer out loud.
It’s a powerful prayer and Ian grasped its message immediately.
“…that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.”
“He’s saying I’ll stop hurting by reaching out and helping others to stop hurting, helping them understand that death is really eternal life,” Ian said with a wisdom that belied his young years.
Those were the words I wanted to say to Dave Mangold. But they weren’t necessary after all. Dave already knew them.
Iras' Rainbow
***
Iras Donahue and I were unlikely friends.
Iras had a mind like a computer. She got her master’s degree in business administration and was perfectly happy spending her days juggling numbers as a certified management accountant.
I, on the other hand, am chronically math challenged. I’m baffled by the arithmetic it takes to participate in Macy’s 20-percent-off sales.
Nevertheless, Iras and I clicked from the moment we met. She was one of the first people I met when I moved to the area and joined the nearby Catholic church. She set the bar, making me feel welcome – this tiny pixie-like lady with a grin that lit up her entire face.
I felt as if I’d come home.
When the church opened up a Catholic school, Iras volunteered to be the school’s accountant. That proved lucky for me. As I enrolled my son, Ian, in the school that inaugural year, Iras walked me through the financial paperwork.
Over the next five years, Iras continued to make sure my automatic withdrawal account was up to date.
Each Sunday we would sit together at Mass while her husband, Tim, served as usher. When he mentioned he could use some help, I volunteered and he trained me. I became his “underling usher.” I’d call the Donahue household to discuss usher business with Tim, and Iras and I inevitably would get into lengthy conversations about everything from parenting to pedicures, and I’d forget the reason I’d called.
I wish I’d been less hurried, more attentive the last time I spoke with Iras.
We were at Mass and the church was packed. Tim and I gave up our places but I seated my son securely next to Iras.
In between seating latecomers, Iras and I were talking about getting together for a girls’ luncheon, just the two of us.
Out of the norm, Iras wasn’t at Mass the following Sunday. Tim said she hadn’t been feeling well. Later that week, he e-mailed me to say it looked as if Iras needed to have her gall bladder removed. The surgery was scheduled for Friday. He asked if I could handle ushering the Mass alone.
I told him not to worry. I asked him to give Iras my love, assured him I’d say prayers for her and promised to visit after the surgery.
Ever conscientious, Iras left copious instructions at the school, worried about how they’d handle the accounting during her absence.
It’s possible that Iras knew something we didn’t.
The day after her surgery, Iras had a heart attack and fell into a coma. The EKG showed no brain-wave activity and she was placed on life support.
I drove straight to the hospital after getting the news. Tim was able to sneak me into ICU before the staff caught on that I wasn’t a member of the family.
I stood there in shock and held Iras’ tiny hand in mine. I told her I loved her and began whispering prayers. At one point she squeezed my hand. Tim told me it was just a reflex. But I like to believe she somehow heard me, that she knew I was there. It was a moment I forever will cherish.
Ironically, Bob and Mary Schindler, the parents of Terri Schindler Schiavo who was in the national spotlight over the right-to-die issue, were the guest speakers at my church that Sunday. Their visit opened my eyes to the struggles of families facing life-and-death decisions.
Unlike Iras, Terri wasn’t on life support. She only needed a feeding tube to survive, not unlike an infant who needs only a bottle or a breast. Also unlike Iras, Terri had no living will. Iras had made her wishes crystal clear. She did not want to be kept alive on life support.
Still, you could see the pain and indecision in Tim’s eyes. It was agonizing enough to lose the love of his life, but then to be forced to play a role in her death was more than he could bear.
Iras used to tell me how very lucky she was to have Tim for a husband. She’d laugh recalling how her family didn’t want her to marry him because he was an Irish Catholic from the wrong side of the tracks. But Tim quickly won over Iras’ big brother, Alan, who’d taken over the paternal role when their father died. And Tim and Iras’ love only grew stronger over their nearly 40 years of marriage as they consoled one another during times of grief and found solace in their faith.
However, looking at his wife lying in the hospital, surrounded by monitors and wires, Tim knew there would be no miracle for Iras. He was just hoping she would take the decision out of his hands.
But it wasn’t to be. He’d been devoted to her. Now Iras expected Tim to fulfill this one last duty.
I felt so helpless as I hugged Tim shortly after he ordered the doctors to remove Iras from life support. Iras was breathing on her own but her respiration was low. It was only a matter of time. Tim sadly shook his head when I asked if there was anything I could do for him. He just wanted to sit with Iras.
He urged me to go ahead with my plans to participate in the three-day Project Cure breast cancer walk, saying Iras would have wanted me to. The breast cancer walk was in honor of two mothers and the wife of a teacher from our school who lost their lives to breast cancer. Iras knew all three women.
So I walked. Even though my heart felt like it was in my throat, I walked. Sunday, the final day of the walk, the weather was picture perfect. The air was crisp and the skies were sunny with a few fluffy clouds here and there.
As our group of walkers headed down Natures Way toward Culbreath Road in Bloomingdale East on the second lap of that day’s walk, someone shouted, “Look, a rainbow!”
Sure enough, a rainbow had appeared in front of us although there was no rain in the forecast.
My friend, Amy Meany, walking beside me, recalled that a rainbow represents God’s promise. She felt it was a sign that our walk would be a success.
Someone else noticed that the main color of the rainbow was pink, the signature color for the fight against breast cancer.
“I don’t think so,” I said softly, reaching for my cell phone.
I knew Iras was gone even before I heard the agony in Tim’s Voice.
“I know,” I told him. “We’re looking at her rainbow. She’s telling us goodbye and that she loves us.”
My best friend, Mary Owens, had stopped with me as I made the call to Tim.
Tim was too devastated to reply. All I could do was tell him that I loved him before he broke the connection with a sob.
I cried as we continued walking. When we caught up with the other walkers and told them the sad news, we gathered and prayed for Iras.
A meteorologist can provide any number of scientific explanations why that rainbow appeared at that time to that particular group of people.
But Tim told me that Iras always loved rainbows. They were her personal signature. And my friend and fellow walker, Lisa Huetteman, reminded me that the Spanish word for rainbow is “arco iris.”
It made perfect sense that Iras would send us a rainbow to let us know that she was at peace and that she would see us again.
D’Ann White
Oct. 19, 2006
Iras Donahue and I were unlikely friends.
Iras had a mind like a computer. She got her master’s degree in business administration and was perfectly happy spending her days juggling numbers as a certified management accountant.
I, on the other hand, am chronically math challenged. I’m baffled by the arithmetic it takes to participate in Macy’s 20-percent-off sales.
Nevertheless, Iras and I clicked from the moment we met. She was one of the first people I met when I moved to the area and joined the nearby Catholic church. She set the bar, making me feel welcome – this tiny pixie-like lady with a grin that lit up her entire face.
I felt as if I’d come home.
When the church opened up a Catholic school, Iras volunteered to be the school’s accountant. That proved lucky for me. As I enrolled my son, Ian, in the school that inaugural year, Iras walked me through the financial paperwork.
Over the next five years, Iras continued to make sure my automatic withdrawal account was up to date.
Each Sunday we would sit together at Mass while her husband, Tim, served as usher. When he mentioned he could use some help, I volunteered and he trained me. I became his “underling usher.” I’d call the Donahue household to discuss usher business with Tim, and Iras and I inevitably would get into lengthy conversations about everything from parenting to pedicures, and I’d forget the reason I’d called.
I wish I’d been less hurried, more attentive the last time I spoke with Iras.
We were at Mass and the church was packed. Tim and I gave up our places but I seated my son securely next to Iras.
In between seating latecomers, Iras and I were talking about getting together for a girls’ luncheon, just the two of us.
Out of the norm, Iras wasn’t at Mass the following Sunday. Tim said she hadn’t been feeling well. Later that week, he e-mailed me to say it looked as if Iras needed to have her gall bladder removed. The surgery was scheduled for Friday. He asked if I could handle ushering the Mass alone.
I told him not to worry. I asked him to give Iras my love, assured him I’d say prayers for her and promised to visit after the surgery.
Ever conscientious, Iras left copious instructions at the school, worried about how they’d handle the accounting during her absence.
It’s possible that Iras knew something we didn’t.
The day after her surgery, Iras had a heart attack and fell into a coma. The EKG showed no brain-wave activity and she was placed on life support.
I drove straight to the hospital after getting the news. Tim was able to sneak me into ICU before the staff caught on that I wasn’t a member of the family.
I stood there in shock and held Iras’ tiny hand in mine. I told her I loved her and began whispering prayers. At one point she squeezed my hand. Tim told me it was just a reflex. But I like to believe she somehow heard me, that she knew I was there. It was a moment I forever will cherish.
Ironically, Bob and Mary Schindler, the parents of Terri Schindler Schiavo who was in the national spotlight over the right-to-die issue, were the guest speakers at my church that Sunday. Their visit opened my eyes to the struggles of families facing life-and-death decisions.
Unlike Iras, Terri wasn’t on life support. She only needed a feeding tube to survive, not unlike an infant who needs only a bottle or a breast. Also unlike Iras, Terri had no living will. Iras had made her wishes crystal clear. She did not want to be kept alive on life support.
Still, you could see the pain and indecision in Tim’s eyes. It was agonizing enough to lose the love of his life, but then to be forced to play a role in her death was more than he could bear.
Iras used to tell me how very lucky she was to have Tim for a husband. She’d laugh recalling how her family didn’t want her to marry him because he was an Irish Catholic from the wrong side of the tracks. But Tim quickly won over Iras’ big brother, Alan, who’d taken over the paternal role when their father died. And Tim and Iras’ love only grew stronger over their nearly 40 years of marriage as they consoled one another during times of grief and found solace in their faith.
However, looking at his wife lying in the hospital, surrounded by monitors and wires, Tim knew there would be no miracle for Iras. He was just hoping she would take the decision out of his hands.
But it wasn’t to be. He’d been devoted to her. Now Iras expected Tim to fulfill this one last duty.
I felt so helpless as I hugged Tim shortly after he ordered the doctors to remove Iras from life support. Iras was breathing on her own but her respiration was low. It was only a matter of time. Tim sadly shook his head when I asked if there was anything I could do for him. He just wanted to sit with Iras.
He urged me to go ahead with my plans to participate in the three-day Project Cure breast cancer walk, saying Iras would have wanted me to. The breast cancer walk was in honor of two mothers and the wife of a teacher from our school who lost their lives to breast cancer. Iras knew all three women.
So I walked. Even though my heart felt like it was in my throat, I walked. Sunday, the final day of the walk, the weather was picture perfect. The air was crisp and the skies were sunny with a few fluffy clouds here and there.
As our group of walkers headed down Natures Way toward Culbreath Road in Bloomingdale East on the second lap of that day’s walk, someone shouted, “Look, a rainbow!”
Sure enough, a rainbow had appeared in front of us although there was no rain in the forecast.
My friend, Amy Meany, walking beside me, recalled that a rainbow represents God’s promise. She felt it was a sign that our walk would be a success.
Someone else noticed that the main color of the rainbow was pink, the signature color for the fight against breast cancer.
“I don’t think so,” I said softly, reaching for my cell phone.
I knew Iras was gone even before I heard the agony in Tim’s Voice.
“I know,” I told him. “We’re looking at her rainbow. She’s telling us goodbye and that she loves us.”
My best friend, Mary Owens, had stopped with me as I made the call to Tim.
Tim was too devastated to reply. All I could do was tell him that I loved him before he broke the connection with a sob.
I cried as we continued walking. When we caught up with the other walkers and told them the sad news, we gathered and prayed for Iras.
A meteorologist can provide any number of scientific explanations why that rainbow appeared at that time to that particular group of people.
But Tim told me that Iras always loved rainbows. They were her personal signature. And my friend and fellow walker, Lisa Huetteman, reminded me that the Spanish word for rainbow is “arco iris.”
It made perfect sense that Iras would send us a rainbow to let us know that she was at peace and that she would see us again.
D’Ann White
Oct. 19, 2006
Everyday Miracles
By D'Ann Lawrence White
Life hasn’t been perfect.
Like everyone, I’ve had my share of sorrow, my moments of struggle.
“Character builders,” my dad used to call them. He died two years ago after facing the ultimate character builder, a life-and-death battle with cancer.
Nevertheless, even in my darkest hours I can’t imagine the depths of despair that drove Rose Miranda to leave her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son in a borrowed car June 30, 2006, walk into a Crown Bank in Lakeland, hand the teller a note and walk out a few minutes later with a bag of stolen money.
Friend and then-Tampa Tribune cop reporter Mike Wells was on call that weekend and covered the unsettling story.
“We had trouble finding anyone to take the kids,” Lakeland police Sgt. Gary Gross told Wells. “Apparently she doesn’t have many relatives here.”
Although Gross said the children appeared healthy and in good spirits, Miranda said she was out of work and had no money. No gun was found, but Miranda’s note implied she had a gun. Therefore, she was charged with armed robbery.
I was staggered by the sheer desperation it must have taken for a 23-year-old mother to summon up the nerve to rob a bank while her two children waited in the car.
But I wasn’t surprised.
Unfortunately, in my years as a reporter, I’ve witnessed my fair share of hopelessness and despair, and I didn’t have to look far. Right in my own community I’ve seen things most people expect to find only in Third World countries. I’ve seen homeless families sleeping in cars, children foraging in trashcans and elderly invalids left to lie for days in their own feces.
Every year I treat my son to a rather unorthodox Thanksgiving spent feeding the homeless. He watches in astonishment as destitute people emerg from cars, woods and from behind buildings for a hot turkey dinner beneath a shelter. He stood silently beside me while a drug addict described how he’d beaten up his girlfriend after someone sold him crack laced with embalming fluid.
You would think after more than two decades in this business I would become inured to heartache. But every story still reduces me to tears. If anything, I’ve become more empathetic over the years.
Despite their emotional toll, it’s these stories that give my job meaning. Sometimes they make me angry, sometimes sad and helpless, and sometimes the stories are so compelling, so powerful, they’ve changed my life and the lives of people who read them.
If I do my job right, I’m able to convey that sense of injustice, urgency, spirit and poignancy to the reader. Maybe I can bring some attention to a problem, maybe match a person needing help with someone who can provide the help or perhaps simply show the amazing fortitude of the human spirit.
Like that of FishHawk Ranch resident Dan Lynott when he attended the father-daughter dance at Lithia Springs Elementary School.
Dan had married Anita the year before and adopted Anita’s daughter, Mattie. Shortly after they married, Dan discovered he had terminal cancer. His greatest wish was to live long enough to dance with his daughter for the first and last time.
Nor would I have traded the hour I spent watching 9-year-old Sydney Simms and 8-year-old Zachary Tucker giggle as they played the Homer Simpson version of the board game Operation. Both were battling rare forms of cancer. With purple smudges beneath his vivid blue eyes, Zachary had that ethereal quality you’d imagine an angel might have, and I had this terrible ache in my heart as I watched him carefully retrieve Homer’s funny bone as if he hadn’t a care in the world other than winning that game against Sydney. It was then I realized that, without uttering a word, Zachary was sending me a message in his own shy, quiet way. I’d been taking life way too seriously. I hadn’t been spending enough time playing. I stopped at Wal-Mart on my way home and bought the same Simpson Operation game for my son and me to play.
I was struggling with a serious illness of my own May 9, 2006, when I received word that Zach was dead.
I consider it a privilege when people trust me enough to tell their stories, and I’m humbled when, every so often, they lead to a welcome outcome, dare I say miracle?
I’m not talking about the kind of miracle that parts seas or causes statues to weep. I’m talking about the miracles that occur when people respond with genuine human kindness. They’re not nearly as dramatic, but wondrous all the same.
Like the time sheriff’s deputies surprised a family of foster children with a new play set after theirs was stolen just before Christmas. Or when 4-year-old Thomas Tucker of Seffner received the life-saving therapy he needed for spinal muscular atrophy after his story was published.
Sometimes publicity isn’t even necessary. I happened to mention to someone that I knew of a single mother who was having some financial troubles. Before I knew it, word spread a senior adult men’s Bible study class at First Baptist Church of Brandon. The class wrote out a check to me, no questions asked. They figured my word was good enough. In effect, they’d given me a gift as well: their trust.
Granted, as Jesus told his disciples, there always will be poverty, sickness and despair. But, in my experience, there always will be people willing to help.
I wonder if Rose Miranda would be facing armed robbery and child neglect charges today if people had known how desperate she was, if someone had been able to tell her story.
My guess? We’d have pulled off another miracle.
Life hasn’t been perfect.
Like everyone, I’ve had my share of sorrow, my moments of struggle.
“Character builders,” my dad used to call them. He died two years ago after facing the ultimate character builder, a life-and-death battle with cancer.
Nevertheless, even in my darkest hours I can’t imagine the depths of despair that drove Rose Miranda to leave her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son in a borrowed car June 30, 2006, walk into a Crown Bank in Lakeland, hand the teller a note and walk out a few minutes later with a bag of stolen money.
Friend and then-Tampa Tribune cop reporter Mike Wells was on call that weekend and covered the unsettling story.
“We had trouble finding anyone to take the kids,” Lakeland police Sgt. Gary Gross told Wells. “Apparently she doesn’t have many relatives here.”
Although Gross said the children appeared healthy and in good spirits, Miranda said she was out of work and had no money. No gun was found, but Miranda’s note implied she had a gun. Therefore, she was charged with armed robbery.
I was staggered by the sheer desperation it must have taken for a 23-year-old mother to summon up the nerve to rob a bank while her two children waited in the car.
But I wasn’t surprised.
Unfortunately, in my years as a reporter, I’ve witnessed my fair share of hopelessness and despair, and I didn’t have to look far. Right in my own community I’ve seen things most people expect to find only in Third World countries. I’ve seen homeless families sleeping in cars, children foraging in trashcans and elderly invalids left to lie for days in their own feces.
Every year I treat my son to a rather unorthodox Thanksgiving spent feeding the homeless. He watches in astonishment as destitute people emerg from cars, woods and from behind buildings for a hot turkey dinner beneath a shelter. He stood silently beside me while a drug addict described how he’d beaten up his girlfriend after someone sold him crack laced with embalming fluid.
You would think after more than two decades in this business I would become inured to heartache. But every story still reduces me to tears. If anything, I’ve become more empathetic over the years.
Despite their emotional toll, it’s these stories that give my job meaning. Sometimes they make me angry, sometimes sad and helpless, and sometimes the stories are so compelling, so powerful, they’ve changed my life and the lives of people who read them.
If I do my job right, I’m able to convey that sense of injustice, urgency, spirit and poignancy to the reader. Maybe I can bring some attention to a problem, maybe match a person needing help with someone who can provide the help or perhaps simply show the amazing fortitude of the human spirit.
Like that of FishHawk Ranch resident Dan Lynott when he attended the father-daughter dance at Lithia Springs Elementary School.
Dan had married Anita the year before and adopted Anita’s daughter, Mattie. Shortly after they married, Dan discovered he had terminal cancer. His greatest wish was to live long enough to dance with his daughter for the first and last time.
Nor would I have traded the hour I spent watching 9-year-old Sydney Simms and 8-year-old Zachary Tucker giggle as they played the Homer Simpson version of the board game Operation. Both were battling rare forms of cancer. With purple smudges beneath his vivid blue eyes, Zachary had that ethereal quality you’d imagine an angel might have, and I had this terrible ache in my heart as I watched him carefully retrieve Homer’s funny bone as if he hadn’t a care in the world other than winning that game against Sydney. It was then I realized that, without uttering a word, Zachary was sending me a message in his own shy, quiet way. I’d been taking life way too seriously. I hadn’t been spending enough time playing. I stopped at Wal-Mart on my way home and bought the same Simpson Operation game for my son and me to play.
I was struggling with a serious illness of my own May 9, 2006, when I received word that Zach was dead.
I consider it a privilege when people trust me enough to tell their stories, and I’m humbled when, every so often, they lead to a welcome outcome, dare I say miracle?
I’m not talking about the kind of miracle that parts seas or causes statues to weep. I’m talking about the miracles that occur when people respond with genuine human kindness. They’re not nearly as dramatic, but wondrous all the same.
Like the time sheriff’s deputies surprised a family of foster children with a new play set after theirs was stolen just before Christmas. Or when 4-year-old Thomas Tucker of Seffner received the life-saving therapy he needed for spinal muscular atrophy after his story was published.
Sometimes publicity isn’t even necessary. I happened to mention to someone that I knew of a single mother who was having some financial troubles. Before I knew it, word spread a senior adult men’s Bible study class at First Baptist Church of Brandon. The class wrote out a check to me, no questions asked. They figured my word was good enough. In effect, they’d given me a gift as well: their trust.
Granted, as Jesus told his disciples, there always will be poverty, sickness and despair. But, in my experience, there always will be people willing to help.
I wonder if Rose Miranda would be facing armed robbery and child neglect charges today if people had known how desperate she was, if someone had been able to tell her story.
My guess? We’d have pulled off another miracle.
What Were They Thinking?
By D'Ann Lawrence White
If I had my way, the Fourth of July would fall some time around mid-January.
What were our Founding Fathers thinking when they signed the Declaration of Independence in sweltering weather?
Sure, they were smart enough to write this enduring document, a document that could withstand 230 years of court battles. But they didn’t have the foresight to figure out that we would be obligated to stage parades and fireworks displays on the hottest day of the year.
Or maybe they did. Maybe before signing the Declaration of Independence, Button Gwinnett from the most southern of the 13 colonies, Georgia, asked the rest of the guys to reconsider.
“Hey, can’t we wait a few months to sign this thing?” pleaded Gwinnett. “If we sign it today, people won’t need to light a fire to cook their celebratory barbecue ribs.”
Unfortunately, he was outvoted by all those patriots from cooler climes.
“What do you mean?” countered fellow signee William Whipple of New Hampshire. “July’s a great time of the year. It’s perfect beer and baseball weather.”
Thomas Jefferson was tapped to head a committee to compose the Declaration of Independence in early June 1776 and he quickly got down to business, presenting the first draft to the Second Continental Congress June 28.
Of course, that first try wasn’t quite up to snuff. The Second Continental Congress suggested some changes -- 86 in all. So Jefferson and his team -- John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Philip Livingston and Roger Sherman -- went back to the drawing room, so to speak, and came back out on July 4.
They could have stayed in the drawing room longer. We’re talking about a critical document. Clearly it deserved to be pondered over until at least … umm … October.
My theory is that Jefferson and Adams somehow knew they would both die on July 4, 1826, and they liked the irony of having the Declaration of Independence signed on the same day.
Actually, our forefathers didn’t finish signing the declaration until August. It was July 4 that the colonies voted to accept the Declaration of Independence. By the way, of the 13 colonies, nine voted in favor of the declaration. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against it. Delaware was undecided and New York abstained.
Granted, I dread the blazing temperatures that are inevitable on Independence Day. Nevertheless, I haven’t missed a Brandon celebration in 22 years.
Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment but there’s nothing that evokes those warm-and-fuzzy feelings like a hometown parade led by the sheriff’s deputies and veterans color guard.
I’ve viewed the parade from just about every angle, including some I’d rather forget.
I still cringe when I recall once walking the entire parade route wearing a cardboard box painted to look like a newspaper rack. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Fellow employees Marci Alter and Susie Howell shared my humiliation. Near the end of the parade, my newspaper rack got overheated and fell over in someone’s yard, and my fellow newspaper racks had to run off and summon help.
I’ve posed as other characters throughout the years -- a World War I dough boy, an 1890s paper boy and Uncle Sam. I’ve driven in, ridden in and walked behind cars, trucks and golf carts in the parade. I’ve sat on the reviewing stand where I’ve been bombarded with beads as I’ve tried to judge cheerleading squads, floats, marching bands and Scout troops. I’ve walked the parade route taking photos of adorable kids keeping comfortably cool in wading pools and lamenting with those parents who didn’t think to bring wading pools. And I’ve simply sat beneath the shelter of an oak tree at Campbell’s Dairyland, cradling my toddler in my lap, seeing the Shriners’ miniature motorcycle camels through his eyes.
As sweat pours down my face and I reach for my battery-operated combination fan and water spritzer and pull another can of ice-cold soda from the cooler, I’m reminded that I’m sharing in a tradition that began July 4, 1778. That’s when American celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence with the first “procession” and fireworks display.
They didn’t have battery-operated fans, wading pools and ice-filled coolers back then. So who am I to complain about the heat?
If I had my way, the Fourth of July would fall some time around mid-January.
What were our Founding Fathers thinking when they signed the Declaration of Independence in sweltering weather?
Sure, they were smart enough to write this enduring document, a document that could withstand 230 years of court battles. But they didn’t have the foresight to figure out that we would be obligated to stage parades and fireworks displays on the hottest day of the year.
Or maybe they did. Maybe before signing the Declaration of Independence, Button Gwinnett from the most southern of the 13 colonies, Georgia, asked the rest of the guys to reconsider.
“Hey, can’t we wait a few months to sign this thing?” pleaded Gwinnett. “If we sign it today, people won’t need to light a fire to cook their celebratory barbecue ribs.”
Unfortunately, he was outvoted by all those patriots from cooler climes.
“What do you mean?” countered fellow signee William Whipple of New Hampshire. “July’s a great time of the year. It’s perfect beer and baseball weather.”
Thomas Jefferson was tapped to head a committee to compose the Declaration of Independence in early June 1776 and he quickly got down to business, presenting the first draft to the Second Continental Congress June 28.
Of course, that first try wasn’t quite up to snuff. The Second Continental Congress suggested some changes -- 86 in all. So Jefferson and his team -- John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Philip Livingston and Roger Sherman -- went back to the drawing room, so to speak, and came back out on July 4.
They could have stayed in the drawing room longer. We’re talking about a critical document. Clearly it deserved to be pondered over until at least … umm … October.
My theory is that Jefferson and Adams somehow knew they would both die on July 4, 1826, and they liked the irony of having the Declaration of Independence signed on the same day.
Actually, our forefathers didn’t finish signing the declaration until August. It was July 4 that the colonies voted to accept the Declaration of Independence. By the way, of the 13 colonies, nine voted in favor of the declaration. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against it. Delaware was undecided and New York abstained.
Granted, I dread the blazing temperatures that are inevitable on Independence Day. Nevertheless, I haven’t missed a Brandon celebration in 22 years.
Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment but there’s nothing that evokes those warm-and-fuzzy feelings like a hometown parade led by the sheriff’s deputies and veterans color guard.
I’ve viewed the parade from just about every angle, including some I’d rather forget.
I still cringe when I recall once walking the entire parade route wearing a cardboard box painted to look like a newspaper rack. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Fellow employees Marci Alter and Susie Howell shared my humiliation. Near the end of the parade, my newspaper rack got overheated and fell over in someone’s yard, and my fellow newspaper racks had to run off and summon help.
I’ve posed as other characters throughout the years -- a World War I dough boy, an 1890s paper boy and Uncle Sam. I’ve driven in, ridden in and walked behind cars, trucks and golf carts in the parade. I’ve sat on the reviewing stand where I’ve been bombarded with beads as I’ve tried to judge cheerleading squads, floats, marching bands and Scout troops. I’ve walked the parade route taking photos of adorable kids keeping comfortably cool in wading pools and lamenting with those parents who didn’t think to bring wading pools. And I’ve simply sat beneath the shelter of an oak tree at Campbell’s Dairyland, cradling my toddler in my lap, seeing the Shriners’ miniature motorcycle camels through his eyes.
As sweat pours down my face and I reach for my battery-operated combination fan and water spritzer and pull another can of ice-cold soda from the cooler, I’m reminded that I’m sharing in a tradition that began July 4, 1778. That’s when American celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence with the first “procession” and fireworks display.
They didn’t have battery-operated fans, wading pools and ice-filled coolers back then. So who am I to complain about the heat?
Words To Live By
By D'Ann Lawrence White
The bumpy six-hour ride to Tallahassee for the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce’s Tallahassee Trek was an ideal opportunity to observe my fellow trekkers outside the normal chamber events and community functions.
Dr. Carlos Soto, president of the Brandon campus of Hillsborough Community College, passed the time listening to classic rock songs by “The Who” as well as some of his son’s contemporary choices on his MP3 player. Wearing headphones, he stomped his foot to the beat of songs unheard by his fellow passengers.
Meanwhile, Tribune ad manager Melonie Hall dosed herself with Dramamine and moved to the front of the bus to keep the nausea caused by bad shocks or a misaligned axle at bay.
The rough ride combined with the hum of the bus engine had the opposite effect on me, lulling me to sleep. Not even the victory shouts and groans of defeat from the back of the bus where a group of trekkers played poker could disrupt my state of semiconsciousness. I was aware of the conversations around me but couldn’t shake off the urge to slumber.
The discussions in front and behind me ranged from the high rate of homeowner’s insurance to the Gators’ chances of bringing home their first national basketball championship.
In my near dream state, I heard Kerri McDougall ask the question, “Who would you have lunch with if you could invite anyone, dead or alive?”
I silently seconded George May and Andy Mason’s choice of Thomas Jefferson. With the ongoing debate over separation of church and state, I’d love to know once and for all if our forefathers intended to keep any reference to God out of our government buildings and schools.
However, if I could have roused myself enough to join the conversation, I would have told them my first choice would be Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
I’d heard stories about Mother Teresa all my life, how she worked tirelessly to provide the poorest of children with an education and would sit for days comforting people dying of leprosy and AIDS.
But it wasn’t until she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 that I realized she was not only a woman of great faith but also a woman of great wisdom. Although she’d never claim to be one of the world’s great intellects, her words demonstrated an understanding of humanity you can’t learn from books.
They were words that transcended religion and politics, words that all people can take to heart.
Her belief that the home, the family is the root of all the world’s joys as well as its woes was a constant reminder to me that the most important job I have is raising my son.
“Just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence in each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world … Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do but how much love we put in the action that we do,” she said.
The endless despair she witnessed would have overwhelmed the average person. However, she never allowed the sheer numbers of those suffering to get the best of her.
“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one,” she said. “It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.”
However, it was her gentle smile in the face of all that despair that most impressed me.
Whenever I encounter an angry driver pointing a finger my way, Mother Teresa beseeches me to smile, “especially when it is difficult to smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”
Whenever I come across an irritable sales clerk, I recall Mother Teresa’s plea for understanding: “Kind words can be short and easy to speak,” she said. “But their echoes are truly endless.”
I keep a picture of Mother Teresa on my desk at work as a constant reminder to be patient and kind as I deal with the pressures of deadlines, unreasonable demands and hurtful criticism. The photo sits beside my computer where I can gaze at it while an irate reader berates me on the telephone.
Mother Teresa mounted a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan, the children’s home she founded in Calcutta. It’s her own version of “The Paradoxical Commandments” written by author Kent Keith when he was a sophomore at Harvard University. Keith’s commandments originally were written for publication for student leaders. Mother Teresa amended them to fit any situation.
Her version is mounted to my refrigerator with a Spongebob Squarepants magnet where I can review them as I rummage through outdated milk cartons and week-old leftovers in search of something to make for dinner:
“People are often unreasonable and self-centered; forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you; be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous; be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow; do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough; give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.”
I have no doubt that my fantasy lunch with Mother Teresa, most likely a meager meal of rice and bread, would be the richest lunch of my life.
The bumpy six-hour ride to Tallahassee for the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce’s Tallahassee Trek was an ideal opportunity to observe my fellow trekkers outside the normal chamber events and community functions.
Dr. Carlos Soto, president of the Brandon campus of Hillsborough Community College, passed the time listening to classic rock songs by “The Who” as well as some of his son’s contemporary choices on his MP3 player. Wearing headphones, he stomped his foot to the beat of songs unheard by his fellow passengers.
Meanwhile, Tribune ad manager Melonie Hall dosed herself with Dramamine and moved to the front of the bus to keep the nausea caused by bad shocks or a misaligned axle at bay.
The rough ride combined with the hum of the bus engine had the opposite effect on me, lulling me to sleep. Not even the victory shouts and groans of defeat from the back of the bus where a group of trekkers played poker could disrupt my state of semiconsciousness. I was aware of the conversations around me but couldn’t shake off the urge to slumber.
The discussions in front and behind me ranged from the high rate of homeowner’s insurance to the Gators’ chances of bringing home their first national basketball championship.
In my near dream state, I heard Kerri McDougall ask the question, “Who would you have lunch with if you could invite anyone, dead or alive?”
I silently seconded George May and Andy Mason’s choice of Thomas Jefferson. With the ongoing debate over separation of church and state, I’d love to know once and for all if our forefathers intended to keep any reference to God out of our government buildings and schools.
However, if I could have roused myself enough to join the conversation, I would have told them my first choice would be Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
I’d heard stories about Mother Teresa all my life, how she worked tirelessly to provide the poorest of children with an education and would sit for days comforting people dying of leprosy and AIDS.
But it wasn’t until she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 that I realized she was not only a woman of great faith but also a woman of great wisdom. Although she’d never claim to be one of the world’s great intellects, her words demonstrated an understanding of humanity you can’t learn from books.
They were words that transcended religion and politics, words that all people can take to heart.
Her belief that the home, the family is the root of all the world’s joys as well as its woes was a constant reminder to me that the most important job I have is raising my son.
“Just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence in each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world … Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do but how much love we put in the action that we do,” she said.
The endless despair she witnessed would have overwhelmed the average person. However, she never allowed the sheer numbers of those suffering to get the best of her.
“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one,” she said. “It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.”
However, it was her gentle smile in the face of all that despair that most impressed me.
Whenever I encounter an angry driver pointing a finger my way, Mother Teresa beseeches me to smile, “especially when it is difficult to smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”
Whenever I come across an irritable sales clerk, I recall Mother Teresa’s plea for understanding: “Kind words can be short and easy to speak,” she said. “But their echoes are truly endless.”
I keep a picture of Mother Teresa on my desk at work as a constant reminder to be patient and kind as I deal with the pressures of deadlines, unreasonable demands and hurtful criticism. The photo sits beside my computer where I can gaze at it while an irate reader berates me on the telephone.
Mother Teresa mounted a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan, the children’s home she founded in Calcutta. It’s her own version of “The Paradoxical Commandments” written by author Kent Keith when he was a sophomore at Harvard University. Keith’s commandments originally were written for publication for student leaders. Mother Teresa amended them to fit any situation.
Her version is mounted to my refrigerator with a Spongebob Squarepants magnet where I can review them as I rummage through outdated milk cartons and week-old leftovers in search of something to make for dinner:
“People are often unreasonable and self-centered; forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you; be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous; be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow; do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough; give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.”
I have no doubt that my fantasy lunch with Mother Teresa, most likely a meager meal of rice and bread, would be the richest lunch of my life.
I Get By With A Lot Of Help From My Friends
"My tongue is the pen of a ready writer." Psalm 45
By D'Ann Lawrence White Tampa
It’s not that I’m a loner. On the contrary, I’m the ultimate people person.
My husband and 10-year-old son lament that a simple trip to the store for a gallon of milk turns into a marathon for me because I can’t resist striking up a conversation with the nearest person, whether I know him or not.
It doesn’t matter if the target of my verbal onslaught is grumpy and antisocial. He’s simply more of a challenge.
No, being around people isn’t my problem. Having to depend on people is.
Ask my mom who used to call me Little Miss Independence because I always insisted on doing things on my own in my own way.
I couldn’t wait for teachers to do their jobs. I taught myself to read, and then I proceeded to read everything I could get my hands on.
My parents must have cringed when I graduated from the University of Missouri, loaded my 1975 Oldsmobile with all my earthly possessions and drove from St. Louis to New England to begin my first newspaper job.
I didn’t even have an apartment lined up. I slept in my car until someone directed me to Mrs. Bernasconi’s boarding house.
But Mom and Dad, bless them, never interfered.
They knew I had to do it my way.
Once I heard my mom’s friend ask her about my marriage prospects. “Oh, I don’t think D’Ann will ever get married,” she answered. “She’s too independent.”
It surprised us both when I met and married my husband, Michael, 25 years ago.
But my husband’s a rare breed who’s always sensed my need for space and never griped about late-night meetings, 1 a.m. deadlines or sacrificing weekends for the sake of a story.
I was able to vigorously guard my independence until my son was born.
Being a working mom with a child, I found myself having to ask a friend for a favor here and there, always careful to keep track and return the favor.
“I’m running late. Can you pick my son up from school?” “I’ve got to be at a meeting. Can you take my son to the birthday party since you’re already going?”
It bothered me and I did it sparingly. I hate having to admit I can’t do it all.
However, in April I wasn’t given a choice. I became ill, was stuck in bed for an extended, agonizingly boring period of time and wound up in the hospital.
The upshot is I learned a few new lessons.
I learned that I really can do that stunt Jennifer Beals performed in the movie “Flashdance” when she removed her sports bra without taking off her shirt.
There were no rooms available in the emergency room so I was on a gurney in the hallway when the nurse asked me to change into a gown. No problem. “What a feeling!”
Unfortunately, I also learned I was claustrophobic when the MRI technician rolled me into that big tube.
Simultaneously, I learned how easily rules can be broken when it means calming a hysterical woman.
“OK, lady, we’ll let your husband inside the room with you. Just stop screaming.”
Most importantly, I learned how much I need my friends, especially my two best friends, Mary and Rita.
I met Mary nearly 11 years ago when we showed up at Primary Prep preschool cradling our 6-week-old babies, born just a week apart.
We both wore that look of indecision and fear you see on the faces of all new working moms placing their babies in the hands of virtual strangers, and we bonded instantly.
We attend the same church. Our kids attend the same school and summer camps and Mary’s become a second mother to my son, a mother who is way more organized, a better disciplinarian and much more patient than I am, which is why I teasingly call her St. Mary.
I think people are a little surprised to find out we’re best friends.
She’s so together and I’m so, well, not together.
I met Rita about three years later when she, her husband and three children moved into the house two doors down from ours.
Our boys promptly struck up a friendship and are best friends to this day.
Likewise, Rita and I immediately connected. Rita also attends the same church and our kids go to the same school.
Rita and I share the same quirky sense of humor that some people, namely our husbands, just don’t understand.
For instance, neither of us had time to put together a really creative Greek god costume for the fourth-grade Mount Olympus festival so we challenged one another to put together the lamest costume.
Rita won by sticking an old brown shepherd’s tunic over her kid’s head and calling him Thor.
During my six-week illness, between Mary and Rita, I never had to worry once about who would pick up my son from school, who would drive him to extracurricular activities, birthday parties, the St. Stephen Spring Jubilee and Scout meetings.
Mary hosted my family at her house on Easter and made sure my son got to participate in an Easter egg hunt.
She prepared dinners for my husband and served as a surrogate parent for my son at Meet the Teacher Night at school.
Rita, likewise, entertained my son with movies and overnight stays.
She rushed to my side at the hospital (Mary was out of town or she’d most likely have been there as well), where she laughed, witnessing my "Flashdance" performance.
She left the hospital only to pick up our kids from school and then care for my son until my husband left the hospital to retrieve him.
Then, in one of the most spiritual experiences of my life, Rita sat beside me, holding my hand while my priest, Father Bill, performed the sacrament of the anointing of the sick on my behalf.
It wasn’t easy for me -- letting go, admitting that I needed help. And, no matter how much Rita and Mary demur, their gift isn’t a simple favor that can be repaid in kind, though I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying.
I believe people come into your life for a reason. You can either accept them or turn them away. My first instinct was to turn them away. Thank God Mary and Rita wouldn’t let me.
By D'Ann Lawrence White Tampa
It’s not that I’m a loner. On the contrary, I’m the ultimate people person.
My husband and 10-year-old son lament that a simple trip to the store for a gallon of milk turns into a marathon for me because I can’t resist striking up a conversation with the nearest person, whether I know him or not.
It doesn’t matter if the target of my verbal onslaught is grumpy and antisocial. He’s simply more of a challenge.
No, being around people isn’t my problem. Having to depend on people is.
Ask my mom who used to call me Little Miss Independence because I always insisted on doing things on my own in my own way.
I couldn’t wait for teachers to do their jobs. I taught myself to read, and then I proceeded to read everything I could get my hands on.
My parents must have cringed when I graduated from the University of Missouri, loaded my 1975 Oldsmobile with all my earthly possessions and drove from St. Louis to New England to begin my first newspaper job.
I didn’t even have an apartment lined up. I slept in my car until someone directed me to Mrs. Bernasconi’s boarding house.
But Mom and Dad, bless them, never interfered.
They knew I had to do it my way.
Once I heard my mom’s friend ask her about my marriage prospects. “Oh, I don’t think D’Ann will ever get married,” she answered. “She’s too independent.”
It surprised us both when I met and married my husband, Michael, 25 years ago.
But my husband’s a rare breed who’s always sensed my need for space and never griped about late-night meetings, 1 a.m. deadlines or sacrificing weekends for the sake of a story.
I was able to vigorously guard my independence until my son was born.
Being a working mom with a child, I found myself having to ask a friend for a favor here and there, always careful to keep track and return the favor.
“I’m running late. Can you pick my son up from school?” “I’ve got to be at a meeting. Can you take my son to the birthday party since you’re already going?”
It bothered me and I did it sparingly. I hate having to admit I can’t do it all.
However, in April I wasn’t given a choice. I became ill, was stuck in bed for an extended, agonizingly boring period of time and wound up in the hospital.
The upshot is I learned a few new lessons.
I learned that I really can do that stunt Jennifer Beals performed in the movie “Flashdance” when she removed her sports bra without taking off her shirt.
There were no rooms available in the emergency room so I was on a gurney in the hallway when the nurse asked me to change into a gown. No problem. “What a feeling!”
Unfortunately, I also learned I was claustrophobic when the MRI technician rolled me into that big tube.
Simultaneously, I learned how easily rules can be broken when it means calming a hysterical woman.
“OK, lady, we’ll let your husband inside the room with you. Just stop screaming.”
Most importantly, I learned how much I need my friends, especially my two best friends, Mary and Rita.
I met Mary nearly 11 years ago when we showed up at Primary Prep preschool cradling our 6-week-old babies, born just a week apart.
We both wore that look of indecision and fear you see on the faces of all new working moms placing their babies in the hands of virtual strangers, and we bonded instantly.
We attend the same church. Our kids attend the same school and summer camps and Mary’s become a second mother to my son, a mother who is way more organized, a better disciplinarian and much more patient than I am, which is why I teasingly call her St. Mary.
I think people are a little surprised to find out we’re best friends.
She’s so together and I’m so, well, not together.
I met Rita about three years later when she, her husband and three children moved into the house two doors down from ours.
Our boys promptly struck up a friendship and are best friends to this day.
Likewise, Rita and I immediately connected. Rita also attends the same church and our kids go to the same school.
Rita and I share the same quirky sense of humor that some people, namely our husbands, just don’t understand.
For instance, neither of us had time to put together a really creative Greek god costume for the fourth-grade Mount Olympus festival so we challenged one another to put together the lamest costume.
Rita won by sticking an old brown shepherd’s tunic over her kid’s head and calling him Thor.
During my six-week illness, between Mary and Rita, I never had to worry once about who would pick up my son from school, who would drive him to extracurricular activities, birthday parties, the St. Stephen Spring Jubilee and Scout meetings.
Mary hosted my family at her house on Easter and made sure my son got to participate in an Easter egg hunt.
She prepared dinners for my husband and served as a surrogate parent for my son at Meet the Teacher Night at school.
Rita, likewise, entertained my son with movies and overnight stays.
She rushed to my side at the hospital (Mary was out of town or she’d most likely have been there as well), where she laughed, witnessing my "Flashdance" performance.
She left the hospital only to pick up our kids from school and then care for my son until my husband left the hospital to retrieve him.
Then, in one of the most spiritual experiences of my life, Rita sat beside me, holding my hand while my priest, Father Bill, performed the sacrament of the anointing of the sick on my behalf.
It wasn’t easy for me -- letting go, admitting that I needed help. And, no matter how much Rita and Mary demur, their gift isn’t a simple favor that can be repaid in kind, though I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying.
I believe people come into your life for a reason. You can either accept them or turn them away. My first instinct was to turn them away. Thank God Mary and Rita wouldn’t let me.
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