Category Archives: Visiting

Visiting

Posted by dkrashb on

Saturday, our last day in Columbus.  We have a full agenda today.  First, a visit with the world’s best doctor for me.  Then we are taking lunch to some friends who just had a new baby.  We will wrap up the day with dinner with another set of friends.  I pop out of bed an hour earlier than my alarm, already preparing in my sleep for our day.

Seeing my doctor is always a treat.  The only thing that would make it better is if we were meeting over coffee instead of in her office.  But, this way I get to see her and get a minor issue addressed at the same time.  I suppose it’s somewhat odd to be friends with your doctor, but I’m not sure why.  Who better to trust with your health care than someone who genuinely cares about you?

After my appointment, Pat picks me up and we head to City Barbecue.  We are running ahead of schedule.  We decide to go to the grocery store first and pick up a few things for our hosts that we have been consuming.  Then, we go back towards City Barbecue, still ahead of schedule.  We decide it may take several minutes to get our order together, so we go ahead and go in.  We order a family pack, but can’t decide on only two sides, so we add two more.  When our order comes, each side is packed in a 1 quart container.  We have enough sides for about 32 people.   You can never have enough sides.

We arrive at our friends house, still a few minutes ahead of schedule.  It never fails that all the lights are green when you need to slough off time.  We even took the slower, back way to get there.  Sara is home with both children.  Geoff is not yet back from a grocery store run.

Sara greets us at the door with Lella cradled in her arms.  Her tiny pumpkin head perfectly round against her mother’s arm.  I am surprised to find myself pleased to see her.  While I’m never going to be one of those people who swoops in and snatches the baby out of mom’s arms and goos and gah’s over it, paying no attention to anything other than the baby for hours on end, I feel less afraid of appreciating the baby.  I think that in my younger years I felt like I had to reject babies entirely in order to avoid any regrets about not having any of my own.  That somehow there was a threat that I might suddenly wish for one and my biological clock would click on and my relationship with my now husband would be threatened as a result.

Having recognized that I would not be the world’s best mother and subsequently decided that the world would be better off if I didn’t reproduce, I have not, as of yet, regretted that decision.  While there are times I think my life would feel more purposeful if I had children, I have a hard time imagining giving up on so many of the life experiences I have been able to have because I don’t have kids.  Now nearly 45, there is little possibility that I will suddenly awake and want to have a baby.

Today, instead of feeling repulsed by this tiny life, I am intrigued.  She is beautiful, this tiny Lella.  I like to say her name, “Lel-la.”  It rolls on my tongue and feels like “lullaby.”  It is both a soothing baby name and a strong adult name.  I am amazed that no one ever thought of it before (well, that I know of)

As Lella awakens and looks out upon the wide world before her, her eyes open, big and bright.  She appears to watch things across the room and I wonder how far she can see.  I remember being told infants can only see the distance from the breast to the face, but she looks so fascinated that I have to ask out loud.  Sara also believes she can only see about 18 inches.  Lella makes a fist, twists her face, kicks her legs and farts loudly.  Henry, her 4-year old brother, is not the only one who is amused.  We take her upstairs for a tour of the nursery and a diaper change.  I rub Lella’s head and make sure she doesn’t roll off the changing table while Sara looks for something.

I am reminded of a terrifying event in my early teen years when an infant I was babysitting kicked his diaper off the changing table and I bent down to pick it up.  The screaming infant, probably suffering from colic, kicked so hard in the instant I bent to pick up the diaper that he flopped off the table and landed on the floor at my feet.  I believe this was the first nail in the coffin of my desire to have children.  Fortunately, the baby was not seriously injured, but I stopped babysitting infants after that.

Today, I stand next to the changing table with my hand cupped over Lella’s head rubbing her fuzzy hair, relaxed and happy to have this moment to experience baby-ness.  I can’t say that I really want to fuss over this tiny infant all afternoon.  In fact, I occasionally forget about her as we eat lunch and talk of adult things, but it’s nice to at least feel at home around this tiny, fragile life and not feel afraid that my mere presence might in someway break it.

After hanging out for a few hours, we head on back to our host’s house.  We are already exhausted and it is not even 3PM yet when we arrived.  Pat heads upstairs for an afternoon nap while I sit and talk with Georgia in between games of solitaire.  I keep thinking I will doze for a while, but in the end I never do.  It’s just as well–when Pat wakes up, he seems groggy and disoriented.  A long afternoon nap will do that to you.  I smile as I look at his rumpled hair when he comes back downstairs.  Back up we go, smoothing ourselves and making ourselves presentable for our evening out.

Special Ed

Posted by dkrashb on

When Pat drops me off at the office, I head to the cafeteria to grab some breakfast.  I decide to stop by the gym to say hello to my former workout buddies.  The gym looks dark.  I swipe my badge anyway, but the door doesn’t unlock.  I stand there perplexed for a moment.  If I felt like a visitor yesterday, I feel doubly so today–I worked on this campus for 5 1/2 years and the only time my badge failed to open the fitness center door was when I broke it in half.  I’m a bit indignant about being locked out of the gym, but I remind myself that it’s lucky I decided not to show up un-showered and in my gym clothes only to discover I couldn’t get in.

After a full morning of back-to-back conference calls, I dash down a flight of stairs to meet up with a couple of my friends who are taking time out to have lunch with me.  I arrive still on the phone, but manage to get off the phone before we get into the car.  We decide on Chinese and head to a local favorite.

An interesting phenomena of having a blog in which you record much of your life is how conversations go with your friends when you see them again.  Many seem to feel obligated to read your blog and will apologize for not keeping up with it.  I am not offended by people not reading my blog.  While I like having an imaginary audience because it seems to keep me writing, which is my real goal, knowing that my real audience is busy and often doesn’t have time to read my blog takes away some of the anxiety about “what will people think?”

Vince, however, does not feel obligated or apologetic when it comes to reading my blog.  He simply says, “too many words.”  I am not offended by this either.  After all, I’ve made a personal choice to write my blog because I want to develop a habit of writing.  While I know I should be reading too, I’ve not made the choice to make time for reading.  I do not surf other people’s blogs except to take a quick look at people who leave an indication that they’ve read mine.  When someone who also has a blog clicks the “like” button on one of my blog entries, I take a quick look at what they are posting out of a curiosity to understand what they liked about mine.

Recently, a photographer and blogger “liked” several of my blog entries.  When I go to his blog, I see that he is an artist–someone with vision.  When I look at his work, I immediately see the difference in what I do and what he does; the stark contrast between “having fun with it” and creating actual art.  I ponder why he reads my blog at all and wonder what he likes about it.  I am too intimidated by his talent to give him a “like” in return.  I find myself hoping he reads this entry and than alternately worrying that he will.  My admiration makes me feel foolish.

The fact that my friends do not read every entry in my blog is actually helpful–otherwise, I really would have nothing new to say to them after not seeing them for 6 weeks.  I tell them about my realization that I suffer from a learning disability when it comes to hang gliding and the empathy that I have suddenly discovered for all the people whom I’ve known in my life whom I judged as stupid because they didn’t have a talent that I had.  If nothing else comes from hang gliding, I am at least reminded of the Zen lesson of allowing the ego to be diminished.

Humility is a difficult lesson in the end.  In my complete incompetence, I have realized that a lifetime of making humiliating experiences into funny stories is not the same thing as having humility.  It seems I have taken the approach of creating a good defense by taking the offense in the form of discovering and revealing my personal weaknesses before anyone else does.  As if me announcing I suck at something before anyone else does makes it all right.

What I learn now is that humility felt purely comes not from a fear of others finding you out before you do, but from compassion and empathy and the understanding that I am no better than anyone else.  I am reminded of a recording of Marianne Williamson a dear friend loaned me for 3 years until I finally listened to it out of guilt.  The quote I recall vividly from that multi-CD set is: “You are not special.”

This is what I do not explain to my friends:  What I get from hang gliding is the visceral realization that I am not special; I am as limited and inadequate as everyone else. I have intellectually feared and suspected this all along, but when I hang glide, I feel the truth of it physically.  The physical realization of this fact leads to the physical sense of humility.

Turns out that when I thought I was feeling humility before, I was really feeling shame.  The difference between the two is striking.  Humility sneaks over me gently, making me feel more connected to others, more part of the whole of life.  Shame strikes suddenly at my gut, causing me to shrink within myself, feeling alienated and alone.  When I am shameful, I am full of fear.  When I am humble, I feel remarkably safe.  I hold on to this fleeting feeling just long enough to understand that it’s a breakthrough moment.  But like all breakthroughs (at least for me), they appear suddenly and briefly, only to retreat to be learned all over again at a later date.

I shake away a sense of sudden vulnerability I feel and return to my social self.  I become effusive; I can’t stop talking.  It’s as if I shield the soft places with a torrent of words, distracting from what’s important but frightening.  Afterwards, I think about my friends and wonder why they even make time for me when all I do is babble at them.  I think about how lucky I am to have patient and caring people in my life.  Maybe my luck with friends makes me special?  No, no.  I am not special.